Page 29 of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

“You don’t ever go in to a possible unknown threat without someone at your back.”

“Been living around bikers too long.Shit.”

If possible, I could feel her smile.

Not the time to argue, I sigh, giving in, and she knows it. “Fuck, stay close. Don’t touch anything.”

“Except you?” she asks cheekily.

I chuckle and sigh again. “Don’t touch anything ’cept me.”

She gasps loudly and stops walking. When I turn to her, she has her hand thrown over her mouth, tears filling her big eyes. I hate seeing her in pain, but this pain I have no control over.

The whole place has been turned.Upside down. Not like someone came to rob the place. Michael showed and he’d been pissed that she’d denied him. Called the cops. Didn’t come home. It could have been any one of those. But with a prick like him, it was all of those. Maybe I could’ve stopped it if she’d called me sooner, but that ship hasn’t just sailed, it’s halfway across the fucking Atlantic.

I could tell her I’m sorry this happened to her home, and part of me is. But most of me is a giant dick that knows without him messing with her, I wouldn’t be here now. “Smart thinking, going to a hotel.”

It’s true—sheisa smart girl. With the level of devastation he left—I don’t even want to consider what he might have done to her.

The coffee table is tossed face down. One of its legs broken off. All the cushions ripped apart, stuffing strewn all over the floor. Glass knick-knacks and what I think might have been a green vase lay broken or smashed. Shards of green milk-glass and crushed dried or dead—I can’t really tell at this point—flowers cover most of the floor. The leg from the coffee table is sticking out from a large hole in the god dammed TV screen. The power and anger it had to take to plunge a table leg through a television, it turns my stomach. And the pages from Liv’s books are torn out and crumpled.

It just gets worse from there. The kitchen, it’s a holy mess. Broken dishes. The refrigerator door wide open. Spoiled milk pooled on the floor. Broken beer bottles mixed with the beer in a large puddle, and all her food items, from fresh baby spinach to flour all over the floor, to—sick. Sugar and thousands of sugar ants swarming the sugar crunch underfoot.

Liv begins crying. We don’t even make it to the bedroom before I lift her in my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist and press her face to my chest. She holds on, arms around my neck as I spin on my boot heels to get her out, dialing 9-1-1 as we rush.

Before we get out the door, Liv hits my chest to get me to put her down, which I do because the woman hits hard. And more than that, she’s not doing it to be obstinate, she’s on a mission, running to the front window to pick up a broken hula girl. It looks old and sun-bleached and Liv looks devastated as she sobs, breaking my heart for her even more now than it had just moments earlier.

“Liv, baby,” I whisper without anything else to say. She turns herself into my arms, still clutching the hula girl against her breasts. Once she’s lifted off her feet again, I waste no time getting her out of the house and set her down on the hood of the truck to wait for the cops to show.

We finally hear the sirens in the distance, but instead of pushing me away, she draws me closer, holding on tighter, though her tears have begun to dry in streaks down her cheeks where her foundation washed away. To most, she’d look a mess. And in my opinion, she doesn’t need any of it to begin with, but Liv never leaves home without her precious makeup. That chunky purse of hers carries everything. No matter the state of her, she’s nothing short of the most beautiful woman in the entire fucking world, inside as well as out.

“Was anything taken?” the police officer asks and I jolt like a punk. He snuck up on me and that shit never happens, but I was so caught up in Liv—taking care of her, drying her tears. It won’t happen again.

She must have been startled by the sudden appearance of the cop, too, because she begins to cry again but does so while shaking her headno.

“It’s tossed. Bad,” I answer for her. “We think it was her stalker.”

The cop’s brow furrows. “Has she reported this stalker?”

“Yeah. Two days ago. He attacked her at the beach in… Was it Sandbridge, Liv?” I ask her.

She nods.

“I was out of town and came as soon as she called.”

As Officer Drinkswine—that’s a badass name if I ever heard one—takes the rest of our statement, then moves back to his cruiser to make a call, others move inside to check out the destruction.

“This is my home, Gage. What am I supposed to do?” Liv begins to cry even harder, sniffling as she tries to regain composure. “Now I’m not safe anywhere.” She finishes with that punch to my gut.

My hands drop from holding her to rest at each of her thighs on the hood and I take a small step back to see her face fully. “You’re safe with me, Liv. You don’t go off alone. I kept you safe at the compound. I’ll keep you safe here. That’s my promise, baby. I’ll keep you safe or fucking die trying.”

She gathers her hair, pulling some more of those strands wet from tears sticking to her face back and braids it all to keep it out of her face. It’ll fall without a band to hold it, but it gives her something else to focus on. At least she’s calm now. Calm enough to grab a handful of T-shirt and tug me closer so I’m flush against her again. “Love you.” She whimpers, but then kisses my jaw.

Fuck, I bury my nose in the crook of her neck and hold on tight.

The cops stay for quite a while, taking pictures and walking evidence bags filled with Liv’s bedding and underwear. The clean stuff from the drawers and the dirty from her hamper. The sick, crazy fucktard jizzed all over it apparently. Trashed my woman’s home and then defiled it. They want him caught, I want him dead for putting that level of fear in Liv once again. She’s had enough of that kind of fear to last a lifetime.

“Wait here,” I order her once we’ve been given the all-clear to go back inside. “And I mean it.” Since she didn’t listen to me last time. With cops still milling about, she’ll be fine for the time. It’s quick, so I can’t guarantee she’ll get everything she needs or wants, but what I don’t grab we’ll buy fresh, and I pack her bag.

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