Page 211 of Fury

“No.” She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were suddenly cold, fighting shivers. “Motormouth broke it when he went through my stuff in Chicago. He broke it, and I realized right then that nothing could be held sacred anymore. Not you and me together, not my own life or yours, not our feelings, not our dreams. Nothing.”

The colorless tone in her voice drained the vengeful lust-filled fervor in my blood.

“So, when I saw you in LA,” she continued. “I let you walk out the door because no matter how much I wanted us back, how much I wanted to reverse time and change my choices, even if I could’ve, there was no point.”

“No point? Being close to you, having that again, having you, then being sideswiped by your news of getting married. I found you, came to you so full of hope. Worst day.”

“Worst day,” she whispered hoarsely.

“I left you and tried not to look back,” I said. “Tried real hard.”

Her eyes gleamed. “You left, and then I followed your trail of blood all these years.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I wiped the sweat and water from my eyes with a blood-smeared hand. “You got on with your life. You got married, had a kid!”

She only drew her robe tighter around her body.

“What does that mean?” I yelled.

She raised her hands. Surrender. Limit reached. “Go.”

“I don’t want to go!”

“There’s nothing here but sadness. Now go!” Her hand went to her cut arm.

“Baby, I don’t want to be sad, and I don’t want you to be.” I rubbed my hands down my face, my head spinning.

We stood there in the silence, amidst our wreckage.

“I’m going to clean us up.” She left the room and came back with a box of sterile bandages and a small tube of antibiotic cream. She applied the cream on herself as I tore open a bandage. I wrapped it around her arm, then taped it. She applied the cream on my cut.

“I’m not leaving this time,” I said. “I made that mistake once, twice. I should have fought for you, for us. This time, I’m going to do whatever it takes to hang onto you.”

She taped the bandage on my arm without a word.

I flexed my hands. “My missing fingers and that phantom pain that comes and goes, have been a reminder all these years not only of that hell, but of you and me. Hell and heaven. Beautiful and horrible. We found each other first in the dark and then in the light and in all the shadows in between. No matter how I tried convincing myself that I should forget, the scars never allowed it.”

She put the cap back on the tube of cream. “Go.” Her voice was weary.

Weary like my soul.

I didn’t want to fight with her, I only wanted her to see it like I did. From that moment on her bed, touching her, feeling her respond underneath my hands, my mouth, smelling her, listening to her sounds, tasting her. Through my hand I’d felt my own heartbeat joining hers, and for the first time in so, so long, I felt whole. I knew she felt it too. I knew she did, but she was scared.

My chest knotted. “Beautiful and horrible and beautiful again. That’s us, baby.”

“GO!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, her eyes wild. She launched away from me like an animal just freed from a trap.Slamwent a drawer. She pivoted.

I froze.

A gun aimed at me. “Go.”

I could command men to do my bidding with a look, a pitch in my voice, any number of almost unnoticeable gestures. But Lenore in pain? My body felt heavy, weighted down. My limbs locked.

I stood still under the watch of that Ruger. “What are you so afraid of, baby? After everything you’ve been through, you’re operating on fear now? With me?”

“Fear brought me here,baby, safe and sound,” she said, steadying the weapon in both hands. “I saw Tania’s scar. That shouldn’t have happened. Years ago, I stayed away from her and you to protect us all. And now we’re here, together again and this happens. It shouldn’t have happened. It was wrong. So wrong. Why should Tania suffer? Why?”

“No more suffering. That shit’s done.”

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