Page 65 of Beautiful Beasts

The nightmare I have every single night. The memory that makes it hard for any of us to get sleep at night.

I wish I could say that once they were killed, it made everything better, that it made me better, but that would be a lie, and I promised myself I wouldn’t lie to myself anymore or my Beasts.

I have to be honest, and the truth is Gus haunts my dreams, he haunts my thoughts, and the water can never wash away what he has done to me. Even though I wish daily it would.

Over the last three years, Harley and Dante have done their best to try and replace what all the men have done to me before them, and sometimes it works, and other times, it doesn’t.

I lean my back against the bed frame and run my hands over my face. I turn and look past Harley and see the clock, 3 a.m. Shit.

I wish that just one night I could get a full night’s sleep without waking up or waking up my Beasts, but just like the night before here, we are all awake at 3 a.m.

“Baby girl,” Harley whispers.

I look at him and watch him closely as he leans his back against the bed frame as well, taking my hand in his. He lifts my hand and gently places kisses on the back of my hand, forcing my stomach to fill with butterflies.

“Are you okay, Sweetheart?” Dante asks as he rests his back against the bed frame and rests his hand on my growing stomach.

I turn and look at him. He tilts his head to the side as he leans in and gently kisses my tears away, which honestly just makes me want to cry more.

“I am okay, just another nightmare,” I say calmly.

It is the truth; I am okay. I am okay because of these two men, the men who killed for me, who would have burned the entire world down to get revenge for me. I am okay because these two men and I are forever intertwined together.

I am their Beauty, and they are my Beasts. Soon, we will have a little one running around, and we will all make sure that he is safe and loved.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Harley asks softly, bringing my attention back to him.

They are always ready to be my listening ears, just like Harley promised me they would be.

His promises run through my head every day, and I see them come to life every day that we are together. They even left the mansion they called home, which I called home, and we moved. We left the town where they were someone and moved far away to start over.

After everything that happened inside that house, I tried to go back inside, but I couldn’t. I had a panic attack just walking up the front steps.

I thought it would be hard for Dante and Harley to walk away from their lives in Washington, but they made it look easy, and now they are both the Kings of where we live now.

A place that is warm all the time, a place that our pasts haven’t tainted.

A place where our child can grow up and never have to deal with the demons that were in Washington.

I wish my mind would understand that I have moved on, but it doesn’t care what I want. I have learned that it doesn’t matter where we move, the past; my past will always be with me, and I can’t outrun it. I can try, but it will just drown me.

So, instead of running, I have learned to talk to my Beasts about it, but tonight is not one of those nights. I am okay. Or at least I will be. I just need a few minutes to calm down my racing heartbeat.

I take a deep breath and shake my head. “There is nothing to talk about; he is dead.”

A frown forms across Harley’s face. “Gus?”

I nod. “Yes.”

He lifts my hand back to his lips as he kisses my knuckles this time. I can see the concern in his eyes. He can’t kill someone that is in my head, plus they killed Gus, and Gus killed Bruce.

It was a dangerous triangle that none of us knew was even fucking happening. I didn’t realize they were twins, but it makes sense now. It didn’t three years ago. I almost lost myself in all the darkness. It drowned me to the point where I couldn’t fucking breathe, speak, or move.

Dante and Harley washed, fed, and ensured I got out of bed. If it weren’t for them, I would probably be dead right now. If they didn’t come down to the basement when they did, I know Gus would have killed me. We learned so much about him once we went to his house; seeing what he was hiding in there was scary. The plans he had for me, for him, it was beyond anything I could have guessed.

I have nightmares of things going differently than what they did, and each time I wake up, my Beasts remind me I am alive and safe, but it doesn’t take the sick feeling in me away. My chest tightens now, just thinking about it.

After three years, I can still remember when we went through both of their houses, and we found pictures, clothing, letters, and so many different things, evidence of their obsession with me.

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