Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Swiss’s face remained an expressionless mask. Whether deliberate, to intimidate me, or in order for him to get through telling me this, I wasn’t sure.
“When I feel hurt, betrayed, vulnerable, I turn into the person I am for the club,” he explained in a softer tone. “The killer. The man who doesn’t feel remorse for causing pain. For ending lives. For doing any number of fucked-up things. The man who likes that shit.” His eyes scrutinized me, waiting, inspecting, dissecting.
He was looking for disgust, I guessed. A sign that he was pushing me away.
I gave no such sign. Because I wasn’t disgusted with him. Wasn’t going anywhere. I tried to communicate that with my face, even if I was still mad at him.
“Not trying to escape the way I treated you,” he shook his head. “’Cause that shit is inexcusable. All I’m doing is making sure that you don’t take any of this on. That you don’t somehow warp my reaction into you not being good enough. Aren't worth fighting for. ’Cause you are. You’re too fucking good for me. And I knew it. Knew it since the moment I laid eyes on you. But I went after you anyway.”
The cicadas sang louder, yet not enough to drown out the quick thumping of my heart.
“I’ve been patched in the club for almost as long as you were married.”
I pursed my lips, or at least tried to, pain spearing through my mouth as I attempted the gesture. Though that pain was dulled by my fury toward Swiss. Instead of the lip pursing, I narrowed my eyes, but even that hurt.
“After I lost them, the club was what saved me,” he continued. “Turned me into someone completely fucking different, of course. Someone my family doesn’t recognize or understand.” He paused, staring out the doors to the fast-approaching twilight. “I see them once a year, maybe. Christmas. Or my mom’s birthday. Out of guilt more than anything else. I just make it harder for them, when they see what I’ve become.”
Seeing the pain etched in his expression, seeping off him, it was pure torture to stand in front of him without touching him. Without comforting him. The anger that I’d been so sure I wanted to hold on to slipped through my fingers.
“Almost two decades. I turned into someone dark, ugly, twisted. But that was my version of healing. I got myself a family. A fucked-up one to be sure, but I had one I truly belonged in. For that same amount of time, you had nothing. No one but a man who beat you.” His voice cracked then, with fury or some other emotion, I wasn’t sure.
But fury factored in there somewhere because his hands were fisted at his sides.
“You had no one but your daughter,” he bit out, eyes piercing me with their intensity. “You had one cherished thing. One thing that truly mattered. You lived for. You fought for. And because you fought, because you lived, I have you.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“I have you because of that girl,” he ground out. “Because of what a fuckin’ amazing mother you are. I have you because of that fire you have inside you that would do anything to protect her. And I threatened that by doing something that comes natural to me.”
He took a gun out of his cut and laid it very purposefully on the console table behind the couch, next to some crystals.
My heart thundered.
“I had planned on using this,” he nodded to the gun. “And this,” he took the knife from his belt. It gleamed against the light. He placed it next to the gun.
My eyes left the weapons and went to him. He’d been watching me the entire time.
“I was going to end his life with those,” he murmured. “It was going to be slow. Messy. It was going to be fucking spectacular.”
I bristled at his tone, but something in me responded positively too. I liked it. The passion in his voice, talking about torturing and killing Preston.
“I was blind. Blind with my love for you. With the guilt over what I let happen to you. Rage. Fuckin’ fear. Terror that for the second time in my life, I’d lose everything. And that’s why I was prepared to kill him. Despite what it would do to Violet and, in turn, to you.” He took a breath. A visible, deep breath. “I’m filled with shame over that, Kate.”
The words were coming from a visceral place. They were being torn from him. That’s why he’d been gone for so long, because he’d been looking for those words. The strength to face me.
“Not gonna say it’s not hard,” he continued. “One of the hardest things in my life, not killin’ him. Letting him walk out…” He didn’t finish the sentence, visibly shuddering.