Gage’s face changes, the storm sweeping over his features so fast that I barely see the clouds coming before I’m thrust right into the heart of it. He looks so hurt.
“I did it for you! For every other woman out there! So that he could never touch another one of them. Never hurt anyone. So that every single person knows who and what he is. No more hiding. No more harming. No more fucking taking something that doesn’t belong to him, that was never given freely. He’s a sick bastard who was never gonna get justice because his victims lived in shame and terror.”
The bottom of my world drops out. “Victims?”
“He did it four different times, Ami. He told me. I fucking made him confess, and I knew he wasn’t lying at that point. Four women. Four lives he’s ruined.”
My head swims as the world tilts sideways around me. My stomach lurches and bile splashes up the back of my throat.
“If I- if I had… if I’d gone to the police… to the hospital… told them what happened maybe it wouldn’t have happened to anyone else.” I keep my eyes squeezed tight shut, unable to look at Gage, but I hear him. His words are soft and blanket me in ways that I don’t deserve.
“You don’t know that. And you can’t blame yourself. You lived for years with this, Ami. A secret that could have destroyed you. He took more than just your body. He took your future. He took years from you. He changed you in ways that you’ll always be changed. Marked you physically and in every other way. You can’t blame yourself for making the choices you did. Yes, maybe you could have stopped him. Maybe not. Maybe he would have got away with it. Maybe he would have got a slap on the wrist or gone to jail for a year and got out and done it again. Who fuckingknows. What you do know for sure, is that one of your family members, maybe more, would have gone away for murder. That’s a life sentence. It was your family’s lives, or his. You made the only choice you could have.”
“That’s not true I could have gone to the police and maybe they could have got to him before… before…”
“Your brothers? Your father? Doubtful. They would have got him sooner or later. I believe that’s true, given that I know a little about them. Viking can be brutal when he wants to be. Your brothers are no better. I’m glad they’re a second chapter of The Riders, and not our enemies. There’s a reason Steel agreed to the truce between us. To the crazy marriages your father asked for.”
“But those women… I could have stopped it. I could have… I can’t… they suffered, like I did.”
“Yes. Yes, they did, and neither of us can change that, but what I did ensures that he won’t do it again. It was justice, the only justice I could give you. And them. You know as well as I do that the cops would do nothing.”
My hands shake so violently that the papers on my knees rustle loudly. I want to still them. To bury them in the folds of my dress, but I can’t. I can’t move. I feel paralyzed. I can’t even begin to fathom the horror. Three other people suffered. They suffered because I made the wrong decision. Or did I? What could I have done? Condemn one of my brothers or father to languish in prison for the rest of their lives, just to avenge my honor? I know Gage is right. The bastard would have got off. Even if he went to jail, he would have got out eventually and my brothers, or my dad, would have been waiting. He probably would have hired a smooth lawyer and got a year or two, or community service or something ridiculous. I don’t know it for a fact.
“Ami…”
I start when Gage’s hand, warm and firm, closes over my own. “You can’t blame yourself. He’s taken enough from you. You can’t change the past. You can’t change any of it. All you can do is move forward.”
My eyes snap open and I stare at the man kneeling in front of me. His face is pale, his mouth a thin, hard line. His eyes are obsidians swimming with rage and sorrow. This man, this is the man who has given me so much. He’s tried to do everything he could to give me back everything that was taken from me. He tried to undo the pain. The years of rage and hurt and terror. He did the only thing he could.
“It’s not what you did that I’m angry at,” I confess, even if it makes me look like a monster. Thinking about that bastard being punished for what he did, being marked, being labelled… it eases my chest and sets me free, breaking the final chains binding my heart. “Even if it makes me a terrible person, I’m glad that you did it. I didn’t want you to. I didn’t ask you to. I’m terrified of what it could mean for you- if he ever…”
“Presses charges? He won’t, Ami. With the word, rapist, tattooed across his face, you don’t think the cops would be more than a little suspicious? It would come out. All of it. He’d be found guilty now. I made sure he won’t ever do it again. He knows that I’d be coming after him if he ever tries to surface. No, he’s going underground. He’s not going to be after me or you or anyone else. He’s lucky I didn’t put him there. The only thing that stopped me was you. I knew you wouldn’t want it. I knew you’d be angry with me. I knew it would be like victimizing you all over again, not giving you a choice. So I did the only thing that I could think of doing. I made him stop.”
“You lied to me though,” I breathe, tearing my hand out of Gage’s. I miss his warmth instantly. “We’re so new. So fresh. So fragile. We have this… this thing. This beautiful thing, but it’s like a string. Like a filament of a web. The one thing I never wanted you to do was lie to me. How can I trust you now? You know that it’s not easy for me.
“I wasn’t trying to lie to you, Ami. I just didn’t… I didn’t think you… I wanted to have time to explain it to you. Just like this. Just like now.”
“Or you could have told me what I wanted to hear so that you could get in my pants. Just like every other fucking man out there.”
Gage’s brow shoots up. His jaw ticks, betraying the fact that I just pissed him the hell off and his mask is slipping. Just a little.
“It wasn’t like that, and you know it. I did nothing when you lied. When you humiliated me. When you turned me into someone who was just like my father, even if I hadn’t done it. The worst part of it all was that for a minute, I really thought I had done it. That I was just like him. I was pissed when you came back asking me to sign those papers when we never even gave it a shot, but I would have. I would have and I was willing, but it didn’t happen like that. You told me. You told me everything and I let you in. You’ve seen all of me. All the things no one else has seen. I wasn’t there to protect you from him when it happened. From it happening at all. I would give my fucking soul to go back if I could, but I can’t. So I did the only thing I could do. So you tell me, Ami, how likely is it that I just wanted to get in your fucking pants?”
“You lied…” My nose is burning and no matter how hard I blink or how fast I swallow, I can’t hold back the tide. I need to be strong to do this. It’s the only way.
“Ami, look at me.”
Gage’s voice cuts through the heady tide of sorrow like a knife. I shake myself and lift my head up past the weight of years and years of pain pressing down on me like a yoke across my neck.
No.I force myself to take a shuddering breath and raise my head. I won’t go there again. I won’t become this. Not again. Not ever. I won’t let myself be that victim again. I won’t lethimtake anything more from me. I spent years hiding. Years running. I won’t lethimbreak me. I won’t let anyone ruin me again. I’ll never hand over that power and let fear and self-loathing rule my life. I won’t go back to the darkness and the clouds, just as I learned what standing in the warmth of the sun feels like again.
For too long other people have directed my life, made choices for me either by their words or actions. Now it’s time for me to do what I want to do.
Even though I’m exhausted, I keep my head lifted. I punish my lungs with huge gulps of air. I swipe at the tears with the back of my hand and blink hard, struggling to see past my grainy eyes. Eventually Gage’s face swims into view.
He doesn’t have his mask in place anymore.
The hard edges have melted away and all I see is the raw mix of tenderness and compassion shining in his eyes. He looks at me like I’m not just someone, but his someone. Like I don’t just mean something. Like I mean everything.