Breathe (Colorado Mountain #4)(125)

“Well, they didn’t,” he fired back. “They got names, Faye, they got a lot, and all of it they should not have. They should not know. I do not know those two but I know you.” He lifted a hand and jabbed a finger at me. “And I like you. I didn’t f**kin’ like my wife but I still didn’t want her on her knees, terrified, a c**k forced in her mouth, her face raped before she got holes blown into her. So if that shit happens to you,” he jabbed his finger at me again, taking a step toward me before rocking to a wooden halt, “I… will… lose… my… goddamned mind!”

But I was frozen, head to toe so it took a lot of effort to force out my, “What?”

“Yeah,” he ground out. “Semen on her face, darlin’, in her stomach. No one knows but a bunch of cops, most of them dirty, and me, the same and her f**kin’ husband. Last thing Misty did on this earth was give a blowjob and not one she wanted to give. Before he f**kin’ took her life, he f**ked her goddamned face.”

My entire body started shivering as I stared at him and tried to process this horror.

“That why you were up there that night we met?” he asked and when I stared at him blankly, shivering, shocked at this new knowledge, he barked, “Answer me!”

I jumped and whispered, “Ye… yes.”

“Jesus f**king Christ!” he yelled, turning, he swiped my perfume bottle off my dresser, shifted and with a scary, powerful sidearm throw he threw it across the room so it shattered against the bricks at the other side of the apartment.

I blindly took quick steps back, going at a diagonal and slammed my side into the kitchen counter. My body registered the pain so I stopped.

His burning eyes scorched back to me and he clipped out, “This world, Faye, the one you actually live in is not a fantasy.”

“I… I know,” I said softly.

“Bad shit happens.”

“I know,” I repeated.

“Happily ever afters are not f**kin’ guaranteed.”

“Chace –”

“You can be you, good, sweet, kind, generous, loving and still get your face raped and holes blown through your beautiful body and no hero’s gonna ride in and save you from that shit because you’ll be f**kin’ dead.”

“Pl… please calm down, Chace, and let me explain.”

“There is no explanation for this stupid f**kin’ shit, Faye,” he fired back and I stared at him.

Then I squared my shoulders and whispered, “There is.”

He studied me a second before he threw his hands out to his sides and invited sarcastically, “Dazzle me.”

“I was doing it for you,” I told him softly and he shook his head, moving toward me but I stood my ground.

“Wrong answer,” he growled.

“It affected you, Misty’s death. I saw it, how it upset you and, you know, I, well, I had a crush on you before –”

I stopped speaking because suddenly he rushed me and before I knew it both his hands were on either side of my head, his face was all I could see and he whispered, “Shut up.”

I didn’t shut up.

I kept going in a whisper.

“I didn’t like to see you suffer.”

His hands pressed in and he clipped low, “Shut up, Faye.”

I didn’t shut up.

I kept talking.

“I wanted it to stop.”

“Shut it.”

“I wanted it to stop. I wanted you to be free.”

His face got closer and he growled, “Shut it.”

I again didn’t shut up.

I gave him all of me.

“I wanted you to notice me.”

He used my head to yank me into him then one of his arms closed around me so tight I couldn’t breathe, his other hand curled around the side of my head, pressing my cheek to his chest and he bit out, “God damn it.”

My fingers curled into his sweater at his sides and I kept at it but I had to do it on a breathless wheeze. “It was stupid. I knew it when Benji and Serenity started turning up stuff so I tried to stop them –”

His hand flexed into my scalp but his arm around me loosened slightly as he whispered in a voice that seemed torn out of him, guttural, leaving damage in its wake, “Seriously, Faye, f**kin’ shut it.”

I shut it.

He held me close and I held onto his sweater for what seemed days before I felt him shift but only his head so his lips were at the top of my hair.

“Fuck me, what am I gonna do with you? Even when I wasn’t with you, you tried to take my goddamned back,” he muttered there and it was not a question for me so I decided not to answer.

His hand slid from the side of my head to my jaw, he tipped my head back and I hesitantly looked into his face, relieved to see he was no longer pissed way the frak off but that didn’t mean he wasn’t openly troubled.

“You f**ked up, Faye.”

I slid my lower lip to the side and bit it before letting it go and whispering, “I think I got that.”

“Now is not the time to be cute,” he warned.

I pressed my lips together.

He closed his eyes and pulled breath in through his nose.

Then he opened his eyes and ordered quietly, “You get on your computer and you talk those two down. I don’t give a shit what you gotta do. Get their promises. Get them to vow on whatever geek shit you guys hold sacred that they are not gonna do one more thing on this gig. You have to, you tell them I’ll hunt them down and arrest their asses for whatever bullshit I can dream up with illegal wire taps and hacking. Then we hope they haven’t got on radar. And we hope more they haven’t put you on radar. Because knowin’ that shit happened to Misty when my ring was on her finger, I didn’t want it there or not, eats at me every f**kin’ day. That shit happened to you, it’d kill me but not before I hunted down the man who did it to you and I made sure he was dead. I am not jokin’, not even a little bit. So get on your computer and sort their asses, baby, and do it now.”