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What would it take for him to stop?
Leaving Brady?
Having to make that impossibly painful decision just to save whoever he planned to victimize next?
Maybe that was what I needed to do.
Maybe this had to be on me, not Brady, even though he’d insisted he was taking care of things.
“How far are you inside your head right now?” he asked.
His voice was like a blade, cutting through the semi-silence, the point startling me enough that I jumped.
I was so far into my head that I hadn’t realized I’d been rubbing his chest or that my breath was coming out in pants or that my entire body had tightened into a ball.
I tilted my neck back to glance up at his face. “Clearly, you’re seeing straight through me.”
“I’ve been doing just as much thinking.” He brushed some hair off my forehead. “On the flight, since we’ve been home—he’s the only thing I can focus on.”
“Same.” Lying down no longer felt like the right position, so I sat next to him, crossing my legs in front of me. “Everything aches, Brady. Everything is so …” My voice trailed off as I thought of a more accurate description. What I was experiencing was deeper than an ache. It was a heaviness that lived directly above my heart, a weight that wouldn’t lift. That made it hard to breathe. That sent tears shooting into my eyes. “So fucked up,” I finished. I wiggled my fingers, trying to move the numbness out of them. “Something has to give. Something has to be sacrificed. It’s the only way he’ll stop. And it has to be me?—”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” he said, cutting me off, his hand going to my leg at the same time. “Normally, I’d just make the decision and do whatever the fuck I wanted. But having you in my life, I can’t do that. Your opinion matters, certainly when it comes to this.” He sat up a bit higher, reclining against the headboard behind him.
“What are you saying?”
He reached toward his nightstand and grabbed his phone, tapping the screen multiple times before he faced it toward me. “I haven’t told you everything.”
I took the cell from his hands, the screen showing a text box with David’s name at the top. “You’ve been texting him?”
“For a while.” He nodded toward the phone. “He reached out to me first, and it’s been ongoing. Read what he’s sent.”
For … a while?
And he hadn’t told me?
There was an instant narrowness in my chest as I scrolled to the very top, when the first message from David had been sent, and I read their exchanges. Words full of hate. Anger. Accusations. And there were multiple messages a day.
I reached the section where David spoke about hurting Diesel, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
How did I ever live with that man? How did I give my body and heart to him?
How did I trust him?
He had been a monster when I was with him, but this person—this level that he’d reached—was worse than when he’d beaten up Preston. This was a revengeful, immoral, despicable human.
It was like every day that had passed fueled him a bit more.
Until he became this. Someone willing to do anything and everything to get what he wanted regardless of what that meant and who and what he destroyed in the process.
His texts, the ones he’d sent over the last couple of days, made it clear that Brady had a choice.
He could either give me up and the pain and ruin would be over or David would continue this path of wreckage.
I knew how Brady felt about me. I knew how much he loved me.
I felt the same.
But I couldn’t put this choice on him. It wasn’t fair that he had to make this type of decision, putting his home and business and family at risk.
