Page 96 of Tell Me You Love Me

“I’m gonna show him how it feels to be violated.” Minutes after leaving the house, I skid into the cheapest hotel Plainview offers, with thevacancysign hanging limp and the building’s façade faded from decades of brutal summers. Cutting the engine, I look across to my brother. “He took something from her, so I’m gonna take something from him. She protected me, when all along, she was the one who needed protection. She wished for healing for me, when all I did?—”

“If you accept this as your fault, then I take it on as mine, too.”

“Chris—”

“She wasn’t my girlfriend, but she was the best person I knew, second only to you. So either we go in there, knowing exactly where to lay the blame, or we sit out here and wallow becausewefailed her. Personally,” he shakes his head, “I’m not interested in watching you hate yourself for the next seventy years, ruining the life youcouldhave with her.”

“She’s pregnant.”

He startles, his eyes flipping to mine. Questions flash through his mind, and then gentle, easy acceptance. Finally, his lips curl into a smug grin, and his fist comes up in offer. “Congratulations. So now we celebrate by putting this where itbelongs.”

“Fine.” I slam my fist to his and smile when rage turns to giddy anticipation. “For Alana.”

“Fuckin’ A.” He shoves his door open and circles to the bed of my truck, snatching out a tire iron and looking it up and down before tossing it my way. “He liked to hit us with those, remember?”

A curtain shifts in my peripherals—Room Five—followed by the click of a lock echoing throughout the dirty, dusty parking lot, empty but for our truck and one rundown station wagon worth more for its scrap metal than it is as a drivable vehicle.

Lucky for us, Grady Watkins willalwayschoose a cheap hotel, not because he’s dead broke—though he’s that, too—but because he won’t risk CCTV footage capturing the deals he makes with cash and little baggies of white powder he slips into his pockets.

“We aren’t going to prison for this. I promised Alana.”

“Can’t.” Chris beams, menacing and feral. “You still have to fight in Vegas. I put a lot of work into your schedule for that, and I’m gonna be pissed if you mess it up.”

Snorting, I stalk along the uneven ground, my hand flexing around the heavy steel, and my brain focused on just one thing.

Just one, satisfying outcome.

Stopping in front of room number five, I don’t bother knocking. It’s not like they’ll let us in anyway. Instead, I lift my leg, chamber my shot, and slam my foot down over the crappy lock until the metal handle pings free of its frame. Splintered wood scratches my skin, but the pain only spurs me on. The excitement I have for revenge is fuel in my veins. I stride through the door and grin, bigger than I have in way too fucking long, at Grady’s stunned shock.

Fear.

Pants-pissing horror that turns to a squeal as I grab him by the throat and throw him to the ground, driving my fist into his face. Once. Twice. Three times. Maybe more. And because Chris is such a good guy, he closes the door behind us and stands guard over the bitch whose lips snap closed.

You sleep with dogs, you’re gonna catch fleas.

“We’re gonna discuss consent, Grady.” I shatter his cheekbone and grab his jaw, yanking it back until the whole fucking thing dislocates and tendons snap. Then I pick up the tire iron and hold it lengthways across his throat, pressing down and cutting off his air. “You overplayed your hand, motherfucker. You could’ve stayed away. You could’ve hidden.” I crush his larynx and thrill in the blood filling his eyeballs. “I would’vecome looking either way. Once that chick put Alana’s book on national television, it was already all over for you. But coming to Bitsy’s funeral like we were all friends?”

I pull back, then push down harder until something cracks in his neck.Oops. Bet that was important.“You made the hunt all too easy. Now we’re bigger than you, and you’re gonna pay for what you did to us. What you did to my brother. But most importantly, what you did to Alana.”

I loosen my grip on his throat and allow him a moment to breathe. To suck air into his lungs and try to get up and scramble away. But when his body fails to move at all, I thrill at the terror in his eyes.

“Sucks losing control, don’t it?” I swing my arm back and hold the tire iron like a baseball bat. “Sleep now, bitch.”

FINAL ROUND

ALANA

Las Vegas

“It’s so noisy, Mom!” Franklin crushes the cups of his noise-canceling headphones to his ears, wrinkling his nose in displeasure when the crowd roars and the referee thrusts Tommy’s hand in the air.

His chest is sweaty, pounding with adrenaline and scrambling for air, while behind him, a semi-conscious Henrik Docik lies flat on the canvas, medics crouching over his prone form to make sure he’s okay.

Docik came to Vegas tonight hoping to take the title belt. In the end, all he took was a beating.

The moment officials let them, Eliza and Ollie shove through the cage door and wrap themselves around Tommy. And right behind them, far calmer, Chris follows.

“He’s wearing earplugs, Mom!” Franky tugs on my sleeve, pointing toward his favorite Watkins and beaming because his aversion to noise is, once again, normalized.

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