Page 4 of From the Ashes
That’s fear.
Well, I am pretty sure it was fear. I can’t be a hundred percent sure ‘cause my fucked-up brain can’t process people’s emotions, but after years of therapy and watching as many films as I could to study humans’ reactions, I’m getting better each day at reading them. She was scared, and I never, ever wanted that.
What the hell do I do now?
Now I’m going to have to live with the fact that this angel, this breath-taking woman with a voice like silk and eyes like gems, will always remain out of touch. She’s in my head, and I can't shake her away. I was supposed to stay cold, keep my distance. I knew she wasn’t just any girl, and now it's ruined. So much so, I don’t know what to do about it.
So I ended up in the club basement, slamming my fists into the concrete floor like it could knock some sense into me. I exhale hard, dragging a hand down my face, shaking my head.How the hell am I supposed to think about anything else now that I’ve met her?My knuckles answer before I can. Blood stares back at me, bright, angry streaks blooming across my swollen skin. The cuts are raw, the flesh split, crimson seeping through in slow, deliberate lines. And yet...I feel nothing.
Some say pain is a construct of the mind, but to me it's a way of letting out whatever’s stuck inside me. I've tortured many men in my short twenty-five years, hundreds, if not more. Most of them were more afraid of the potential pain I would make them endure than the pain itself. Could see it in their eyes when they heard the drill or the sound of the electric peeler. I didn'teven have to touch them; they were already there, fighting to flee the hurt. To escape the inevitable. Yet to me, physical injuries weren't really painful. To some extent, I would feel someone digging their fingers in a wound, of course, nerves and all. But I had found that with time, I'd only truly suffered when my mind was the target. Safe to say that my reputation had prevented even the bravest of our enemies from coming and taking their shot at me. They knew I was the kind to sew back a wound to keep on with the torture.
And here I fucking was, back in the basement of the club after promising myself to never come back here. Hell, at least I had held my promise to myself. I wasn't here to torture but to get a bit of peace and destroy my fists.
It wasn't completely all about her.
Watching women get hurt, assaulted, or mistreated is triggering to me. I have seen too many things too fucking young, and now, the sight of a man twisting a woman's hand into compliance is unbearable to me. Like an urge to act, correct, and protect. To take control back of what I had been unable to do fifteen years ago with my sisters and mother.
So when I saw this guy enter her home, I didn't think twice about it. After months of watching her, I had never seen him. Never. And if that guy was in the picture, they must have held their encounters in other places, ‘cause her home was hers and her kid’s only. I had seen a couple with two girls enter it once and figured they were family, but other than that, that woman had made her space her own heaven, and I couldn't let that guy destroy her peace.
You destroyed her peace.
You were the one watching her.
I reach the door and grab my cut before sliding my arms in it—the letters,Ghost,dancing over the back; my nickname outside of the club. Here, my brothers always call me Carter, but to theworld, I’m Ghost. Vox, my VP, chose it. Said I was barely alive when they found me at fifteen, that I was always drifting away, couldn't carry on with small talk and all. He said each guy I was taking care of in the basement was more terrified than he had ever seen. As if they were doubting my humanity, my lack of empathy. As if I wasn't really human after all. So Ghost it was. Taking the stairs to the main hall, I bump into my prez, Ares.
“Shit, Carter, what’s it about?” He motions his chin to my hands.
“A setback.”
He frowns. “That chick again?” I know he gave hell to Vox when he started stalking Rose, but he's different now. Guess he figured there’s more to life than the club since marrying Mia. Not that I'll ever get something like that, but I get it, especially since being the bodyguard of his Old Lady. I see their banter, the way they look at each other like characters in movies, the way his tone hardens when he talks about her as if he were guarding the most precious treasure any man could ever have. I'd never get that, being a sociopath and all that; sometimes in life, you have to be realistic. And I know men like me, twisted, borderline psychopaths, aren't getting a happy ending. I had watched enough films to know that the hero got the girl at the end. And I was no hero.
I stared at him. “I talked to her.”
His jaw ticked as one corner of his mouth lifted. That was a slight smile. I think.
“Okay, that's good, kid, huh? It was time, don't you think?” he says, patting my shoulder.
I had told him about her months ago when I asked to stop being the enforcer of the club and become one of his wife's bodyguards. I knew I couldn't keep on doing what I was doing if I wanted a chance at talking to a girl like her. Couldn't put her in a risky situation with me being an enforcer. Folks in our worldcould have talked and tried to hurt her to get to me. And there was no way I was going to let that happen, especially since she has a kid. So I switched from killing to protecting. And even if I knew deep down I'd never have a shot at a normal life with a woman, at least I had tried to better myself for her. I could say I tried.
“It didn't happen the way I wanted it to.”
“Yeah, well, that’s life, Cart. Not everything happens like you plan it, trust me, I know.”
I look at him, deadpan. “I don't know how not to scare her. She's…normal.” Hell, she’s anything but normal. That woman is the sun and the stars bound together into the most spectacular galaxy of charms and beauty. But normal means that she isn't from our world.
“You should talk to Shadow ‘bout it, he's good at giving advice,” he pats my shoulder again, pointing his finger at me, “just no fucking gifts, alright?”
Gifts.
Yeah, I already knew that, but still, it was a reflex for me to think about them each time I wanted to please someone. Parts of bodies, blood, organs, and ears. Little gifts I had left on some girl's doorsteps back in the days. Gifts I had put so much fucking effort into foraging myself. And still, I was always met with a slap in the face and threats of restraining orders.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, boss.”
“Don’t want to spend the whole night up the valley cleaning your fucking treasure hunt like last time,” he grunts, reminding me of three years ago.
I stare at him, trying to convince him I’m done with them, even though they’re still scratching at me. After that night, where I had tried to organize a date night for a chick of the strip club across town, ended in having to ask Vox and Ares to help me find the pieces of body I had hidden in the woods, ‘cause thegirl threatened to fetch the police to see it. I have no issue with the police, but I didn’t want it to be such a big deal.
It was a fucking shit show. And I knew I had disappointed my bosses that night. Felt like a failure. I just wanted to seduce the girl… After that, Ares and Vox found me a shrink. The guy was covered with debt and his only way out, Ares said, was helping me. I knew I was lucky to spill my guts out without having to kill the guy after or wonder if I’d ever go behind bars for what I had confessed to him.
