Page 81 of These Monstrous Ties
“We hooked up once,” he continues.
No shit,I think, but don’t say anything.
“She got pregnant.” He takes another drag from his cigarette. I want to snap it in half or put it out on my own eyes. “She said it was mine.” I see him, out of the corner of my eye, shrug. “It was a mistake, the sex. We were drunk. Young. And stupid.” He was twenty-one when we met. Twenty-two now. Not that young.
But this isn’t what I care about. I don’t want to know any of this. I want to know the outcome. What came next. What happens now.
He snuffs out the cigarette on the porch, grinding it down to nothing, with a little more force than is probably necessary. He leaves it there, between us, and clasps his hands together, hanging his head.
“I believed her, you know?” he asks. He turns his head and looks up at me, hands still clasped. “Hell, she probably believed it, too.”
I say nothing. I’m holding my breath.
“I believed it was mine. But after that night, we fought like cats and dogs. She seemed to hate me, for not wanting to be with her. To be afamily.”He says the last word with a sneer. Knowing what he had been through, with his own family, or what little I knew of it, I can’t blame him.
Knowing my own family, I can’t blame him. I’m not even sure what that word is supposed to mean anymore.Family.
“She treated me like shit. I let her. It was my fuck up as much as hers.”
My pulse quickens. I need to know. I want to scream at him to tell me, to answer the most important question. But I can’t. I won’t. He deserves this time. My silence. So he can tell me. I’ve spent a year hating him for something he hadn’t done. Hating him over Julie, too. Thinking that was part of his fucking evil persona.
Now I know better.
So I wait.
“Anyhow,” he scrubs a hand over his face. “The baby was born. She named him Finn.” He huffs a laugh, shaking his head, as if he doesn’t like the name. “Good thing, too. Because his father,Finley, wasn’t going to have anything to do with him. At least the kid got named after him.”
I blink, trying to process what he’s saying. Those words mean…that the kid isn’t his. Julie’s kid isn’t his. She hadn’t been pregnant with his baby.
But I’m missing something. The story isn’t over.
“I don’t act like the kid’s dad. More like an uncle or a godfather.” He meets my gaze again. He looks as if he might be asking me a question, the way his brow is furrowed. But he keeps talking. “I paid for the house they live in. I’m not hiding them there. Julie wanted to live there, away from this place. Away from Finley. I paid for it, and I help her with expenses, too. Because even though it isn’t my kid…well, it could have been, right? And Julie and I don’t particularly like one another, but it could have been mine just as easily as it was Finley’s. Finley doesn’t have anything to do with his son, although he does sign child support checks, which I guess is better than nothing. But not much better.”
He hangs his head again.
I exhale, letting my eyes trail to the river, the dark water rushing past us, just feet away from where I sit. I feel like I’ve been swept up in a faster current than that this past year, just waiting to drown. Now, though…I feel like someone has thrown me a life preserver. I’m still in the water, still flowing down the stream, but maybe now I won’t drown.
“I knew Jeremiah knew I wasn’t sure,” he continues quietly. “But I figured he’d come after them. That’s why I was there, when you were. I didn’t expect to see you there. I wasn’t sure why you hated me, but when I met youhere, after I’d been looking for a sign of you all this time…I knew you didn’t know. You couldn’t possibly have known.”
He rubs his hands together, as if trying to get warm. He’s wearing grey basketball shorts and a black tank. I want to move closer to him. But I don’t. What’s the point?
“I knew Jeremiah recognized you,” he continues softly. “That night. But I didn’t know what you were. A lost love?” He coughs. “And I knew you were an escort.” He flashes me a small smile, white teeth nearly gleaming in the darkness. “I wasn’t sure until we met here, in the woods. I wasn’t sure you didn’t love him or something. But then when I realized you hated me…it clicked. And I knew you wouldn’t have been with him if you knew. I don’t know much about sex work,” he admits. “But I know consent is a big fucking deal. And you didn’t seem like the type of girl who would be okay with what happened that night. And your anger toward me, it clicked it all into place.” He snaps his fingers, emphasizing the point.
“I had no idea though, that he was your…” He can’t say the word. I don’t want him to. “Mayhem burned down Brooklin’s house, to pay him back for what he did to us and to warn her. And his club, too. But I wanted to find you. I just needed to know you were alive and okay.” He sighs. “He never mentioned a sister. I knew what he did to his foster family. I thought it proved his loyalty; that he’d do whatever it took, no matter what.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “It did, I guess. But his loyalty is to you.”
I breathe a little laugh, feeling my throat tighten. I run my hand along the back of my neck. “It wouldn’t have worked before, you know,” I say, my voice quiet. But he’s staring at me. He looks as if he’s hanging onto every word. “I wouldn’t have left Jeremiah. He wouldn’t have stopped looking for me. He still won’t. I’m sure he knows I’m here.” I swallow but force myself to keep going. “It never would have been a choice for us. Ties that bind and all that.” Even as I say the words, my heart cracks in two.
There’s a silence between us a moment.
“These are monstrous ties,” Lucifer finally says, his words heavy. I watch him swallow. And I want to move to him. To fling my arms around his neck. To pull his wiry, lean body into me. To figure out what could happen between us.
But I can’t. It will only make it hurt worse. For both of us. No matter that Julie’s child isn’t his. That isn’t the deal breaker. It never had been.
It is, as he said, these monstrous ties. This tainted history. Lucifer had saved my life that Halloween night. But I had broken him. My brother had broken us both. He’d betrayed the Unsaints, and I couldn’t deal with being a living reminder of that betrayal to them, even if I was only an estranged sister.
This could never be.
I want to ask him how far it got. I want to ask exactly what he saw, what he watched. But I also don’t want to know.
