Page 28 of Bruised MC Bear
At least she was honest. “Exactly.”
She looked up at him. “But no one, yourself included, would want to overhear the person they just slept with hours ago, having a conversation like that.”
Axe nodded and took a seat on the sofa, dropping the pillow beside him. “True. I agree. That was not okay.”
“All right.”
He watched all the anger physically drain out of her. She placed her pillow flat on the bed and stretched out on one side, turning her back to him.
Axe took this silence as progress. Removing his shoes, he swung his tired legs over the side of the couch and relaxed his head on the pillow.
* * *
Blood.
There was so much blood.
All over the walls, his toys, and sticky on his fingers where he’d touched the stair railings. Nancy still whimpered upstairs in the corner. She was deafening compared to the silence around them, the silence that came with death.
Whatever happened, he knew with a weird, warped clarity that there was no coming back.
At first, his vision couldn’t make out what he saw in the living room. Like a puzzle, it was too much to put together in his head, too complicated—but the second it started to make sense he leaned over the banister and puked onto the floor. It was as if his whole stomach had turned inside out on him. A burning sensation went all the way up into his lungs, like trying to hold lava in his throat while it ate away at his insides second by second. He forced himself look back again at their living room that was distorted with red streaks, puddles, and drips.
He knew there was no way they could have survived.
Not in so many pieces scattered around the room.
Where was Vincent? Why wasn’t he covering his eyes as he had done during this tragedy? Why was Nancy still at the top of the stairs when Vincent had lifted her up and carried her outside to his car? Why was this nightmare continuing to change? His stomach gave another hard lurch, fingers going tingly and numb. He ignored it all and stepped forward into the living room. On autopilot, he navigated through the squishy carpet and leaned over the hand with his mother’s wedding ring still gleaming as if nothing had ever happened. He watched as his fingers reached out to the touch the stone—
“Axe.” The echoing female voice called to him from a distance. “Wake up. I need you to get up for me now, Axe!”
Axe jolted up into a seated position on the sofa. For a heartbeat, the world blurred. He blinked, rubbing his eyes to force the nightmare back, but still saw his parents’ bodies sprawled across the motel room floor. His insides were burning again. A pounding headache behind his eyes that felt like someone was jabbing tiny needles deep inside his brain. He ran a hand down his face. Blood was on it too. He tried to ignore the shaking and the cold sweats dotting down his spine, but then a foreign hand pressed into the back of his neck.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Axe roared, jerking back from this new female player with the blurred out face, trespassing into his waking dream as if she meant to shoot him too. His hands flew up defensively and gripped her hard around the neck. “I didn’t fucking say you could touch me! Who sent you?”
Her eyes damned near bulged out of her head, and he could feel her pulse pounding under his hands as she tried to say something. Right now, he didn’t give a fuck what made her shake like a leaf, or that she wasn’t actually armed, given her hands gripped his fingers as she tried to get him to release her neck. And why was she calling his name Axe? No one used that name that night. The memories in his brain started to teeter like a seesaw. They layered over what was around him, but seemed real enough to force him to act.
As this intruder’s body started to go limp, and as her hands dropped to her side, the threat of imminent death faded, as did the waking dream. That was when Angel’s face came back into focus.
Fuck.
Angel.
He hurriedly released her neck and helped her to sit and catch her breath. “God. I didn’t know it was you…you just…” he tried to say something to explain as Angel held her neck and fought to suck in air. The fear in her eyes etched into his brain. He had almost killed her because of this fucking flashback. If he had ended up transforming to his bear while he slept—which had happened before—she would have been dead right now. There was nothing he could say to make this right. Bolting up to his feet, he got her a bottle of water.
“Are you okay? I can get you to a hospital if you’re hurt. Christ, I’m so sorry.”
If she were okay, he would get the fuck outside and let her be so this couldn’t happen again. He swallowed the frog-sized lump in his throat, hoping he had not done too much damaged. He had never had to go through this shared accommodations deal before tonight. Even back in foster care, they had been careful to place him with smaller families to he could have a room to himself. Now, she would finally see him as the broken, bruised, and damaged beyond repair individual that he really was.
“I’m fine,” Angel choked out after gulping down the entire bottle of water. “Please. Just sit.”
Fuck, he barely recognized her voice. The guilt clawed at his chest. He had hurt her. He had given her that choke mark, now layered over the bite on her neck. It was all kind of sick, fucked up, and twisted now. It wasn’t a surprise to him that his bear wanted to escape this human jail cell and run as far as it could go. Goddamn it, she wasn’t supposed to see him like this—ever.
“No,” he snarled, backing away to the door. “Just tell me you’re fine so I can stay in the van. You’re not safe around me…not while I sleep.”
He watched her visibly swallow.
“You’re safer in here than out there,” she rasped out. “After hollering and growling loud enough for people to hear you three states over, the cops are probably outside looking for a bear already. I’ve been trying to wake you for over ten minutes. We’re supposed to be laying low, remember?” Angel stood up from the couch and stepped closer to him, meeting his eyes. She pointed at her neck. “This wasn’t personal. It’s not your fault. Look, you don’t scare me, okay? Sit.”
