Page 120 of Fury

“Guess murder affected me more than I expected, now that I live among civilized, normal society.”

His eyes shifted over me. Could he see the blood? Could he smell the agony that still clung to me?

“I killed Motormouth to protect myself, you, us, our baby. But I lost the baby a few weeks after. And that’s when I thought, is that how we’re going to start a life together, by killing? By kicking more of this horrible shit under the rug? It was just the beginning of his tiny life. Probably no bigger than a bean inside me, but—”

“Stop!” His eyes glimmered with water.

“So I left Chicago.”

“We can have another kid. Miscarriages happen to people all the time.”

“Do they happen because the mother kills over and over again? Because the mother is on the run, hiding from killers?”

“Mothers kill to protect their families!”

“Yes, yes, families. But we—”

“We already are a family. We always will be.”

“A family that can’t ever be together!” I bit out. “Can’t you see that, after everything that’s happened? After all this time?”

He winced as if I’d hit him, his eyes narrowing.

“I was going to tell you about Motor, about…” I took in a deep breath, but the knots inside me kept on knotting and twisting. “You didn’t come that day, that night. Tania came over and told me about you being in jail, and she gave me your message. I knew then that I couldn’t keep clinging to this dream we both had, a dream that would never come true for us. We’d always just have pieces of each other, once in a while fragments. That’s all.”

He shook his head at me. “You didn’t tell Tania?”

“About killing a Smoking Gun in my apartment with his own knife? No, I left that out. I refused to put her in any more danger.”

“Jesus.” His jaw hardened.

“I can’t go back with you.” I slid up higher against the wall. “You need to get yourself an old lady who can be by your side in every way.”

He stared at me as if I was suddenly speaking in an exotic foreign language.

Incredulity…

Impatience…

Irritation.

His eyes blazed. “I’ve been in jail for three years, and I just got out a couple of weeks ago. I jerk off, I’m thinking of you. I watch porn, I see a stripper, a pretty girl on the street, I’m thinking of you. There’s only you. Only you inside me and out.”

My heartbeat kicked up in my chest, and I pulled tighter on the garrote I’d wrapped around it three years ago. “How was jail?”

He let out a huff of air. “Jail turned out to be a set up. They needed me inside.”

A hard, bitter laugh escaped me. “Yeah, they needed you.”

He dug a hand in his hair. “You’re tired now. You’ve been on your own through all this heavy shit. You were lonely, I get it. Take some time. You...” He gulped for air, for reality to go away and come again another day. “Rethink this. Don’t just—”

“I’ve had nothing but time to think about this, to live with it,” I said. “We kept waiting for things to get better, Finger, but they didn’t. There is no spectacular holy glimmer of light that’s going to appear over the cave we’ve been burrowed in and announce, “It’s all good now! Come out, come out wherever you are!”

“You said you’d keep what we had safe. You said—”

“I did, I did keep it safe.” I swallowed hard. “But we’re not some fairy tale.”

“We’re my fairy tale!” his voice broke.

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