Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (39 page)

When still he didn’t say anything. Juliana thought she might scream. And then she realized: he had been buttoning down his secrets, bottling up his pain, burying his demons for years. He had just survived weeks of torture because he’d kept so many secrets. Why would she expect him to let go of all that control in a blink, simply because she wanted him to?

She slid off the bed and knelt between his legs and rested her hands on his knees. “It’s okay. Tell me how you’re doing. Are you better? You look a little better.”

Visibly relieved, he put his hands over hers. “I’m trying to be.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. I just want you to understand that you
can
tell me anything. You can’t shock me. You can’t make me stop loving you. I hurt for you. I want to help you.”

“It’s just—it’s easier for me to control it if I keep it inside.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I think so. If it’s spoken, it’ll be stronger. I can’t handle stronger.”

She thought he was wrong, that sharing it would dilute its power, but something in his eyes said that his trepidation was too great to fight now. “Okay. Whatever you need. Why did you want to talk, then?”

“I want to know what I have to do to get back what we had.”

“I don’t think we can.”

He dropped his head, and then, after a beat, he nodded.

She grabbed his beard again and lifted his head. “No. Trick, listen. What we had is in the past. We were only just starting when everything went to hell. What’s happened since they took you, that changed things. You survived something horrendous. I learned so much about you and your life, and Lucie and I made bonds with your family. We’re all different. What’s between us is different. So we can’t go back. But we can go forward.”

Hope entered his eyes, pushing to the side the cloud of disquiet she’d seen in them since he’d been back. “Can we?”

Letting go of his beard, she scooted even closer, and cupped his cheeks in her hands. “I learned something about myself, too. It’s nothing new, really, except that I understand now how it affects us. I’m not good with uncertainty, Trick. It makes my brain chew on itself. I can’t be in the dark. I need you to tell me what you’re doing—the club stuff. I can’t live with you running off and me not knowing why, or whether you’re in danger. I need to know you trust me that much, and I need to
know
so I don’t
imagine
so much.”

He shook his head, and she dropped her hands with a huff. That was important. She could live with an outlaw—with this outlaw. She could love him and make a life with him. But she couldn’t live in the dark. The uncertainty would kill her—and them.

But he caught her hands in his and brought them together. “I’m not telling you no, Jules. I’m telling you I’m not an outlaw anymore. I stepped out of that work. I can’t do it anymore. I’m just a bike designer. That’s it. No more outlaw.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’m still Horde, but I’m not signed on to anything but the shop. I’m going to manage the shop and build my bikes—and if you’ll still have me, I’m coming home to you every night. No more worry. For either of us.”

If that was true—of course it was true—then that changed everything again. For the better. It brought stability back. And it would set aside her fears about Mark breaking through whatever restraint the Horde had put on him. The times that he’d come for Lucie, he’d been on his best behavior, but Juliana hadn’t let herself trust it. She knew him, and knew he’d find the first opportunity to retaliate and try to take Lucie away. If Trick weren’t doing dangerous things anymore, but still with the power of the Horde at his back, then she had the best of both worlds: a strong legal stand, and a stronger stand against Mark’s warping of the law. She had friends, too.

“Trick…oh my God. Are you serious?”

“Completely. I can’t anymore. I never wanted it. I’ve never spent a dime of the money I’ve earned that way.”

She leaned in and wrapped her arms around him. His arms came around her, and he stood, taking them both to their feet. For a long time, they stood that way, and Juliana tucked her head under his beard and let herself reclaim the feeling of being in his arms.

Then, her face still pressed to his chest, she voiced the question foremost in her mind. “What about what you told me about being an outlaw and not a criminal?”

He chuckled—a real chuckle, not that stunted, misshapen rattle she’d heard from him in the couple of times they’d been together since he’d been back. “You’re right. I guess I’m still an outlaw, in that way. It’s who I am, the way I see the world. This is my life. But I’m done doing outlaw work. For good. I promise.”

She leaned back and looked up at him, and finally she saw the man she loved, who’d been away from her for months, looking back at her. “Don’t promise.”

He frowned. “No, Jules, I—”

With her hand on his mouth, she stopped his protest. “I know you mean it. I believe you. But we can’t know what’ll happen in the future. So don’t promise. I believe you. I don’t need the promise. And thank you.”

He kissed her fingertips and lifted her hand from his mouth. “I love you, but I didn’t do it for you. I did it because I couldn’t keep going any other way. I did it for me.”

“That’s
better
, Trick. That makes it more real.”

He brought up a hand and combed it through her hair. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes. Please.”

His hand closed in her hair, and he bent his mouth to hers. His touch was light; she felt his beard more than his lips. So she leaned in, lifting her hands to his head, tangling in his hair, and pressed his mouth down on hers. When their tongues finally met, he groaned and backed off, dropping his forehead to her cheek.

“I…It’s…it’s still hard to be touched. I don’t know what I can…do. Handle.”

God, that agents of their own government had done this to him. Juliana had no great faith in the law or the government; the reason she wanted to be an attorney was because the system was so deeply unjust and unfair, and she wanted to bring what she could of justice and fairness to it. But still, that they could stoop so low as this? She wasn’t surprised, but she was horrified.

And so incredibly sad for Trick.

She pushed his head back and looked into his eyes. “Did they…?”

He shook his head sharply, but she couldn’t tell if there was denial in that movement. It was more like he was shaking away the very thought before she could utter it. “Nothing of me was mine.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and Juliana understood that he was shoring up his strength so that he could say what came next.

As he spoke, he kept his eyes closed. “I was…
subjected
, all the time. Even when they left me alone, they had control. They did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and I had no warning, sometimes not even the literal ability to see it coming. I had no control over anything at all. Except staying quiet. And now, touch hurts. They took that away.”

They were still wrapped around each other; her hands were in his hair, and his in hers. She tightened her arms. “Even this touch?”

He opened his eyes. “At first, yes. Not now.”

“You let me hold you when you first got back.”

He nodded. “That felt so good. That was the last time anything did until now. I guess I was still in shock then, and it’s been building up since. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe because you’ve been isolating yourself so much.” She had an idea. “Can we try something? Can we take our clothes off and get in bed and just be close? Nothing else. Let me touch you until it doesn’t hurt. And you touch me, if you want.”

Before he answered, he considered her, his eyes moving back and forth over her face. Then he asked, “What about Lucie?”

“She’s with Faith and the kids. Faith said to call and let her know if I wanted her to take Lucie out to their place for the night. They just adopted a couple of ponies, so I don’t think Lucie will be sad to spend the night at their zoo. I’ll call, and I’ll stay here tonight with you. If you want that.”

“Okay.” He gave her a look then that she couldn’t read.

“What?”

“I didn’t know about the ponies. It’s strange to me that you know something like that and I don’t. I feel like I got left behind.”

She pushed her hands under his flannel shirt and t-shirt; when they touched the bare skin of his sides and back—God, still so thin—he sucked in a breath, and his skin twitched. But she left her hands where they were, firm on him. “You didn’t, though. We’ve all been waiting. Lucie and me, we’ve been right up front, waiting. And while we were waiting, we found a family, too.”

He didn’t respond, and she pushed her hands up, bringing his t-shirt and his open flannel up, too. He took over and pulled the shirts off, dropping them to the floor behind him.

The bruises had healed, but there were several other marks, like scars of some kind, rounded and dark. His ribs stuck out; they provided more definition now than his muscles had before. She smoothed her hands over his chest—slowly, gently—and he stood still and let her.

The wound through his nipple still bore a bit of a scab, but had nearly healed, and the infection had cleared. She drew a finger lightly along the fresh scar where he’d cut the infection out, and he made a noise at the back of his throat.

Looking up at him, she asked, “Did I hurt you?”

After a beat, he shook his head.

“Good. That’s good. Let me call Faith, and then let’s get into bed.”

~oOo~

He was already in bed when she turned and set her phone on his dresser. While she shed her clothes, he watched, quietly.

It was strange to her to feel like she was the stronger of the two of them. Despite his struggles with nightmares and his bouts of anxiety, Trick was a strong man. In many ways, Juliana had felt unequal to him—he had an electric intellect, a calm demeanor, a keen eye, a strong will, a virile body, and, usually, a clear sense of himself and his place. Though he had anxiety, that anxiety was a symptom of trauma, not a state of being. Even now, even while he struggled with more, greater trauma, even while he faltered, there was deep strength in him.

For her, anxiety had always been a state of being. She’d spent great quantities of energy making her life predictable and stable wherever she could. Loving Trick had exploded all of that in spectacular fashion. Her old self would have seen the aftermath as a disaster and would have run as far and as fast as she could in the other direction.

And yet, she felt strong—stronger than ever. All her supports had been pulled out from under her, and she’d found herself still standing. Emily had forced her out, but she’d stood toe to toe with her and wrenched a parachute from her. Her new job would be better. She’d been there a couple of times, just to get a sense of how things worked before the office closed for the holidays. Her bosses worked with a sense of mission that had nothing to do with financial success and everything to do with injecting justice into a grossly unjust system. Exactly what she wanted to do, too.

There was distance between her and Lisa now, but it wasn’t an unfriendly distance. Their lives had been separating for years, anyway, and Juliana had simply been unwilling to admit it. Lisa was a party girl. She was single and meant to stay that way. She never wanted children, and, though she doted on Lucie, she also resented her a little, too, for the ways Juliana’s life had changed with motherhood.

Her inability to confide in Lisa about Trick hadn’t changed their friendship, it had simply clarified it. And now Juliana and her daughter had the Horde as their family, too—a host of women who understood her life and were there without delay when she asked for help, a bevy of children for Lucie to be close with, and even more men who would throw themselves between her and Lucie and trouble. Even while Trick had pushed her away, they had kept her close.

Which was why she was even here in this room with Trick now.

She was stronger for loving Trick and being part of his family. And she was strong enough to help him finish healing and come fully home.

~oOo~

Juliana woke in the middle of that night when she was tossed violently over and almost fell out of the bed. By reflex, she caught herself on the edge of a table of some sort and just had time to understand that she was in Trick’s dorm room when another blow hit her in the back, knocking the wind out of her as Trick flew off the bed and stopped, frozen and panting, his hands up in a fighting stance.

This was different from his nightmares of before. Those had been calm on the outside. She’d been awake for a few, and he’d be still and silent, and then his eyes would fly open. At most, he might gasp as he woke. Then he’d sit up and, usually, hurry to the bathroom. Or just go out and drink, pacing the living room.

This one, though, was violent, and she wasn’t yet sure he’d woken.

They hadn’t closed the blinds on the window, and the floodlights over the parking lot made the room glow with eerie, long-shadowed light.

“Trick?”

He flinched but didn’t answer her. Feeling afraid and still rattled from the blows he’d unwittingly dealt her, she eased herself out of bed. They were both naked, and she felt particularly vulnerable walking toward him while he was still so stiff and ready to fight.