Page 126 of Insidious Heart
I quickly nod. “I tried to keep things as separate as possible because I just wantedyou,not your connection to that slimy bastard.”
“Which is why you still haven’t killed him.” Stevie narrows her eyes. “But you’re going to, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”Just call me Honest Abe.But I fucking hate liars, and shit is already so fragile between Stevie and I. I don’t want to lose her by bullshitting her.
However, the way her eyes are welling with tears again leads me to believe I fucked up anyway.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do with that information, Victor.”
“Nothing?” I search her face and pray to whatever the hell higher power there might be that she understands what I’m saying. “Beau Williams is literally everything I look for in a target. Abuse, murder, sex trafficking, drugs. He checks off all my boxes, Stevie, and I was contracted to kill him.”
“He’s my father,” she whispers before her expression goes hard. “My father!”
“Who beats you unconscious!”
“I know but, but—”
“But nothing! That piece of hot garbage who shot you out of his nutsack over twenty-three years ago has not given one single fuck about you since then. He tried to take you away from me, Stevie! And if I hadn’t come back for my gun, he would have succeeded.”
“But he’s still my father!” she yells. “He’s all I have!”
And I shake my head, my fists clenched at my sides. “You havemenow. You have me, baby dove, and I will never let you go.”
“I know it’s hard for you to understand, it’s hard for me to explain, honestly, but… Beau is the last little connection I have to my mother.” Stevie drops her eyes to her purple moccasins as she gnaws her cheek.
She doesn’t even believe herself.
Again.
So I sigh and try very hard to remember some of the shit my many counselors told me. “It’s ok to hate him, Stevie. It’s ok to hate him, to not love him, to maybe even want something bad to happen to him. Just because he’s your father doesn’t mean you automatically have to be loyal and devoted. You don’t owe him shit. You can—”
“He saved me, ok?” My baby dove snaps as her eyes shoot to mine. “Beau saved me when my mother tried to kill us both. If he hadn’t come home and rushed into the house, I wouldn’t be standing here right now. And I can’t let you kill him because of that!”
Why do those words feel like Stevie is rejecting me all over again?
“And… and I don’t know how we can be together if you do.”
And there it is.
There’sthe rejection I felt, plain as day, right up in my face.
I stand there staring at her, my gaze taking in every detail in case this is really the last time I get to see her, trying like hell to push down the confusion and anger because no matter what, Stevie doesn’t deserve that from me. “You should go.”
“What?”
“Go home, Stevie.” I nod toward the back door. “It isn’t safe out there, and you don’t need to be in here when the cops show up.”
“The cops? Victor, what—”
“Go! Please. Go home.” She starts backing away again, quicker than before, but stops at the door and looks at me with the same fucking sadness I’m starting to feel. “You know how to reach me if you change your mind or decide you want to talk, but right now you need to go.”
“Victor…”
“Go! For fuck’s sake, Stevie! We’re standing in an abandoned house with a mutilated body of someone you know, only a couple hours after The Ripper left his first victim of the night in town. Get home where I know you’ll be safe! You might not want me anymore but I still fucking want you. I want you alive and breathing, thriving in this fucked up world, even if I can’t have you in mine. You are my goddamn reason and if I can’t protect you now, then what’s the fucking point of any of this at all!”
And thank fuck, she listens.
Stevie barely stifles a sob as she runs out the back door, the screen slamming in her wake, and the second it does, I flip my shit.
