Better When He's Bad

CHAPTER 12 Dovie

THIS WASN’T WHAT IT was normally like when we were together like this. There was a level of intensity in him, a strand of danger that would have scared me had I not seen the struggle he was fighting in those fathomless eyes. I didn’t know if it was the location, the chat with his brother, or the idea that Lord Hartman was heartless and all shades of evil that had him so impatient and edgy, but whatever it was, I could feel the lash of it across each part of my flesh that he exposed with rough hands. He was trying to make a point, to teach a lesson. Only I don’t think he knew which one of us was supposed to be learning it, so instead of fighting him, instead of adding fuel to the fire, I just went still. I was naked and he was still fully clothed, a position I seemed to find myself in a lot around him.

I laid my hands flat on the clean sheets I had just put on his mattress. I kept my eyes locked on the swirling black void in his eyes and refused to move, to give him any kind of reaction as he moved over me. His mouth was too hard, his hands were too rough, and it was the first time since I decided I could handle the trouble he represented that I actually felt like I was in over my head. I had just learned I had narrowly escaped a professional hit on my life thanks to dear old dad; Bax should be coddling me, trying to soothe me. Instead he was trying to push me, trying to scare me into begging him to stop. I wasn’t going to play his game, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of winning it either.

I felt the scrape of his teeth across the sensitive skin of my neck as he bent over me. He pulled his shirt off by the collar and I fixated my gaze on the pulse thundering at the base of his throat. I wanted to kiss him, to let him know it would all be all right, but I wasn’t going to lie to him. If he kept this up, as soon as it was over, I was leaving this apartment, leaving all the darkness and danger that was Bax and taking my chances on my own. I knew Race wouldn’t let me down. I just had to stay alive long enough for him to let his plans play out.

The hard planes of Bax’s chest pressed against the soft curves of my own. My body reacted. How could it not? I wanted him, had wanted him from the get-go, and now that I knew the way he used his mouth, the way he used his hands when he wanted to bring pleasure and light instead of pain and darkness, there was no way my nipples weren’t going to perk up, no way my skin wasn’t going to pebble in arousal, and no way my core wasn’t going to go slick and hot when he gathered both of my lifeless hands in his own and pulled them up above my head.

He used his jean-clad knee to force my legs apart and settled himself in the cradle of my hips. I just stared up at him, pleading with my eyes for him to stop. He wasn’t Shane, he wasn’t Bax, he was just a cold stranger who didn’t care that this was all wrong. I focused on the star on his face. It should be ugly, should make him look ridiculous, but right now I felt like it was my only navigation in a pitch-black sky.

He was waiting for me to stop it, waiting for me to tell him to do the right thing. I could feel him shaking, and not because he was turned on, but because he was forcing himself to hold on to me, to threaten the tenuous threads of the fabric that was holding us together. He was quaking in such a way that had those chains inked around his wrists been real, they would have been rattling and clanking together. I didn’t utter a protest when he pressed his lips to the crest of my cheek and drew them along the ridge until he reached my mouth. I was going to have bruises around my wrists from how hard he was holding me, and I could feel his heart thundering against my own.

His lips settled firmly over mine. It wasn’t a kiss so much as it was an assault. I was pliant. I was still. I refused to give him what he wanted, even when I was tempted, because it felt so good when he ran his tongue along the sealed seam. I wanted him, just not like this.

His chest heaved and billowed against mine, and belatedly I realized the normally insistent erection that was typically trapped between us by this point was missing. He didn’t want to be doing this any more than I did, but I wasn’t going to stop him. He had to stop himself, or really, all there was in Shane Baxter was badness, and whatever part of him I thought I saw when his guard was down, when he kissed me, when he looked at me like I was his reward, was only going to be a figment of my imagination.

He growled against me, his mouth too hard, too fierce, and I couldn’t stop the single tear that slid out of my eye. We were so close together that he felt the tear when it touched his cheek.

“Tell me to stop.” He whispered it against my mouth, the same conversation we had the first night he put those diabolical hands on me.

Last time I had given in to the demand, even though I didn’t mean it.

“No.” I whispered it right back.

“Tell me to stop, Dovie.” His fingers opened and closed in a spasm around my wrists and I had to flinch a little. I saw his reaction flare in the velvet color of his eyes. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he couldn’t stop it either.

“No.”

“You can make everything better.”

He sounded so lost and my heart broke for him. He was a guy who was never going to have a chance at a typical life. There was never going to be a desk job in his future, no simple road with redemption at the end. He was always going to be a guy who had a criminal record, was too wild, too rough not to have a reputation that went along with his ragged persona. He was equal parts Bax and Shane, one was never going to exist without the other, and he was just going to have to find the balance between the two. I didn’t mind helping him figure it out, as long as he didn’t destroy me in the process.

“So can you, Bax, but if you do this, I’m done. There is no going back.”

His eyes flashed at me and my hands were suddenly free and he was levering himself up off of me, the muscles in his arms and shoulders shaking.

“Isn’t that the point?”

He was going to run, I could see it clear as day. He didn’t know what to do next and he was going to bolt. He wanted to make me be the one to do it, so that his conscience was clear, but I hadn’t cooperated and now he was going to go out and unleash all that turbulent emotion on an unsuspecting city. I was tempted to let him.

“Bax . . .”

I thought he was going to get up and head for the door, but he surprised me by twisting at the waist and trapping me back between his stripped torso and the bed. This time when he kissed me, it was for real. His lips moved across mine with force, but not in a way that was punishing. When he demanded entrance this time, I let him have it, and even went as far as to wrap my arms around the strong cords of his neck. His tongue danced with mine, his teeth scraped with the intent to arouse not to punish, and his hands were shaking when he used them to push all my hair back off of my face. His black eyes burned into my own, and I saw an eternity of regret and remorse flood the dark pools.

“You’re a nice girl, Dovie. You should be anywhere but here with anyone but me. This shit with Race and Novak, your old man being the scum of the earth . . . you deserve so much more than all of it. Your life should look different than this, and sooner or later you’re going to hate me.”

I put my thumb on the center of his bottom lip and sucked in a breath when he pulled it into the moist cavern of his mouth.

“Or maybe the opposite of that.” His eyebrows shot up and he used his tongue to swirl around the edge of my thumb before letting it go with a pop.

“Don’t do that, Copper-Top. It would be the worst mistake you ever made.”

He was the second person today to tell me that exact same thing, only I wasn’t sure it wasn’t already too late. There was just something about him, something there that made me want to believe that in the long run, all the bad that made him who he was could be dealt with, could be loved, as long as it came with the fleeting glimpses of good like he was showing me now.

“I’m only twenty, Shane. I have a lifetime to make good decisions. Might as well get the bad ones out of the way now while I still have time to learn from them.”

He caught the hand I had put over his heart and looked at the pale skin that had faint red marks circling it in the shape of his fingers. He put his lips to the center of my wrist, right where my pulse was hammering in time to his.

“I hurt you and made you cry.”

I sighed because I knew he was right. “You also protected me, stood up for me, and made me feel beautiful and secure, which is a lot more than I can say for most people in my life. With you, taking the good with the bad just goes hand in hand.”

He shifted so that his big body was braced above me. He bent his head and placed a whisper-soft kiss on my collarbone. My body reacted instantly. I ran my hands along the ridge of his rib cage, careful to avoid his still-raw knife wound. He was so solid, all parts of him real and strong. When he wasn’t being his own worst enemy, he was the most rigid and stable being I had ever encountered in my life, which was in contradiction to the restless and careless way he lived his life.

“Is that why you call me ‘Shane’ every time I take you to bed?” His mouth landed on my breastbone. I think he was purposely ignoring the begging, plump peaks of each breast. How we had shifted gears so fast I wasn’t sure, but like with everything that came with him, I just held on for the ride.

“I call you ‘Shane’ because you’re different when we are together like this—softer, less scary. I feel like all day long Bax is who you have to be to survive this life you’ve chosen to live, but Shane is who you choose to be when you let your guard down and leave it all on the streets.”

I ran my fingers over the prickly softness of his shaved head, taking a second to rub the smooth surface of his scar.

“I’m not going to pretend I don’t like it when you’re Shane better, but Bax has his place and I can deal with him, just not in bed.”

He moved lower and kissed each one of my hipbones where they jutted upward as my belly hollowed out at the contact. He dipped his tongue into the little indent of my belly button and put a kiss that left a mark on the path of freckled skin that trailed to the apex of my thighs. He was still lying between them, so there was no cover, no protection from either his burning gaze or his questing mouth and hands.

“It’s just me, little Dove, no more and no less.”

His breath hit the damp slit that was getting achy and ready for him to take things up a notch. It made me shudder and my fingers dug into the side of his head, which had him grunting in response.

“Just you is a whole hell of a lot more than most people bring to the table anymore.”

His head dropped and everything else fell away. He had the ability to make time stand still and all the awful things that swirled and invaded everyday life just evaporate into thin air with the stroke of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth. It wasn’t the first time he had used his mouth to make love to me, but there was something in it this time, something in him that made it different. He was trying to apologize, trying to make amends for purposely trying to freak me out earlier. He was reverent, he was sweet, and oh, good Lord, was he thorough and intently focused on making sure I felt what he was doing in every other part of my body. I was so emotionally strung out that I almost shoved him away, but it felt too good and I knew there was no way he was going to let me go anyway.

He sucked hard on my clit and used his fingers to mimic what I wanted him to do with that erection that only moments ago had been insistent against the side of my thigh. When he swirled the flat of his tongue around that tightly wound-up bundle of nerves, I knew it was going to be over before he even really started. He was relentless. He was ratcheting me up so high and so tight there was nothing I could do but scream his name as I broke under the tension. I felt everything inside me let loose and I went limp as he continued to run his tongue along saturated folds and oversensitized flesh. He pulled his fingers out and used them to trace random patterns across my knee and upper thigh.

I struggled to get my eyes back open to look up at him. He was rising to his knees and working on the button to his jeans. I swore there would never in my life be anything hotter than Shane Baxter getting naked and ready to work me over. My lazy heart picked back up when the top of those flags made an appearance. The look on his face after he got me off was always the same mixture of male satisfaction and appreciation, like I had given him some kind of gift by letting him make me come. It always did something to the very core of me to realize that to him it was something special, that I was something more than what he was used to.

He shoved the denim off over the hard globes of his ass but not before handing me a foil wrapper and telling me to get to work. I was lethargic, sleepy from the orgasm and the emotional turmoil of the night, but I wanted to put my hands on him, wanted to cross this last bridge in the place that had made him go so dark on me. I was all the way in Bax’s world now, there was no more pretending I was just biding my time on the fringe until Race showed his face.

I got the latex over him, took a minute to appreciate the heated length and the weeping head, but he was done making nice, and even though I was still extrasensitive and not really all that responsive, he slid into me. It was a tight fit and made both of us gasp. He held himself up over me on rigid arms and stared down at me while I worked my legs up around his waist and my arms across the broad expanse of his tattooed shoulders.

“You okay?”

That he asked meant everything and shook the last of the lethargy out of my blood. I arched up against him and dug my heels into his ass to get him to move.

“Better than all right.”

He swore and I saw some of the shadows move out of his eyes. He sank all the way into me and I felt consumed by him. Every part of him was hot where we touched, and the drag and pull of his unyielding flesh against my quivering inner muscles had me spiraling out of control all over again. He set a pace that was brutal and all about achieving the ultimate pleasure. We weren’t connecting on any other level than physical. Too much had been bared tonight, and this was the only way it could be.

He kissed me hard and I clutched at him to stay anchored to this bed in this place, otherwise I would fall away and I didn’t know that I could find my way back. He ran a hand down my bowed spine and gripped my ass in a desperate hold. Our chests rubbed together so hard that my already aching nipples actually hurt at the contact and our mouths slammed together repeatedly. It was almost violent—the unhinged and desperate way we were moving together.

He whispered my name against my puffy and swollen lips and I knew he was going to reach the end before me. If it was possible, his thrusts became more frantic, his hands greedier, and I thought I was just going to have to hold him through the storm, when all of a sudden that sneaky hand that had been clasping my backside snuck between my legs and hooked around my clit. I saw stars and then I think I blacked out for a few seconds, because he kissed me again and then my head exploded.

I heard him groan and felt some of the tension work its way out of his big body, but I was in another world. I was in a world where I was just a girl and he was just a guy, and we didn’t have problems like gangsters, murderers, and missing brothers hounding us at every turn. In this world, we were just allowed to be happy and wrapped up in each other and the reality that this had a time limit on it didn’t exist.

He dropped his forehead to mine and I had to focus really hard to hear what he was saying to me.

“I never considered you might end up being the one who hurts me before this is all said and done, Copper-Top.”

I sighed and tugged him down so I could wrap myself up in him.

“We could just try not to hurt each other, Bax. That’s how people who like each other normally operate.”

“Like that’s going to work for us.”

I ran my fingers over each defined ridge of his spine. I sighed again and nuzzled into the curve of his shoulder. “Sadly, no.”

“We have this right now. I’ve learned to appreciate the good while you got it.”

I yawned and tried to snuggle into him, even though he didn’t seem to want to turn the thinking off.

“With us, that’s all we can ask for.”

He muttered something into the wild waves of my hair but I was too spun out emotionally and physically to keep up with him anymore. I closed my eyes, and the last thing I heard before I fell asleep was him telling me that amongst all the things he thought that I deserved, someone better than him was at the top of that very long list.

I wasn’t sure what woke me up a few hours later. We were on our sides facing each other. He had one arm curled around my shoulders and I was using the inside of his other arm as a pillow. I had my free arm tucked along his ribs and had thrown one of my legs over his lean waist at some point in the night. There was barely any space between the two of us. His naked chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm, like he was still sound asleep. But when I pried my heavy eyes open, the first thing I saw was his wide, dark eyes focused unwaveringly on my face.

I was going to ask him what was wrong, what had caused us to wake up, when I noticed the even darker muzzle of a gun pointed right at Bax’s temple. I woke up because we were no longer alone in the crappy apartment and a looming figure had a gun pointed at Bax’s head. I sucked in a breath and opened my mouth to scream in reflex when the armed shadow suddenly moved and a faint glow of moonlight highlighted the familiar face and glinted off of golden-blond hair. I was going to snap my brother’s name and ask him what in the hell he thought he was doing, but I never got the chance because Bax was suddenly a flurry of activity. Like he had done from the get-go, he put himself between me and whatever the perceived threat might be.

He rolled over so fast it almost toppled me to the floor. I screamed at him to stop, terrified Race would fire the gun by accident, but neither one of them was listening to me. Bax grabbed the barrel of the gun my brother had pressed to his head and shoved it up and back toward Race’s startled face. I knew now that Race wasn’t any kind of saint, but there was no way he was going to be a match for Bax. Maybe before his best friend had been sent to jail they were an even match, but now Bax had five years to fuel his fury. Five years of loss to pay Race back for, and it didn’t seem to matter that he was buck naked.

They both emitted a sound that was more animalistic than human, and the next thing I knew, the gun was lying on the bed next to me and they were trying to rip each other apart with their bare hands. I scrambled to my feet and put on the first thing I could find, which happened to be Bax’s hoodie. I zipped it up and snatched the gun up before either one of them could remember it existed. I called first Race’s name and then Bax’s, only to be ignored by both of them. The sounds of heavy fists hitting flesh and the coppery scent of blood soon filled the small space. I didn’t even try and warn them when the brawl moved from the space near the bed closer to the TV stand. The flat screen was no match for two furious men, both over six feet and apparently intent on destroying each other.

I winced when Race landed a solid blow on Bax’s already battered ribs and then had to squeeze my eyes shut when Bax retaliated by slamming his elbow repeatedly into Race’s cheekbone. They were both bloody, and even in the dark I could see the cold looks of fury on both of their faces. It wasn’t going to end unless I did something about it. Unfortunately, I had no idea what that something should be. I shoved my hands through my hair, closed my eyes, and screamed as loud and as long as I could. If their battle hadn’t drawn the attention of the neighbors, my bloodcurdling shriek surely would. I screamed until my throat was raw, until hot tears burned down my face, until I thought I would pass out from the lack of air in my lungs, and I didn’t stop until a pair of arms wrapped around me and pulled me close. Since the chest I fell against was bare and slicked with blood and sweat, I knew it was Bax who had collected me and not my brother.

I forced myself to look over Bax’s shoulder to make sure my sibling was still breathing. He was, but he didn’t look happy, and as soon as Bax pulled away from me, Race threw him his jeans and barked at him to get dressed if he was going to be so close to me. Bax flipped him off and fished around in the pocket of the hoodie I was wearing for his smokes. He looked at me when he spoke and not at Race.

“I’ll be back in a minute. If the neighbors called the cops, I’m gonna tell Titus it was a false alarm.” He cut a warning look at my brother. “If she’s crying when I get back, I won’t stop next time.”

“Who are you to threaten me over my sister, Bax? You were supposed to protect her, not fuck her.”

Bax growled and made a move like he was going back after Race, so I put a hand on his forearm and reached up to wipe off a trickle of blood that was trailing out of his nose with the edge of my thumb. I shook my head, and with my eyes, I pleaded with him to let it rest. It must have worked because he stuck the end of the cigarette in his mouth and headed toward the door.

“Well, maybe you should have left written instructions with someone before you dipped out, leaving her on her own to deal with half the Point trying to get their hands on her in order to get to your stupid ass. Sorry, as usual I wasn’t in on your goddamn plans, Race, so I just made up my own rules as I went along.”

“That’s what you always do, Bax, and look where you ended up.”

I saw Bax’s jaw clench and his hands curl into fists.

“Not without some help, Race.” His eyes lifted to me and it made my heart sink to see that all those swirling shadows were firmly back in place. “I’ll be right back.” I wasn’t sure if that was a threat to my brother or a promise to me, but either way it raised goose bumps all along my arms.

When the door closed with a fierce bang, I flipped on the overhead light and finally looked at my older brother. He had flopped into the worn-out chair and looked about as haggard and spent as its threadbare fabric. He was a big guy, not as bulky as Bax, but wherever he had been, he hadn’t been taking very good care of himself over the last month. His cheeks looked hollowed out, he had an unkempt scruff decorating his handsome face, and his eyes, identical to my own, were far too dark. In addition to the weight loss and general disarray of his clothes and normally perfectly styled hair, there was now a gaping wound on his cheek, his eyebrow was split open, and there were rusty smears of blood along the back of both of his hands.

I sighed and walked to the tiny kitchenette to get him a damp rag to clean up with. “Where have you been?”

“What are you doing in bed with Bax, Dovie? Do you have any idea what he’s capable of, what kind of guy he is? I never would have left you alone had I thought you would be dumb enough to end up sleeping with him.”

I gritted my teeth and tossed the rag to him. I narrowed my eyes at him as I propped myself up on the counter and watched him.

“You left me alone after I got the crap kicked out of me and told me to wait for him, Race. Who are you to show up now and judge what’s happening here?”

His eyes, so like mine, flared dark with anger and guilt. “I had to leave you. They would’ve just kept coming and I had to figure out who I could trust.”

“They would’ve grabbed me to get to you, Race. Do you even care about that?”

He shoved his hands through his golden hair and started to pace in front of me. “Of course I care. Every move I’ve made has been to keep everyone safe. I knew Bax would find you. Would stand between you and Novak.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and leveled him with a look. “What if he hadn’t? What if he had gotten out of jail and taken off? That’s a big risk you took with my life without talking to me about it, Race.”

“I know Bax.” His gaze drifted to the rumpled bed. “At least I thought I did.”

“I thought he was like your brother, your best friend. Isn’t that why you told me to trust him if he showed up? Even if he was scary, even if he seemed dangerous, you told me to trust him.”

“That was before I knew he would sink so low to pay me back.”

“What are you talking about?”

He lumbered to his feet and started pacing back and forth. “I never thought he would sleep with you to get back at me for sending him to jail.”

I sucked in a breath so hard it hurt. I shook my head and frowned at Race. Even though I missed him, was worried about him, I wasn’t going to let him waltz in and start getting things all tangled up.

“He didn’t. He didn’t know about the setup until tonight when he cornered Lord Hartman. He suspected you had something to do with it, were involved somehow, but he called Titus tonight for the real story. He took me to bed way before that, Race.”

“Jesus, Dove, I don’t need details.”

“Then stop being an idiot. You pulled a gun on the only person in the world who gives a crap where you’ve been and if you’ve been okay besides me.”

“I wasn’t expecting to find you naked, in bed with him.”

“That justifies putting a gun to his head after everything he’s already been through?”

Race’s eyes flicked up at me and then he squeezed them shut and shoved his fists into them.

“You’re in love with him.”

I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Maybe a little bit. Regardless, he’s been here and he’s done what you intended him to do. Benny, Novak . . . none of those guys have gotten close to me, and they want to because whatever you have going on is making everyone very nervous, Race.”

The door to the apartment swung open and Bax stalked back in looking no less pissed and battered than when he left. His face had fared better than Race’s, but his knife wound was all broken open again and the scab looked like something out of a horror movie. He made his way over to where I was standing. He put a finger under my chin and tilted my head up and looked at me hard.

“Okay?”

“Fine. You need to rewrap up your side.”

He looked down where he was steadily leaking blood and shrugged. “It won’t kill me.”

He took a position similar to my own and crossed his arms over his chest and glared at my brother.

“So, Race, why don’t you tell us what you have on Novak that’s enough for him to want you alive, even though you threatened to take him down? Why don’t you explain to your sister why you brought her back here, knowing everyone was going to be all over you?”

Race muttered something under his breath and folded back into the chair. He clasped his hands in front of him and looked at something on the floor between his feet.

“The night I grabbed the old guy, I knew there was no way you were going to kill him and no way Novak was going to let him live. I set up a bunch of wireless remote cameras on the meeting point.”

Bax shook his head. “Smart bastard.”

Race heaved another sigh. “Yeah, only the footage is blurry. You can tell it’s Novak, you can see him pull the trigger, but then everything kind of went crazy because you took off in the Aston Martin. I was supposed to stick around and give the footage to Titus, and Novak was supposed to go away for murder, only none of that happened. After you went to jail, Novak told me if I didn’t scram he was going after Dovie and after you behind bars. I told him he didn’t want to mess with me, but I didn’t want to tip my hand too early. When I knew you were getting out and could protect yourself, I knew it was time to come back.”

He tossed his head back at the ceiling and looked up at the peeling plaster while Bax shifted restlessly next to me.

“I was all set to turn the footage over to Titus when my idiot father decided to let me know that he had been laundering all of Novak’s money for the years I had been gone. I didn’t keep in touch with my parents too much until Dovie and I came back to the Point. I didn’t know how tangled everything had gotten. I didn’t know how to take Novak down without dragging my dad through the quicksand with him.”

Bax grunted at that and asked coolly, “What does your old man have to do with anything? He tried to put a hit out on Dovie so what do you care if he gets swallowed in quicksand?”

Race swore.

“Not the old man, but my mom. She probably wouldn’t survive having all of this unravel on her. Dad in jail for RICO and Dad’s illegitimate kid shoved in her face. Not to mention Novak would probably kill her just to keep me in line.”

“Why did you bring Dovie back here? Why risk it if you were safe in another city?”

“I was never going to be safe. Novak was always going to use me to hold over your head. He’s not stupid, Bax. He knew the first thing you would do when you got out of jail was try and find out answers. He knew you would come after me. I came back to show him I wasn’t scared, no matter how awful this place is, it’s still my home. I wanted him to know his time was running down and I wanted to be closer to Titus because right now he’s the only person I trust.”

He looked at the bed and then glared at me. “I couldn’t leave Dovie alone, so she had to come with me. I was just waiting until she was older, out of high school. I wanted her to have enough time to find her footing here before the shit hit the fan. I feel like everything has been stuck in suspended animation, everything just on pause waiting for you to get out of prison. It’s like time has been standing still and everything comes down to you and Novak, to this moment.” He gave Bax a really pointed look, which had him shifting uncomfortably. “Plus I knew that if something happened to me, you would be here, Titus would be here. She doesn’t need to be alone in her life anymore. There is family here in the Point, as hard as you might try to forget it.”

“What do you mean you didn’t want Dovie left alone? You left her alone after Benny kicked the shit out of her.” Bax sounded furious about it and Race had the good grace to flush and look at me with remorse. I knew how my brother’s head worked. He was always trying to pull things apart and figure out what made them run. This situation was no different. To Race, I was a cog in the wheel of whatever Novak’s big picture was. It should offend me, make me mad, but by now I was getting kind of used to being a means to an end for men playing dangerous games I didn’t fully understand.

“I know and I’m sorry. But something strange happened when I marched into Novak’s compound, something that changed the course of what’s going on here.”

I could feel Bax stiffen even with the space between us and could feel the heat of anger blazing off of him. “What happened?”

Race’s green eyes flashed between the two of us and then landed heavily on his friend. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. I walked in there yelling about a hidden tape with an execution on it. Threw around words like ‘feds’ and ‘lifetime behind bars’ and Novak just looked at me like I was an annoying fly buzzing around his head. He knew I was confident moving back here, that I felt like I had leverage. And I thought they roughed Dovie up to find out what I had because you were getting released, but then I walked out of the compound without so much as a scratch. It didn’t add up. We both know I should’ve ended up with a bullet between the eyes.”

I gasped at the graphic image and Race shifted his gaze to me with a wince. “I only meant to stay away for a day or two, to see how things were going to play out. I crashed with Carmen for a few nights, paid Lester a few bucks to be on alert, and imagine my surprise when there was no Benny, no Novak. It didn’t make sense, so I wanted to dig further into it. Something else is working and I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to figure out what it was. It’s like a giant game and the only person with the rules is Novak.”

His gaze went back to Bax and he sighed heavily.

“I feel like you’re the prize right in the center of the game board, Bax. I just don’t know what moves Novak is making to collect you.”

I gulped and wanted to lean against Bax’s side, but didn’t want to set either Race or him off again. I was just going to have to comfort myself. Just like I always did.

I rubbed my arms up and down the soft fabric of the sweatshirt and looked back and forth between the two men. “So what now?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I came to find Bax. I can’t stay hidden, because sooner or later Benny is going to come after you to get me to make a move one way or the other. They’ll grab you to get me to come out of hiding; whatever Novak’s plan is, he wants me to be part of it. They know about the tape now. I told him if he ever came near you again after they knocked you around, I would send it to the feds. I thought that’s why they have been looking for me but now I’m not so sure. No one knows where the tape is besides me. Novak has cops on the take, he has eyes everywhere. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to figure out where his reach ends.” His blond head dropped a little and his shoulders slumped. “I don’t know who we can trust beyond Titus.”

We were all quiet, the weight of having to deal with any and all of Novak’s machinations heavy in the room around us. I could hear Bax’s steady breathing, could see the fear and anger stamped on Race’s face, and I thought Bax was right, I did deserve more than this in life.

Bax pushed off the counter and scraped his hands hard over his scalp. He looked at me and then at Race. “Give me the tape.”

I winced and Race scowled.

“No!” I screamed it out of fear for Bax’s safety, Race barked it out of indignation. Bax just shook his head.

“What other option is there? Novak already has a hard-on for me. He never would have involved you or Dovie in any of his machinations if he didn’t want to have me over a barrel. It’s my fault. I break the law. I steal shit and end up tied into guys like him. Neither one of you needs to suffer for it anymore. This is my mess, I’ll clean it up. Whether it’s about the tape and blackmail or something else altogether.”

I grabbed him. I couldn’t help it. I wrapped my hands around his biceps, but like when I thought he was going to run away from me earlier, I could already see the dark barriers folding down as he looked down at my panicked face.

“So what? You’re going to offer yourself up as the sacrificial lamb? That doesn’t solve the problem, it just places you in the line of fire instead of Race.”

“Yeah, Bax. I followed you willingly down this path. You didn’t have to drag me kicking and screaming. I knew it was wrong, knew the risks we were taking, and you already gave up enough in this nightmare. Novak is my problem.”

Bax swore and I think my heart started to fracture when he purposely untangled himself from my clutching grip.

“Novak is the Point’s problem.”

I gulped back all the sour things I was feeling, the bitter taste of Shane disappearing behind everything that was Bax right before my eyes.

“And you have to be the one to take care of it?” It was a stupid question to ask and I almost choked on it.

There was nothing in his eyes when he looked at me, he was back to that dangerous stranger that I was equal parts scared of and fascinated by. He pulled out the big guns, the ones that there was no way Race could argue against. I knew, just like that, the battle was over.

“I went to jail for you, Race. I spent five years hating you, being disappointed in you, and convincing myself not to kill you when I got out. I might understand why you had to do it, but that’s five years I won’t get back and you owe me for it. Give me the fucking tape and let me handle Novak. You keep your sister safe and make sure no more of this nasty shit blows back on her.”

I wanted to argue, wanted Race to protest, but he just nodded, and like that, everything shifted. I wasn’t Bax’s lover, his friend, or his partner in the shared goal of finding Race; I was just some girl and he was just some guy and this was the kind of life we lived in the Point. No one got a happy ending, and I should have known I was not the exception to the rule.