Brutally Beautiful

Chapter 7

Kade had been at the bar every night for almost a week, staring at me so hard that I feared he might burst a blood vessel. I peeked out of the door in the bar’s kitchen and watched him walk in. He was scanning the room, dark serious eyes searching. Was he looking for me? Was it fear that had my hackles up? Or was it excitement? I wanted to punch myself in my head for thinking it.

I mean his actions were incarceration worthy, but then what he said to me last night…it just…touched me. Because, Lainey, you somehow soothe the chaos that’s inside me. You heal me.

You heal me.

You heal me.

“Let me guess. My brother is out there, yeah?” Dylan’s voice rumbled behind me. He settled himself next to me and peeked beside me behind the door. The closeness of his arm to mine made me shiver and I moved away. When he realized what I’d done, his eyes widened, “Ah shit. You’re scared of him? Damn, Lainey, is he scaring you? I swear Lainey; he’s not a bad person. He’s just not right in the head.”

What the heck did that mean?

“We need to talk.” Tears burned my eyes out of sheer frustration, and I ran. I ran down the hallway into his office, hoping he’d follow me so I could get some sort of answers. This was too intense. His brother was vile towards me one minute, then the next, he was apologizing and following me around, being flirty in a weird way. I got that there was an attraction there. I mean Kade Grayson was glorious to look at. I now understood the idea of being attracted to someone at first sight, or whatever you wanted to call it. There was no denying something was there that drew us to acknowledge one another and to look at one another. I couldn’t remember another time where I’d felt this instant attraction so strongly with somebody, and I saw it in him, the way he watched me, I saw that same strong pull in his eyes. But he’d been following me. Conveniently showing up in places I frequented, just watching and waiting. To say I was worried was the understatement of the century. I was ready to pull out my claws.

Dylan’s serious face was in mine instantly, worry lines creasing his forehead, making him look so much older.

I paced back and forth in front of his desk, wringing my shirt in my hands. “Look, Dylan. I appreciate everything you have done for Bree and I, showing up here all messed up as we were, and letting us stay and work here, but you had to realize by now that I’m running from a really bad situation and I don’t want to get myself mixed up in another one. So, please tell me what it is that is wrong with your brother.”

Dylan’s eyebrows rose with a sad expression, his shoulders slumped and he just seemed to give in. “Take the night off, Lainey. Go home and Google Kade Grayson. He’s got his own damn Wikipedia page. You’ll find everything that everybody thinks about him there. Once you read all the articles on what happened and what he did, then look up his books. His pen name is Cory Thomas.”

I stood there staring at him. This whole town was bat-shit crazy, and the Graysons seemed to be the supreme rulers. Ever since we got here, I’d been waiting for someone to ask me to drink whatever weird Kool-Aid they were passing around. He couldn’t just give me an explanation? I had to go on a freaking treasure hunt?

Slipping out the back door, I yanked on my coat as fast as I could. It was freezing outside, but thank God, I had less than a ten-minute walk to the trailer park.

I had no idea what I would find when I looked up Kade. What could possibly make an entire town fear him? What could possibly make a grown man choose a reclusive existence and have such a strong distaste of other human beings? And, why the hell would he take it out on me? Climbing the icy steps to my trailer, I was determined to find out.

Warming my hands around a steamy cup of freshly made coffee, I turned my computer on. Logging online, I immediately typed Kade Grayson into a search engine, and clicked on the first site. Not prepared for what I saw, my coffee cup fell from my hands, stinging a burn across my fingers and splashing down my legs. The cup shattered into pieces across the crappy linoleum of the trailer and echoed itself in my ears.

Saint Benedict’s High School Massacre.

England.

School shooting.

1998.

A sixteen-year-old student killed a total of twenty-eight of his fellow students and three teachers.

Oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

My eyes scanned through the sickening photographs of the school. The crowds of screaming students, close-ups of crying teachers, zoomed in pictures of bullet holes in the windows of the classroom, and a terrifying black and white grainy video surveillance still shot of a lone gunman walking the hallway of the school, a duffle bag full of firearms hung from his shoulder. At the end of first period, each one of those guns would be emptied of bullets.

A shuddering fear gripped me as my eyes scoured the pictures. My tears fell and my stomach rolled with each new photograph. My cold trembling fingers covered my mouth and my chest tingled, as I scrolled through the pictures of each dead student. The beautiful innocent faces of each dead student.

Dead students.

Photographs of the three teachers, and their families that would never see them again.

The question whispered in my mind like the wind, slow at first, then picking up speed and howling through my skull. Was Kade a sick sadistic killer? Kade murdered those children. How can he do such a thing? My God…no wonder people said he was the devil. Why wasn’t he in prison? Was it because he was a juvenile when he murdered a classroom full of innocent kids? Through the blur of tears, I finally found my answers.

Kade Grayson, sixteen-year-old high school junior was the only survivor in the entire junior class, although severely wounded. The gunman, sixteen-year-old high school junior, Thomas McKadley, committed suicide after the attacks by a gunshot wound to the head. In addition to the shootings, the disturbing and extensively planned attack involved propane tanks converted to bombs placed at each exit of the school, and two explosive devices rigged in a car and eight under the stands of the gymnasium.

Oh, my God.

Kade.

What do I even do with that? What do you do? How do you get over that? Fucking hell. That was just like Columbine. How…how do you live from there? Oh God. Sixteen? Severely wounded? Watched his entire class slaughtered.

How do you go on?

My chest tightened and my throat thickened with knots I couldn’t swallow. A thick sheen of guilt and sweat covered my skin. I assumed Kade was a killer, just as he assumed I was a stripper. Kade was a man who lived through horror, real life horror. Of course, he would be untrusting and full of hate and rage. That’s a fucking given when people are trying to kill you. You don’t get over that. You never get over that; it scars you.

How did he live through that? How did he deal with it?

I googled Cory Thomas next, just like Dylan told me to, with tears stinging my eyes and racing down my cheeks. Websites upon websites, fan sites, fan forums, blogs, reading groups, Facebook pages and fan-fiction; it was an endless supply of people who loved this obviously incredible reclusive author. His readers loved him. That is how he dealt with it, he wrote about it.

I clicked on his list of books; there were hundreds of them. Hundreds.

All he did was write. All he did was hide from the world and write.

His latest book, Behind Green Doors, was independently published just the day before. There was a crazed buzz about it. Reviews and comments in forums spoke about it being his best work to date, a mixture of erotic horror, and thriller with a love story twisted inside of it. I downloaded it to my eReader, then cleaned up my mess of coffee, made a new cup and crawled into a ball on the couch. Wanting. Needing to climb into the mind of this man, this man who had seen mayhem first hand and had tried his best to live with it. I knew all too well how scary and real his nightmares might be. Trying to wipe away the last of my tears, my raw eyes strained to see my eReader.

Two beautiful green eyes graced the cover of the eBook, floating in darkness. I hadn’t read a horror book in ages. I swiped the page and stopped on his dedication page, spilling my coffee for the second time in my lap.

For the mysterious green-eyed waitress

She is now my favorite flavor

What the fuck? What the fucking FUCK? I stood up, dropped my eReader and paced the room, coffee still dripping off my shirt. He made me lose two fucking cups of coffee. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

I was going to need an entire bottle of wine to read the rest of this shit.

I changed my clothes. Again. My body was shaking, worse than it normally did. I was livid. I was shocked. I was…I was smiling. Why the FUCK was I smiling? This was bad. This had BAD written all the fuck over it. This…this is just a morbid filled ice cream cone dipped in psycho flavored sprinkles. My mind was racing, from pictures of the murders he witnessed as a sixteen-year-old boy, to the erotic violently sensual way he kissed me, to the lone man sitting in a diner, bloody and devoid of any expression, emotionally detached from the rest of the world. The room was literally spinning around me, pulling me under, and panic was pumping straight adrenaline through my veins.

Picking up my eReader, I tried again, taking a deep breath and counting backwards from twenty. I scanned the words on the device until my eyes blurred from tears…and my heart broke from…no, for Kade.

I can clearly remember the first time I met her. Those brilliant green eyes hiding all her secrets, keeping them from me… Like a wrecking ball, she came in, crumbling my walls into dust… She was as broken as I was…I could see some sort of pain in those green depths, some sort of mirrored knowledge that the world sucked. And, I thought to myself…finally…finally someone on my side of the fishbowl. I wanted to know what haunted her and hold hands in the darkness…together…

Blood. Gore. More blood and gore. By the fourth chapter, I was sure the male main character was a fucking serial killer.

As soon as my lips touched hers, her smile wandered its way to my mouth. I loved the softness of her lips, the warmth of her tongue, the way she moved her mouth over mine, her body leaned closer against me. “You make me smile when your lips are on mine, like I’m borrowing your happiness, like it’s wiping off on me. Maybe I’m just stealing it, I don’t know. All I know is that it gives me a calmness, a happiness I never thought I could feel…you give me a reason…”

She was mine, and no other’s. Only my lips could kiss hers. Only my hands could hold hers. Only my body could sink deep inside her between those smooth ivory thighs…And only she could tame the beast I was. Only she could quench the thirst I hungered after, and coax the monster inside me to be a man again, if only a broken one…

More carnage. An eerily true to life decapitation scene from an accident, and wait…by chapter twenty, I believed the female character might have been the serial killer. This book…this book was dragging me to the dark dungeon of my own psyche where I did not wish to linger. Holy crap, I just got mindfucked. The book ended with a cliffhanger that made me scream. Like literally, scream. Out loud. His words were like liquid poetry, emotion dripping thickly off of every single sentence. It made my heart thunder in my chest and ache for the characters. They were written so close in likeness to both Kade and me, right down to the way my hands trembled and twisted napkins when I got nervous, to the destructive and angry way he tugged on his hair. The scenes of carnage, the gruesomely horrific violence, were so real and terrifying that I found myself gripping the edges of the couch cushions with anxiety.

Is that why the people in this town think he’s the devil? Because he writes horror-fiction? That’s absurd.

Rubbing my eyes, I looked at the clock on the wall; it was eleven. I read his words, his book, straight through for seven hours. Rifling through my drawers, I changed into a pair of jeans and a turtleneck to go back to the bar. Every sound I heard had me wondering if someone was outside the trailer, every howl of the wind had me hearing voices of people I never wanted to see again, and I didn’t want to be alone. Kade Grayson was one talented writer, because I was still feeling the effects of the complete terror of his book.

After locking up the trailer, I silently made my way through the park, staying on the road with eyes wide open. No matter where you might have met up with your nightmares in your past, you could always find new ones on cold dark country roads. Relief swept through me when I had the bar in my view. The neon lights of the shaking ass sign were like a beacon of safety to me, but I still had a strange gnawing fear in the back of my head. It was probably from reading the horror story, alone…but I just couldn’t shake the thoughts that someone was right behind me, reaching out their hand to grab me in the darkness of the night. You know that fear…that something is there just beyond your sight, waiting…watching you.

When my feet hit the asphalt of the parking area, I ran to the door of the bar and stumbled in, breathless and shaking. I could brush it off as being out of shape and cold, but truth was, I was dead scared. Because Kade Grayson wasn’t the only one who’d lived through a real-life horror and I remembered all too well what those hands that spring from the blackness of the dead of night felt like around my throat.

The bar was practically empty. Cynthia (aka Sin Dee) was on stage, surrounded by four men raptly watching her spin herself around the pole, and for the briefest of moments, I envied her sexuality, her lack of inhibitions and her confidence in her beauty. I would love at least one night in my life to feel that free about my body and myself.

Dylan, Bree, Fran, and Natalie, another dancer, sat around a table in the middle of the bar, deep in some sort of discussion. Natalie was still dressed in her thong and a sparkly bikini top, and Fran didn’t seem to own the ability to lift his eyes off her breasts. Good, maybe he’ll ask her out and leave me alone with my coffee.

Kade sat in his normal booth. Back to the wall, facing the whole bar nearest to the back door, and now I completely understood why. He would always need to see the whole of a room, always need to be nearest to an exit, just in case. Kade Grayson had a whole new personality to me now, and I understood it. God, I understood him.

Immersed, consumed in whatever he was writing, I took advantage of his distraction to study him raptly. Leaning forward, the chiseled features of his face illuminated by the glow of his computer screen, his fingers danced quickly over the keys. He looked a mess. Hair tousled, falling darkly across his forehead, tight gray shirt, a simple cotton one, clung to his body, demonstrating his powerful chest and hard solid muscular arms. A smear of ketchup covered his cheek from the half-eaten hamburger lying on the dish next to his laptop. I found myself drawn in, in front of him, softly wiping the smear from his cheek. “Shit,” he whispered, looking up with wide eyes.

“Nope. Just ketchup,” I whispered, feeling every beat of my heart as it banged hard against my chest. I couldn’t believe I had touched him. Quickly, I wiped my fingers on a napkin, then balled it up tightly and squeezed it spastically in my hand. “I’m sorry.” I gave him a watery smile and tried to hold back my tears, because I could still see the death and chaos around him. He wore it heavily on his face and in the tightness in his eyes. Like a soldier just home from war.

Slowly putting his drink to his lips, he took a long pull of his beer, his eyes never leaving mine. Swallowing, he placed his drink down and snapped shut his laptop, ceasing the screen’s glow against his skin. With only the flickering flame from the small candle on the table, it made his features look even more menacing and colder than ever before. His eyes were so light they seemed colorless. His hard angular face, chiseled as if from stone, tilted to the side in question.

“That was something a friend would do, no?” he whispered. Softly. Dangerously. Chilling me. His gaze dropped to my lips and it felt as soft as a touch.

I cleared my throat trying to get my breath back. “Why don’t you come and sit with us? Have a bit of normal conversation, friend.”

His right eyebrow shot up. “I’m not normal,” he said, trying to provoke me, crossing his thick arms over his chest as if he was waiting for my rebuttal.

Leaning forward, I placed my face a few inches in front of his and whispered, “Then redefine what normal is, Kade.” Being so close to him, I noticed the slight widening of the whites of his eyes, making his grey irises more brilliant than they already were. His pupils dilated completely, leaving me staring at complete black pools of desire. I swear I saw a layer of sweat burst out across his forehead.

A chuckle fumbled unevenly past his lips, and his head tilted to one side to look at the table I had invited him to sit at. “I appreciate your invitation, but I believe that every time that Fran of yours speaks to me, he’s actively trying to annihilate every last one of my brain cells.”

He was teasing me.

“Well, considering the average intelligence level of the people, and let’s say the chairs and crumpled up napkins there, I believe you’d fit in perfectly with any conversation we could throw at you. Now, get up and stop your whining.”

His smile…his smile almost killed me. Arrow right to the heart, with a stampede of fluttering butterflies exploding from it. That man was breathtaking when he smiled. And that dimple, holy divots of smooth skin everywhere, I could have fallen right into it and lived a happy life there for the rest of my days.

Sliding himself out of his chair, he stood up tall, and stretched. I was captivated by the way his shirt stretched and clung to the muscles of his arms and back. I was well aware that I was the one that looked like the obsessed stalker then, so I stepped away and tried to rub the sight of him from my eyes.

Walking side by side, we made our way across the bar to where everyone was seated.

“Here she is, just ask her,” Bree slurred, smiling at me. “Who is the Karaoke Queen of Manhattan?” Crap. Bree was drunk. And telling everybody exactly where we were running from. Perfect.

I sat down across from her, leaving open the chair that faced the entrance to the bar for Kade to sit in. His face looked ashen, his entire demeanor screamed uncomfortable, and guilt quickly overwhelmed me. Catching his glance, I offered him an encouraging smile and he sat down and slid the seat closer to the table. The expression of everyone was astonishing to me. Dylan was giddy with happiness that his brother was there, but Fran was sneering like an ass. Bree was plainly drunk, and Natalie practically shoved her breasts in his lap.

“Bree was just telling us a little secret about you,” Fran broke the silence. “She swears that your Karaoke skills are unsurpassable.” Need I tell you that my stomach dropped for a bit, wondering what secret she could have drunkenly let loose?

“Ugh. My brother loved karaoke and he used to drag me to bars when we were younger to sing. It’s no big deal. How did you guys get on this subject,” I asked, watching Bree. Her eyes were closed and I knew she was thinking about Michael.

“Oh, I didn’t know you had a brother,” Fran said, scanning his eyes back and forth from Kade to me, and back again.

“Well, he’s deceased, so I don’t usually talk about him,” I explained.

“Oh, I’m sorry. How did that happen?” Fran prodded.

Why do people think it’s okay to ask that question? The answers are just for their own morbid curiosity and it hurts the person whom they’re asking.

“They said it was suicide. Any other inappropriate questions you’d like to ask?” I said, offering an uncomfortable laugh.

Just like always, death kills the conversation. Four sets of silent staring eyes were on me, all except for Kade. No, what Kade did affected me the most, a simple brush of the back of his hand over mine under the table that took hold of all of my senses completely. My insides fluttered. Now that I knew about Kade’s tragic past, I understood why we’d felt drawn together. People who have seen real life monsters up close will never feel understood by people who haven’t. What those people don’t understand, is that we still see those monsters, everyday. They will never understand how tragedy makes you bitter and spiteful, and how it always keeps its claws around your neck, ready to suffocate you.

“Um…what we were saying was that Dylan should have some karaoke on nights when us girls aren’t dancing to get more people to come out to the bar. That’s all,” Natalie said. “I’m sorry about your brother, hon.”

Bree laid her head on Dylan’s shoulder and kept quiet.

“Hey, they have a Karaoke bar in town. I should close the bar tomorrow night and then we could all hear this bird sing,” Dylan teased, pointing to me.

Bree’s face lit up, “I’m in.”

Natalie smiled, “I’m in for a day off and going out, but I have to see if I could get a sitter for the little monsters.”

Fran searched my face for my answer and I just shrugged, “Sounds fun.” I turned my head towards Kade, “Want to come with us and watch me embarrass everybody?”

Again, his smiled crushed me.

“I still say the location is the problem with this bar, Dylan. There’s nothing around here but the trailer park. What made you open up this place here anyway?” Fran asked.

My eyes caught the way Dylan looked at Kade, the same way Michael used to look at me after we’d bicker about something, and then he’d stick up for me in front of my mother, “Because I needed to be near my family. And this is the closest I’ve been allowed to get.”

“Pardon me,” Kade murmured, quietly pushing his chair back and walking off into the back hallway. Dylan ran his hands over his face, and gave me a pained stare. Curling his arms over his head, he cursed under his breath, “Bloody hell. Lainey you just had him smiling and I go and ruin it with my mouth.”

“Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” I said and walked into the back hallway, finding Kade in Dylan’s office looking out the back window. “You okay?” I asked, as I walked up behind him.

“Yep.” He snapped, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. When I stood in front of him, he growled. “Okay, listen. I don’t do talking and shit.”

“Kade, shut up. I just asked if you were okay. You said you were, far be it from me to tell you otherwise. Your brother is just speaking the truth. If you don’t like it, change it. And you are coming with us tomorrow night. You scare the shit out of the townies and I’ll make their ears bleed.”

I don’t think he could have stopped himself from laughing, but I know he tried. A delicious smiled danced across his lips, “What I’m hearing is that, now you think we’d make a great team.”

“So, you’re admitting to hearing things, Mr. Grayson?”

Kade hung his head and laughed. When he looked back up at me, I saw the laughter reach his eyes. “Friends, huh?” The stress and tension that tightened his face eased away gradually.

“We could try,” I said, slowly smiling.

His steel eyes softened as they held mine. Hesitantly, he reached his hand to my face and lightly brushed the knuckles of his hand from the bottom of my chin to the back of my jaw. The touch sent fire across my skin and every last nerve ending in my body awakened and tingled with warmth. Both of us stood there, silently watching one another, slowly leaning closer to each other until his hand slid up and wrapped around the back of my neck, threading his fingers through the strands of my hair. My knees instantly weakened and all my senses heightened with almost painful acuity. His scent of worn leather and whatever soap he used surrounded me, making me want to gulp deeply into his essence. The sounds of his close heavy breathing had my heart pounding as if it were surround sound. Everything seemed clear and just more.

“Lainey! Lainey?” Fran’s voice called from the hallway.

Neither of us moved.

The pressure of his hand gripped at my neck tighter and a slow devilish smile appeared on his lips.

“Lainey?” Fran’s voice continued to call.

Kade shifted and pressed his body against mine, thudding my back against the door of the office, clicking it closed. The hand tangled in my hair tightened more and his other slipped softly along the side of my waist, under the hem of my shirt and skidded hot fingertips along the surface of my skin. Leaning his face into the curve of my neck, he inhaled deeply, and I was instantly gasping for breath from his closeness. “I think someone wants you,” he whispered, chuckling softly against my skin.

“Yes, I hear him,” I whispered back, not caring at all.

“I wasn’t talking about Fran.” He growled, pressing his warm lips against my neck. Oh, hell, it just got hot in here.

Reluctantly stepping away, his hands released me, his eyes so intense, stared down into mine. “I don’t know how to start this, I’ve never done this…,” he whispered.

“Kade, I think you just did.”

His eyes stayed fixed on mine as he smiled. Fran’s voice was closer now, just on the other side of the door and Kade moved past me to open it. His hand brushed over my hip, along the curve of my waist to the front of my belly, and lingered just below my navel. I thudded my head against the wall as the strongest surge of lust exploded through my entire being. My soul wanted a piece of that man.

“Lainey? Are you okay?” Fran’s voice shattered through our bubble, interrupting our moment. He walked through the door purposefully, looked at Kade and narrowed his eyes, then turned to glare at me. “Dylan is closing early tonight, everybody seems to have left. I’ll drive you home now,” he said, chancing another glance towards Kade. “To make sure you get home safe.”

Kade’s eyes never left mine. “Go,” he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow night with my pitchfork and horns.”

“Goodnight, Kade,” I said as I slipped out of the room, leaving him alone. I went back to the trailer that night with a very buzzed Bree, but I wore a smile plastered to my face. I was glad to soothe someone again, to heal someone again.

****

As I applied the tiniest bit of mascara to my lashes and the thinnest layer of gloss over my lips, I relayed all the facts I’d discovered about Kade’s past to Bree. “That’s the worst thing I’ve every heard, Lainey. Lord, no wonder he’s such a hard guy to get along with. Did you tell him anything about what you’ve been through?”

“No, Kade doesn’t know that I know, so there’s no need to tell him about my past. And I won’t, so please don’t say anything to Dylan in your pillow talk.”

“Girl. My pillow talk will not have you in it, not to worry,” she said kissing me on my temple and winking at me as she looked into my reflection in the mirror we were sharing. She slathered on a thick layer of dark shiny lipstick and puckered her lips, blowing a kiss into the air, and then leaned all the way against the surface of the mirror. “How is it possible that it’s the dead of winter and I have more freckles on my face? Skin cancer? Look at them. Do they look abnormal? ”

Scanning her beautiful skin, I counted five very normal freckles across the bridge of her perfect nose. “Stop. You still only have five freckles. Your freckles are freckles, and you’re beautiful.”

“And you,” she said turning to face me, “are actually putting make-up on your face. I know damn well it’s not for Fran. What gives?”

I stared at her blankly.

“Holy crap, you like Kade.”

“No. Yes. No.”

“You can’t fix him, Sam,” she whispered. “He’s not broken and bleeding. It’s something inside his mind, babe.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to fix him…”

Bree sucked in her cheeks. “Really? You’re standing in front of a mirror putting lip-gloss on and I can see in your head, I can see it…”

The slamming of the trailer door and hooting alerted us to Dylan and Fran’s arrival. Grabbing our coats, we followed their voices and found them lounging on one of the couches in a deep conversation about the healthy effects of drinking red wine as opposed to beer. Fran was going off on one of his tangents, stopped, looked me up and down, smiled and said, “You look nice tonight,” and continued his rant.

Nice. Isn’t that the adjective every woman wants to hear?

Fran’s rant took us all the way through the drive into town to a huge bar called Shenanigans, where a decent sized crowd sat drinking and listening to people horribly singing Karaoke. I pointed Dylan to the empty booth closest to the exit. “Let’s sit back here.”

Natalie waved to us from the bar and skipped over with a round of beer in her arms and winked, “First round is on me! And I ordered chips and dip; it’s so delicious here. So good.”

Fran attacked poor Natalie with another enthralling conversation, explaining what the rest of us had heard him drone on about for the entire car ride there, how healthier a glass of red wine is for your body. Dylan laughed and shook his head as Natalie sat listening closely to everything Fran hit her with.

After another round, I was bored out of my mind listening to Fran and Natalie telling me what I needed to do to live a healthier lifestyle, and Bree looked about ready to stick a fork in one of their eyes. In one large gulp, I drained my beer in front of the both of them and slammed my bottle down against the table hard. When the chips and dip arrived, it just got worse. As soon as Fran tasted the chips and dip, he would not shut up about it. Would. Not. Shut. Up. Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was losing my patience and easily irritated. I looked at Dylan and Bree who both wore the same expression as I did. No, it was all Fran.

“Lainey, you have to try this sauce,” he moaned, through a mouth full of chips.

It’s dip, not sauce. I took a chip because I was starving, but I didn’t feel like dipping into a huge bucket of dip where everybody was double dipping their saliva. Ugh.

“Lainey, just dip it in the sauce. This sauce is delicious. You have to try it. Dip it in the sauce. Just dip it in the sauce,” he pushed.

What the hell kind of sauce fetish owns this moron? “Jesus, Mary, and Jerome…I don’t want to just dip it in the sauce,” I said calmly. I wanted to slam my fist into the stupid bowl of chips to shut him up, but instead, I sat cool and composed, plotting how I was going to get him and Natalie together, so he would leave me the hell alone. I grabbed Dylan’s beer and downed the rest of his as he sat back beerless, and laughed at me.

When I looked up, my heart nearly surged out of my chest. Kade had arrived and was walking his way over from the door. While it was true that, everyone seemed to turn to look at him with some sort of fear, I just looked at him with awe, knowing how strong he must be to go against his comfort zone, and he was drop dead gorgeous. Dressed casually in a worn pair of jeans and a beaten to hell leather jacket, he looked the part of a dangerous, reckless, and completely out of control man. It made my cheeks flush, and it made my insides heat, knowing that he came here because I asked him to.

“Hey,” I said, sliding over in the booth to make room for him.

“Hey,” he mumbled back, smoky grey eyes blazing at me through thick dark lashes. Leaning in slowly towards me, he tentatively brushed his hand against my forearm. Bringing his face closer to mine, he whispered, “Stunning.”

Holding steady eye contact with him, my breath faltered, and what felt like a goddamn inferno surged through my body, slapping me in between my legs with such a forceful heat that I suddenly believed in self-combustion.

“Okay, ladies and gents. This next round is on me. What is everyone having?” Fran shouted out across the table. “Kade, my man. You have to try the sauce, it’s outstanding.”

Everyone ordered a beer, but Fran came back five minutes later with a beer for everyone and a glass of red wine for me, and a glass of red for him.

“Please tell me you did not just get me a wine on purpose,” I said.

Fran winked at me from across the table, “It’s a wonderful year. Have a sip.”

“Oh, my God, I’m about to lose it,” I muttered, and before I could say anything else, Fran interrupted me with more of his tactful conversation skills.

“So, Kade. It must be very gratifying to be such an accomplished and famous writer. You must have a plethora of women adoring you and throwing themselves at you. I bet you chew them up and spit them out, eh?” Fran asked, clearly trying to alert me to his presumptions about Kade’s promiscuity. I knew, because he smirked at me after his pointed asinine question.

“Not if they taste good,” Kade deadpanned, and then he slid his beer over to me, grabbed my glass of wine, and took a sip. “Most of them don’t taste very well, mind you, but, once in a while…Once in a while, you find someone that you taste and it changes the way the rest of them do, and no one seems as sweet or delicious.” His eyes locked on mine.

Fran was speechless, for once. And Kade? Kade was sitting next to me, stealing the air from my lungs with his closeness and his words, and I just burst out laughing. You know, one of those nervous, psychotic sounding laughs that end with a snort. Bree fell into a fit of giggles next, followed by some chuckles from Dylan and Kade.

Fran looked around at the people who seemed to be staring at us, and his cheeks reddened, “Lainey, try to control yourself. People are looking over here.”

“Oh, my God, Francis, stop.” I downed the rest of my beer. “That beer was delicious, Kade, thank you. I think I want a cup of coffee now,” I laughed.

“Lainey, we’re at a bar, stop with the coffee. You’ve probably had more than enough caffeine today. I’ll get you another glass of wine. No more caffeine; I watch your hands tremble enough. And you don’t even like beer. It’s like you don’t know what’s good for you.”

“Francis,” I threatened, “if you don’t stop this inappropriate compulsion with my eating and drinking habits, I believe I might cause you great bodily harm with some form of male testicular torture,” I said, laughing hard.

He scoffed. A little snort followed by a smirk and that nasty crinkle of his nose, which was always plastered on his face. “Are you premenstrual right now?” he asked in a low whisper, as if it were an appropriate question. “An over-emotional female prone to exaggeration does not suit your personality type. This sort of change in your personality is what I’ve been trying to explain to you. It’s from too much caffeine.”

“That is the most arrogant, condescending, male chauvinistic and patronizing mansplaining bullshit I have ever heard,” I said.

Kade slammed his fists down on the table and his presence seemed to expand and crowd into my small space on the booth. Before he could say anything, I brushed the back my hand over his arm, just as he had done to me a few moments before to let him know I could handle the situation. He visibly relaxed and leaned back into the cushions of the bench we occupied. It kind of made me feel beautiful.

Next to Fran, Bree covered her face with her hands and Dylan’s expression looked shocked. I stood up, flattened my shirt down and wiped my clammy hands on my pants. I gave Fran a measured stare, leaned over the table, and asked sweetly, “Do you think yourself as a man that’s well endowed, Francis?”

He squirmed in his seat, and gave me a slight nod.

“Let me ask you then,” I leaned in closer and licked my lips, trying to act as seductively as I could. “Can your penis reach your rectum?”

Slowly, a flirtatious smile emerged on his face; he nodded and leaned his head closer to mine.

“Then go fuck yourself,” I said evenly. Climbing behind Kade in the booth, I jumped off the seat, made my way to the bar, ordered another beer and a shot of whiskey, and stared down at my trembling fingers.

An icy cold beer and whiskey shot slid in front of me almost instantly.

“I’m taking you out of here,” Kade’s voice rumbled in my ear, fanning warm breath against my neck.

Gulping back my shot, I turned my head and looked up into his eyes, our faces so close, our lips mere inches apart. Slowly, his eyes trailed down to my mouth and he shifted his body to face me, “Come on, I’m in the mood for coffee.” His dark features softened, his body slackened and relaxed against the edge of the bar as if he really felt comfortable next to me.

Drawing in a deep breath, I slid my gaze over to our table and heaviness settled over my chest when I locked eyes with Fran, then back to Kade. I had never dealt with any of this nonsense before. I’d never had two men at the same time vie for my attention (if that’s what it was), but I did know what it was like to be with someone who tried to control you, and that, I didn’t need. So, without any trepidation or fear, I followed Kade Grayson out of the bar with a wildly beating heart.

After I climbed into Kade’s truck, I texted Bree to tell her I left. Shivering from the cold air, my teeth started to chatter and Kade looked at me questioningly. “You didn’t go back to the table for your coat, and I didn’t think to bring it to you when I asked you for coffee,” he stated, the mist of his warm breath dissipating into the cold air of the front cab of his truck.

“Wasn’t in my escape plan, no.”

A slow sexy smile transformed on his lips as he unzipped his leather jacket and quickly yanked his arms from their sleeves and passed it to me.

Slipping the coat over my shoulders, I was hit with the intoxicating smell of Kade, a mixture of spices, man and thick, rich worn leather. Twisting the key in the ignition, his truck rumbled to life. The cold leather seats beneath me vibrated, as a Metallica song blasted deafeningly from his speakers with James Hetfield’s deep raspy voice singing Whiskey in the Jar. Pure, raw nostalgia surged through my veins, teenage angst, and memories flooded my mind.

“Sorry,” he muttered, fumbling to turn his audio system off.

“Don’t!” I yelped. “Don’t shut it off. I love this song. I was obsessed with Metallica when I was younger.”

“You? You listened to Metallica?” he laughed harshly, doubting my honesty.

I despised it when people didn’t take my word for truth, and I hated when people doubted me. So, I sang the words to him as the music played, “…stand and deliver or the devil he may take you…”

His eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t respond at all. He quickly looked out his windows for any oncoming traffic and pulled out onto the dark road. His eyes found mine again and narrowed.

“…I took all of his money…”

His brow wrinkled.

“…It was a pretty penny…”

He bit down on his lip to keep from smiling. I sang louder.

When he finally let his smile free, I danced around the cab of the truck singing and playing air guitar, until the song ended and he clicked off the audio system.

Emptiness. It was thunderous.

With the sudden loss of the music, a heavy white-noise-roaring silence fell over my ears. It had a tangible weight to it and my shoulders felt its heavy burden. I hoped I hadn’t push too far. I hoped that being myself for a minute with him wouldn’t cause him any more damage. Shifting over, I quietly leaned my forehead against the cold window and glanced out at the darkness of the tall trees that rushed by us alongside the road. Kade must have been speeding, because the trees were blurring past my eyes too fast. I said nothing though. If he needed to drive this fast, I needed to let him. Besides, I was the mother of all lead-footers; nobody drove as fast as I did.

Pulling into a large parking area off the main road, he parked his truck in front of an all night diner that sat in the middle of an empty highway. With both hands, he tightly clutched the steering wheel until his knuckles were white from lack of blood flow. The muscles of his arms tightened and bulged, his back was rigid and his face stared straight out the windshield into the dark trees the grill of the truck was pointing towards. He had turned the engine off, so the temperature inside the cab of the truck was dropping fast and I could once again see the mist of his breath. “How do you do that?” he whispered, coldly.

Unbuckling my seatbelt, I shifted my body around to face him, “Do what?”

“Act comfortable around me,” he said, as his head turned and his intense eyes collided with mine.

Pulling the handle of the door, I pushed it open and climbed out. Standing in the open door of his truck with the dome light on, I looked at him dead in the face. “I’m never comfortable with anybody, Kade. Ever. I just deal with whatever situation I’m in the best way I know how.”

Slamming the door, I walked around the truck towards the front entrance of the diner, practically dragging his enormous jacket on the ground. Kade’s door echoed mine, and instantly, he was in front of me blocking my way, his body so close to mine, but not once…not once touching me. And, I wanted him too; I wanted him to touch me. Leaning his face closer to mine, daring me to look up at him, I did. Pain was evident in his features; confusion, struggle, and heartache were embedded in his skin. My heart broke for him.

“How?” he asked, leaning closer.

“Easy,” I smiled, hoping to lessen his tension with humor. “You just gotta find your happy place, Kade. Mine is with Tatum Channing and a bottle of rum.”

Caught off guard, his smile lit up the night, “Tatum Channing, huh?”

“Yes, please,” I smiled, walking into the diner, melting with the warmth of the air that hit me as soon as we stepped foot inside.

Without speaking, we both headed for the first booth by the exit. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. He just sat down, back against the wall, eyes scanning the handful of customers that had ventured out just as we did. I could see the tension in his rigid posture and the tightness in his jaw as he surveyed the layout of the building, and I understood, more than he would ever know, I understood. When his gaze landed on mine, his tension seemed to slacken some, but not completely and I understood that too, I was just glad to notice that I helped in some sort of relief for his coiled body.

The waitress, an older lady with an impressive grey head of hair swept up into a 1960s beehive hairstyle, leaned her knee against the cushion of my seat and snapped a wad of gum in her mouth, “Hey, kids. What can I getcha?”

“Two coffees,” Kade mumbled, “and I need a cheeseburger deluxe.” He looked at me shrugging, “Sorry, I’m hungry. Would you like to eat anything?”

“Actually, a cheeseburger deluxe sounds like heaven, so make that two,” I smiled at the waitress. His eyes continuously scanned the room as the waitress walked away. Then after about three sweeps, his eyes met with mine again. He muttered another apology about being hungry, and held his eyes in a steady unwavering stare with mine.

“Don’t be sorry. I am going to destroy that cheeseburger with my soul, I’m so damn hungry,” I laughed.

Two huge mugs of steaming coffee were placed in front of us and he smiled tightly into the dark liquid as he poured in milk. “So what’s the story with you and Francis?”

Sipping at my coffee, I rolled my eyes, “There’s no story. I explained to him weeks ago, and I seem to have to remind him daily that I don’t want a relationship with him. He has a hard time listening.”

“He’s about as fun as a funeral. And he’s a big dick,” he stated, trying to hide his small smile behind his coffee. “Dating him must be mind-blowing,” he said dryly.

“You know what they say, having a small dick is the leading cause of acting like a big one,” I quipped. He laughed at me and his smile was exhilarating, making me want to hear more. “And we’re not dating. Dating sucks. Relationships suck. There are too many creepers out there.”

“Creepers?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling and winking. “There are all different kinds of creepers too. Let’s see,” I said, tapping my finger against my lips. “There’s the touchy feely, hands-on creeper, the boob-gawking-mouth-drooler creep, the dirty talker creep, oh, or the fetish dude creeper, who stares at your feet during whole conversations. The dominant creeper who likes to victimize, is the worst in my book. There’s the creepy geek freak, who talks Vulcan or quotes Star Wars facts during sex, or the dirty old man creeper. Can’t forget the married creep or the cat guy creeper, or the creep your friend set you up with. There are so many,” I laughed. “My favorite is the online creeper.”

“Online creeper?” he asked, chuckling.

“Yeah. You know, the guy you meet online with an affinity for sending photos of his penis with every contact. For some strange reason, they love sharing pictures of their dicks publicly, like they are trying to promote them, make them famous or something. It’s the equivalent of being a flasher in an overcoat on a train platform. And they’re always trying to sex-message you some God-awful picture of themselves next to a can of soda to boast their size.”

Kade’s shoulders were shaking from his laughter, “What the hell is a sex-message?”

“It’s one of those sex messages that you constantly get from people. Hi. I am so-and-so and I just saw your profile and think you are kind and lovable. I want to be your friend and share my life with you. Here is a photo of me, blah, blah, blah. Do you have any naked pics?” I sipped at my coffee, enjoying the warmth of it. “I’m dead serious, Kade. Just look at sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, you’ll realize the internet is a veritable sausage fest. Everybody is showing off their dicks these days. Creepers.”

Laughing, Kade asked, “And what kind of creep was Fran?”

“Oh, he was the creep your friend sets you up with, touchy feely, and the cat creep all rolled into one.”

“Must be hard pickings around here for you ladies to lock your ball and chains on someone, if all the eligible men are as creepy as Francis is,” Kade said, reaching for a napkin.

I drew in a deep breath, blew it out dramatically and laughed, “Why do all women constantly get dragged into the same stereotypical group when someone is talking about relationships, and women needing to be married, like it’s a universal constant? Not every woman wants to lock a ball and chain on somebody. It’s like saying that all men actually do think with their dicks.”

Our plates of food were placed in front of us, the smell of delicious greasy diner burger hit my nose like a freight train, and I moaned out loud.

Kade eyes snapped to mine, and a shiver ran down my spine. I just stared like an idiot back at him, holding my burger in both hands above my plate.

“But, men do. Take that moan, for instance. That had me thinking of you spread out over this table in nothing but a pair of black lace panties and your legs wrapped around my neck with those old white Converse still on your feet.” His eyes pierced me and he shrugged his shoulders and smirked.

I froze at the thought, with my mouth just about to take a bite of my burger. “Subtle. Kade. Very subtle. I should give you a taste of your own medicine and go all Harry-Met-Sally on you.”

A few minutes passed by as we both watched each other and ate, listening to the sounds of the kitchen and the wind whipping against the thick glass of the window next to us.

“Tell me about your brother,” Kade whispered, low and cautious.

“What would you like to know?”

“Everything, anything. I don’t know.”

Staring down at my hands, I began unconsciously folding a napkin and playing with its creases. “Michael was my best friend. He was brilliant, a doctor, funny, and was unbeatable at playing pranks on people. Part of me is still holding onto the small hope that everything that happened was a cruel prank, and he’ll just pop up from behind the bushes somewhere laughing his ass off.”

A faint smile tugged at his lips. “I think that’s everybody’s default setting on death. Everybody hopes it was just a big sick joke. But, think about it, why would you want a person you love to be that cruel to you?”

“I wouldn’t care. I’d just give anything for one more of our talks,” I whispered. “Are you and Dylan very close?”

Glancing up at him, I noticed his face was twisted in grief. His brows creased in the middle of his forehead and he rubbed the back of his neck, “I’m not close with anyone.”

“Not even Morgan?”

“Least of all Morgan.”

The waitress leaned across our table, then gathered our emptied plates and poured us more coffee.

“Bree mentioned you both lived in Manhattan. Must have been culture shock coming all the way up here from a big city.”

“Probably just as big as coming here from England. When did your family come to the states?”

He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “I was seventeen.” His expression darkened and I could visibly see his chest tightening. “So what was it like living in a big city growing up?” he said, struggling to think of anything else to talk about.

“My father always worked, and my mother was always busy, so my brother and I pretty much had the entire city as a playroom,” I tried to explain without giving too much information about any personal subjects.

Slipping the check over the table, the waitress winked at me and walked away. Kade grabbed for the check, and I reached into my purse for some cash. When I tried grabbing the check from him to see what to put in, he practically bared his teeth at me and snarled. I watched him leave a hundred dollar bill on the table and he placed his hand on the small of my back and led me to the door.

“So, what’s your story then, Lainey?”

“I don’t have any stories you’re going to want to hear, Kade. Do you have stories you want to talk about? Or you want to make this evening light and unheartbreaking?”

His lips curled up playfully, “Oh Lainey, I have tons of stories…” he said as we climbed into his truck and started the engine. “But my story? Let’s see…my past is heinously horrid. Born with extremely powerful, yet flawed super human powers, I accidently melted my mother into a heaping pile of goo as soon as I fell from her womb. The guilt was unbearable and drove me to wear a mask to hide my deadly grey eyes, deliberately living a life of solitude as I search the world for a cure for my flaws. Everyone thinks I’m not living up to my heroic potential and that I should work for the government, fighting America’s villains, but the reality is that I’m just saving everyone from my hell.” Kade had pulled out of the lot and the dark road was racing under the wheels, and the trees were a blur of tangled blackened branches blocking out the moonless sky. For miles, an awkward heavy silence hung in the air when his story finished, both of us knowing there was some strange truth to his tale. Turning into the trailer park, he slowed the truck down from warp speed, pulled into the dirt road next to the trailer, and turned off the engine.

“I googled you,” I whispered.

His eyes nailed me to the seat. Vaporous breath escaped through his lips as his chest rose and fell faster and faster. His eyes flickered and searched my face maniacally; his breathing became more erratic, intense gasps of air. “Goodnight, Lainey,” his voice croaked huskily.

I leaned forward and laid the palm of my hand over his chest. I felt him tense and strain beneath the tips of my fingers. His eyes searched mine, as my fingers felt for the beat of his heart, listening to it, feeling it as it slowly settled into its regular pace.

“Kade.”

“Don’t. Just go, please. I can feel you in my darkness, Lainey, and you’re shining, lighting up my way. Please go. Leave me to my darkness,” he smiled bitterly.

“Kade, I know the mess you’re dealing with and how it makes you feel. More than you know.”

“You don’t know anything!” He screamed, nostrils flaring and red-faced. He goes hot and cold like the flip of a switch. On-flip-Off. Hot-flip-Cold. “Yes. I have the characteristics of a real person. Flesh, hair, bones, blood, whatever…but I have nothing on the inside. Empty, devoid of any emotion, dead. Like I did die that day, and only my body remains here. Maybe you could feel flesh and pulse, see my blood and bones and you think I'm just as human as you, but I'm not. I’m fucking empty. There is nothing inside me. Nothing but violent scenes and pleading echoes. Then I saw you, and something small flickered deep inside the dead dark recesses of my mind. I don’t need some stupid little girl like you telling me how you understand me, when you never would be able to conceive the unthinkable shit I’ve lived through. Just fucking leave me here, Lainey. Walk the fuck out and leave me here.”

“I don’t want to leave you there, Kade. Nobody should be left there.”

“So, what? You’re going to try to save me, Lainey? Leave me alone. You have no idea who and what I am. Get the fuck out and go back to your little perfect bubble.”

Ignoring his rouse, I dug into him, “I can see you’re in pain.”

“My pains are not apparent to the eye,” he muttered.

“What the fuck are you talking about? They’re as apparent as the nose on your damn face, because you wear them so proudly! You act as if you carry some contagious sickness with you, something that you actually threaten people with. Well, I’m not scared of you and your self-inflicted disease. Especially since I suffer from the same exact one, I just know how to live with it. The first time I saw you - you fucked me like a teenage virgin with your eyes, then when I asked you for your order, you acted like a misogynist. I know, Kade. How about we do this? Why don’t you snap a little picture of me and then later tonight, when I leave the premises and you’re all by your wonderful Wizard of Oz lonesome, you could creep in for some quality time with the still, mindless, silent picture. Or maybe, you could just acknowledge the fact that I might understand what you’re going through and deal with the real life me, the one that you follow around.”

Why the hell couldn’t this shit be easy, because honestly, I just wanted to be the one that fucking broke through that wall and get to the good shit. There I said it. I wanted to be that one, the special one. Tag me a stupid emotional clichéd girl, but I wanted that man to look at me from between my legs, lick me utterly senseless and to make me forget my name.

“Get the fuck out.”

“You need a hardcore fucking detox for assholism. Let’s lay it all out, shall we? Something horrific happened to you. There is no doubt about that. You had innocent children, friends, classmates and teachers slaughtered in front of you. A teacher, whom you admired and loved, who had a husband and children at home, jumped the fuck in front of you while a madman was taking out his sociopathic crazy on you, to shield you and save your fucking life. You suffer from flashbacks, yes? Medically, that’s called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and you can heal. Trust me. If you want to, you can deal with this, deal with it, and I can help you. But to bind yourself to your house, to leave your brother worried and missing you…You hide yourself off from the world, from a woman whom you can’t take your eyes off of, and complain that life has whipped you hard. You don’t know me, Kade. Maybe I’ve danced with the same monsters you have. I know it all. Let me help you.”

He slammed his fists against the steering wheel, “GET THE FUCK OUT!”

Shaken, I did what he told me to do.

He peeled out of the driveway, kicking up dirt and rocks in his haste, and I didn’t see him again.