Strife: Hidden Book Four (18 page)

“I’m not a patient man, Molly. Right now, I’m pretty much at my limit.”

My heart was pounding. How could he still make me feel this way after everything we’d been through, after all that had happened since that night I’d destroyed him? How could he make me feel something, anything, when I was sure it was impossible to open myself up that way again?

I put my hand on his chest, moved to push him away from me, when he covered my hand with his, held it there. I looked up, met his eyes, and he held my gaze for several long moments, need, hunger, anger washing over me in waves. Then he released me and stepped back and away without another word. He grabbed his car keys off of the entry table and walked out, closing the loft door behind him.

“Christ,” I muttered, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

I could have used another shower. A cold one. Instead, I downed another cup of coffee, grabbed the spare key off of the hook near the door, and headed out. My imps trailed me. I had a lead on a lost girl, and I needed to hit something.

When I got back, I was a mess again. I jumped into the shower and let the grime wash off of me. I’d crawled through a filthy crawlspace looking for a little girl. I found her, alive, and brought her home.

Worth every claustrophobic moment.

I was stepping out of my room when I heard the door open, felt Nain before I saw him. I watched as he hefted two large plastic storage bins, one stacked on top of the other, and carried them into the loft. He glanced at me, then set them down on the dining room floor.

“What’s that?” I asked. I looked him over. He was filthy, clothing and hands smudged with something dark.  

“Take a look.”

I walked over and lifted the lid off of the top bin. My heart stopped.

Stuff from my house; dirty, smoke-smudged, but whole. I spotted a few of my McCoy planters from the bedroom, some of the jadeite dinnerware I’d collected. And that was just what I could see from the top.

I looked up at him, didn’t know what to say.

“I know how you liked all of this shit,” he said, shrugging. He looked away, almost seeming embarrassed. “This was all I could grab in one trip.”

“Are you kidding? This is….” I shook my head, looked through the bin again. “I know it’s stupid. It’s just stuff, right?”

“It’s stuff that’s yours. Stuff you worked for and made into a place you loved. I’m sorry about your house, baby.”

I was stepping toward him before I realized what I was doing, and when I reached him he pulled me into his arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world, held me tightly as I let myself cry over my house and all of the insanity of the night before. Over the craziness in my life and my fear of Nain and everything he meant. I put my arms around his waist, rested my forehead against his chest as I calmed down.

“You never used to cry,” he said, running his hands through my hair.

“Sure I did. I just never let anyone see it.”

He held me tighter, and we stood there, neither one of us moving. Neither one of us wanting to. And I knew it was wrong. I knew I should be running as far and as fast away from him as I possibly could. I knew he could destroy me in a way no one else ever could; that he’d done it before and if he thought it would save me, he’d do it again without a second thought. I knew he was brutal and ruthless and crude.

I knew he loved me, and that was the most frightening thing of all.

I made myself release him, pushed myself out of his arms, and he let me go. I glanced down at his hand, and he was still wearing the ring. No point in hiding it from me anymore, I guess.

“Is it true you and Eunomia messed around?” I asked him.

“I’m not Brennan, baby.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. And we weren’t together anymore.”

“I know we weren’t.”

“It wasn’t just her. For a year or so after I got back and learned all about you and him, I fucked just about anyone who wanted me, trying to get you out of my system. Didn’t work.”

“No?”

“No. You’re so deep in me there’s no chance of ever getting you out.” He paused, stood there watching me, and the intensity in his gaze made my stomach twist. “Once I realized that, I gave up. I tried to make myself okay with the whole you and Brennan thing, because I know you. I knew you’d fight your way back here someday. And I thought I deserved to have to watch you with him. Especially after the way I made you hurt.”

He shook his head. “I knew it would be bad, Molly. But knowing and experiencing it are two different things and I swear to you I didn’t realize how bad it would be. How much it would hurt. I didn’t believe it would destroy you the way it did. The second I woke up in the Nether and felt what it was like to have my soul and yours ripped apart, I knew that it was all so much worse than I imagined it would be. So I thought, if he can make you happy, if he can make you feel alive again, who the fuck am I to stand in the way of that?”

I looked away, unable to handle the way he was looking at me. “We argued about you.”

“He mentioned that.” We stood there for a few minutes, awkward. “Is it true you hunted down all of Astaroth’s allies the night I died?”

I nodded. Still couldn’t look at him.

“I saw those photo albums in your room,” I said softly.

“Yeah?”

I nodded. “You’ve had a lot of girlfriends over the years.”

“Only one wife, though,” he said. “And you ruined me for anyone else. No one has ever made me feel the shit you do. No one’s ever made me as pissed off and frustrated. No one’s ever tied me in knots the way you can. I’ve never been the begging kind, but you’re the one being in existence who’s able to bring me to my knees.”

I turned away, shaking my head. “I’ve heard this shit before.”

“Yeah. But now you’re hearing it from me.”

I stood, facing away from him, looking toward the kitchen.

“Was there more stuff to bring back from my house?” I asked, desperate for a change of subject.

“Yeah.”

“Is it bad?”

A pause. “Yeah. It’s bad. I can dig out what’s left, Molls.”

I shook my head. “No. I should do it. It’s my house.”

“We can go back whenever you’re ready.”

“Now?”

“If you want.”

I nodded. “There are boxes down in the garage.”

He came over to me then and took my hand, led me toward the door. We rode down in the elevator together, and he was mercifully silent as we drove toward my neighborhood.

Chapter Twelve

When Nain turned onto my street, I was tempted to close my eyes. I should have. I looked at my house as he drove up to it, the house I'd bought with money I'd squirreled away after two years of living in my car, the house I'd worked on and fixed up and turned into the first real home I'd ever had, and I couldn't help it. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I brushed them away. I was angry, and seeing my house like that was like an arrow to the heart.

Nain and I sat in the truck, him waiting while I got over the impact of seeing my house like that for the first time. I shook my head, opened my door. I grabbed a couple of boxes out of the back of the truck, and watched as Nain did the same. I walked toward the house, and when we met at the front of the truck, he took my hand in his, and we walked toward the house together.

“You can get in the back door still,” he said, pulling me toward the back of the house. “The front is all caved in.”

I nodded numbly, rage coursing through me. His rage, my rage.

“I am going to catch the bastards who did this,” I muttered.

“Not if I catch them first,” he said. “Probably part of Strife's group, right?”

“That's what I'm thinking. She’s probably pretty pissed at me for taking out Terror. Did you see her mark anywhere?”

He shook his head. “I didn't look hard though. We'll check the area out before we leave.”

He opened the back door, and the smell of smoke, soot was even stronger than it had been on the outside of my house.

“There might still be some kitchen stuff I didn't grab,” he said. Then he took a box toward the living room. I could see that it was completely trashed, walls blackened, the ceiling and my bed and dresser from my bedroom upstairs now where the coffee table and sofa had been. Everything was charred, and I couldn't even recognize a few things, they were so melted.

We started rooting through the living room. My Moonbeam alarm clock that had been on my nightstand was there, but it was melted. I threw it aside in irritation. I glanced up. Not all of my bedroom floor had fallen in. Only where my bed had been, where the fire had started. Where the fireball had landed after it had sailed through the window. I was relieved now that the few things I didn’t want to lose (Nain’s notes to me among them) I’d kept in that metal box in the basement.

“How did you get the McCoy?”

“Those planter things?”

“Yeah.”

“Went upstairs.”

I turned and looked at him. “Are you kidding? You walked up those stairs and into what was left of my bedroom to get a few planters? You could have fallen through.”

He shrugged, went back to sifting through the debris on the floor. “I liked a few of those, too.”

“Yeah? Which one?”

“That blue one I brought you earlier.”

I squatted down, found some of my jewelry, still intact, though its wooden box was destroyed. “What was so great about that one?”

“That was the one on my side of the bed.”

I let that pass. Didn't want to think about how perfect it had been, for just a few hours. We'd made love, fallen asleep together. Woke up, and he'd made me breakfast. We'd performed the demon marriage bond again. We'd danced, sunlight streaming through the kitchen window.

He'd died hours later.

It was like watching someone else's life, remembering. And now we stood in the charred remains of what could have been our home, once upon a time, both of us having lived through death, a chasm now between us that felt wrong in every way. A chasm I was starting to despise, no matter how hard I fought against what I felt for him.

“You know what I thought last night, after I knew everyone was out and okay?” I asked as I moved aside some charred flooring from upstairs. Making conversation, rather than letting my thoughts continue on the path they were heading.

“What?”

“They were lucky they didn’t hurt my dogs. I seriously would have gone all Ares on them if they had.”

He grunted. “I was pissed when I realized you took them when you moved out. I was used to having them around.”

“I think they missed the fancy doghouses you had built for them.”

“Yeah? I think they’re my dogs as much as yours at this point.” He sifted through what was left of my living room bookshelf.

I shook my head, tossed a pair of silver candleholders that had managed to survive into one of the boxes. “Were you going to take me to divorce court over it?”

He looked at me. “We're not divorced.”

“We're not married, either.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” he said. Then he stopped, looked around. “What are you going to do about this?”

I looked at what was left of my house too. “I think I’m going to have to let it go. I don't have insurance. Never needed it because I paid for it in cash. It would cost more to rebuild than the house would even be worth, in this neighborhood.”

I glanced his way to see him watching me. “What do you
want
to do?”

I shook my head.

“You want to rebuild it?”

“It doesn't matter what I want. I can't.”

“Why not?”

I stared at him. “It costs money, Nain. I don't have that much left in my account.”

He looked up as if he was trying to keep his patience. I felt irritation rolling off of him.

“You own a fucking multi-million dollar loft. You have over three million dollars in your accounts. You can afford to rebuild if you want to.”

“No.
You
have all of that.”

“I gave it to you.”

“Bullshit. It was mine upon your death. You're not dead anymore.”

“It was yours the second you became mine,” he said, walking toward the hallway. “And like I keep telling you, that hasn't changed.”

I stared after him. After a few seconds, he started talking again. “You want to rebuild, do it.”

“Like I have time to worry about that,” I said, again, stupidly touched by the way he was looking at it.

“Nice thing about being rich: someone else takes care of all the details for you. We can have it rebuilt exactly the same if you want. I know you liked all that old-fashioned shit.”

He came back into the living room holding a couple of small dishes, a vase. “Are these anything?”

I nodded, took them from him and set them into the box.

“One thing, though.”

“What?” I asked, looking up at him.

“Keep the bedroom in the same spot. It was nice waking up with the sun coming in like that.”

“You act as if you're going to wake up there again,” I said, crossing my arms. “You sure you don’t want a bigger room? Bigger bed?”

He stepped close to me. We were both filthy, grubby. We stunk of smoke. He leaned down, his face inches from mine. “That’s because I will be waking up in your bed again. And no, I don't need a bigger one. We only ever used one body's width anyway. Me, on top of you.”