The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) (28 page)

“Nik?” Eric called out from the other side of the door.

“Go away!” I yelled through the door.

He didn’t listen, and I had forgotten to lock the door.

I gazed at his reflection in the mirror with indifference. “You can’t fuck your way to forgiveness, so maybe you should just get out.”

He rolled his shoulders and took my hand, forcing me to turn around. “I couldn’t if I tried, you kind of drained my cock dry. Maybe in an hour?”

“Damn it,” I whispered, wiping my tears with the back of my hands as a smile crept over my lips. “Don’t take my smile as a good sign.”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “What do you want me to do? Cut out my heart? Should I use the brand spanking new box of razor blades you stowed away behind the loose tile on the wall?”

My mouth gaped at him in shock.

He reached up above the medicine cabinet to what I thought was my secret hiding place. He retrieved a blade, fingering it in his hands.

Shifting my weight, I folded my arms. “Yeah, um…best of luck with that.”

He shrugged, removing the cardboard and cut into his chest. Cutting this way and that way, he drew blood until he scraped a jagged little heart into his flesh. His expression barely showed a hint of pain as he scarred his skin. “There. Does that satisfy you? Do I deserve your forgiveness now?”

Slack-jawed, I didn’t know how to respond.

His eyelids drew heavily down his eyes and his jaw firmed. “Do you want to call me crazy?”

My eyes darted to the bleeding wound, the marring of his once flawless light honey-toned skin. “That would be too obvious,” I retorted.
 

I shifted my feet across the marble tile until my body pressed against his completely nude form. “That’s going to scar.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” he rasped. Unblinking, he peered at me while fingering my chin between his thumb and index finger. He dropped his hold and slanted back against the wall. “My father was first generation American. His parents came here illegally from Colombia. He…changed his name when he went to college. His real name?” He glanced at the mirror as he spoke with a perfect accent, “Hernan Aceves-Meíja.” His eyes found their way back to me. “The arguments he used to have with his cousin, Victor, told me Eamon changed it because he had some deluded notion it would make people less nervous. Mention the name to people in the know, and they’ll run away in fucking fear. I guess at first, he ran away from the family business. Obviously, he changed his mind about the straight and narrow after he opened Brae Industries.” He rolled his shoulders, slipping deeper against the counter.

“My mother…grew up upper middle class. She wanted for nothing. When she started working for my father—being in a relationship with him—her parents didn’t exactly take to it well. I don’t remember much, but I remember one of the arguments she had with them over the phone when I was a kid.” He glanced up at me. “I think you can guess the many reasons as to why they didn’t want anything to do with me, or my mother after she had me.” He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair, allowing his palms to linger at the back of his head. “I couldn’t tell you what drew my mother to my father. I wish I knew. He was a fucking asshole.”

“Maybe he wasn’t an asshole with her,” I responded with uncertainty. “Or maybe he gave her something she never had—made her feel things she’d never felt before.” I stepped forward, bringing his arms down and interlocking my fingers with his. My blinking slowed as the warm rush of his touch reverberated up my spine. “Having a wealthy upbringing doesn’t exactly mean you want for nothing. It’s tangible, and sometimes your parents lack in providing you with the intangible—the things you need the most. If her parents were hateful enough to judge your father based upon his heritage, and not because of his other—illegal—activities, I wouldn’t put stock into them being perfect parents.”

“Might’ve been,” he said with enough distance in his voice to read as detachment. “Or she just fell for the version of him that wasn’t real. The guy that didn’t really exist.”

I searched his melancholic eyes. “Are you sure they weren’t in love at some point, and they destroyed each other because they were too broken to be functional together?”

For many moments of silence, we locked eyes with one another. The way he scrutinized my face, it seemed he was looking for the right answer. “He never loved her. I have to believe that, because I’d rather not believe what you just said.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Yes, it’s a gang tattoo.” His eyelids popped open, showing an increasingly disconnected part of himself. “I’ve told you enough, don’t you think? Or should I carve your name into my chest, too?”

I fingered his lips. Tipping up on my toes, I kissed his soft generous lips. “They were monsters. God, Eric. I’m so—”

“Don’t,” he cut in abruptly. “I don’t need your sympathy. I just need you.” He bent down to meet my height, touching his forehead against mine. “You have to know I couldn’t be without you. Promise I’ll stop trying to fuck it up, if you can promise me the same.”

I slipped one hand from his grip. Holding up my hand, I crossed my fingers. While I stared at the cut in his flesh, I shook my head. “God…we are so mentally unwell.” The words bled with more sadness than I meant them to. He didn’t seem to catch it, but they held more than one meaning. Two firmly mentally unwell people could not raise a child.

He slowly smiled. “Isn’t it why we’re so good together?”

“That…remains to be seen,” I responded quietly.

The light-hearted moment was quickly exchanged for pragmatism. “It’s my turn.”

Suddenly thrust out of state of apprehension, my heart began to race. “Your turn for what?”

He held my head, ensuring I was trapped in his gaze with the way he tilted my head to regard him. “Your father. I need to know everything you remember about him. And I do mean everything, Nik.”

“I-I don’t know what to say to that. I told you what I remembered.”

“Are you saying you blocked out some things?”

I blinked rapidly. “Maybe.”

“Is that your thing? The thing that fucked you up? Is he the worst thing to ever happen to you, Nik?”

I shook my head as the sadness swept me.

“Really?” He raised a brow with interest. “What could be worse than your shitty father?”

“The day I completely dissociated with the word pride,” I droned.

He searched my eyes with concern and impending question. “What happened?”

“I’ve told you about her—the girl from prep school I can’t name because of your way with people who hurt me. I told you how she tormented me for years. Right up until my father died. I—” As the memory shocked my brain, I caught my breath before it escaped me completely. “I don’t know if I should tell you,” I continued, struggling to find the words, “because you’ll try to find her and make her kill herself.”

He took in a deep breath. “Goddamn it, Nikki. Just tell me. I won’t touch her. Promise.”

“Your promises are shit.”

He rolled his eyes, strengthening his grip on my head. “Nikki,” he warned through a growl.

“She…did a lot of things to me. The worst of it was when she tied me to the shower guide bar using her and her friend’s spare bathing suits. Because everyone was scared of her, no one said anything to stop her. I never screamed. I never called out for help. It happened on a Friday. Thanks to my parents being out of town and forgetting to check up on me, I wasn’t found until Sunday night.”

Dropping his head, he muttered a string of curse words under his breath. “Why didn’t you scream your head off, stand up to her, kick her ass…something?”

“She had a lot of friends, when I had no one. And I was never strong enough.” I shrugged. “I’m still not.”

“Don’t do that.” His eyes shot up at me, examining my face with annoyance. “Don’t let people who are shit take that away from you. All that you’ve been through? You are stronger than you know, my twisted angel. Trust me on that.”

“Then, why do I feel like I’m not—especially when I’m with you?”

His eyes turned impassive as he retorted with a biting shortness, “The feeling is mutual.”

“Eric I…” I left my words to dangle. I wanted to confess but I was too afraid of the outcome. When I looked into his eyes, I couldn’t find what I needed in order to tell him exactly what Preston had done to me. “Am I the worst thing to happen to you?”

“Yes,” he responded quickly.

It didn’t matter how softly the one word rolled off his tongue, the ground swallowed me whole.

“It’s not for the reasons you’re thinking,” he added quickly, bringing me back from the cusp of becoming devoured by my own wormhole of sadness. “I’ve…built this persona over the carcass of who I used to be. The man who gets things done, no matter how fucked up they were. After meeting you, the two sides of me are fighting for the same space.”

He released his hold on me and leaned back against the counter as he erratically searched my eyes. “The stronger is going to win, and he’s going to hurt you. He wants to hurt you. And I’m not talking about the things I’ve done to you before. Worse. So very fucking much worse.” He cranked his neck and dropped his hands as well as our common eye contact. His hands balled into tight fists as he seemed to struggle with his next words. “I have fantasies about torturing you…in meticulous ways. I’m trying to protect you from the monsters trailing me…but there’s one inside of me you should really be afraid of. One you really haven’t seen. If I were a good guy, I’d let you go before it happened, because I know it’s going to. Thing is, I can’t let you go. Neither side can. Don’t know what the fuck to do about that.”

Stunned, I searched his eyes, seeing Eric naked and stripped down in a way I’d never seen him before. It was an emotional overture that completely magnetized my heart, pulling me under his dangerous spell.
 

“And, see, you’re making it worse by looking at me that way.”

I folded my arms, looking around in uncertainty. “What way?”

“Like you have no reason to be afraid of me.”

“You told me I didn’t.”

His shoulders broadened as his grip on the counter firmed. “Things changed.”

I swallowed back the thickness serving to glue my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “How do we stop that from happening?”

“Not we. You.”

Nodding, I rested my body against the wall. “At times, I think I would have to completely break you, as you’ve broken women before me, to get to the man I know you can be, and have him remain forever.”

“I wouldn’t let you do that without a fight.” His words were said with such a paper-thin weakness, it reaffirmed my knowledge. “A fight you would probably lose, Nik.”

Wondering if I was dreaming, I looked around, searching for the surreal in my surroundings. I questioned if all that transpired between us the entire night would be a distant memory when we awoke the next morning. In the most moving moments I’d ever shared with Eric, the man before me was unequivocally and remarkably genuine. He was Ethan.
 

“What if I succeeded?” I asked.

Wrapping his arms around my body, he pulled me toward him. “I know this…you could break me a million times until there’s nothing of me to put together. And still, somehow, whatever minor piece is left, would still feel this way about you.”

I tried to swallow back the emotion that threatened to overtake me. I shook my head, trying to find a strength I’d never really had. What little of it I used to have continued to be lost to me. I lost it when my mother died. “Being who you were made to be, how do you do that so well? That thing you do that makes me—it makes me feel powerless.”

With a skewed smile he pinched my chin between his fingers, leaving his face to linger only inches from mine. “Weren’t you listening to me before? You are the reason. I keep doing it because you make me want to be that man. Seconds later, because of the shit that was done to me and the way I have to be when you aren’t there, I forget about it.

“It’s a talent I picked up. Goddamn, if it isn’t crazy strong when I’m with you”—he gesticulated with his finger between the both of us—“like this. You make me feel like it’s okay to be like this. It fucks me up, and makes me feel things I’m not used to feeling all at once. I can’t describe all of what the emotions are. I know I called it love before, but I—” He took in a long breath as he closed his eyes. When he opened them, the cocky man was back. It was as if our moments of finding solace in one another never happened.
 

I would always remember, even if I never saw again the man he just showed me.

“Nik,” he whispered, touching his lips to mine. “I may not be able to come again, but you will. I’m making damn sure of it.” He suddenly picked me up and carried me back to the bedroom.