The Marked Men Series Books 1–6: Rule, Jet, Rome, Nash, Rowdy, Asa. Jay Crownover
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“All right then. If you swear you’re going to be okay I’m gonna run and find someplace with coffee that doesn’t taste like tar, and I’ll be back.”
I wasn’t going to ever really be okay again. I didn’t think anyone who had been through what I had in the last few months would, but I wasn’t scared of Rule. Almost being raped by a lunatic had given me a whole new perspective on what was missing from my life and what I was going to do differently from this point on. I wanted to fidget with my hair, but it was snaggled together with dried blood and who knew what else and it wasn’t like there was going to be any fixing my face. Rule was just going to have to face the horror show full-on and deal with it.
I was messing around on my phone, returning texts from Cora and most of Rule’s boys, letting them know I was fine, when the door opened and he came in. I looked up and watched him, so I saw the initial anger that was stamped all across his handsome face quickly bleed into horror at the sight of me all battered and bruised. I saw his chest inflate and deflate as he sucked in an audible breath and moved to the end of the bed. We stared at each other in silence and I noticed absently that his hair was still normal, if unruly, as well as its natural dark brown color. I still hated it because it made him look like a stranger. His eyes looked wild and too big for his face; a full-blown blizzard was sweeping out of the cold depths. He was messing with his lip ring like he did when he was nervous and I realized if I didn’t say anything there was a good chance we would spend the rest of the afternoon watching each other warily.
“You didn’t have to come. I’m fine, just a little banged up.”
His big hands tightened on the end of the bed and I watched the snake head bend and flex with his aggravation.
“I wanted to see for myself that you were all right. You could have called to let me know you were hurt.”
I refused to look away from him and he seemed infuriated each time his gaze landed on another part of me that was broken. “Well, considering you haven’t spoken to me for weeks, it didn’t seem very logical to let you know what was going on.”
His mouth tightened. “You’re right. I should have been there. You shouldn’t have been alone.”
I sighed and clenched my hands in the blanket. “You’re right, you should’ve been there, but not because Gabe is crazy and not because I needed protecting from him. You should have been there because you care about me as much as I care about you, but that isn’t the case. No one is to blame for this mess but Gabe; he’s sick and broken and chances are, even if someone had been with me, he still would have gone all stalker crazy, so it is what it is. I don’t hold anyone accountable but him. Besides, my body is already on the mend; it’s my heart that still feels like it went through a food processer.”
“Shaw.” He tried to interject something but I held up my good hand and looked him right in the eye. “I’m tired of my love not being good enough. I thought when this started with you I would be okay with whatever it was you were willing to give. I thought I could love you enough for the both of us since I had been suffocating in it for so long, but I realize now that I deserve more.”
I blinked back tears that snuck up on me. “I deserve it all because I’m willing to give it all. I would have worked through the darkness with you, Rule. What I won’t do is watch you walk away from me every time something happens that has the potential to hurt you. I’m sorry I never talked to you about Remy, but I told you all time and time again he and I weren’t a couple. You had the undeniable proof on my birthday. You should be mad at him for keeping it a secret, not me. You were right all along; we don’t trust each other enough to ever have had a chance at making this work. I think I wanted it too much and you didn’t want it enough.”
I was surprised to see moisture in his eyes when I was done talking. The only time I had ever seen Rule cry was at Remy’s funeral. He reached out a hand like he was going to lay it on my leg but retracted it before he ever made contact.
“Shaw, what if I did love you?” His voice was just a hint above a whisper. “Seeing you like this makes me want to murder Davenport with my bare hands, but it makes something deep inside me hurt. I’ve missed you these last few weeks, but I was also furious with you. I couldn’t get the two to ever line up.”
I gave my head a sad little shake and let the tears gathered in my eyes fall. “That isn’t enough. I’ve spent my entire life trying to live up to unreachable expectations. You were the only thing I ever wanted for myself, and once I got you, you felt like you had to entirely change who you were in order to be with me. I refuse to put the same kind of expectations I always struggled with on someone else, even if I didn’t ask that of them. Parts of us are great together, Rule, but other parts of us just don’t work. All this”—I waved my good hand over my reclining form—“will knit itself back together. It’ll be fine and we’ll just go back to whatever it was we were doing before.” I made sure that he understood I was talking about everything from the gash on my head to my broken heart. I would get over him. There just wasn’t another option.
“You’ve always been in my life, Shaw. We should’ve been able to make this work.” I wanted to shrug but I only had one working shoulder so that wasn’t an option. Instead I swiped at my tears with the back of a hand and offered him up a shaky smile.
“There are a lot of things that maybe should have gone one way and didn’t. I know most people thought you and I being together was a long shot, so we should just be grateful for what we had.”
“I feel like I’m letting you down, letting everyone down, and for once it’s bothering the hell out of me. I just don’t know how to work around what’s going on up here.” He tapped his temple with a finger.
I was crying in earnest now and it was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that if he could just love me, just learn to let me love him the way he deserved, the way I desperately wanted to, then it would all be fine, but that wasn’t the case. We needed to believe in ourselves, needed to trust that we were each enough without trying to be other people. That just wasn’t happening, so I closed my eyes and for once I was the one to shut him out and fall into the dark.
“Some things just aren’t meant to be. I’m getting tired. Can you send a nurse in on your way out? I think the painkillers are starting to wear off.”
“Shaw, I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too, Rule, really. I am, too.” I had spent a lifetime in love with him, and as much as I wanted to be strong and put it all behind me, letting go of what I felt for him was going to be the hardest thing I ever did. We stared at each other for a long, sad minute, then he turned and left. When Ayden came back in the room I was crying inconsolably and she had to crawl up on the bed to wrap her arms around me. I cried longer than I ever had before. I cried until there was nothing left inside me to cry out. I let my best friend hold me as I fell apart. The nurse came in with a painkiller, but when she saw the state I was in she turned right back around and came back with a sedative.
I spent one more day in the hospital, and when I was released I realized there was no way on this earth I was going back to my apartment with Gabe out on bail—restraining order or not. Luckily, Cora had an extra couple rooms open in the house she rented in the Washington Park area because both of her roommates had recently gotten engaged to each other and had moved to their own place. Ayden dropped me off at her place and returned a couple hours later with all my essentials packed up for an extended stay. She said the property management company was working on getting our place cleaned up but it gave her the creeps to be there alone. It didn’t take more than a week for her to ask Cora if she could crash in the other vacant room at her house as well. Our apartment manager had even agreed to let us break the lease without paying a penalty because of what happened to me.
Being around the girls did wonders for both my mental health and my physical state. They never let me get down and someone was always there to remind me that everything I was feeling was temporary. They also refused to let me freak out over pressing charges against Gabe.
Things were moving fast, and a few times it looked like Gabe’s father was going to use every trick he had to get