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Is that better or worse? Can I face him after the way we left things? What has he done since my absence from his home?
I tilt my head toward the voice. Delusion gets the best of me, and I reach out and touch his firm physique to ensure this isn’t some phantasm from my imagination. My fingers graze his muscle-padded suit, and I can’t deny it any longer. Cain’s here and wants something from me.
“C . . . Cain? What are you doing here?”
“We left things rocky, princess. I’m here to fix it.” His golden eyes are level with mine, unblinking as if he’ll miss something important if he does.
“What makes you think you can?”
“Because we belong together, Alyssa. I knew it from the second I saw you and I won’t change my mind. You’re mine.” His lips hardly move. It’s amazing how his voice carries such strength through such a tiny slit.
“How did you find me?” I rest the pen on the clipboard.
“The whats, whys, and hows don’t matter. I’m here to take you back to where you belong.”
Even knowing the monster that Cain is, I can’t stop myself from swooning over this chivalrous act.
“I’m going to sit down, Alyssa, and we’re going to talk about this. If you still want to run, I won’t hold you back,” sadness clings to his words like a disease, “but I’ll never forget our together.”
He sits without an invitation.
“I’m not the man you thought I was, and I understand why you are upset. I’d have come for you the day you left had I thought it would make any difference, but I wanted to give you space.”
I nod but don’t dare interrupt him. I don’t know where this is heading, but I’m genuinely curious to see it through to the end.
“I may not be the best man, fuck, I wouldn’t even call myself a good man. I’m a no-good piece of shit that has seen and done more evil than I care to remember,” he sighs, “but you changed something in me. There’s more to life than what I do. I knew it the day I met you. To be a cheesy mother fucker, Alyssa Dresden, you make me want to be a better person.”
I try and stop the warmth flooding my cheeks. I can’t give Cain the wrong idea of what I’m feeling.
“Then why do it?” My question returns his grim appearance.
“Why do anything?”
I scrunch my brow at his response.
Cain takes a moment to consider his words. He never takes his eyes off me while he thinks, but his fingers anxiously tap against his knee.
“I do it because I’m obligated to. My father was a cruel man. He believed in power above all else,” Cain turns away. He looks at the reception desk, but he doesn’t see Cynthia Duarte, the black pens in their grubby holster or the water-starved flower. Cain stares into the void while the soiled recollection of youth floods his mind. “I got whipped before I could walk and shot a man before my first kiss. I didn’t want to be here, but it got drilled into me, forced into me by praise or fist, until I unrelentingly accepted my role as the future head of this organization.”
“Cain, I’m—” There are no words to ease him through this suffering. Instead of hunting for the right thing to say, I wrap an arm around his shoulder.
“It blurred into one after a while. Day after day, month after month, year after year, what good is keeping track when there’s nothing to live for?” he says, “then you walked into my life and I knew it would never be the same again.”
He pauses to clear his throat. “Never before have I wanted something so bad. Never before have I had more reason to want to live and love again. I knew I’d plant my seed in you, Alyssa. That you’d mother my child and raise him to be better than me.”
Our child. Somehow I’d forgotten about it in the mix of lunacy and depravity I wrapped myself in. My hand instinctively reaches for my gut. Cain’s head trails to it, practically frothing at the mouth for another opportunity to touch me.
Us.
“I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you, Alyssa.”
Is someone who does bad because it’s been forced into him inherently evil? It’s the question I’m left to ponder after Cain speaks. Sincerity clings to his face with every word.
“I’m sorry I hurt you. It wasn’t my intention, and I hate myself for it.” I’ve never seen Cain Hawthorne vulnerable before. The cocky confidence he wears like a masculine cologne has vanished, and left me with a taste of the real man hiding inside him. “I love you, Alyssa Dresden, and I don’t much see a point to living if it’s not with you at my side.”
I never expected those words to come from Cain. Somehow, it’s those three words that turn my mind into mush and all the fears and doubts I had about the man sitting beside me wash away.
Yes, bad men can be good, but so too, can good men do bad. His past isn’t for me to dissect and interrogate. Here, in the confined space of my old employers, Cain is a man in love. He came to me with his hat in hand asking for forgiveness, and ended up rocking my world instead.
