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“Then ye’ll have to kill me before I let you take her.” Caelan sat up straighter. “Kill me and be done wi’ it. Do it. Finish it now. I should ne’er huv trained ye, I admit it. I shouldna have given you a chance. I tried to kick it out of ye, I saw the pain you couldna hide from me. I wanted to fix you. Help you.”
“You admit it, then?” Eric spat. “We’re the same?”
“Aye, I admit it. But I was strong enough to go the right way. You only stayed on the path while you had me.”
Eric grimaced. “You don’t know that. I’m trained, like you are. I know how to cover my tracks.”
Caelan’s swallow could be heard even by me and this seemed to delight Eric.
“Ye’ve been killing before recently?” My husband sounded disturbed.
“Had to get it out somehow.”
This was about more than Eric’s alleged love for Caelan. This was a warped, twisted person who’d earnt himself a tiny amount of self-esteem by being Caelan’s student—while deep down, beneath, he was still that boy. Unloved, unwanted, lost… afraid.
I sat on my knees and Caelan saw my shadow move. His hand gestures urged me not to speak again, but I couldn’t keep it in. Not now.
“In the back of your mind, you’re still that boy.” Eric’s fury showed as I spoke. “What did he do? Try to beat the gayness out of you? What did he do?”
“He never beat me,” he growled. “But he never loved me. Neither did she. She accused me of being the one to break them apart, but it was her, it was always her… she was always drunk or high. When he got the call, he was off, and he didn’t look back.” Eric trembled finally and looked down at his lap. “I wasn’t the son they wanted.”
“What about the marks, on your arms?” I wanted to know if any of it had been real. Even a small amount… I thought we’d…
Eric turned over one arm. “I’d hurt myself to vacate, because, this was a pain I could control.”
“You kilt ma oldest friend,” said Caelan, in a meeker voice than I’d ever heard him speak with. “A father of three. A good, solid man. A man whose wife you looked in the face after the fact and apologised to. Only a monster does that.”
“Yes, I am a monster,” Eric admitted, eyes gleaming with a mixture of tears and rage. “Like you, Caelan. And like her. We’ve all killed. When she killed those men at the cabin, I knew then, what a monster really looks like. Someone like her.” He grinned from behind that existential sadness. “Someone who delights in the killing, spilling guts everywhere.”
I didn’t say it, but it was because one of them had threatened my son, like he was now.
I’d tear apart anyone who threatened my family. I’d gladly rip them limb from limb to keep my loved ones safe.
It wasn’t a good idea to remind him of my specific motivations, not in that moment.
“She was so wet after she made those kills. She came so damn hard it was insane. She made me do her up the bum even though she hadn’t completed yet that morning. She wanted it rough, Caelan. Really rough. She wanted me to do things to her she can’t do with you because you’re too big and too much. She came so hard, so many times with me. Do you know why?”
We both remained silent. This was a pointless conversation.
“So, she gets off on hurting people,” said Caelan gleefully. “She told me about all the times she kicked people’s heads in at class. How many instructors she put in the hospital. So yeah, I’d say, she was probably getting off on the thought of hurting me because I’d left her. It probably had nothing to do with you. But see, I ken you, Eric also. From the very start of all of this, it was obvious your intention was to hurt me. To punish me by trying to shack up with ma wife. Fair do’s, she had every right to punish me because I’m her husband and I left her, but you? You have no rights to me!”
“See?” Eric tapped the gun against his knee, reminding us he had one. He was smiling. “No, she didn’t come hard because she was trying to hurt one of us, or even herself. That wasn’t it. She came hard because I remind her of Blake. Isn’t that right, sweetheart? The classic. Daddy issues.”
Before I could say anything again, Caelan was on his feet and stalking around the room. Perhaps he’d decided Eric wasn’t going to do anything, therefore, he wasn’t afraid for my safety anymore—and didn’t need to be my human shield.
“So we’ve all got Daddy issues. We’re all monsters,” said Caelan darkly, “but ye’ve only been playing at being a killer. Guns are nice and clean, are they no? Easy though, if ye ask me. See, you’ve no idea what it takes to save yourself from an abuser. You’ve no idea of the strength she and I share. And I would remind you again, ye’ll have to go through me to get to her.” He walked to Eric and held the barrel of the gun against his chest. “Go on, do it! Because there’s no way we’re all walking out of here alive today. So end me and be done wi’ it. Leave this house and let ma wife and bairn be. Go off and take over Sherry’s drugs cartel. Do as you fucking please, but dinna think I will ever allow you to take her from me.”
Right on cue, the baby began to stir and my panic set in. If the baby started to cry, it would set Eric off, demanding that a decision be made and this thing finished with.
Caelan ignored the baby’s little mewls and turned his attention to Eric again.
“You are no a new thing for her, y’ken? When I was trailing Flora to protect her from Sherry’s thugs, I saw her go into hotel rooms and public bathrooms with filthy married men.” Eric’s dark smile appeared and unnerved me. “I believe what happened with ma uncle scarred her, made her feel dirty. True. But more than any of that? She had to watch as her father nearly crumbled under the weight of grief, cried himself to sleep for decades because of the loss of her mother.” The recollection sent tears streaming from my eyes. “She used to tell herself that a love like that was designed only to destroy. That it should be avoided at all costs or face the potential fallout if it was lost.” I saw Caelan gathering himself to go on, when Eric looked at me differently, with a more sinister glare, frightening me. Thankfully Caelan chose that moment to sit in front of me once more. “All ye are pal, to her, is another one of them. Another blank face to get her rocks off with. Freedom from all the hurt of the past. Because sex can be just sex. Remember? We examined her like she was a piece of meat that night and she loved it. Women want that sometimes, but no all the time. Most of the time, they want a man who listens, holds them, is there to pick up the slack… no very often, they’re most of the time stronger than us… but she found a friend in me before she found anything else. That’s why you canna break us.”
Eric glared. “I can’t break you, but, I can separate you.” He raised his gun. “You’ll let her come with me and I’ll show her a good time, buy her things, let her ride other men if she wants… though she’ll need to wear a rubber with them. I had a vasectomy years ago to prevent more of me being visited upon the world.”
I slapped two hands over my face. It’d been easier to imagine…
Oh, god.
