He left the toilets and was hurrying back to Finley, trying to calm his shattered mind from the shock of what he’d done. His whole body was shaking, and his adrenaline was still soaring high. He walked and walked and then he heard it… the sound of a man crying nearby. He stopped abruptly and followed the sounds to the corner of the yard where a thin and tall man sat, covered head to toe in bruises with his hands over his inch long hair.

Jaxon recognized him immediately. He was the fish he’d seen many times before getting dragged to the toilets. And now he was sobbing shamelessly like his world had collapsed – and he was doing it out in the bloody open of all fucking places!

“Are you a fucking idiot?” Jaxon snapped.

The startled man looked up. “Please don’t… don’t…” He put his arms up, shielding himself from him.

“I’m not going to fucking hit you,” Jaxon retorted. “You wipe that shit off your face now. You cry like a pussy and you’re going to be dead before the week is out.”

“What the fuck do I care? They’ve fucked me up already.” The man bitterly wiped his hands across his face.

Jaxon noticed the stiffness in his body. Too in pain to sit upright properly, he copped it good.

“Who fucked you?”

The man didn’t respond.

Jaxon sighed and looked around. He really should just fucking leave this fish. The last thing he needed was to give a shit about him.

“Tell me who it was and I promise they’ll never touch you again,” Jaxon said.

The man looked up at him in surprise. “You’re not going to hurt me?”

Jaxon frowned. That’s all he’d done in this fucking piece of shit place: hurt people and then himself. And now look at the blood on his hands.

“No, I’m not gonna hurt you. What’s your name?”

“Dean.”

“What are you in here for?”

“I took the fall for a drug bust. They guarantee if I make it out of here, I’m part of them. But that’s a big fucking ‘if’ now.” The man’s anger shone as he plucked out pieces of grass from the ground.

Jaxon pitied him. He had a pretty face, but no muscle anywhere on his body. Easy target for the mongrels around them.

Maybe he did it to appease his guilt, or maybe he was trying to keep intact what little moral value he still had. The words fell out of him. “No one’s going to touch you again. You have my protection.”

“And what do you want in return?” The man looked warily up at him.

What did Jaxon want more than anything? Other than the girl who’d stolen his heart?

“Your trust… and some favours when the time comes.”

Fifteen

Still naked, I curled into a ball with the covers around me. I stared at a chipped corner of the night table as if it was telling me the answers of the universe. A hysterical laugh escaped my lips as I pondered the events of my life. You couldn’t write this shit down.

Just as quickly, I bit down on my lip and fought the tears. Why was I always so damn weak? Why did I have to cry this much? I didn’t want to be this emotional. I didn’t want to feel, period. Feeling meant bad things. What is it with emotions, anyway? Loving someone gives them the power to hurt you. I hurt and have been hurt back in the process. Was this some sick form of karma? Was five years away from Jaxon, miserable and aching, not enough of a punishment for what I did to him? Now I had to love another man and suffer this on top of it all?

Despite my flair for melodrama, I didn’t want to die. I tried to think about how I could walk out of this undetected. My stupidity would have only been a push for the Jackals to be extra attentive in the surveillance room. Barge might have gotten a scolding about it, and now that they were aware of what I’d done, they were probably going to be all over me. Walking out of here undetected was out of the question.

I couldn’t even pick up the phone and call the police. I’d seen enough police officers stopping by just out front of the perimeters to collect their extra income on the side. Money to buy their silence. The Jackals were set up, rolling (more like scuba diving) in cash, and owned everyone. In all the months I was here, I’d never seen any illegal activity within these walls. They knew what they were doing to a tee.

My body tightened at the sound of the door opening. I dreaded to think who it was. It could have been anyone wanting to teach me some manners after my stunt. Or maybe it was Remy again ready to take care of that promise he made. I was still nude, so at least he’d spare me a screeching at that.

I heard footsteps making their way around the bed. I watched Remy stop in front of me, looking down at me with a much more subdued look than before. Still, he was emotionless. He took a seat facing me at the edge of the bed. Idiot me couldn’t help but admire him. He was a thing of beauty to me.

One that had threatened to choke, rape and kill me. Fucking lovely.

“There’s one secret I’ve kept from you,” he began after our stare off. “You’re perceptive. I always knew that, but the room’s never changed. I never did anything to it knowing you were comin’ here. In fact, I didn’t even want you to leave that bunker at all. Not for a very long time.”

He absentmindedly raked his hand over his hair and looked around the room. Remy wasn’t his usual confident self. He was uneasy and that made me tense.

“I made mistakes. With you, this was my biggest one.” He produced a black jewellery box from his other hand. He held it out and motioned for me to take it. Confused, I did, all the while eyeing him curiously. “Well, open it then.”

Tucking the sheets tightly around my torso, I sat up until my back was against the headboard. I spun the box around, unsure of whether the truth awaiting me was what I wanted after all. Ignorance is bliss, right?

But my body’s autopilot went on. I didn’t want to hear myself think about shit. I just needed to get this done. I opened it and froze. I looked up at Remy, and then back down at the box. Then I gulped away the thick shockwave in my being and pulled out the bracelet. I blinked hard as I spun the silver chain around until the heart fell into the palm of my hand. I blinked even harder when I shakily turned the heart around and met the three words that had once meant everything to me.

You’re my ultimate.

Panting heavily now, I stared accusingly at Remy. “W-Why do you have this?”

Remorse stricken, he opened his mouth slowly and quietly said, “Why do you think, Birdy?”

This was my birthday gift from Jaxon. The one I thought I’d never see again. The one I kicked myself repeatedly all these years for leaving behind. Our conversation flooded into my mind, recapping all I’d learned after I’d left him. He’d been in prison. For something he didn’t commit. And… and…

“They’d been tipped off…The officer,” I choked out, unable to slow my quickening heart. “He planted drugs and… Oh, my God.” I looked at him harshly, tears exploding right out of me like my heart. “Don’t tell me it was you! Not you!”

“I didn’t know what happened to you,” Remy retorted defensively. “You disappeared off the face of the earth! And it was right after that night you chatted me up in front of him. What the fuck was I supposed to think? I abandoned post and looked for you for weeks. I sent men all over the city. The answer at the time was he’d done something to you–”

“Why didn’t you just ask him?!”

“I had the police interrogate him; otherwise I’d have killed him, I was so fucking angry. They went through the entire apartment looking through everything. It was strange as fuck that you’d suddenly packed a bag and left without a word. It was like he’d done something to you and made it look that way. Only figured it out months later when my guys found you in the system sending out resumes to shops some of the Jackals owned. You were workin’ some piece of shit job on the wrong fuckin’ side of town.”

“So you found me and saw that I was doing well.”

“Yeah– ”

“Then why wasn’t he let out?”

Remy exhaled, rubbing his irritated face in resignation. “Two reasons. He was in deep with Finley inside those walls. Got a lot of jobs done, was already integrated in the Scorpions, and by then they were packing shit up in Winthrop and lookin’ to relocate elsewhere. If he got out, I didn’t want him at you and you anywhere near that gang. Plus he got sentenced. I can’t override a fucking ruling like that.”

“And the second reason?” My words tumbled out harshly because I already knew what the second reason was.

He exasperatedly shut his eyes for a moment. When they opened again, weariness filled them. “You’re right. I’m obsessed with you. I don’t even know why. I just… I wanted you to myself. I had a lot of shit going on, was just given the title of VP. I wanted you to have a good job, to be safe and secure so that when I was ready to come for you, we would both be in good places.

“Anyways, Scorpions set up shop here. When I saw Jaxon, I knew it was going to be a major complication if you ever came back. Tried to sort some peace out with them, accept what they’d done to our town… Then all control escaped me with what happened to your mom and all. I didn’t want you here at the risk of you seeing him. Then of course Rita fucking pushed the issue behind my back, telling the priest to contact you. The rest was out of my hands. You came back and went straight to him. I realized I had to stop waiting for the best time and just make that time happen with you. So I took you from him. Again.” Even I could hear the sound of incredulity in his voice, like he was stunned at what he’d done.

“It was wrong,” he continued. “I know that. I made a stupid decision. I was selfish and wrong. Sometimes love makes you do the craziest shit.”

“That’s not love,” I bitterly stated. That was obsession. Obsession of the most critical kind.

“The way I feel for you, it’s love. You don’t wanna call it that? Fine. But every time I look at you, I see purpose. I’m a fuckin’ weak ass man in your hands. For Manny to tell me that you were spying in the surveillance room after you’d disappeared from the party today to see who I assume was Jaxon – how the fuck am I meant to take that news, Sara? The possibility you could be usin’ me right now…” He paused and looked away from me, unable to meet my eyes. He was hurting.

I didn’t want to crumble. Not after what he just did and the news I’d just learned. So I watched the pain skirt around his face as he tried hard to swallow it back. It was tough fighting it when all I wanted to do was reach out for him. I thought it strange just then how you can watch someone you love do the most horrible things and still burn for them. Enough for me now to understand Jaxon when he told me it wasn’t up to me to have made the decision to walk away.

But there were more questions that needed answering.

“The text message,” I said, waiting for him to come clean once again.

He frowned. “What’re you talking about?”

“There was a photo sent to my phone of a girl trying to kiss Jaxon at a club. One that almost broke us up.”

“I have nothing to do with that. If I did, I’d tell you.”

Damn. I was mentally exhausted and emotionally drained.

“Thank you for telling me the truth,” I muttered. He could have easily left me in the dark about it. Instead, he confessed it all at the risk of changing how I felt about him.

I went to hand him back the bracelet – he did steal it off Jaxon after all and had kept it all these years – and he looked down at my hand stupidly. “It’s yours, Sara. I don’t want it.”

Minutes passed by. I dangled the bracelet in my hands, watching it shimmer under the light, feeling good I was holding onto something that Jaxon had once touched.

“So what now?” I asked. “Are all the Jackals going to make me suffer the consequences of my actions?” In other words, am I going to die?

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he answered softly. “I told Manny I sent you to the surveillance room to meet with me, but that you got there before I did. That you’re just a curious girl I hadn’t explained the rules to.”

And so he redeems himself by lying to Prez in order to protect me. Cue more internal conflict. “He couldn’t have bought that.”

Remy shrugged coolly. “It doesn’t matter. That’s my word against his. He can’t do shit about it.”

“Well, thank you. For covering me.”

He went to grab my hand but hesitated. Then he tapped his fingers against the mattress thoughtfully and replied, “Next time come to me, and I promise you’ll get your answers.”

I nodded rigidly.

The silence that followed wasn’t comfortable. It was awkward as hell. Both of us were immersed in our own world of thinking; the only way to bridge the gap would have been to show some affection. I could make things right again by bringing him into my embrace and continuing on as though it never changed.

But the days of my pretending that everything was alright were over. I wouldn’t make-believe a reality in order to make others around me happy. So I didn’t comfort him.

He got up after a while, stared lovingly at me in a way that stole my breath. Then he left the room.

The second he did, I hurriedly put the bracelet around my wrist, clasping it with a click that felt more like it was emanating from my heart than anything else.

*****

Tears fell from my eyes. The second I stepped back into the house, I was held down to the ground by a fat arm. My head thumped, and my eyes swelled from the pressure he was putting on me.