Chapter 35: Zayna

Chapter Thirty-Five

Zayna

I have to confess the truth to Gideon Blackwood and his wife, Tamiya. But it’s not easy to face the truth. I handle the awkwardness the same way I handled all the awkwardness with Ruger. I take some salmon out of the freezer and prepare it for dinner. Ruger at least left fish, but I needed more diapers, food for Eden, and seasoning. Ruger refuses to believe that anyone uses seasoning “that quickly” while cooking.

Gideon takes the dog for a walk while I cook and Tamiya holds Eden. She’s grown a lot over the past few weeks. Tamiya holding her makes me nervous in a way I didn’t expect. I feel like Eden’s mine. Which makes the prospect of Ruger’s return that much worse. I can steel myself up to leave Ruger, but how the hell can I leave Eden?

She just feels like a part of my life.

I know now that I’m alone with Tamiya, she’ll want to know more about “the situation” between me and Ruger. I took one look at Gideon and shuddered, so maybe she’ll understand how I could meet a man with his ex-wife’s blood on his hands and end up in his bed. Tamiya is a private investigator and I’ve been living here for weeks, so I assume she has our entire relationship pieced together. She even looks at me like a cop. I met enough of them after the incident in Boston.

If Tamiya weren’t so friendly, her gaze would be almost unnerving.

“Where did Ruger go?” she says. “You say you don’t know and I think that’s half true.”

“He went to kill somebody.”

“Grant.”

I know my guilty ass flinches. I haven’t ever been on this side of an investigation. I turn to look at Tamiya and the grin plastered across her face betrays my failure to hide my feelings. I should have expected her to be five steps ahead and not just three.

What’s the point in lying now?

“Yes.”

“But that’s not the problem between you?”

“No.”

Then she surprises me again. She can’t really be six steps ahead.

“It’s romantic when you think about it.”

She smirks – it’s a smirk, but it’s sincere.

“Murder?”

Ruger doing this for me is practical from my perspective. I get to benefit from the dark urges he can’t seem to hide. I wouldn’t call murdering your prisoner’s rapists romantic.

“Hunting them down. Killing them to make it look like a suicide.”

“They were suicides.”

“It’s brilliant,” Tamiya continues, incapable of hiding her genuine admiration. “How could they ever live with what they did? Nobody mourns them. Not even their parents.”

I turn my back and put the cuts of salmon on a baking tray, paying excessive attention to the distance between each cut. I’m even cooking a piece for Zeus. Tamiya doesn’t let me get away that easily. I should have expected as much.

“What’s the problem? Why did he leave you here with the baby and the dog?”

She’s wondering what I’m wondering. Is he going to come back?

Ruger is a war hardened asshole. He’ll be back. I just don’t know when. I have to face Tamiya again. I have to face all of this right now. My feelings for Ruger. What we’ve done together. What’s going to happen when we split up? What about Eden? Zeus?

I face Tamiya and before I can think it through too deeply, I sigh and just spill it all out.

“He wants to kill my ex-boyfriend.”

“Curtis?” Tamiya says. At this point, she is just flexing her investigative abilities. I nod, because I can’t bear to say his name out loud. Part of me can’t believe this is where I’m drawing the line. But… How can I let Ruger kill an innocent man? It’s just not right.

“He’s annoying but… he’s not a criminal.”

“Annoying?” If I’m taking the bait, so be it. Who doesn’t want to have a bitch session about an old ex-boyfriend? Just a few minutes to make sure his life is going terribly. Nothing too crazy.

“I studied that man’s social media accounts for three days and I needed to do very inappropriate things to my husband to remind myself that normal men exist.”

Okay, damn. Go in.

“Not a crime to be annoying, though. Is that the problem?”

“Yes. Like Ruger gives a fuck.”

“What’s his problem? I’ve done the research. You went no contact long before… you know… and you never looked back.”

My shoulders relax immediately. She understands. She’s married to a biker. On some level, she gets it.

“I love Ruger.”

I can tell from her face that I went too far. It probably won’t even make her feel better that saying those words has me choked up. I haven’t even allowed myself to acknowledge my feelings for him. So naturally, they come spilling out at the worst time.

“The racist?” Tamiya blurts out.

Heat rushes to my cheeks. Tamiya covers her mouth. Someone has to rescue this conversation before I screw up even more.

“He… Him and I…”

I sound dumb. A loud knock on the door breaks the fucked up tension growing between us.

“Open the door, Gideon. I’m not getting up!” Tamiya calls out.

The door opens but the man standing there isn’t Gideon.

And it’s not Ruger either.

I feel sick to my stomach. Tamiya speaks first. If I open my mouth, I’ll throw up all over the salmon. I step backwards instinctively. I can’t take my eyes off him. He’s annoying. Tamiya is right. Stretched ears. A mohawk. Two eyebrow piercings. A new face tattoo.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Tamiya asks.

I shake my head wildly from side to side. No.

There’s only one reason this man could be here.

Ruger sent him here.

Which means that bastard never intended to let me get away from him and he always planned this – a cold-blooded murder.

Curtis sweeps his hand forward and bows dramatically. I physically cringe.

“I’m here to see Zayna. I got her letter about our spirits reconnecting on the physical plane.”

Ruger is such an asshole.

Tamiya looks back at me and wrinkles her nose. “Um… Okay. Come on in.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Tamiya sticks her hand out. But does it stop him? No. It doesn’t. He kisses Tamiya’s palm. She shrieks and Gideon materializes in the doorway out of nowhere, making everybody flinch when his voice booms across the entire cabin.

“Why are you licking my fucking wife?”

Zeus barks aggressively and from there, all hell breaks loose. Within seconds, Gideon grabs the back of Curtis’s neck like he’s a loose pitbull and yanks him back so hard that Curtis yelps like somebody stepped on his paw. Tamiya covers Eden’s ears as she snaps at Gideon to calm down.

Zeus senses the tension in her voice and has always been protective over Eden, so his barking just gets louder and more aggressive. I stand up and try to quiet Eden down. Curtis keeps yelping like a damn dog, making the entire situation worse. Everything feels like it’s pressing down on my chest and nobody is worried about the real problem.

Ruger.

“QUIET!” I yell out. Everyone shuts up. Gideon throws my ex-boyfriend to the ground and I hear a loud crack as his knees hit the ground. Zeus rushes over to bark at him more and lick him aggressively. And Eden cries. Loudly. She reaches for me and Tamiya rushes over to hand her over, freeing up her hands to dive into the mess going on.

Tamiya kicks my ex boyfriend out of the way and then shoves her husband a few feet back.

“You can’t kill him, Gideon!”

“Who the fuck is he?”

Gideon’s face is the same color as the salmon. I sneak the tray into the oven and set the timer for twenty-eight minutes. We might need the loud alarm to snap us back to reality and we’ll all definitely need dinner. I don’t know what Curtis plans on eating, because I am not giving him Zeus’s share.

“He’s Zayna’s ex-boyfriend,” Tamiya says, her eyebrow movements and body language adding drama to the situation. The heat in my cheeks spreads everywhere.

The idiot stumbles to his feet. I want him to shut up and I glare at him in hopes that he takes the hint. But when has that man ever taken a hint?

“I’m here because she sent me a heartfelt love letter. I don’t know who you are, but if you’re the deranged racist holding her captive…” He stands up at all of his five-foot-eight-inches. I want to die. He looks like a shrimp compared to Gideon. Ruger could pinch him between his fingers and crush his lungs.

“I’ll fight you to the death.”

Tamiya snorts in an effort to hide her laughter. I hear it, but my delusional ex-boyfriend hears nothing of the sort. Delusional. I know he’s not delusional. He fell into a trap. Ruger did this. I don’t know he did this, but I know he did.

Gideon sighs. “I’m not going to fight you.”

“One punch surely couldn’t hurt…” Tamiya mutters. I think I’m the only one that hears it. Gideon makes eye contact with me that freezes me in place. He has a firm, commanding stare. I don’t fear him being unhinged like Ruger, but I know he isn’t afraid to lay down the law.

“Put that baby to sleep. I need to talk to him without a child in the room.”

He points to my ex-boyfriend. I nod and leave the room with Eden, my heart pounding. My closeness makes her stop crying, but I don’t know if she’ll go down in the crib that easily without me settling her way more first. And honestly? I could tell from the start that she misses her daddy.

I hate that I miss him too. And that everything about Ruger has always messed with my head. Especially this.

Baby Eden ends up being a godsend. She takes long enough to get to bed that I have time to think.

I need to get Curtis out of here before Ruger gets back. It’s urgent. I kiss Eden’s forehead and promise her that I won’t let her father go too far off the deep end. If Ruger wants this to work… if he wants me to feel safe in this twisted, fucked up love that I feel for him, he’ll have to let me be the one that pulls him off the edge.

He’ll have to trust me the way he expects me to trust him.

When I walk back out into the living room, nobody trusts anyone. Gideon and Tamiya are playing good cop, bad cop. Tamiya’s the bad cop, which looks even scarier with her pregnancy. She turns her baby bump on him like a battering ram.

“How did you find this place?”

“He doesn’t even get USPS,” Gideon says, touching Tamiya’s shoulder gently. Good cop. But also… good husband.

“Zayna loves me ,” he says. “She wrote it down.”

“Zayna hasn’t contacted you in years,” Tamiya says. “What makes you believe she wrote that letter?”

“Nobody else knows these things about me.”

Tamiya and I both know that man chronically over shares online. I doubt he has a bunion that his Instagram followers don’t know about. I clear my throat, ready to put my foot down before Curtis inevitably fights me.

“I didn’t send him anything. It’s a trap. Ruger lured him here and… he really needs to leave.”

I don’t even address him. Part of me is too scared to address him. What if Ruger walks in at the last minute? Can I really risk that? I have to be smart here. Tamiya looks at me and she can tell, I’m not messing around.

“Do you think Ruger could do that? Write in English?”

I have to bite my lower lip to keep myself from screaming and laughing. I’ve spent enough time with Ruger to understand why she asks. But also, I know him better than anyone in this room. I’ve been in bed with him. This isn’t a man you want to underestimate.