14. Ignacia

Chapter fourteen

Ignacia

(Still Refusing to be Sam Until This is All Over)

B eau lasted two days on bed rest before he turned into a grumpy, restless, surly Neanderthal of a beast. Although, to be fair, I’ve used the whole prehistoric man term before, so I’m not sure it applies unless he became more caveman, but maybe that’s mean. The foulness he exhibited—growling into his phone, stomping around, commanding that I not make any trips outside the house that he didn’t sanction, even into the yard, and refusing to let me help him do anything at all, even though it was clear he was still hurting—far outdid any caveman behavior that ever could have existed.

Up in my bed, I’m not surprised to startle awake, my heart hammering and skin clammy, only to hear Beau knocking around downstairs. He hasn’t been able to sleep much because he’s been so uncomfortable. Not that he’d admit it. He’d rather grate the other side of his face off than share anything with me. His trick is to avoid me as much as possible during the day and then keep himself awake all night, making calls and pacing the house. He can’t sit still, and I feel like I can’t sit still either.

There’s something I want to say to him.

But I’ve already said too much.

Something bangs down below.

Goodness. Beau is usually pretty quiet about his night walking. Not because he cares that I’m up here trying to sleep, but because of the whole avoidance thing. Waking me up and having me come down there wouldn’t give him the aloneness he craves.

I can tell he thinks his team is taking too long to nail Aiden down. He wants out of here. I’m getting too close to him. I’m getting under his skin. He’s shared some truths with me that no one else knows, and he feels it’s dangerous. I’m a threat.

I think.

It’s sometimes hard to read him. Okay, fine, all the time .

Another bump. For the love of cheese.

I sit up in bed and reach for the glass of water on my nightstand. I stretch a hand out along the pillows beside mine, along the quilt. It’s not cold because it’s hot enough in this room to give the air conditioner a workout, but it feels cold and empty to me because Beau isn’t here. However, he doesn’t belong in this spot. It’s not his. He’s only here once a week, and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just an arrangement.

Physical attraction, developing feelings, strange yearnings, and my pounding heart aside, this is all. An. Agreement.

Whomp.

Okay, what the hell?

“Beau?”

The house is just as quiet as it was before the bumps. I’m not sure what he’s doing down there, but it’s Beau. I can trust him. He’s safe. He’ll keep the house safe. He’ll keep me—

Footsteps start up the stairs, and they sound extra heavy. Dragging a little. My stupid heart goes wild, and my lady bits? They practically spring out of my skin and go running to meet him, waving their hands in the air wildly like noodle arms, offering themselves up to him. Take us, please. We want to be taken. You alone can fulfill us. Or just fill us.

Wow, I officially need to go back to sleep. It’s too early to be awake. Two forty-eight in the morning apparently makes a person delirious.

Another heavy step and then shuffling feet. Beau must really be feeling the fall because he sounds like he’s literally dragging himself up, step by step, using only his front teeth. If anyone can do it, he can.

“Beau?” I shift out of bed and stand up. He probably needs help. I know he doesn’t want pity, but I also don’t need him to go end over end down the stairs and break his neck. “Beau, I’m coming to help you, and I don’t want to—oh my holy fucking asses!”

The lights flick on, and I blink hard into it. I must be hallucinating. This isn’t real. I’m dreaming all this, and at any second, I’m going to realize that, and then I’ll be doing that groggy, nasty thing where you know you’re dreaming, but you still can’t wake up. Like the pee thing. You know it’s not rational to have to pee every six seconds, and it can’t be that hard to find a bathroom, but then you force yourself awake and realize you’ve probably had to pee for hours.

This can’t be real because Beau—Beau is standing in front of Aiden, and Aiden’s arm is locked around his neck. They’re back to chest, and there’s a gun pressed to Beau’s temple.

My having a breakdown is going to help no one, but that’s immediately what I want to do. I want to turn into a liquified, blubbering, sobbing, screaming mess. I want to race for my phone and call the cops. I want to open the window and get out onto the roof. No, I’d like to open the window and toss Aiden out onto the roof and then call the cops.

But I don’t move because I want Beau to be safe. Why him? Why not me? I’m the one Aiden wants. I’m the one who deserves to be taken captive. Beau didn’t do anything in this. He just wanted to keep me safe. He wanted to help me.

He looks so fucking utterly calm that I nearly burst into tears just because he’s not afraid. Doesn’t he care about living at all?

Yes, he does.

His eyes track very slowly to my face, and I can see what an effort it’s taking as he forces himself to be casual. He doesn’t want me to get hurt, which is why he hasn’t twitched. He’s giving Aiden what he wants to protect me .

“We’re going to play a game,” Aiden says coldly from behind Beau. I can barely see him since Beau is so massive. I just see hands and a gun, and they look strangely disembodied.

“Is it guess what time it is?” Beau asks gruffly. “Because let me tell you, it’s obvious that it’s dick o’clock.”

“Shut up!” Aiden always did have a high voice, but it sounds so absurd next to Beau’s deep tenor. Why does Aiden sound like he’s the one in distress? He sounds annoyed. He sounds worked up.

Fuck. God. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I force myself to suck in some air and concentrate on Beau’s beautiful, stony, and perfectly calm face to keep myself from freaking out.

“This is the game.” Another octave. I wish I could see Aiden’s face. That way, I can judge how desperate he is. Everyone knows the most dangerous people are the ones with nothing to lose. “You’re going to confess to everything. I know your little boyfriend here’s been tracking me. You told him everything, and he thinks he can nail me for this. Well, wrong. You’re going down for it, Sam. You were always going to take the blame for this. So you’ll turn yourself in, and I’ll go somewhere that won’t extradite me, and everyone will live happily ever after.” The gun presses harder into Beau’s temple, and I can see the way the barrel digs into his skin. It makes me want to scream, to lunge at Aiden, to knock the weapon away.

“Alright.” I put up my hands. Can Aiden even see them? Because I can’t see his face. I can’t fucking see his face, and I need to. Beau’s eyes close. Then they open slowly like he’s silently begging me not to do this. “Alright, Aiden, that’s what we’ll do. I’ll go with you. You just have to let him go.” There’s no way I’m using Beau’s name. Aiden might already know it, but he also might not. He might be grasping at straws here. Afraid of his own shadow, running scared. He’s blaming me because that’s the most logical thing.

“I don’t think so. I’m not letting him go anywhere. I’m going to stay right here, with a gun pressed to this fucker’s head, and you’re going to go to the police and turn yourself in. Once I know you’ve been arrested—you do get a phone call, so make sure it’s to me—I’ll let him go.”

“And what if she refuses?” Beau cuts in smoothly. He’s so eerily calm, though I know it’s not real. I can see the tiny tremble run through his body. And it’s not fear. It’s adrenaline.

“Then I open that window and throw you out face first.”

Aiden’s savage retort makes Beau laugh. Not a little chuckle but a big belly laugh that can potentially set the gun straight off. I still want to surge forward, but the tiniest shake of Beau’s head keeps me where I am. If I charge at Aiden, I could make him accidentally squeeze the trigger. I have to remember that Beau is trained for situations like this. That’s why he’s so calm.

He’s waiting for an opening. For the right moment.

“Where the roof’s concerned, you’d have to get in line, dude. I’ve already been there, done that. I survived.”

“Shut up! Don’t you call me dude.”

Beau once demanded the same thing of me, and there he is, using that word now. It feels like he’s doing it for me, to reassure me somehow.

“Okay, dude. Go ahead. Throw me over the roof. I’ve been craving round two all week. Come to think of it, you probably greased the shingles the first time. It was a real adrenaline rush, I can tell you that much.”

“Kind of like Russian Roulette?” The disembodied hand presses the gun so hard into Beau’s temple that I see the flesh start to wrinkle and dimple. “Hmm? How about we give it a try, asshole? I have to tell you, though, this thing is fully loaded. The odds aren’t in your favor.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Beau’s too calm. He is so unflappable, but if I know one thing about Aiden, it’s that he’s not. He wasn’t ever moody in our relationship, and maybe I can’t judge what was real and what wasn’t given that it was all a lie, but whenever he got angry, he’d get so angry that he couldn’t breathe, and whenever something upset him, he’d be basically inconsolable.

I can’t see his face, but my heart contracts to the size of a hard little stone when my eyes shoot to his hand—the one holding the gun. It might not look like it’s connected to a body, but it is. Those knuckles are white, and the palm is probably clammy. Aiden isn’t the kind of person who bluffs about anything. He’s a great liar, but the truth behind the lies? That’s always perfectly sincere, even if it’s perfectly wrong. The safety is off on that gun. It’s real. One slip of a sweaty, nervous hand, one trigger, and Beau’s life could be over.

It could be over before he knows how wonderful it can really be. Before the glass heart bursts wide open and learns to let the sunshine and feeling and warmth back in. Even if it hurts to feel those things, it’s worth it. It is. I want so badly for him to see that and believe it. If I could, I would stick myself into his heart and vacuum out all the bad and all the wrong that’s ever been done to him. I would make him see that he is wanted, even if he was given up at birth. He was loved so deeply, and he could be loved again. He could learn how to manage the pain if he chose love.

Isn’t love always supposed to win?

Or is that just for fairytales?

I want this to be like a fairytale. I want his story and my story to have happy endings, even if they’re not together. For the love of all watching-the-stars-on-a-greasy-roof-on-a-perfect-summer-night, I want to see what it would be like together. This can’t be the end.

Beau might be calm, and he might be breathing steadily and regularly. He might be trained for this, and he might be brave enough to figure he can talk his way out of this as a tactic, but getting Aiden worked up and wild isn’t going to help. I know that. But Beau doesn’t.

“Okay.” I take one step to the side, and there. Yes, I can see Aiden’s face now. Waxy and white with sweat beading his brow and a curled upper lip. There’s a ring around his pupils that isn’t right. Fear. He doesn’t want to be doing this. He truly is that desperate. “Aiden, look at me.”

Beau tries to sway his body, so Aiden can’t look at me. But I step to the side again so he can. I don’t look at Beau’s face. I know he’s furious. I know he’d try and signal for me to stop, to not say anything, and to just let him handle this.

But I can’t do that.

I can’t take the chance that Aiden won’t do something he’ll regret forever, even if it happens by accident. I can’t take the chance that this beautiful man won’t have a future, a life, and a chance at happiness he doesn’t even know exists. I want him to have that. I want it so badly that it makes me feel like I’m going to burst on the inside.

‘“Aiden, you’re right. His men were tracking you. Trying to get intel on what you did, trying to prove it was you. They want to send you to prison. And I did tell him everything. I wanted to clear my name. I wanted to have my old life back. I wanted to go home.”

Aiden’s thin lips press together, and a red stain appears on his cheeks. He’s not just scared now, he’s furious. I need him to be furious and to believe I’ll do anything he asks. I need him to put the gun down and let Beau go so this nightmare can end.

“I did all of that. I did. But I’ll do what you say. I’ll do it right now. I’ll go and drive to the police and turn myself in. I’ll say all of it was me. I’ll go to jail, and you can go free. I’ll do it all. Just please, don’t hurt this man. He has nothing to do with this. It’s one thing to threaten me into complying, but you can’t shoot him. If you do that, you’ll go to jail no matter what, and it won’t be for fraud or theft. It will be for murder. Not second degree but first.” I get my hands high where he can see them. I have to keep appealing to the fear that brought him here in the first place. “Please, Aiden. You need to listen to me.”

“You don’t care about me,” Aiden hisses, and there’s the slightest hitch in his voice. Rage. Is he seriously angry that our relationship didn’t work because I found out he’d been lying to me and using me, and I left? I choke down my own feelings about that, which all rise to the surface in a smothering fist wrapped around my throat.

“Our relationship is over.” That’s the truth, and he needs to hear it. “But this man didn’t have anything to do with that. He was trying to help me because I hired him to do that. Hate him or not, you need to dial it back. You need to take a breath. Let’s go downstairs. You can sit him on a chair and tie him up until you know you’re free to go. Leave him tied up. Just don’t kill him. There’s no future for you if you do that.”

“There’d be no future for him either,” Aiden shoots back. His voice changes, his face changes, and the hold on the gun changes. The angle tilts from Beau’s temple down lower, the barrel of the weapon brushing the shell of his ear. At the sight, my stomach lurches, and nausea twists violently inside me. “My fucking god, you care about him.” He didn’t know before, but now he does. I must be projecting it all over the place. “Your bodyguard? Seriously? You’re such a slut, Samandra. Such a cliched little—”

Beau moves so fast that Aiden is no match for his overwhelming strength. Beau has the training, but as he grabs the barrel of the gun and twists, he’s not just acting on adrenaline and instinct. He roars something incoherent as he whips to the side, slamming the gun down and getting his hand up and around Aiden’s wrist. A nasty crack of bones breaking punches through the stunned silence in the room, followed by a deafening pop.

I can’t blink. I can’t move or breathe. And I can’t register anything that’s happening.

I’m as useful as a shaking, trembling statue, even as the gun goes skittering across the floor. It went off. The gun went off. I can smell the charred metallic evil of it.

I finally break out of my shocked state and rush for the gun. It’s near my bed. I pick up the thing that’s heavy and warm from Aiden’s hand. It disgusts me to hold it, but I know enough to click the safety back on. Then, I stand there against the bed, holding the last thing on earth I ever want to touch as my hands shake with tremor after terrible tremor. They roll through me like a storm on the ocean. I’m just the little wooden vessel that doesn’t come out the other side of a long, rain-lashed night.

Beau is magnificent.

Once I get over myself and stop thinking about storms and sinking ships, I watch as he wrestles Aiden flat onto the floor. He gets Aiden’s hands above his head next and laces his wrists together with one of his huge palms. He’s probably three times as heavy as Aiden is, and there’s no kicking him off. There’s no fighting back or escape.

“Call the police,” Beau instructs me calmly. “Right now, please.”

I want to. I want this all over. I want Aiden to be where he can’t hurt me or Beau and where he can’t hurt a single other person ever again. I want the silence, stillness, and peace of this house back. I want to rush to Beau and tell him I’m sorry he very nearly got incredibly hurt because of me. He put his body between me and the threat, and then he immobilized said threat at what could have been a very great cost to himself. It could have cost him everything to keep me safe, and yet…he did.

The room still smells metallic.

Like blood.

I finally look down past Beau’s heaving shoulders. I look all the way down to the floor, where he’s basically kneeling on top of Aiden.

Down to the puddle of red spreading out ominously beneath them.

I have a burner phone downstairs, so I grasp the gun tightly and race to get it. Someone is hurt. I don’t know which one of them is bleeding. I don’t want anyone to die. Please. Please. Please let no one die.

I find the flip phone in the kitchen drawer and jam the SIM card into it to get it powered on. I call the police first, and I manage to control the sobs and hysteria long enough to give them my location and directions and to ask them to please send help. An ambulance. Someone has been shot. Someone is bleeding.

In my heart, I know it’s Beau. Because if it were Aiden, he’d be screaming and wailing. He’d be freaking out. Only Beau could take a bullet and remain so very quiet. Only Beau would ensure that, above all, the job got done.

I beg the woman on the other end of the line to please, please hurry . Please. Before it’s too late.