Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

“I really appreciate this, Addie,” said Marleigh the following Saturday as we stood on her front door step. “The shower was everything I would have wanted.”

Neither Sabrina nor I had told her that we’d been planning to throw the baby shower for her. We’d only sprung the news of it on Marleigh yesterday, and … well, she’d cried. The heavily pregnant woman did a lot of that nowadays. She was close to crying again right at this very moment—her eyes were actually welling up.

“It’s like you have an endless supply of tears,” I teased.

“It’s the hormones,” she sniffled before placing a hand on her swollen belly. “And the back pain. And the whole waddling like a penguin thing. And have you seen the size of my bump? My grandmother asked me twice if I was sure I wasn’t having twins. My aunt said she wouldn’t be surprised to hear it was triplets.”

I kissed her forehead. “Ignore those people. You look beautiful, even with your eyes all red and puffy.”

Hearing the purr of a car engine, we looked to see Ollie parking at the curb. He exited the vehicle with a smile, but his brow furrowed as he saw his fiancée trying to smother sobs.

He made a beeline for her. “What’s wrong?” he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Did you struggle to zip up your boots again?”

She socked him in the gut, seeming to delight in his oof. “I get no sympathy from you. None.”

He chuckled. “Did you enjoy your baby shower?”

Her glistening eyes lit up. “I did.” She grabbed his hand. “Wait until you see all the gifts for the baby. There are even some for me.”

“Did I get any?” he asked, sliding his arm around her shoulder.

“Nope.”

His brow pinched. “Hey, how’s that fair?”

She offered him a brittle smile. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you carrying our child for nine months?”

He grimaced. “No—”

“Then you get no rewards.”

“Rewards, huh? Okay.” He nodded at me, his mouth curved. “Thanks, Addie. I really appreciate it. And thanks to you, too, Sabrina,” he added as my BFF materialized.

She inclined her head. “You’re very welcome, my dear almost-brother-in-law. But if you let Marleigh do as she threatened and call the baby Winchester—”

“Threatened?” echoed Marleigh, her nose scrunching up.

“—you and me are gonna have a huge fallout.”

Marleigh sighed at her sister. “I didn’t threaten anything. I mentioned that I very much like the name and just might choose it if the baby’s a boy.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Winchester,” Ollie cut in.

Sabrina blinked. “You’d be naming your son after a gun and a haunted building. What on Earth makes you think that would be a good idea?”

How my BFF didn’t see that the couple was fucking with her, I didn’t know. “You’re all ridiculous.” I tugged on Sabrina’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Fine,” she huffed.

After the hugs and goodbyes were done and dusted, she and I walked toward our respective car.

“Well,” began Sabrina, “I think we did awesome, considering we’ve never thrown a baby shower before.”

I shrugged. “Of course it was a success. We’re good at what we do.”

A glint of pride glowed in her eyes. “This is true.” She paused, nudging me with her elbow. “Just think, we could be throwing a baby shower for you sometime next year.”

That was my hope.

As I drove home, I reflected on how—for the first time in a long while—I had true confidence that my personal goals would be met in the near future. I’d thought I’d been so hopeful with Grayden, but I realized now it wasn’t quite the case.

Back then, in truth, I’d simply wanted so desperately for it all to work out that I’d firmly told myself it would. I’d ignored my doubts, ignored my reservations, ignored the voice in my head that warned he still had feelings for Felicity.

And that was my fuckup.

I had no such reservations when it came to Dax or what lay ahead for us, despite that we didn’t have a conventional marriage. There was no part of me that watched him warily or worried he’d toss aside the promises he made to me. I didn’t feel at all insecure with him—he gave no room for that to happen; reassured me both through words and actions that I had no need to be.

On arriving at the villa, I strolled through the hallway, peeking into rooms as I went by, finding no sign of Dax. I was just about to call his name when I noticed him through one of the kitchen’s floor-to-ceiling windows—he was sitting on one of the comfy loungers near the pool. No, straddling it, his back stiff. And he was fully clothed.

I slid open the patio door and stepped outside. “Hey, what you doing out here?”

Sipping whiskey, he looked at me. And I stopped dead. His expression was sober and shuttered, and his eyes were two wells of sheer weariness.

Goosebumps swept up my arms. “What’s happened?”

A long sigh slid out of him. “Nothing,” he replied, sounding both tired and distracted. “It’s just been one of those days.” He went back to staring at the rippling pool water.

“Dax, don’t blow me off,” I said, my voice firm but gentle. “We don’t do that to each other, remember?”

No response.

I crossed to the lounger beside his and perched my butt on the edge of it. He didn’t even glance my way, just stared straight ahead of him, his gaze unfocused. Even though all I could see was his profile, I didn’t miss how utterly drained he seemed. Not physically drained, but emotionally.

Leaning forward to rest my lower arms on my thighs, I flicked a look at his half-empty tumbler. “What’s got you sitting out here drinking whiskey?” Still nothing. “Okay, we don’t have to talk. I’ll just sit and stare at you until you feel creeped out. I might even throw in some heavy breathing or hum eerie tunes just to bump up the ick factor.”

His head very slowly swung my way, and he gifted me with a half-hearted droll look. “I meant it when I said nothing has happened.”

“You also said it’s ‘been one of those days,’ which means it was—at the very least—relatively shitty. Tell me about it. Offload it all.” I felt my brow pucker. “Everyone’s okay, right?”

“Yes.” Sighing again, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s the anniversary of my maternal grandmother’s birthday, so I spent most of it with my mom. This day is always hard for her.”

I felt my jaw drop and my gut twist. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Because I knew you were throwing Marleigh’s baby shower.” He lowered his hand to his lap. “You might have arranged the party, but you were just as much a guest as anyone else. You were looking forward to it. I wasn’t going to spoil that for you.”

“That’s not how this works, Dax. I get to be there for you—”

“You would have delayed telling me if things were the other way around.” He gave me a pointed look. “Don’t say you wouldn’t have—that would be a lie.”

I snapped my mouth shut, annoyed I couldn’t disagree. “If you’d told me last week, when I mentioned that I’d settled on this date for the baby shower, I could have rearranged it.”

“For what purpose? There’s nothing you could have done. And you had already dished out invitations by that point.”

I went to argue … but then stopped. Because a dispute wasn’t what he needed from me right now. Softening my voice, I asked, “How’s your mom?”

“Not good. She and my grandmother had a complicated relationship, but they loved each other.”

I slanted my head. “What about you? How are you doing?”

He only made a noncommittal sound.

“That bad, huh?”

Another long sigh. “It’s not easy to get through to somebody that their feelings of guilt are unnecessary when they won’t even admit to experiencing such guilt.”

I frowned, trying to read between the lines. “Your mom blames herself for Clear’s suicide?”

“Not quite. But she does feel she could have done more for her.”

“In what way?” I prompted when he said no more.

His gaze resettling on the pool, Dax took a swig of his drink. “My mom always suspected that Clear would kill herself after Bale was executed. She had my grandmother under constant watch, brought her to live with us, got her professional help, but …”

But Clear had thrown herself in front of a bus and then died on the way to the hospital—I’d heard that much. I’d also heard whispers of there having been a suicide note in her pocket that had explained how she’d seen no point in life if she’d had to live it without the man she’d loved.

I swiped my tongue across my lower lip. “Did your grandmother genuinely love Bale?”

“She swore she did, but I don’t know if I’d really call what she felt for him ‘love.’”

When he again fell quiet, I reached over and gently poked the side of his knee. “I get that you’re not much of a sharer and that this has to be a really difficult matter for you to talk about, but if you won’t speak to me about it, at least call Caelan or Drey. I don’t like the idea of you bottling up all the stuff that’s right now flying through your head.”

His gaze cut back to me. “You really want to hear about this fucked up shit?”

“Not because I find it morbidly fascinating. I just want you to offload everything. You know I’d never repeat any of it.”

“I do know,” he softly confirmed.

The complete confidence with which he said that made my chest pang. “I never met Clear, but I saw her from time to time from afar. What was she like?”

He exhaled heavily and turned away again. I thought he might once more fall silent, but then he spoke.

“It’s easy to assume she must have been fucked in the head to marry a death row convict.” He scratched his chin briefly. “It wasn’t that. She was just a very wounded person who sought safety, protection, and love from the wrong kinds of people.”

I’d seen that behavior before in others. None of those people had gone on to wed a serial killer, but they’d gotten involved with partners who’d been bad for them.

Dax sipped at his whiskey. “She’d known abuse. Pain. Abandonment. Fear. But she hadn’t really processed anything she’d gone through. She’d dissociated instead. Lived in a bubble she’d created, where her world was exactly how she’d wanted it. Being in a relationship with a prisoner who would never be released meant she’d been was ‘safe.’ He could never harm her. Never cheat on her. Never dominate or bully or control her. He’d needed her—she’d been his only real link to the outside world.”

Ah. While it was intellectually understandable, considering the psyche worked in the strangest ways, it was still somewhat difficult to grasp that someone would wish to marry a person like Bale. “She always seemed happy.”

“In her own way, she was. She’d loved me, my brothers, and Raven. Loved my mom with a fierce devotion. But Bale had come first to her, because of how he’d made Clear feel. Safe. Adored. Needed. Understood. Special. And when he died, she hadn’t been able to bear not having any of that anymore.”

“He was like a crutch, then? She was dependent on him in some ways?”

Dax nodded, his expression turning grimmer. “There was never any changing that. We all tried—me, my siblings, my parents, even Clear’s friends. It made no difference.”

“You can’t help people who don’t want help or can’t see that they need it,” I softly pointed out, detecting that Kensey wasn’t the only person in this picture who felt guilty for not having been able to reach Clear. “You were all good to your grandmother. A lot of people would have kicked her out of their lives, all things considered. Your family did the opposite, despite everything.” Which couldn’t have been anything close to easy. “Any feelings of guilt here are misplaced.”

“Yes. And my mom knows that deep down, but it doesn’t make much difference. What adds to her guilt is that they fought so much. They didn’t used to. Not until after I was born. Clear would try pushing her to take me to see Bale. My mom refused, but Clear never let up over the years. She was the same regarding each of my siblings.”

“I can’t say I blame Kensey for keeping you all away from him.” I doubted I’d have taken my children to a maximum security facility to meet a man who had butchered women.

“It hurt her that Clear would push and push even as she saw how her relationship with Bale affected her grandchildren’s lives. But in Clear’s mind, he was a changed, misunderstood man who loved his family.” Dax shrugged one shoulder. “As I said, she lived in her own personal bubble.”

I nibbled on my bottom lip. “Did you ever want to see him?”

“No. I won’t lie, I was curious about him. Curious about what was in the letters he wrote to me. He used to hand them to Clear and ask her to pass them on—my mom held them back, though. She did the same with the letters he wrote to my brothers and Raven as well.”

Personally, I felt it was best that Kensey had done so. “Did you ever ask to read them?”

“No. The only reason Bale was reaching out to me was to try to infiltrate my mom’s personal life. He saw her as his daughter. His angel. His bright spot. He cared for her in a way that only someone like him could care for another person. He didn’t like that he saw so little of her.”

“And he thought if he could win your affections, so to speak, you might pester her to take you to visit him … and then he’d be able to see her,” I surmised.

Dax dipped his chin. “Yes. It was only ever about her.” He tossed back the last of his whiskey. “It sounds crazy to say it, but he wasn’t evil. Wasn’t one-dimensional that way. The parts of him that weren’t warped and twisted formed a deep attachment to her, and that messed with her head. As did the fact that she’d loved him when she was a kid. A kid who’d had no idea of the things he’d done. A kid who hadn’t even realized he wasn’t her biological father—Clear hadn’t told her that. She’d learned of it through gossip.”

“Shit,” I muttered with an inward wince.

“Yeah.” Dax inhaled deeply. “If what he’d felt for my mom had been a real, selfless love, he would have backed off completely. But the truth is he had no capacity to feel such an emotion. But Clear wouldn’t admit to that, or see any wrong in having married him. So yeah, she and Mom had argued a lot when I was a kid. Especially when my name was printed in articles in connection with him, or when I’d come home covered in bruises after being in yet another fight—sometimes while defending Clear after assholes called her a serial killer’s slut.”

I clenched my teeth as anger whipped to life in my belly. “And then you had to deal with people comparing you to him on top of all that. Why on Earth would anyone think that you brawling with other teenage boys even came close to the actions of a murderous sexual sadist?”

“When Bale was a teenager, he got into a lot of fights. He liked to give pain, and he liked to receive it.” Dax licked over his front teeth. “People insinuated we were similar in that way.”

I frowned, my head rearing back slightly. “But aside from liking to dish out a spanking during sex or whatever, you’re not into that stuff.”

“No, I’m not. But some of Redwater’s population liked to make out differently. It made good gossip, I suppose.”

I let out a sound of disgust. “People suck.” I cast a look at his empty tumbler. “Want a refill?”

“No.” He set his glass on the table between our loungers and then patted the spot between his spread thighs. “I want you to come kneel right here.”

I narrowed my eyes as his own began to heat and darken. “What’ll happen if I do?”

“Many, many things,” he replied, the words practically dripping with liquid sex.

He wanted to forget, I realized. Wanted to shove everything out of his mind and seek the most basic form of oblivion. “You know, most people would just ask for a hug when they’re feeling down.”

“Most people don’t have a wife who’s as good with their mouth as you are.”

I laughed, taken by surprise. “All right. I’m game for whatever you’ve got in mind.” I stood. “You’ve sure never let me down sexually before.”

His lips kicked up. “Right back at you.”