Chapter 83

We took a break for donuts—well, I took a break for donuts because I needed fucking donuts. Did I need to be eating my fucking feelings? Probably not, but I’d run it off later.

As we sat in silence, her gaze was fixated on the window, and I watched the wheels turn in her pretty little head. Admittedly, I was throwing a lot at her—a lot more than she’d probably been expecting. While I wanted to take her calm quiet as a good sign, I fucking knew better. She needed time to sit with it. Emotionally supportive aside, I knew hearing everything I’d gone through and tried was a lot for her. Her heart was too fucking big for it not to be a lot.

When I caught her staring, I put down my donut and gave her my full attention. I knew that look on her face as she chewed her bottom lip. She was contemplating the best way to ask a question.

“Go ahead. Ask the question you want to ask” I said.

“Did you really kill a man?” Genevieve asked. I faltered. Not the fucking question I thought she was going to ask.

“I’ve killed ten,” I replied carefully and watched her eyes widen. Hot in the bedroom, not as hot outside of it once reality kicked in. She needed it explained in depth. Whether she accepted it after that was a different story. “What I need you to understand is that they were either reactive kills to violence or proactive to the information given.”

“Is this what you do now? Your job. Do you kill people?”

“Yes and no.” I sighed. “I’m a bounty hunter, which means I collect dangerous people. But there’s more to it than that. The man I work for has a squad of individuals trained to handle magical creatures—creatures doing unspeakable fucking things to humans and others. The goal is to always bring them in alive. But hunts go wrong. Shit hits the fan. Every time someone died, there was a reason for it. And every person that I’ve killed pushed the fucking question of whether or not they were human. Technically, you and I aren’t fully human. Most of what I hunt aren’t, but they use being human as cover to get by and often do more damage that way.”

“Oh.” She tugged that sexy bottom lip between her teeth, and I resisted the urge to bite it myself. The last thing I needed to do was be thinking with my dick. Instead, I reached out and ran my hand over her ponytail.

Wrong fucking thing to do. All that did was inspire more thoughts I didn’t need to fucking have. I dropped my hand, keeping it to myself. I was riding a lot of fucking emotions, and sex was an easy escape—a fucking rush that tipped the scale of how crappy I felt. I didn’t need to chase that high. Not right now.

“Can you still love me?” I asked.

“I’ll always love you,” Genevieve answered so quickly I barely finished my question. She didn’t even have to think about it.

“Do you hate me?” Her hand sought out mine. She squeezed tight and offered a small smile. “Do you hate what this makes me?”

“No,” she said. “Your darkness doesn’t scare me, Killian. And you do good things with it.”

“I try.” Fuck, I didn’t deserve this woman. Heavy emotion seized my chest, and I drew in a deep breath.

“Does this job have handcuffs too?” She fluttered her lashes at me, breaking the tension. I grinned and shook my head. This woman.

“Cuffs, zip ties, and an assortment of knives,” I replied. I watched how her pulse quickened under the delicate skin of her neck. That lusty look in those pretty golden eyes would get us in trouble. And for the way my dick thickened against my jeans, the brain downstairs had no problems with that. I cleared my throat, shifting uncomfortably. “You know, we should probably fucking talk about all of that.”

“Probably,” she agreed.

“I think it’s safe to say you and I can’t start over in that department.” Thank fuck for that. I was too horny to start back at the beginning. When she nodded, I continued, “But I’ve also abused my power over you as well, and that’s inexcusable.”

“I don’t think you have,” Genevieve said. I stared hard at her until she relented. “Okay, maybe a little.”

“And even a little is unacceptable,” I reminded her. It was, and it made me sick to my stomach. It was so easy to fall into the role in the heat of the moment, but after three years that wasn’t something I should’ve done to her. “There’s a fucking list of things I think we should do moving forward, and I want you to give me your ideas too. This can’t just be what I think and want, Genevieve. So, tell me, what do you want to do?”

She pursed her lips together as she thought about it, and I waited. I gave her all the time she needed, even if it left me fucking wanting. I wanted to know every thought cycling through her mind—to know how I could make it better.

“I want to date again,” she finally announced with a firm nod. I smiled. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I liked it. “I want to date like we should’ve been able to date.”

“Okay.”

“But I want you to live at home with me,” she continued. As if I’d have it any other way. “And I want to go to your doctor appointments with you. At least at first. If that’s okay. I know you probably don’t want me there, but I don’t know anything about bipolar. I can find books and articles about it online, but I don’t know how to help you or make it easier for you—”

I dragged her mouth to mine in a fierce kiss, overcome by emotion. I wasn’t even sure what fucking emotion I was feeling, but it was something powerful and consuming. I felt her smile against my mouth.

“I’m not leaving you because you’re bipolar, Killian,” Genevieve whispered. “Or because you’re an alcoholic. Or even because you have darkness in you.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“You’d get mad at me if I said that about myself to you,” she said, and I chuckled. She had me there. “I want to do a new collar ceremony at the club with new collars and new vows.”

“I can arrange that.” I’d enjoy arranging that.

“And maybe… never mind. We can talk about that later.”

“Say it now, Genevieve.”

“I just…” she hesitated, but I waited. I wasn’t letting up. If it was something she wanted, I wanted to hear it. “I think maybe… if everything goes okay that we… I think we should get remarried.”

“We’re not divorced, Genevieve,” I pointed out. “I burned the fucking papers I had drawn up, and I never signed the ones you sent me.”

“I know, but I don’t feel like our wedding counts anymore,” she said. “I feel like… I let my parents dictate our wedding a lot. I want… I want something that’s more me… more us. Something small and intimate.”

“Whatever you want,” I told her with a smile.

“What do you want?” Genevieve asked. “I’ve been doing all the talking. What do you want, Killian?”

“I have a list.”

“You said that.”

“We need to go to therapy.” That was easy enough to begin with. We’d gone before, so it wasn’t odd for me to bring it up again. From the little nod she gave, she agreed. “David thinks I should go to individual therapy, which honestly, I should. I can’t tell you what to do, but I think you should too. It helped last time, and there’s a lot more that we have to fucking unpack this time. It only makes sense.”

“Okay,” she replied.

“Genevieve, you have to want it for you. Same as last time—”

“I’m tired of feeling awful, Killian,” she interrupted. That heated look in her eyes told me more than her words ever would. I gathered her legs and pulled them over mine to keep her close. “It worked once, it has to work again, right?”

“That’s the idea,” I said. “I want to move back home. I miss our house, and I’m fucking tired of living with the kitchen prince.”

She giggled, burying her face in her hands.

“You know it’s true,” I scoffed. The sound of her laughter was a pleasant distraction that I gave into for just a fucking moment because I knew the next words out of my mouth would gut her. I fucking hated that I had to. I squeezed her calves for comfort. “And, Genevieve, we need to take care of the rooms.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes widening and glassing over with tears as she shook her head.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!” she repeated louder.

“Yes.” I held my tone, determined to not fight with her. Not about this. “We have to.”

“Please, no,” she whispered. “I don’t want to.”

“I know, princess,” I replied. “And I can take care of the hard shit, but you and I have to face what happened. And it starts in that house.”

Silent tears rolled down her cheeks, but she said nothing. I was right. She knew I was right. And I knew that she knew it. That was all that mattered.

“The last two things are pack things.” Another issue I didn’t want to fucking bring up, but I had to. “Your dad needs to be dealt with—on a pack level. Don’t fucking interrupt me because you’re getting ahead of me. I’m not the one who will deal with him. I can’t be. There’s too much shit there, and it’ll cause problems. But Mom is right. We’re a pack, we take care of our own, and we take care of our children. What your father did is inexcusable. I should’ve done something years ago. Maybe if I had… maybe shit would’ve been different. But Mom and the puppy squad are going to handle him. And I don’t need you to be okay with it, but I need you to let it happen. If there’s any fucking hope for us, you have to let it—”

“Okay,” Genevieve cut me off quietly.

“Okay?” I frowned. I expected more backlash. Walking away from him was one thing but talking about removing her father from the pack was a different one.

“I just… can they not tell people?” she asked. “About… you know.”

Fuck, my heart. That look on her face killed me. Wrapping a hand around the back of her neck, I pulled her close and pressed my lips to her forehead.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Genevieve,” I murmured against her skin. “You did nothing wrong.”

She nodded, but whether she believed me or not was a different fucking story to be tackled on another day. The plan was already to handle Phillip Goodwin as quietly as possible for the sake of Genevieve’s dignity. Mom was contacting the people in charge of placing pastors—whoever the fuck that was—to report his behavior, and my brothers had a plan, but I wasn’t allowed to know it.

“What’s the second thing?” Her voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

“I’m taking a leave of absence from the pack,” I told her. “Effective immediately until who knows when. I still plan to help with the hunter because I’m the only one who stands a fucking chance, but leading… I can’t focus on that right now. I need to take care of myself. And you. Eventually, we’ll have to figure out what the fuck me leading looks like for our marriage.”

“If that’s what you want.” She scooted closer, and I wrapped my arms around her.

What I wanted?Fuck, what I wanted had nothing to do with the pack. I wanted my life with Genevieve—a future with her. I didn’t give a fuck about anything else.