Page 27 of Slaughter
“Who are you?” My voice came out rough and broken. “Who the hell are you?”
Before she could answer, Shadow was there, his hand on my chest, pushing me back.
“Brother, you need to calm the fuck down right now.”
I didn’t take my eyes off her. I couldn’t.
“Who is she?” I demanded, my voice rising. “Shadow, who the hell is she?”
Shadow’s expression shifted, confusion giving way to understanding, then something that looked almost like pity. “Slaughter,” he said quietly. “That’s Hope. My sister.”
His words hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest, knocking the air from my lungs and leaving me gasping. Hope. Shadow’s sister. The woman from the pond. The woman I had called Julie. The woman I had made love to while believing she was my dead wife, my Julie, my everything. And I had just knocked out the man who had been kissing her. The man who actually had a right to kiss her, to hold her, to call her his own.
“Oh God,” I whispered, my hands shaking uncontrollably as the full weight of what I had done crashed down on me like a tidal wave of shame and horror. My knees felt weak, threatening to buckle beneath me. I looked at her again, really looked at her this time, and saw the truth written all over her face. It was there in the curve of her cheekbone, the shape of her eyes, the way she held herself. How had I not seen it before? How had I been so blind, so desperate, so willing to see only what I wanted to see?
She’d known. That night at the pond, she had known I thought she was someone else. She had known I was calling her by another woman’s name, touching her like she was a ghostmade flesh. And she had let me believe it anyway. She had let me continue living in my delusion, my beautiful, terrible lie.
“Hope,” I said, her name foreign and familiar all at once on my tongue, like a word I had spoken a thousand times in another language.
She was crying now, silent tears streaming down her cheeks as she stared at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Was it pity? Guilt? Regret? Maybe all three, tangled together in a knot too complicated to unravel.
And all I could think was...I’m a dead man walking.
Chapter Eleven
Hope
He walked away.
I stood there behind the garage, my back still pressed against the rough wood where Angel had kissed me moments before, and I watched the man who had made love to me while calling me another woman’s name turn his back on me and walk away without looking back.
Not once. Not even a glance over his shoulder. Just the broad expanse of his leather cut disappearing into the crowd of Diamondback brothers, swallowed whole by the noise and chaos of the barbecue, like he’d never been there at all. LikeI hadnever been there at all.
My chest felt hollow. Carved out. Like someone had reached inside and scooped out everything vital, leaving only the empty shell of a woman who had been foolish enough to believe that maybe, just maybe, he had felt something real that night at the pond.
But he hadn’t. He only felther. Julie. His ghost. And now that he knew the truth. Now that he knew I wasn’t her, could never be her, he was gone, and I didn’t know what hurt worse. Him whisperingJulieagainst my skin while he moved inside me, his hands reverent and desperate as he touched me like I was something sacred he had lost and found again.
Or this.
Watching him leave now that he knew what really happened. Now that the illusion had shattered and all that remained was me, Hope Owens, the homeopathic retailer who couldn’t baketo save her life, the waitress who served coffee and smiled at strangers, the woman who was so unremarkable that even when a man made love to her, he saw someone else entirely.
I was invisible. I had always been invisible. And God, it hurt so much I couldn’t breathe.
“Hope.”
Angel’s voice was soft, careful, as if he were approaching a wounded animal that might bolt at any sudden movement.
I turned my head slowly, meeting his eyes. He looked... sad. Not angry. Not betrayed. Just sad, like he had known all along that this moment was coming and had been bracing himself for it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words scraping out of my throat like broken glass.
“I know.” He reached out, his hand hovering near my shoulder before he thought better of it and let it drop. “I told you that you were waiting for something. Guess now we both know what it was.”
A sob caught in my throat, sharp and painful.
“Hope!” My brother’s voice cut through the air like a whip, sharp and furious, and I turned to see him glaring at me, Kansas beside him, both of them wearing expressions that promised hell was about to rain down if someone didn’t explain soon.
Probably me.
