Page 13 of Devil’s Torture

Because this isn’t a fucking rom-com, like I already pointed out, and the man in front of me has no idea what I’ve been through. The only reason I’m not screaming at him right now is because he did one thing that made my life infinitely easier—everything was paid for.

“I can’t believe it either,” there’s something hard in his voice.

“What are you doing here?”

There. I asked the question. The one I wasn’t going to ask. The one I was trying to convince myself couldn’t be strung together in such a way.

It’s the most important question.

“I had to leave ten years ago. It wasn’t really a choice I was given,” he starts and I can hear the resentment in his voice.

I don’t care about it, but I can hear it.

“I don’t care,” I tell him, the words flat.

He blinks at me like he has no idea what I just said. His eyebrows pull together and the look on his face takes me back to all those years ago.

“No, you need to know,” he insists, the gravel in his voice becoming more pronounced. As if earnestness will make me care.

It doesn’t.

“I don’t.” I shake my head slowly and take a step back.

His hands curl into fists at his sides. “I didn’t have a choice. It was forced on me.”

“Why?”

When his eyes flash with hesitation and he doesn’t answer me right away, I already know what he’s going to say. “The club needed me. It wasn’t something I had a say in.”

I scoff, one side of my mouth tipping up in disbelief. “I didn’t believe those lies from the club, and I don’t believe them now.”

The hurt that flashes across his face would have swayed me ten years ago. It doesn’t now.

His tone is resigned and resentful, “I can’t tell you everything that happened. You’ll look at me differently.”

A sound comes out of me that might be a laugh on a different day and in a different situation. “You abandoned me for ten years, Rune.” He flinches at my use of his road name. I never used it in the past unless we were around the club; never in private. “I already look at you differently.”

When I walk away, part of me expects him to try and stop me. He doesn’t.

I’m not sure how I feel about it.

My heart continues to hammer in my chest while I pick Dawn up from her sitter’s house. My sitter is a godsend; I don’t know what I would do without her. She picks Dawn up and helps with homework if there is any. Also, when necessary, she’ll pick up my groceries. I wouldn’t be able to afford her if my bills weren’t taken care of.

Maybe I should have thanked Rune for that earlier. But I could barely think past the anger.

Fuck, I can barely think past it now.

Dawn talks to me about school, her friends, and what show she’s started rewatching…again. I’m barely listening but manage to insert the right noises in the right places. At least I think I do.

I should be focusing on my daughter, but my mind is back in the moment when I saw Rune again. Today. Why did he have to show up today? Is his reappearance what my gut has been warning me about for weeks? Honestly, I had just assumed it was because the ten-year anniversary of his disappearance was coming up and ten is such a big, round number.

Apparently, there was more to the feeling, and I should have been paying closer attention.

That’s on me.

Fuck.

I’m distracted thinking about how his shoulders still look as strong as they did back then, like they could carry the weight of the world without a problem and without faltering.