Better When He's Brave

“I had to.” I really did. This was the reaction I expected, but it still tore me right down the middle.

“Just like you had to make a deal with a terrible man so you could seek out retribution. ‘Had to’ and ‘want to’ are very different creatures. I think you should go.”

“I’m sorry.”

I got to my feet and stumbled to the front door.

“You should be.” My father’s voice was harsh and shaking throughout the entire exchange. I had rendered my mother nearly catatonic but he had enough in him left to tell me, “Don’t come back, Reeve. We were healed, had moved on without you.”

They had healed because he was right: it was only time and the acceptance of the loss that led to healing, to moving on. I had yet to accept my sister’s death. I was still stuck in the moment, watching dirt cover Rissa’s casket and smoldering like a live ember with fury and rage. I was never going to be whole.

I pulled the door open and burst onto the crumbling cement stairs that led to the door. I tripped a little over my own feet because I was weak with rejection and disappointment, but hard hands were there to hold me up. He seemed to be there catching me every time I fell these days. I didn’t even look up, just leaned into his chest and started crying. Titus didn’t ask any questions. He just folded me into his strong embrace and took me to his car. The GTO stood like a beacon of freedom, of justice, in this worn place, and once I was inside it, I completely fell apart. The sobs racked my entire body as the motor roared to life and Titus pulled away from my parents’ house. It felt like I was leaving my entire past behind.

“Don’t turn your phone off again.”

I hiccuped a little at his stern tone and blinked the water out of my eyes to see where we were going. The city was behind us and we were cruising at lightning speed around the Hill and up into the mountains. I had never been up that high. I was a born and bred city girl, so the closest I got to nature was walking across the grass when I was in WITSEC. The landscape was dark and imposing and also beautiful.

“I had to. If I spoke to you I knew you would talk me out of going or insist on going with me. Conner told me he would kill them if I didn’t go alone. Besides, you didn’t need to hear me explain what I had done again.” Shouldering my father’s disgust was hard, but seeing it on Titus’s handsome face again would have killed me.

“Roark might go after them anyway.”

“He might. But it was more about ripping me apart than it was about them. He figured my dad was going to look at me like he never wanted to see me again, and he was right. I had told him that telling my parents what I had done was the one thing I could never do. Admitting it to them was always one of my biggest fears. Turns out I had a reason to be terrified.” I leaned my forehead on the cool glass of the window and asked, “How did you find me?”

He snorted and the wheels spun as the gravel turned to dirt, kicking the back end of the powerful car out to the side. “I called the feds. Though I’m feeling slightly annoyed at myself that I couldn’t figure out where ‘home’ was from the instant you sent the text.”

I hummed a little acknowledgment. “Where are we going?”

“To the top of the mountain. We used to race down the side for money and pink slips. Bax had a hell of a winning streak when he was sixteen that sort of put everyone off of doing it anymore, but it’s still a nice place to have a quiet minute.”

“I don’t know that quiet is good for me right now.” I felt cold and numb all over. “But thank you for coming for me.”

He swore and the car fishtailed again but he didn’t seem that interested in slowing down. His voice was smoky and thick as it washed over me.

“My mom is a drunk. She had a bottle in her hand the second I was born and hasn’t put it down since. She was never very interested in being a mother, but she was beautiful and had an uncanny ability to attract very dangerous and powerful men.”

“Like Novak.”

He nodded in the darkness and I could see how rigid his jaw was as he talked to me. “Novak and my dad, Elias King.”

I couldn’t stop the shocked gasp that fell from my lips. The life of Elias King was a horror story parents told their children to get them to come home early at night and to keep them on the straight and narrow. His was a name whispered in fear when his awful misdeeds were tossed out as a warning to young girls. Elias King was a serial killer. A rampaging murderer that had raped and murdered more woman than I had fingers and toes. Not to mention when they finally arrested him the guy had been sitting on enough black-tar heroin to feed all the junkies in the entire state’s habit for years to come.

“No.” There was no way on earth that this man, this marvelous, amazing, law-abiding man, came from a horrific miscreant like Elias King. Titus had monsters inside of him but I couldn’t believe he was born of them.

“Yes. I think my mom knew what he was up to; that’s what started her drinking in the first place. She learned her lesson, though, and when she got knocked up with Bax she knew enough not to saddle him with a killer’s last name. I’ve had a mass murderer following me everywhere I go my entire life.”

“Oh my God, Titus, I had no idea.”

“Not many people do. It’s not something I advertise, and King is a common enough last name that people rarely make the connection. My mom was pregnant with me right before he went away. I’ve never even seen him in person. I only know what the rest of the world knows through the news and media. He’s slated for execution but the date keeps getting pushed back.”