Evangeline didn’t move and it wasn’t a surprise because, at his words, all of a sudden it felt like her insides were frozen solid.
When he didn’t go on, it took a good deal, but she forced out, “Okay, Branch. I’m listening.”
“I know what happened to you at the club because I was there,” he announced. “Aryas called me. I do jobs for him and that night after it happened, he called me. You didn’t see me because you were fucked up. But he called me and I was there. In that room. With you.”
The chill she felt became a deep freeze and she just stared at him.
“Shoulda told you this morning and I wanted to but I didn’t and I wish I could say I didn’t because I was looking after you. I’d freaked you and you didn’t need anything to freak you more. But I didn’t do it looking out for you. I did it because I like what we got and I was weak. I didn’t want to lose that. But I’ve been thinking about it today and the right thing is that you should know.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“I’m not done,” he shared curtly.
She stayed silent.
“That night Aryas called me and it wasn’t to get a lock on Kevin. He already had a lock on Kevin. It was to deal with Kevin. And I dealt with Kevin.”
Evangeline felt her breath go funny.
“It isn’t mine to give about Aryas’s business so I won’t give it,” he stated. “What I will say is, most the time Aryas has got a message to convey, it’s the kinda man he is and the rep he’s got that he’s good with delivering it. Sometimes, he wants to be certain that message isn’t forgotten. That’s not all the work I do for him or that I just do, but in a case like that, he calls me in.”
When he didn’t go on, feebly, she nodded.
So he went on.
“He called me in. And I conveyed his message. That being, beating the shit out of that asswipe and then destroying his goddamned life.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
He continued like she hadn’t said a word.
“It’s important you know with your relationship with Aryas that that wasn’t the message he wanted delivered. But so you understand completely what I’m saying to you, I’m gonna give you a little piece of me.”
Oh my God.
That time, she didn’t verbalize it.
But she felt the words thrum deep.
“I knew a woman and she was important to me. She fucked up, did somethin’ she knew was stupid, and she got her head caved in by some asshole who I don’t give a fuck what his issues were, acting on them, there’s no one with a decent soul on the planet who wouldn’t think he’d done wrong. Even if she liked to tie men up and spank their asses. So when I got a shot at Kevin after what he did to you, I took it further than Aryas required and there was motivation to that. What you gotta know is, I get there was motivation for that. No trigger had been tripped. I knew precisely what I was doing, why I was doing it, and I did it deliberately.”
When he paused, Evangeline just nodded, feeling a lot—utter sadness at the story he had to tell about the woman he knew—and a lot more about all the rest of it.
“But she wasn’t the only motivation I had,” he carried on. “I saw you, bloodied and fucked up and havin’ trouble breathing because he’d cracked so many ribs, little thing like you, in that room where trust is paramount and he broke it in one of the worst ways imaginable. But it was worse. You cared about the guy and he snapped on you, so my motivation was also you.”
Oh my God, she thought again.
“Okay, Branch,” she said quietly.
He kept speaking.
“And again, I didn’t lose control. You should know for more than one reason it wasn’t about losing control. You should know because you’ve been sleeping beside me and you gotta have the information you need to decide whether you wanna keep doing that, that the man you sleep beside is capable of what I’m capable of, doing it with a purpose and fully cognizant of what I was doing.”
He took in a breath and finished.
“Now, you got a decision to make but I’ll share a couple more things before you do that.”
Again she nodded.
Again he went on.
“One is to confirm what you know. Kevin is taken care of and he’s not a threat to you nor will he ever come into your life again. Two is that, like I don’t have an issue with who I am and how I am with what I like to get me off, in that kind of job, I do not have that first fuckin’ issue with what I did. There are things I’ve done that I regret in my life, but that’s not one of them. I don’t give that first fuck what might have been behind that man losing his shit and taking it out on you. You do not harm someone who doesn’t deserve to be harmed. You absolutely do not take your fists to a woman. And you categorically do not hurt someone who’s put their trust in you and has given you a place in their heart. I figure, if every motherfucker who took his fists to a woman or a child or anyone who loved them got his jaw broken and his life dismantled, that shit would stop. Since that doesn’t happen, it goes on. But I was in a position to make certain the man who harmed you learned a lesson. So I gave it to him. And I don’t regret it.”
He stopped talking and Evangeline just sat there.
Well, she didn’t just sit there.
She sat there with words racing through her brain.
You skipped down them this morning … Don’t do that again.
Just engage the alarm and lock the doors like I said, Evangeline.
You don’t buy them, Evangeline, I will and I’ll install them. This isn’t a request.
You cared about the guy and he snapped on you, so my motivation was also you.
But I was in a position to make certain the man who harmed you learned a lesson. So I gave it to him. And I don’t regret it.
And …
I’ll get it and it’ll suck because this is good. I’d like for it to last a while. But you gotta know who you’re fucking.
“You need to make the choice right for you, Evangeline,” Branch cut into her thoughts and she focused on him. “You want me to go, I’ll go. You want time, I’ll go and you got my number. If you can handle who I am and what you now know and want us to keep going, you call me and I’ll come back. But you can’t, like I said, it’ll suck, but I’ll get it and I’ll honor whatever decision you think is right.”
“I’m uncertain,” she said quietly, “that the domestic violence shelters should change their mission statement to ‘Healing through breaking his jaw and dismantling his life.’” She paused and concluded, “But they should.”
The remoteness left his face and she watched the stiffness in his body that she hadn’t noticed before begin to slightly relax.
So she instantly set her wineglass aside and rolled up to her hands and knees in the couch.
She crawled the short distance to him, coming up and sitting back on her calves when she got close and then lifting a hand to curl it at the side of his neck as she brought her face near to his.
Stroking his jaw with her thumb, she whispered, “Thank you for that honesty, Branch.”
He stared into her eyes and said nothing.
So she did.
“Without a lot of time to think on it, having known Kevin, and you’re right, caring about him, I have to admit I hope he found the strength to work through whatever was troubling him to make him do what he did. But even so, I’ll share I also don’t care what it says about me that I don’t have to think too long to understand that I’m totally okay with the lesson you taught him because I did care about him and he had every opportunity to share with me what was troubling him and he didn’t. He hurt me. If I was a different person he could have changed the course of my life in irrevocable ways that would have been tragic. And actions deserve consequences. Maybe, if I could choose, his consequences might not have been that extreme. But I wasn’t the only one he hurt, whose trust he broke, who was affected by his actions, so I’m not the only one who gets to say what his consequences were.”
She adjusted her hand to bring it to his jaw so she could rub her finger along his lower lip and she felt her belly melt when she saw his eyes react to her touch.