Chapter 22: Rachel (Part 2)

The flick of his eyes to hers was so abrupt that she jumped, and he planted a hand on either side of her face. Letting out a haggard breath, he leaned his forehead on hers in what looked like an attempt to calm himself.

"I'm serious," Tanner said to the bed as he avoided her eyes. "Leila, her name was–a huge female tiger that didn't like her trainer. We had a female tiger trainer quite a while before my issues, but she quit after an incident. The tiger lunged at her, and I pushed her out of the way, but the beast took me down easily. They're huge animals and very dangerous, even with how built I am. I have one here too." Tanner brought her hand down to the right side of his lower abdomen, and she located another row of scars where its claws must have raked him. "I don't consider watching them abuse that animal a high point in my career, so I'm not fond of showing off my scars."

With Tanner's hands on hers, pressing then against his skin, her face heated and she couldn't pull her eyes away from him.

"Wha-What about these little ones." Rachel slipped her hand out of his to tickle a few that were on his sides.

"Various small things. Sparks, splinters, rope burns, and we had a shitty archer. Used to use me for practice when I was younger, but I threw my knives at him, so we are about even. I never hit him though. Most of the time he only nicked me, but he shot one right through my shoulder once." Tanner brought her hand up to his left shoulder and she found the small mark.

"I'm not as impressive," Rachel said, rolling up her short sleeve to reveal a small scar of her own. Tanner's expression lightened, and he touched the smooth, white streak on her upper arm. "Roman candle. Some idiots who dragged me into their shenanigans when I was much younger. Tim and his group would never have been so stupid. The lady at the hospital said I was lucky I hadn't lost an eye. It skimmed up my shoulder and almost hit my face."

"Can I kill them?" Tanner asked, and she shook her head vigorously.

"No." Rachel laughed, leaning against his chest, and she squeaked as Tanner adjusted her so that she was tighter against him

No longer moving, Tanner relaxed and she found her lips quite close to his neck. Staring, she weighed her options and gave in to what she wanted to do. She kissed him on the side of his neck, and he gripped her side so hard that she flinched. He let her go immediately, and though she expected him to push her away, he returned his hands to the headboard beams instead.

She breathed a shallow sigh of relief against his skin, and slid her hands up to the back of his head as she kissed his neck again. His quick, labored breaths lifting her slightly before falling in his chest. All the while, she trailed her lips down to his collar bone and she kissed the small scar that the arrow had left before moving to a smaller one on his pectoral muscle.

A snap stopped her, and she pulled back from Tanner. The beam Tanner had been clutching had snapped and was now in his hand. Setting it back into place, he let out an uneven breath, lost his hand in his hair, and ripped out his hair tie in frustration.

"It's just aesthetic anyway." Rachel nervously tried to calm him, but he'd already threaded his hands tightly into his hair and was now clutching it, his teeth clenched so hard that she worried he might break them. "Did getting these scars hurt?" Rachel asked, trying to distract him, but he remained silent. "Maybe you should play with something other than all those sharp knives."

"This hurts worse than any knife, Rachel." Tanner's voice was hoarse, and she recoiled from the heavy gaze that dragged up to her eyes. There was something dark in them, but it wasn't anger. "This has to stop, all right?" Though it was worded like a question, it wasn't one and she backed away from him with a disheartened sink to her posture.

"I'm sorry," Rachel said quietly as he buttoned up his shirt, but he left his hair unrestrained and falling over his shoulders.

For a moment, Tanner leaned back with his head on the wall and took in slow even breaths, in and then out, to calm himself. She wasn't sure if he was about to walk out on her again, and she didn't want him to.

"How about just lying here? I won't do any touching. We can just talk?" Rachel didn't get a verbal response, but he slipped his way down to lying on a pillow. "Make some space," she said, wiggling her way comfortably into the crook of his arm, and she pulled the comforter up over her legs. "Is this all right?" Rachel asked as she breathed against his chest.

"All right?" Tanner rasped, tilting his head toward her. "It's not. Being this close to you isn't right. I'm a horrible person, a sick, demented man and you just refuse to see it."

"My sick demented man," Rachel corrected, and he chuckled, the first positive emotion since he'd seen since he'd pushed her away. "How about you tell me more about yourself?"

"I'm pretty straight forward. Unless you want to hear more about my crew that I slaughtered, you know most of what I do around here."

"I'm game. Tell me," Rachel insisted, but he frowned. "I'm sure you haven't talked to anyone much about it, and what better way to see if I'm going to run for the hills than to give me all of it. I've got no one to tell."

"Very well." Tanner paused, looking up to the ceiling and pulling her closer. "Do you know what the worst part of it all was?"

"Tell me." Rachel reached up to touch his face, but he clamped his hand around her fingers and pulled it back down to his chest. It was strange when he didn't let it go but held it there, gently encompassing it in his own.

"The look in their eyes as I killed them."

Rachel swallowed a bit nervous. Alone in her room wrapped on one of his arms wasn't the best place for a chilling tale of how lethal he could be, but she wanted to know.

"Every one of them knew me," Tanner continued. "Had grown up with me, but they just never saw it coming. It was worst with the crew leader. That man had raised me, helped with every disagreement I'd ever had, but he'd been complicit in their attempt to kill me. I still don't know how that cursed woman got them to turn against me... what she said to them. It hadn't mattered to me.

"Hell, Frankie looked at me, blood spattered across my shirt and holding a blade, and was beside himself with disbelief. Then he begged."

Even though she'd prompted it, it was hard to listen to Tanner's story. It was something painful for him to say, and terrifying for her to hear, but it was essential to understanding him.

"All Frankie did was tell me everything he'd ever done for me, claimed we were some sort of comrades, but he never once apologized. The others spat some plea or other, saying they were sorry and to spare them, but such insincerity under duress did not sway me.

"Frankie though, as I lowered my blade to his throat, though he struggled, he never once said it. That was just so much god damn worse. Frankie knew me, knew I would know he was lying, so he hadn't bothered. At the time, the blood spilling out of his throat had meant nothing to me, just blackness and revenge.

"Afterward though, when I calmed and the rush of anger and hatred from their attempt to kill me had faded... I couldn't rid images of them from my mind. Not the way they had died though. It had been memories of them, teaching me, scolding me, hating me, and loving me. When I realized what I had taken from myself, it hurt.

"People are selfish; I am selfish. I didn't care that they were dead, that I had killed them, just that I no longer had a place to belong. Well, none of them except Frankie. I did regret killing him in particular after a time.

"Frankie'd had a wife, unlike the rest of us misfits, and a young daughter, a family. I took him from them, and at my trial, I had to look them in the eyes. They were desolate without him, and it had really driven home what I'd done.

"I should have fucking killed Lacy." Tanner's tone turned bitter. As he'd talked about killing his crew, his hand had fallen away from hers, but she was listening to him intently still.

"When I went to kill the damn bitch, I froze. Even though I still hate her with every fiber of my being, I couldn't even say I'd be able to kill her if I tried again. That look in her eyes when I came for her after everyone was dead, it was terror. For someone who'd been so headstrong and manipulative to break like that, it wasn't half as jarring as the fact that she was a damn woman.

"Frail and skinny, she wasn't even near my height, just a damn girl. I know it's sick to say, knowing me, but I couldn't bring myself to kill a girl, no matter how much I hated them and wanted to. Something inside of me just failed as she sat there soaked in tears, begging me to spare her... the way she trembled, the way her eyes were so large in fear, her hair disheveled, and how she was so god damn small.

"So, I left her there, in a tent full of corpses, barely able to sit herself up. Then that crazy bitch testified at my trial, spitting such atrocious lies that I wanted to fling a knife at her right there. Of course my lawyers and jailors had not been as lenient as Maggie, so I had no knives.

"Fucking manipulative little shit said I raped her, beat her, and that she'd fled to the other members of my crew for protection. That, in a jealous rage, I had threatened her, and after my accident I had snapped when she refused to sleep with me.

"God damn bullshit, all of it. Never slept with her, never wanted to."

"You don't have to tell me." Rachel touched the side of his face, and he looked down to her strangely.

"Rachel, you should have more sense than to want to be with me. You're intelligent, unlike that obnoxious, spiteful twit." Tanner let out a sigh, but she smiled at him, bringing her remaining hand to the other side of his face.

"Whose ears would you burn if I wasn't here?"

Tanner laughed, lightening his serious mood. "Oh yes, because that walking group of trash you hang out with is any better." Tanner batted her hands away, sliding the one not around her behind his head.

"Woah, my guys aren't trash, and I'll have you know they are very polite when I'm around. They think treating me like royalty is funny because I hate it." When she stopped talking, he was waiting on her to speak again.

"Continue. You never talk about yourself, only listen to me. I'd like to hear what you think." Every time they spent time together, bit by bit he bared his soul to her, but there wasn't really much left to tell him about herself. Her life was mundane compared to his.

"There isn't much more I can say to you. You know who I am. Just some pampered rich girl who is expected to make my father look good at every gathering. I'm really not all that interesting. I do have a crush on this guy almost twice as old as me who likes holding girls at knifepoint."

"Oh? Is that so?" Tanner feigned interest and turned into her on the bed. Bringing the comforter up to her shoulders, he tucked her into her chest and lay his head on the top of hers. "Can I just lie like this?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Rachel said into his chest and closed her eyes.

Tanner trailed his hand down her hair and back rhythmically, and it was so soothing that she yawned and easily became drowsy. In Tanner's arms, it was all too easy to fall asleep surrounded in his warmth.

~

Sometime later, she jolted awake to the buzzing of her phone, and she silenced it before it woke Tanner. The man was wrapped around her and looked so peaceful, one arm likely dead from her laying on it and the other gently holding her hips to him.

The notification that had woken her was a text.

Curfew in 30 mins.

She tried to stifle her gasp as she frantically cleared it from the banners to respond. Donovan had exchanged numbers with her in case of emergency, and he was too quick witted to not know where Tanner was.

Thank you. She typed back and sighed as she waiting for a response.

Are you okay?

She was appreciative that Donovan had woken her up, but annoyed that he still thought that Tanner was going to kill her. The phone was pulled out of her hand just as she was about to respond, and she looked up to find it in Tanner's hand. He looked at it groggily and then glared back at her. There was no name under Donovan's number for good reason, and she kept the history erased because her dad looked at her phone on occasion.

Who the hell is this? Tanner typed back, and despite Rachel's best efforts, she couldn't wrestle her phone away from him.

Your dad, you cradle robbing piece of shit. Get home before Maggie finds out. Tanner gripped the phone so hard that she was afraid he was going to break it like her bed.

"Whose number is this?" Tanner's tone was ice.

"I'm sorry. He was just making sure you got home on time."

"But whose number is it? No one is supposed to know about us." Tanner was angry, and she looked down and away from him, visibly upset. That at least calmed him, and he sighed. "Rachel."

Looking back up to him, she bowed her head apologetically before speaking. "It's Donovan's."

Tanner's jaw practically unhinged.

Don't chew out Rachel. She didn't tell me. I'm not an idiot. Maggie doesn't know.

Tanner looked at the phone, which conveniently answered everything Tanner was about to ask. Rachel was glad that Donovan cared enough to explain for her.

"How long?" Tanner asked, handing her back her phone, and she set it to the side as if it were poison.

"Since we had that argument."

"Rachel... ... I'm sorry."

Ready for some chastisement or disapproving words, that was not the response she'd expected. "What?" she croaked. Tanner was apologizing to her? For what?

"It must have been stressful for you, him finding out and confronting you."

"It was okay," Rachel assured him. "Donovan was just worried you were... coercing me into doing things"

"What? He thought I was raping you?" Tanner looked disgusted, and she shook her head with an exasperated sigh.

"No. He thought I was afraid of you and you were scaring me into doing things with you."

"You are afraid of me."

"Yeah, he knows. I'm not a good liar. He also knows I want to be with you and that he can't change my mind, so he promised not to tell Maggie as long as I promised to tell him if I got in... too... deep." Rachel paused. "Figuratively."

At least Tanner smiled to that. Pulling her to him, he kissed her on the forehead and she smiled when he ran his hand through her hair. "Donovan and I are going to have a talk later."

"Don't fight with him!" Rachel pleaded.

"No promises." Tanner stood up and grabbed his jacket from where he'd laid it on her dresser. As he put it on, he slid the curtains just barely open and observed the clear courtyard under the veil of night.

"There are small unnoticeable handholds in the walls above your window, so I can sneak in and out of your room. Also, your father's security system has some nice holes thanks to some helpful mobsters, so keep the window unlocked." Tanner paused. "I can't say I'll be around for a few days, maybe a week. I need to think about things, but if you need me, you know how to reach me."

Before leaving, he gave her a quick kiss on the forehead, a chaste farewell. Silently, he slid the window open and grabbed a handhold, pulling himself up and out of sight in an instant. If she wasn't a useless lump, she would have gone to see that he was gone, but she just fell back into her bed with her phone.

He's heading back. She texted Donovan so he wouldn't worry.

Are you okay? Again with the question.

Yeah. Tanner is very kind to me. Don't worry about it.

Bullshit.

Rachel cringed on his bluntness. I'm serious.

As long as you're happy and unhurt, I'm fine with it.

Well, I am, quit worrying.

Nothing I can do about it. Have a good night, Rachel.

Thanks. You too, Donovan.



Word count: 2938 -- Edited July 14th, 2020

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