Strong Enough Read online

  But all my adrenaline and fury is no match for Matt’s superior size and strength. I hear the clatter of the gun on the bottom of the boat just before Matt uses his bulky arms and one leg to subdue me.

  “You bitch!” he says, wiping at his left cheek. Streaks of blood mar his pale skin and bring a smile to my face.

  “There’s more where that came from, motherfu—”

  Matt’s long fingers wrap around my throat and squeeze, cutting off my rant. “Do you think I won’t kill you and throw your whore’s body into the lake?” he hisses.

  I sputter ineffectively, trying to spit acid around his tight hold.

  “But I can do worse. If you don’t sit quietly while I row this shitty little boat to shore, I’ll shoot you in both arms and both legs and then drag your ass down the road. You get me? I need you for a little while longer, to help me get your father out of the way, but I can make do without if you prove to be more trouble than you’re worth.”

  A sob builds in my chest. Not because of his threat, but because I can’t bear the thought of leaving the lake. Jasper’s body is in the water. I can’t leave him here. I can’t leave him here all alone, to die with his brother in the water.

  I nod since I can’t speak and after another twenty seconds or so, Matt releases me. I pull in huge gulps of air, raising my hand to massage my neck. My head spins lightly as blood begins to flow to and from my brain again.

  “Here,” Matt says, pitching first one oar and then the other at me, the handle of the second hitting me just above my right eye. “You can row, little girl.”

  My eye tears and I blink rapidly so that I can see. As I’m winding my fingers around the oars, I imagine swinging one of the long pieces of wood and hitting Matt in the side of the head, as hard as I can. My grip tightens and loosens, tightens and loosens as I think, as I plan.

  Just a few strokes to put him at ease and then I can stand and swing at the same time, catching him off guard. Maybe before he can get off a shot.

  Or maybe he’ll even drop his gun and I can get to it before he does.

  Or maybe the blow will kill him and he’ll fall into the water and I won’t have to worry about him ever again.

  I go through the motions as I think, lowering the oars into the water and adjusting my feet in the bottom of the boat. I glare at Matt as he uses his shirt to wipe more blood from what must be a deeper wound seeping at the corner of his mouth.

  I hope it hurts like hell, you asshole!

  I squeeze the handles as I pull back on the oars, sending us slicing through the water in a backward motion. One, I think to myself, deciding that lucky number three will be the upswing that I aim toward Matt’s head.

  I raise the oars and reset them in the water and pull again.

  Two.

  I don’t take my eyes off Matt as he cleans and preens, the gun always aimed roughly at my chest. I raise the oars again, resetting them in the water, my muscles clenching for what comes after stroke number three, but it never happens.

  The boat lurches sharply to the right and dips down at Matt’s end as a dark, glistening shape arises from the water behind him. A thick arm wraps around Matt’s upper body and, with a vicious twist, pulls him into the shiny blackness.

  “Jasper!” I cry as I leap to my feet. But he’s gone. They both are, disappeared into the liquid onyx below me.

  I kneel and lean over the edge of the boat, watching, waiting. I hold my breath as I eye the glassy surface for any indication of struggle or movement. But it remains calm. So very calm.

  I don’t know how many seconds elapse before my anxiety rises to fever pitch and I bend down to slap my hand on the water. “Jaaasperrr!”

  Oh God, oh God, oh God!

  Nothing.

  Then, like a bullet, Matt breaks the surface with a splash and a gasp, reaching for the edge of the boat. His fingers clamp down over my right hand and I screech, using the fingers of my left hand to pry open his grip.

  Matt jeers up into my face. “Snuffed him just like I did his whore mother,” he sputters, tightening his grip to lever himself up into the boat.

  My muscles are preparing for another fight when I see Jasper surface silently behind him. I don’t have to ask if he heard Matt’s words. I can see that he did. His face is death and his eyes are murder. I see Matt’s fate in the dark gold orbs. I see his end. Matt’s life is over. He took something from Jasper that he shouldn’t have. And now Jasper will take something from him in return.

  Moments and movements tick by like days. Slow, frightening days. I see only the highlight of each, like a slideshow recap.

  Long fingers move to Matt’s chin.

  They cup just before they close, like a lover might.

  Matt’s eyes widen.

  Jasper’s knuckles whiten.

  Lips pull back from teeth in a sneer.

  One loser.

  One winner.

  A sharp jerk.

  A muted snap.

  A pause.

  My heart thunders as I watch, as I wait.

  But then Matt’s fingers slither off mine. Slowly, like five thin, cold snakes. I can’t take my eyes off him as he slinks silently, bonelessly into the water, down, down, down, until he’s out of sight.

  Then it’s over. As quickly and as unexpectedly as it began, it’s over. Finished. Done. Forever.

  —

  I’m still staring at the place where my ex-boyfriend’s face disappeared into the black lake when Jasper hoists himself into the boat. Tender yet urgent hands take me by the arms and turn me toward him, forcing my eyes away from the water.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, his eyes dark and searching in the shadows of the moonlight. When I don’t answer, he gives me a little shake. “Muse, did he hurt you?”

  I shake my head negatively. Everything happened so fast. Nothing seems real. Like nothing up to this point has been real.

  Cool fingers curl under my chin and Jasper tips my face up into the light. He examines it closely and then starts to gently touch and prod my head and neck, my chest and arms, and then down to my hips and legs. I sit quietly and let him check me out, my thoughts both chaotic and singular. It’s like all the mess and drama of the last months have culminated in the one thought that nothing is as it seems. No one I thought I knew was even real.

  When he’s finished assessing me, Jasper threads his fingers into my hair and leans his forehead against mine. “Talk to me, Muse. Tell me what’s wrong,” he whispers.

  So I do.

  “Nothing is real.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing that I’ve ever known is real, is it?”

  Jasper leans back to look at me. I can see the crease between his eyes. A frown. “What do you mean?”

  “My father, my boyfriend, my mother.” I pin him with a hard stare. “You.”

  Slowly, like flower petals dying and falling from their stem, Jasper’s hands slip away. Without the heat of his touch, my skin cools. Within seconds, my cheeks feel even colder than they did before. It’s like Jasper’s touch took something from me. Heat, vitality, some part of life itself. Soon, the coldness spreads and I’m filled with a damp emptiness that threatens to consume me.

  I start to shiver.

  “You’re in shock,” he says, moving over to insinuate himself behind me, wrapping his body around mine as much as he can as he takes up the oars.

  “Are you just going to leave . . . I mean, what about the . . . the body?”

  “I’ll call a cleaner.”

  A cleaner.

  “Like in the movies? Someone who works for the government and comes in to remove bodies and evidence?”

  “Yes. Exactly like that.”

  So very cloak and dagger.

  Jasper rows us the rest of the way to the dock in complete silence. When he ties off, I stand up and climb out, leaving him behind. I turn to watch him haul himself out of the boat. He moves with ease.

  “He didn’t hit you? When he fired at you, he didn’t hit y
ou?”

  Jasper shakes his head. “No.”

  “You’re a good actor,” I observe with no small amount of bitterness. My heart nearly stopped I was so convinced Matt had shot Jasper, causing him to fall headfirst into the water.

  “He thought I was too afraid to come after you. I let him think that.”

  “So you weren’t afraid at all? Was anything you told me true?” My frozen blood starts to simmer with betrayal and humiliation. Anger eclipses fear. Bitterness swallows pain.

  “It was all true. I’ve never lied to you.”

  “Well it sure is convenient that you were able to throw off that fear tonight, now, isn’t it?” There’s poison in my tone. I let the fury lick through me, like flames eating up all other emotion, devouring every soft thing. Anything less than rage is weakness. And I can’t afford to be weak right now. Not when I’m dealing with Jasper.

  “I suppose it was. It’s hard to be thankful for that kind of motivation, though.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a gun. You? An assassin? That’s ridiculous.”

  An assassin. The word coats the inside of my mouth like sour chalk. My lips curl into a sneer.

  “I wasn’t afraid of the gun,” he states flatly.

  “Oh, then what was it that you feared more than you feared the water, pray tell?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. My every word, my every action is laced with disbelief and resentment. I can’t seem to make myself behave civilly or rationally right now. This has all been just . . . too much.

  “You.”

  “Me?” His answer surprises me. I was expecting some pat excuse.

  “Yes, you. Well the loss of you.”

  My smile is as tart as my soul. “What a terrible bind that must’ve put you in! What happens if someone else kills one of your targets? Do you miss out on all that money, or do you share it, or . . . How does that work?”

  “I could never hurt you.”

  “And yet you have. Isn’t that a bitch?”

  “Muse, I—”

  “Save it!” I interrupt with a bark. “All I want from you right now is to borrow your car. I need to go to my father’s.”

  “I can’t let you do that.” Before I can go completely off the deep end, he adds, “But I can take you.”

  My lips tighten. I want to refuse him. Out of spite. Right now, I don’t want anything from Jasper, much less kindness. I’m clinging to the anger and the bitterness for dear life. The moment I let go of them, I feel I’ll just fall apart. And I can’t do that yet. I have too many questions. But I do need to get back to my father. And Jasper holds the only means by which to do so.

  Swallowing a thick lump of resentment, I agree. I don’t really have much choice. “Fine. Let me get my things.” With that, I stalk off down the dock and across the yard to the cabin, flinging open the screen door and making my way toward the bedroom.

  Angrily, I ball up my clothes, strewn here and there as Jasper and I left them after making love, and throw them into my suitcase. The ache in my chest as I think on those precious moments, moments that were nothing more than lies, goes deeper and deeper until I feel like it might gnaw right through my spine and leave nothing but a gaping hole in its wake.

  I choke back a sob as I jerk the zipper closed and yank the case off the dresser. When I whirl around, Jasper is standing in the doorway, quiet and imposing. He’s watching me with his turbulent gold eyes, his expression not much different than it ever is. But I’ve gotten to know him well enough that I can see the subtle differences. I’ve memorized every nuance of his face, his body, the heart of the man I thought I was getting to know. That’s why I can see the tinge of regret crouching just beneath the surface.

  A sob works its way up and out. I can’t deal with his softness now, his sweetness. Not now. I just can’t.

  I stomp over to him, listing in one direction as I manage my luggage, and I throw my hand up between us. “Don’t.”

  I hate that my voice breaks. Like a crack in a vase, I’m afraid that it will lead to total dissolution, so I grit my teeth against the surge of pain and I move past him.

  Jasper catches my arm as I pass and he stops me. I don’t bother looking up at him. I keep my eyes trained straight ahead.

  He holds me like this for long, tense minutes. I don’t know what he’s waiting for, but I know that I can’t stand it much longer.

  One question pops out before I can stop it. “When?” Once it’s free, every muscle in my body clenches as I await the answer.

  He doesn’t pretend not to know what I mean. As always, he’s extremely intuitive. He knows the question that’s eating a canker on my insides. Part of me has to know when he decided not to kill me. “I don’t know. I just knew that I couldn’t.”

  I slump in his hold and lean for a few seconds against the doorjamb. “I’m not afraid of you,” I admit. And I’m not. “I’m only afraid of what knowing you and falling in love with you has done to me. I’ve never met someone who destroyed my hope. Until you. As much as I hate you right now, I know I’ll never love someone this much again. But you warned me, didn’t you?” I spit bitterly. “You told me you’d hurt me and you knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Not one damn thing.”

  I turn my hateful, disgusted glare up to him as I yank my arm free and walk proudly to the car. I open the back door and throw my suitcase in, completely disregarding the supple leather of the seats.

  Everything beautiful is getting trashed tonight, I think harshly, blinking back a swell of tears. I refuse to crumble. I. Refuse.

  I climb in the passenger side of the still-running car and I wait. I see Jasper come through the door, turning to lock it behind him. He stands tall and imposing as ever, but something about his shoulders, the way they’re set a little lower, assures me that this ordeal has left its mark on him as well.

  Good. I hope you’re hurting, too.

  Although that should make me feel better, it actually makes me feel worse. Jasper has been hurt so much in life already, I only wanted to heal him, to love him. But that wasn’t to be because he only wanted to kill me.

  The reality of our circumstances hits home again, bursting through my anger with a sucker punch to the heart. I gasp in the quiet of the car and reach for my aching chest. But when Jasper opens the driver’s side door and slides in behind the wheel, I let my hand fall away and turn to look out the window, into the inky blackness of the surrounding woods.

  We ride in silence for miles and miles before Jasper speaks. I wonder that he didn’t think I was asleep, but knowing him, he can probably hear my heartbeat or something.

  “My father was the first person I killed,” comes his hoarse voice in the dark.

  Despite my upset, despite my disillusionment over him and what happened between us, my heart lurches behind my ribs. I say nothing, though. Just close my eyes and lean my forehead against the cool glass, willing myself to remain unaffected.

  I listen as he continues, almost absently, as if he’s merely thinking aloud. “I enlisted in the Army as soon as I graduated. I had to get away from him, even though he wasn’t around anymore. I could feel him everywhere, everywhere I looked, everything I heard. Even in me. So I went through basic training, kept my nose clean, and stayed to myself. But it was during one of the aptitude tests that they picked up on what kind of person I really was. They could spot whatever’s wrong with me. And they used it. Ruthlessly, they used it. When they showed me the X-ray reports from one of my mother’s many trips to the hospital that I knew nothing about, they explained to me the years of abuse she’d suffered. They showed me the evidence of it. And then they told me that my father was going to be released, that his case had been overturned on a technicality. They knew how I’d react. They knew all they had to do was point me in the right direction, get me inside that prison, and I’d take him out. So that’s what they did. They made sure I turned into the exact kind of machine they needed.”

  I steel myself against the rush of heartbre
ak for the young man that Jasper was, for all that he saw and experienced, for all the hurt that marked him so indelibly. Mercilessly, I remind myself that he was going to kill me. I can’t afford to feel for him.

  “Somehow my mother knew. When I went to tell her that he was gone, she cried. But not for him. She cried for me. That’s when I knew that she couldn’t survive what I had become. She couldn’t watch me walk down the only road in front of me. Or at least that’s how I saw it at the time. So when I was recruited into the Colonel’s covert ops team, he, with all his connections and questionable associations, helped me fake my death. From that day forward, Jasper Lyons ceased to exist. I officially became Jasper King. Or Jason King. Or James King. Or whoever else I needed to be. But they were all men you never wanted to meet, guys you prayed never had reason to come to your door.”

  Jasper Lyons. How fun.

  Lyons.

  King.

  Lion, king of the jungle. It’s fitting and somehow acerbic that he’d choose the name.

  Both names suit him. Lyons . . . it speaks to the man he was born into, his animal ways and instincts, his tiger eyes and bloodhound nose. But King . . . King speaks to what he has become. The cream of the killer crop, the top of the assassin list, better at what he does than anyone in his field. He wears the crown.

  If that’s anything to be proud of.

  It’s fitting for his personal life, too. For me, he’s the king of heartache, something I can personally attest to. Even though I’m currently in a state of denial, refusing to deal with the havoc he’s wreaked on me, I can feel the devastation, the utter destruction lurking right around the edges of my consciousness, lying in wait. It’s biding its time, holding on for the moment when I lower my guard, my anger, my determination. Then I can be crushed, smashed, gutted like a bug on the windshield.

  That’s my future.

  So much to look forward to, I think waspishly.

  “The worst part is that I never really minded my job. I knew I was taking bad people out of the equation, wiping them out of existence and saving others from their particular brand of terrorism. Whatever that was. I never questioned it. Not once. Not until you.”