Prisoned - Marni Mann Page 0,86

was going to do. That only made the guilt grow.

Why was I doing this to myself?

Why was I craving more when I knew I couldn’t have it, especially when I couldn’t stop lying to him?

I’d come out of the coma, thinking I’d told Garin the truth. In reality, the truth had never been spoken.

I wished it had.

But that would have meant everything that happened in the cell was real. That the truth had been tortured out of me, and somehow my life had been spared.

How could I wish to have gone through all of that?

What was wrong with me?

Garin finally sat down next to me, his shoes pushing across the sand as he stretched out his legs. Now that he was closer, the moonlight showed me more of his face, but I didn’t need additional light to see how beautiful this man was. His face was an image that wouldn’t ever leave my mind. It hadn’t in all these years. But now that he had grown into a man, there was a roughness that came with him, an intensity that burned in his eyes, and the most tantalizing curve in his lips.

I couldn’t hide what it all made me feel.

I turned toward him and crossed my legs. He leaned back a few inches, moonlight flashing across his hands and a breeze passing through the air. It sent me a whiff of his cologne, a scent I’d been devouring the last couple of days. For the briefest of moments, I closed my eyes, imagining those hands on my body, his scent covering me, his mouth moving across my skin.

His lips.

His tongue.

I took a breath, my lungs not filling as easily as they had in the hospital, and I opened my eyes. “While I was in that coma, my mind took me somewhere. It was a place. A dark place…”

He didn’t move. He just stared and listened. His silence was haunting.

“It was a place no one would ever want to visit and no one should ever have to see. But I was there for a reason, and I deserved to be there.”

My mind was taking me back to the night I had been in Garin’s room, the night Paulie had died, and I was trying to tell him how badly I wanted him. At that time in our lives, I’d always been so honest with him, but telling him how I felt, telling him I wanted more was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. This was even harder.

“You were in that dream, too, Garin. I told you in the hospital that you had protected me, and that’s true, but there’s more. You were there to show me what I could have had, had my life gone differently.” My eyes drifted toward the water; it was easier to look at. “This is going to sound crazy. I shouldn’t even think this, let alone say it…”

“You want to go back to the dream.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. His words only added to the dirtiness of that thought.

“Yes.”

“Tell me why.”

I dug my nails into my palms. Admitting this wasn’t enough of a punishment. I needed more…I needed pain. “Because I could touch you whenever I wanted. I could tell you how I felt. I could feel you, and I didn’t have to let you go. It was just you and me and endless darkness.” Finally, I looked up again, and our eyes locked. “I was given a choice, and this time, I chose you.”

“This time?”

“Yes. This time.” My voice was just above a whisper. “I wanted to before. I wanted it with everything I had. But I couldn’t. I had to leave.”

It felt like I was back in that alley again, cornered by Garin, telling him nothing but lies to protect my brother. But my brother would point a gun at me and pull the trigger as easily as he had pulled it on Paulie.

“Why?”

“I had to.”

“Why, Kyle?”

Here was my chance to tell him the truth. So, why couldn’t I do it? It had taken a dream full of torture—torture I believed to be so real at the time—and the threat on Garin’s life to make me cave last time. What would it take this time?

Anthony holding a gun to my head?

Or worse…Anthony murdering Garin?

Because, once tomorrow morning came, all of that would be possible.

And, if Anthony didn’t kill me, I would go back to being his investment, a way to filter all his cash to make it clean. My payment was an