All He’ll Ever Be (Merciless World Series Book 1)

I’ll never forget the first fight I had with Nikolai. As I sit in my hideaway room, staring at the beautiful wallpaper in front of me with a blank canvas at my feet and a stick of unused chalk in my hand, I remember how I screamed at him and how he screamed back at me.

It was a quarrel of young love. But it was also the beginning of the end and we both knew it.

He’d taught me to shoot that day, letting me fire his gun. He was only seventeen and I was sixteen. I’d begged him to let me fire it. I wanted to know what it felt like and he told me he shouldn’t, and that I would never need to know anyway.

I can’t explain how angry it made me, but it didn’t matter, because he moved behind me as we stood in front of the forest behind my home. His chest pressed against my back and his hands held mine as he taught me how to fire it.

The gun kicked back, but he held it steady in my hands. I remember the heat that spread through me when he asked me how it felt, whispering the question in my ear. We’d been seeing each other late at night, nearly every night for a while.

I knew he cared for me, but he hadn’t said those three words to me that I’d confessed to him.

I peeked over my shoulder, and his lips were right there, so close to mine. I stared at them for a moment and thank God I did, because that’s the moment my father stormed out of the house.

I tore myself away from Nikolai before he even saw my father.

That night we didn’t fight over the gun, or whether or not I should learn how to fire one. We fought because he wanted to end what we had. He said my father would never allow it.

We fought because I wanted to run away with him, but Nikolai refused. Deciding it was better to stay where we were and to stop seeing each other, rather than to take the risk to leave and keep what we had.

He didn’t want to be seen with me again, and that’s why I screamed. He was all I had, and he knew it. It hurt me deeply, although I understood why he didn’t want my father to find out. The second I showed him my pain, he took it away.

Nikolai kissed it away and said he would make it better. That he was doing it all for me, and one day I’d see. It took time for me to get used to not having him. And every time I cried, every time I needed him, if only for a moment, he came to me.

He never told me he loved me until after I’d gotten over what we had and only considered him a friend. But I knew he did before he told me. Because when you love someone, you can’t stand to see them in pain.

Carter’s not like that, though. He’s not a man to soothe or be soothed. He’s the type who puts his thumb inside of a raw gunshot wound and pushes harder. That’s the kind of man Carter is.

There’s no kissing away my pain with Carter. He wants me to live in it, because he lives in his. To stand by his side means to revel in the agony, and more so, to rule in it.

The knock at my door startles me. It’s soft and although I wish it were Carter on the other side, I already know it’s not.

Carter’s not the type to knock so gently, either.

“Yes?” I call out from behind the closed door.

“It’s me.” Addison’s voice carries through the door and I have to take a steadying breath before I can answer her.

My eyes are tired and burn from lack of sleep as she walks in.

“How did you know I was here?” I ask her and only then do I hear how hoarse my voice is.

As I sit up on my pile of pillows and look around, I realize how pathetic this looks. How pathetic I look.

“Daniel told me,” she says softly, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She looks around awkwardly for only a brief second before coming to sit with me on my makeshift bed.

I want to tell her that I’m happy for her, for what I overheard. I want to hug her and confide in her that I already know the good news, although it was an accident. I want to do many things, but Addison came with a purpose and she doesn’t give me a chance to speak first.

I’m grateful for that because seeing her makes me anxious and awkward, given the circumstances.

“When I first moved here… well,” she pauses and clears her throat, then continues, “close to here, when I moved to Crescent Hills, I had no one.”

I pull my legs into my chest and lean my back against the wall as I watch her sit cross-legged. There’s a small pile of plush throw blankets folded next to me and she takes the palest pink one, a soft chenille, and pulls the blanket up around her.

“I know what that’s like,” I tell her and she shakes her head no.

“I was an orphan,” she tells me with her voice cracking and I’m taken aback.

“I had no idea.”

“I don’t look like an orphan?” she raises her brow and jokes, but the accompanying small laugh is sad. “I don’t talk much about it, you know?” I nod as she talks, and I try to imagine what that was like.

“Anyway, I moved between a few different families and the one here was okay; it wasn’t any better than the others in a lot of ways. They didn’t care about me, they just got paid to keep me alive, you know?” Addison chews on her bottom lip for a moment and I can’t help but wonder why she’s telling me all this. She takes in a heavy breath and looks me dead in the eye. “I stayed because of Tyler.”

“Tyler?” A freezing sensation sweeps across my skin at hearing his name. It feels as if I know the Cross brother who died. I’ve dreamed of him, and the words he gave Addison in her dream haven’t left me.

“All of us grew up poor, and so he didn’t judge me, not like the other kids at school. His father was an alcoholic, and his brothers were… well, they did what they had to in order to survive. And it scared me sometimes. But he loved me, and I loved him in a lot of ways. I also realized I loved his brother—I loved Daniel more, even if we were nothing back then. I hardly spoke to Daniel at the time.” Tears cloud her vision and she brushes them away. “The Cross boys, they protected me, they looked out for me in a way no one had. Including Carter.” She lets the tears fall and sniffles before telling me, “I swear to you, there’s so much good in there.”

She licks her lower lip, gathering the tear that lingers there and it’s then I realize she thinks I’m not okay because I want to leave. Because I don’t love Carter.

“I know there is,” I tell her and she waits for more. For the “but” that isn’t going to come from me. “I love him and I love this family.” Emotions spill from me, emotions I wish I could bury deep down inside until I can’t feel them anymore. “I want to be a part of this family more than you could ever know.”

She tilts her head and gives me a look, and I actually crack a smile. “Well, maybe you do know.” I sniff and look at the ceiling to keep from tearing up at the thought of being a part of this family, a family who has protected me and has loved me. Even if they are … the men they are.

“So you do love him?” she asks and reaches out to me, laying a hand on my knee. “You forgive him?”

I nod my head, knowing it’s true. Both statements are so true.

“He doesn’t forgive me.” I tell her the truth that burns a hole in my chest. I have to reach into the pocket of the sleepshirt so I can pull out a few of the loose pearls from the necklace I used to wear. The beads click together softly in my hand as I tell her, “He doesn’t trust me and he’s not going to show any mercy, not to me or to anyone.”

“I wanted to come in here and tell you something. Something that’s scaring me, Aria.” Addison’s voice drops and her eyes darken with an intensity I haven’t seen from her before.

“Go ahead,” I tell her in a whisper, feeling the temperature of my blood drop. She rubs her palms on her jeans as she breathes out slowly.

“I went to Tyler’s grave.” Tears gather in her eyes the same way clouds do as a storm threatens, slowly and with an impending necessity. “There were so many forget-me-nots.” She looks past me, to the window that’s covered in beautiful linens, yet locked and will never open. I doubt she knows that little fact though. Her gaze stays there as she tells me, “I brought two packets of seeds with me before I left, and I scattered them all around his grave.” Her eyes drift to mine. “It’s nothing but a field of blue and white now,” she tells me and a chill flows down my spine. An odd sense of déjà vu pricks its way deeper into my bones.

She lets out a steadying breath and shakes her head gently. “I’ve been dreaming of him since we came back. It’s the same dream, Aria.”

I remember a dream that’s come and gone since I first got here. Since the first week I was locked in the cell in this place, but it’s not what she describes.

“Tyler keeps telling me to remind you. Hold him tight. Don’t let go… or else he’ll die.”

In the depths of my being, I know Carter needs someone to love him and someone he can love in return. He’s a man in pain, a beast trapped in a castle of his own making. I’m just not convinced that I can be that woman.

Or that he’ll let me close enough to be that woman.

“I know,” I tell her truthfully. “But it’s not all up to me.”

“Try,” she begs me. “Please, just try to hold on to him.”

I swallow my heart, which has traveled all the way up to my throat, and only nod. She has no idea how much I wish I could.