Forced to Change

I swam inside the oversized fluffy hotel bathrobe, feeling warm and tingly from head to toe. I was sore from last night, but in a good way. I felt sexually sated. It had been a wonderful worry-free night that the glaring sunlight assured was over.

Jared ordered room service and we ate breakfast picnic-style on the softest bed I'd ever slept on in my life. I was using Jared as my own personal pillow.

"Thank you for last night. It was so perfect. Very romantic, not even a little bit corny. Just perfect." I rolled over to face him and caught a small smile playing at his lips. He stroked some hair off my face, leaned down and kissed me softly.

"My pleasure." His smile grew brighter as he ran his fingers through my hair. There was tension in his green eyes, but the rest of his face was open and warm. I worried about that look.

"So—not to ruin our date, but I still have some more questions. Only if you want to share, though," I started tentatively.

There was so much I didn't know about him, and I felt like I was falling deep, hard, and fast. Too fast almost. It was possible I was already head over heels in love with a man I shouldn't be. He was a killer, after all, and yet I felt pretty okay with that information. I had a new appreciation for the vampire genre. The ironic comparison to my own situation made sense for once. Even though I knew it killed the cat, call me Kitty because I was too damn curious.

Jared's whole body tensed beneath me. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I still reserve the right not to answer, but go ahead." His hand stilled in my hair.

I sat up and crossed my legs, facing him. I wasn't sure what I wanted to know, but I'd opened a door so I took a deep breath and plunged in. "How many people have you killed?"

"A lot. Next question." His arm muscles tightened. I leaned back on my hands. His face went blank, completely devoid of emotion as he stared past me and around the room.

"Grrr. Fine." I stared directly at him, chin raised. His hands balled into fists. I was determined not to let his attitude deter me.

"Were they all bad men, like the ones who were holding me?"

He released his fists and opened his fingers, spreading them wide. He looked me square in the eyes as he leaned back against the headboard with his hands behind his head. "Why do you want to know?"

Question with a question. Joe did the same thing at work. He didn't want to answer. I turned away for a breath and said, "Just tell me. I won't judge."

"Fine. Some. Most were bad men and women. But there were some that weren't." He wiped his hand over his face and his head dipped down.

I released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. "Okay. See, no judgment. I just wanted to know." I waited an entire long minute before asking, "What were the reasons for killing people who weren't exactly bad?" I tried to make my voice sound unaffected. It almost worked. Almost.

"Katie, please don't do this," he whispered as he turned pleading eyes my way. My heart ached because I was torn.

I should stop. I need to stop. I don't need to know. We're fine. No judgment. I can just stop, remain ignorantly blissful forever. Victim or survivor? A survivor should know the truth.

"I'm not judging. I just want to understand. That's all," I said softly. I touched his leg but he pulled his knees up away from me, wrapping his arms around them and sighed.

A hard look washed over his face. "Cannon fodder, mostly."

That threw me for a bit of loop. I was shocked by it, although it shouldn't have surprised me in the least. "Cannon fodder? Like they were innocent. They did nothing wrong except being in the wrong place at the wrong time?" My pulse was in my throat.

"Yes. Exactly. Next question." His voice dropped into freezing temperatures.

"Did you feel bad about it?" I whispered.

"No. Not at the time, never. Not until I met you," he said and his voice was dark but sincere. It was twistedly sweet, in a really screwed-up way. "The last batch, well, I regretted it so much I got out of the business."

That made a lot of sense. Wait just a second. "Whoa, hold the phone. The last batch? You mean Cantana? Paco? Rosa?" I knew. I knew before he said it, but...

"Yes." The one-word answer turned my spine to ice.

"You killed them?" I asked breathlessly. "They're not safely back in their villages somewhere, but dead?" I was fighting back tears. I didn't want it to be true. My breathing sped and my heart threatened to burst from my throat.

"You're not that naïve," Jared snapped before he seemed to think better of it. His voice was softer when he spoke next. "Please Katie, don't hate me for it. I know it was wrong. Because of you. Please don't hate me for who I was before I met you." He seemed to be fighting back his own tears.

"I just need a minute," I said. What I needed was a day, or maybe a week to process the bomb he'd just dropped. Finally, after five more minutes, I gathered the courage to ask my next question. "Other than Carter and CJ, have you killed anyone else since Cantana?"

"I didn't kill CJ. Carter did." Jared jumped off the bed and paced the room. His shoulders were tight. He ran his hands through his hair over and over, pulling at it as if he would tear it out. Tears leaked out of my eyes and down my face. I knew the answer was 'yes' and I didn't want the answer to the follow-up question, like who he'd killed since Cantana.

Stop. I should stop. Please God, why can't I just stop? The last week suddenly meant very little as I watched a stranger, someone I'd never known, stop in front of me.

"Who? How many people have you killed since Cantana?" Anger rang in my voice.

"A lot. All of them bad men since... Except one. But I thought he was...It doesn't matter." His words sat in the air between us like a tension bomb. Then he detonated it.

"Please Katie, don't ask. Don't do this. I can't have you hate me. I hate myself enough now that I know it was wrong. Let that be enough. I can't live without you, and you'll leave me when you know. So just please. I am begging you. Don't ask. Just don't ask me. I'm losing all my restraint when it comes to you. And when you ask me, I'm going to tell you. But you have to understand. I did it for you. For you, because I've loved you since the moment I met you. It was for you. Every single person I've killed since the day I met you was for you."

His impassioned speech told me as much as his words who he was talking about. There was only one person who'd died since Jared had known me that he could be referring to. My stomach turned upside down as I raced from the bed into the bathroom. I made it to the toilet just in time to vomit up my breakfast. By the time it turned to dry heaves Jared was there, holding the hair back off my face. I sank to the floor, taking deep breaths, trying to collect my thoughts. My insides hurt and my skin crawled.

"Who?" I didn't want to believe it, but I had to hear him say it aloud. Before he could answer I whispered, "My father."

His hands covered his face and he slumped to the floor beside me. Everything about him said broken, defeated, but it didn't matter, not to me. I couldn't stop the rage. It burned, scorched and tainted everything I knew about Drew 'Jared' Peedict.

"Yes." His face looked so young. Crushed, but young. Unshed tears glistened in his eyes.

I had to hear the words for them to make sense. "Tell me. Tell me what you did."

"I killed him. I killed your father." His words were detached and hollow, but they made it real.

"No! No! No! I can't...I can't..." I was sobbing so hard I couldn't see straight. "I can't believe I ever trusted you! I don't want to know why. No! Don't you see that? It doesn't matter why you did it. He was all I had left. You took everything from me! EVERYTHING!" My voice rose to a shout. "There's no reason in the world that could make killing my father forgivable. None!"

I tried to stand but my legs refused to work. "I hate you. Do you understand me? I. Hate. You. You're a monster. You're this evil thing that doesn't deserve to live. I wish I'd never met you. I never want to see you again. Stop watching me. Stop following me. Never come near me again. Ever!"

Sometime during all my yelling I'd started hitting him. My hands smacked against his naked chest. I slapped at him, trying to hurt him. I was so angry, so hurt, I couldn't even thinking of a single training technique that could have caused him some real pain. There was nothing that he could have said in that moment that could make me forgive him.

"I thought he raped you. I heard what he said, what you said. I heard it all. I thought..."

"You don't know that. It wasn't, I..." My lips snapped shut as I tried to block the memories out.

He spoke quickly. Most of what he had to say fell on deaf ears as I shook my head to deny it all. "Before you were back he lawyered up. There was all this evidence that pointed to him. The burner phone that only called Lana. And then with Lana not commenting it all disappeared. He wouldn't answer any questions. He seemed responsible.

"I didn't know the Donnelly's got the lawyer for him. I didn't know the burner phone wasn't his at the time. Everything said he did it at the time. And when I asked him about that night, he wouldn't answer. He said he deserved to die. He told me that. At the time I thought it was because of what he did to you. I didn't know the truth."

"So you killed him?"

"He asked me for it. He begged me to help him die. He was sick and you were by his side. You doted on him and refused to leave. I slipped into his room and asked him for the truth. He told me he'd done it."

He pulled away from me and his gun was in his hand. The look on his face was enough to plop me back to my senses. I had told the most lethal man I knew that I hated him. In a hotel bathroom. There was no escape route, and he had a gun. Stupidity didn't begin to cover my mistakes.

Jared stared at me, his hand gripping the gun tight. "Please Katie."

I refused to be intimidated by the gun as I stared him down from my spot on the floor. I rose to my knees, still staring into his intense, hard green eyes. Anger pumped through my system so violently that my vision blurred from something other than tears. I hated him and I hated myself.

How did I let this happen? His gun was raised and aimed at my head.

After a moment, my chin dropped to my chest, my eyes closed. "Fine. Fuck it. Do it." Despite my tears, my voice was as steady as it had ever been.

Even with the heartache muting my senses, I heard the bathroom door click shut a moment later. I looked up and breathed a sigh of relief to still be alive, but my heart finished shattering into a million pieces when the outer door to the hotel room slammed shut. Jared had left me alive, but very much alone.