Lords of Wrath (Dark College Bully Romance) : Royals of Forsyth University

My ears ring painfully. For a long moment, all I can hear is that, mingled with the throb of my own pulse. Rath’s tight, dreadful expression is still frozen in the backs of my eyes, and the first inhale I take goes on so long that my chest feels like it could float away without me.

The man’s collapse to the ground is an afterthought, something I only notice when I realize the deafening pops have stopped. I’m still squeezing the trigger, but all it does is ‘click’ ineffectually.

I can’t seem to get my finger to stop trying.

The sobbed breath that tears from my throat is the only thing that shocks me back to awareness, to Rath’s black eyes gazing back at me, to Tristian’s stunned face, to Killian’s harsh profile as he glances over his shoulder.

Rath is the first to burst into motion, diving for the gun that’s fallen on the slick pavement. I hold my breath as I watch, half expecting the attacker to jump back up. Isn’t that how it goes in horror movies?

When Rath comes charging at me next, I shrink away, terror growing heavy in the pit of my stomach. Despite that, I can’t seem to lower the gun from the exact spot where I was aiming. I know it’s over—that the man must have half a dozen bullets buried in him—but my finger keeps clicking the trigger, over and over.

He pauses at my flinch, but not for long. His fingers are icy and wet when they slowly reach up to grab my wrist. The gentle touch is a shock against the taut tendon there, jumping with every useless pull of the trigger.

“Story,” he says, breathless and coaxing as his other hand gently covers the gun. “Come on, baby. Let it go.”

“I-I can’t.” The adrenaline has me in its clutches, and I’m not sure if I’m shivering or if the world is just trembling around me, but I think I’d have better luck lifting the car behind me than uncurling my fingers from this gun.

Rath wedges his fingertips beneath my palm, forcefully prying it away, and for a long moment, I watch the rain drip from the fringe of his dark hair, fat drops splashing on the leather of his jack.

Over the distant shriek of sirens, I ask, “Is he dead?” and I’m gasping as hard as Tristian. “Did I kill him?”

Rath rips the gun from my hand and shoves it into his jacket, hands coming up to frame my face. “You did a good thing,” he demands, the rushed intensity of his voice snapping my gaze from the rumpled mass of black on the ground. “I need you to get in the car. Right now, Story.”

He doesn’t give me a chance to obey, running to Tristian and Killian and crouching there on the wet pavement. “We need to get out of here, like ten fucking minutes ago,” he’s saying, slinging Killian’s arm over his neck. In the distance, the sirens are drawing nearer, piercing through the dusk.

But I find myself walking toward the body, feet heavy and splashing as I pass them, approaching it—because that’s what it is now, an it—with an unnecessary caution. The chest isn’t moving. The fingers are still. The water running down the pavement is dark with his blood.

I just have to know.

I have to know what Ted looks like.

I pause three times before finally pinching the mask between my fingers and yanking it up. When I do, I bury a scream into my palm, because one of my shots hit right in the cheek. It’s gruesome and mortal and so fucking ugly.

Ugly Nick.

“Oh my god,” I gasp, flinging myself away.

My brain isn’t firing on cylinders, because my first thought is that Ted is Ugly Nick, even though that makes no sense. Then I remember what he said to them before, about this being a job.

I didn’t kill Ted.

I just killed his fucking lackey.

“Story!” Rath is hissing, yanking me back by the hood of the sweater I’m wearing. “We have to fucking go!”

“But that’s—!“

“I know!” he snaps, wrenching me away from it. “The cops are coming, we have to run!”

Run.

It’s like everything snaps into place with that one word, and suddenly I’m hearing how close the sirens are and knowing that we won’t be able to leave the scene in time. I whirl around, taking a hard run toward the car and Rath is right on my heels, our feet pounding the pavement. As soon as we approach the car, I notice Tristian is two steps ahead of me, tearing my temporary license plate from the back before diving into the back, where’s he left Killian. Rath goes to take the driver’s seat, but I lurch in front of him.

“Get in!” I demand, ignoring his protest when I close my door.

The second his ass is in the passenger seat, I’m mashing down on the gas, reversing out of the alley just as the blue and red lights appear on the other end of it.

“Go, go, go!” Rath chants, but it’s unnecessary. I’m already peeling out, flying down 10^th Avenue and away from the main drag. He looks into the backseat, twisted around to get a look at Killian. “How bad is it?” I’m too busy looking in the rearview and panicking at the swirl of blue lights to pay attention to what Tristian is doing back there, but whatever Rath sees drags a miserable sound out of him. “What do we do? Killer, what do we do?!”

“Drive.” Killian’s voice is strong—not the sound of someone who’s on the precipice of dying—so I do exactly as he asks.

Evenly, I advise, “Hold on to something.”

No one listens to me. I can tell, because the second I pull the e-brake and jerk the wheel, whipping the car through another alley, Killian keens. It’d be an awful sound coming from anyone, but coming from him, it’s even more startling.

“Jesus fuck!” Tristian hoarsely barks, sounding both shocked and pained.

“Hold on,” I snap, and this time, they all do. I jerk the wheel again, careening onto 14^th Avenue and only narrowly missing a parked tractor trailer. The gear shift is solid in my hand, and I’m not good at much—I’ve always sucked at math and history—but this is like slipping back into a comfortable pair of long-lost jeans that miraculously still fit. For a moment, it’s like I can feel Jack and his big sister in the back seat, anxious but still wearing big, toothy grins. It helps that the car handles like a dream, allowing me to weave between cars as I fly right through a stoplight.

Rath sucks in a sharp breath, palm coming up to brace against the roof of the car. “You’re going to get us killed!”

Roughly, I switch gears. “Shut up.” And since I know he’s glaring, I add, “I’m not saying it to be a bitch, I just really need to focus.” I punctuate this by zipping between two cars, the blue lights still in the distance behind me. They’re not close enough that it feels futile, but they’re not far enough for any comfort. There’s gridlock up ahead, so I pull sharply to the left, into oncoming traffic.

“Look out!” Rath shouts, flinging a hand toward the dash, but I’m already swerving around the car barreling toward us. Another screeches to an abrupt stop, fishtailing for a few yards and just barely missing us. “What the fuck!”

Unbothered, I take us back over the median, sliding smoothly into the right lane. A couple more veers to the left, the right, and I’ve got wide open road ahead of me.

Rath is breathing hard, body coiled tight. “Should have taken my chances with the cops. Jesus Christ, Story. Where the hell did you learn to drive like that?”

Jerking my hand, I shift gears and stomp on the gas pedal. “Jack taught me,” I answer, and if we weren’t running from the cops with my stepbrother bleeding out in my backseat, I might even have it in me to grin at the memory.

“Jack,” Rath parrots, his eyes boring into me. “Who’s that? Some sugar daddy you were fucking?”

“What? No.” I flick him a dark look before merging into the zip of highway traffic. “Jack was one of my roommates back in Colorado. He was a very skilled thief and also incredibly gay.”

“What does a thief have to do with driving like that?” Rath asks, rifling through my glove compartment.

“He had this crew,” I nervously babble, thinking of his sister and the other two guys who lived with us. I know how it sounds, but they were all the most innocuous people—easy to be around. They were very good at not asking questions. “They would case out different places. Nothing you’d think of, though. Auto repair stores, small restaurants, mom and pop stores. Places with shitty security and cash left in the drawer.”

“You were the getaway driver?” Killian guesses, and I shiver at the sound of his voice.

I nod. “The first time was by mistake. I didn’t even know what they were doing, but they came running out, yelling at me to go…and well, I went.” The adrenaline is still in full force, causing me to babble. “I drove so fast I almost wrecked the car. When they asked me to do it again, I said yes, because…I don’t know. It was money, and I was good at it, and it was kind of nice.” Darkly, I add, “I’m not used to guys wanting something from me that doesn’t include opening my legs for them.” The tense and very pointed silence that follows doesn’t last long.

Tristian’s voice comes, panicked and gritty-sounding from the back seat. “We need to call Daniel.”

“No!” Rath and I bark in a flawless unison. The quick, aborted look we share is full of nervous energy. “We can’t call Daniel.”

“Why the fuck not?!” Tristian’s words are edged in a belligerent panic, and I wonder how bad it is.

“Because we just killed Ugly Nick,” Rath answers, eyes hard. “And I’m not walking into South Side again until I know why.”

“We have a fucking bullet wound here, Rath!”

He whirls around, snapping, “And we might have more if we go back there!”

“Goddamn it.” It’s growled so low that it sputters off into a wracking cough. It hurts just hearing Tristian speak in that gravelly rasp. “So what do we do?”

It’s Killian who answers. “Find a place to hunker down for a minute. Call Ray. Buy us some time.”

“Time for what?” Tristian asks. When no one answers, he heaves this big, grainy exhale and shoves himself between the front seats. “Okay,” he says, pointing out the windshield. His hand is bloody. “Take the exit up here and go west. The faster, the better.”

I don’t ask where we’re going. Wherever it is will be the place I finally come clean about Ted.

About everything.

The cabin is tucked away in the pitch-black woods, only illuminated by the headlights of the Charger. Rath and Tristian squeeze out of the backseat, hurrying to help Killian out of the car.

“Seven six two five,” Tristian barks, nodding at the cabin. Killian can stand, but he needs help and his enormous frame weighs heavily on his friend. “The lockbox on the door. That’s the code.”

I run up and punch in the numbers, getting a red light the first try. My hands are shaking and I can smell the sulphur on them, because I shot a man. I killed him.

I’m a killer.

I get the code right on the second try and the lock unlatches, allowing me to open the solid wood door and swing it wide enough for the guys to get Killian in. I instantly spot the long plank wood table in the middle of the room and command, “Get him on the table.” I look at Tristian. “Is there a first aid kit or something? Supplies?”

“Hall closet. Tool kit on the floor,” he grunts, jaw clenching as he and Rath leverage Killian’s massive weight on the edge of the table.

I dart to the hallway, noting how small the cabin is. The Mercer family is loaded, with homes all over the country. I’ve seen pictures on Tristian’s social media of a beach house made almost entirely of glass, overlooking crystal blue water, and a mountaintop home that seems more like a lodge than a single-family dwelling. I’ve heard there’s a penthouse in New York, an estate in Rome, but this…

It’s a small, rustic cabin that smells musty and has furniture half a century old.

One thing is for certain; no one will suspect a Mercer owned this place.

Anyone who witnessed us running from a murder wouldn’t find us. Downside? There’s also no one to help Killian if he’s seriously injured.

And he doesn’t look not seriously injured. He’s two shades paler, and he’s shivering, all of us still soaking wet from the rain.

Tristian darts around the room turning on lamps. “Welcome to my dad’s bug-out cabin.” He points distractedly around the room. “Kitchen, two bedrooms, a small bath off the hall. The windows are reinforced, with bars on the outside, there’s no other egress but the one we just came through.”

“Bug out?” Rath asks, lifting Killian’s shirt to reveal the bullet wound. It’s not like I’m expecting. It’s not some enormous gaping wound that’s spraying blood. It’s just a small pierce, blood sluggishly draining from it. I know nothing about gut wounds, but it must be a good sign that this one is located right by his side.

Right?

“Yeah, this place has belonged to the Mercer men for over a hundred years. No one knows about this place, not even the wives.” He stoops by the fire and starts to load in logs, and I realize for the first time that we’re all shivering, but Killian could be in shock. “It’s strictly a hideout. Doesn’t exist on tax records. Fully stocked with food, booze, ammunition,” he nods at the toolbox in my hands, “and medical supplies, just in case.”

“Who is your father hiding from?” I ask, carrying the box to the table and unlatching the lid. Inside are medicines, medical instruments, gauze and bandages. A small pamphlet is taped to the top. I rip it off.

“Wives. The mob. The IRS. Zombies.” He shoves rolled up newspaper under the logs. “Who the hell knows. Don’t ask, don’t tell. That’s the Mercer philosophy.” Tristian strikes a match, staring at the flickering flame for a beat before setting the newspaper on fire. He pokes a few small sticks into the fire and dusts his hands off on his thighs. “It’ll heat up fast. Let’s take a look.”

We all stand over my stepbrother and look at the wound, and I respect Tristian for being driven and calm, but none of us knows what the fuck to do.

Killian raises his eyebrows. “Now might be a good time to call Ray!”

Rath jumps into action first, pulling his phone from his pocket. He pauses, glancing at Tristian. “What are the chances Mercer paranoia accounts for use of burner phones?”

Tristian grins.

A few minutes later, Rath has Ray on the phone. The only thing I know about the man is that he put that fucking tracker beneath my skin. It doesn’t endear me to him at all, but I’m still relieved at Rath’s pensive expression as he sits near Killian, giving Ray the rundown with a bowed head. Ray must give him a list of instructions, because eventually, Rath goes quiet, and then stands, inspecting the wound.

“It’s still bleeding, but not—oh. Right.” He nods at Tristian, gesturing to Killian. “We need to look at his back.”

Killian rolls his eyes, muttering, “I’m right here,” and twists to give Rath a view.

Rath’s eyes go wide at what he sees. “Oh, fuck! Yes, it’s—yeah, you’re right, it went right through.” To me, he snaps his fingers. “Gauze, gauze, fucktons of gauze!”

I rush to his side, getting a good look at the exit wound, and my pulse hammers as I push a wad of gauze into it. I get another handful of the cloth and do the same to the front, applying pressure on both sides, and that’s when Killian meets my gaze.

“Thanks,” he says, voice low and full of something I don’t have the bravery to face.

He won’t be thanking me later.

We spend the next thirty minutes trying to heat him up and stem the bleeding, Killian wincing as Rath goes through the motions of determining if anything vital was hit. The longer he speaks to and listens to Ray, the less panicked and hopeless he looks. His expression transforms into a stony sort of determination when he finally hangs up.

Rath shrugs out of his jacket, explaining, “We need to cut him out of these wet clothes, keep applying pressure, and then…” He pushes his wet hair away from his face. “We have to wait for the blood to coagulate and hope it just caught muscle.” To me, he asks, “Any antibiotics in that thing?”

I rifle around, reading the various labels. “Yes!” I give a bottle a rattle, tossing it to Rath, who catches it deftly. “There’re painkillers, too?”

Killian rolls his head to the side, gaze searching for Tristian as he shivers. “Did I hear you say something about booze before?” At Tristian’s nod, Killian decides, “Load me the fuck up.”

Before we do, Tristian runs around the house, dragging a mattress into the main room and placing it on the floor. He has it set up with clean bedding right in front of the fireplace, which is where they carefully drag Killian to.

When Tristian pulls out his knife to cut away his shirt, I flinch so hard that I knock over a lamp, gasping as I fumble to catch it. He only stalls for a moment, his blue eyes piercing mine just as surely as that bullet had punctured Killian.

Looking away, he cuts the shirt as Rath tears it away.

Eventually, Killian is naked and warming in front of the fire, tipping his head up to take a long swig of the vodka Tristian had found in the freezer. “We need to figure out what to do about Nick,” he ultimately says.

Rath shoves his fingers into his hair, giving it a nervous tug. “I can’t believe he tried to fucking rob us.”

“That’s not like him,” Tristian agrees, eyes wild but pensive. “Daniel will understand, won’t he? He’ll get that we were just defending ourselves. It’s not like he was in on it. Killer’s his own son, for fuck’s sake.”

Rath lifts his shirt over his head and begins pacing. “We need to make sure he was doing this alone. Just because Daniel didn’t orchestrate it doesn’t mean someone else didn’t. Has Ugly Nick ever struck you as the self-driven type?”

“He wasn’t.” My voice emerges, small but certain, and I struggle not to shrink against the weight of their gazes swinging to mine. “He wasn’t working alone.”

Killian’s eyes are already glazed, but they still look sharp and alert when they narrow. “What we’re you even doing there, Story?”

Swallowing, I perch on the table they’d just lifted Killian from, hugging my middle against the chill of my wet clothes. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Rath’s eyes are a blazing inferno and he’s standing stiffly, fists curling, like he already knows what I’m going to say. “If you’re about to tell us you had something to do with this, you’d better walk out that fucking door and run for your goddamn life.”

My voice gets lodged somewhere in my throat, because I want to tell them I wasn’t involved—not intentionally—but I’m not sure if it’d be true.

Tristian’s voice comes, quiet and thoughtful. “No,” he says, head shaking. “She fucked us over. She stabbed us in the back. But this isn’t her style. Right?” He says the last part to me and I almost have to laugh.

Oh, if he only knew how much this was my style.

Running away. Making other people do my dirty work for me. Being ultimately unable to follow through. Realizing that I’ve messed everything up.

It’s signature Story Austin.

Shoulders curling in on myself, I begin.

“I ran away from boarding school because someone was stalking me.” I look them all in the eye, bracing myself for the worst. “He calls himself Ted.”

Ten minutes later, Killian only looks half lucid, but Rath and Tristian look fully, terrifyingly alert.

“That’s why you really left,” Tristian guesses, looking away to take a pull out of the bottle of vodka. “It wasn’t about us.”

“It was about you,” I argue. But after a moment of silence, I’m forced to concede, “Not just about you, though. And it wasn’t about Ted, either.” I rub my forehead, wondering if this is something I even need to go into.

Fuck it.

Might as well.

“I became a sugar baby because I wanted to run away. I needed the money, and it was…” I give a heavy shrug, unable to even be embarrassed. “It was what I knew. When my mom needed money, that’s what she did. I was young and stupid, and all these old perverts were champing at the bit to throw money at me just for showing a little skin. It was quick and easy, and it was going to help me get away from Daniel.”

Rath’s head snaps back in surprise. “Why were you trying to get away from Daniel? The only person more loaded than him in this town is Tristian’s dad.”

“I didn’t care about that!” I insist, and it’s true. “My mom always wanted the nice life. The lavish life. The life with nice houses and fancy cars and elegant parties. I just wanted to be safe. And Daniel?” I shake my head, saying in no uncertain terms. “He wasn’t safe. Not for me.”

Killian turns to look at me, and even through the painkillers and booze, his eyes are still brash and livid. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about!” I burst, lurching to my feet. “You saw it with your own two eyes, Killian! Daniel…he’d get tipsy and close me up in his office, and go on and on about me being so pure and sexy. He’d—” I chew the next words out with a sneer, “He’d touch me. He’d make me sit in his lap and then put his hands up my shirt. He’d tell me I had to keep myself chaste, and then he’d talk about how well I was developing. It was disgusting!” Pulling in a long breath, I add, “I knew every day I stayed in that house was one day closer to him following through. And I refused to do that. I refused to be that.” My bark of laughter is a dark, brittle thing. “I spent years around my mom and her Johns, but no one ever did anything like that to me. Not until she married him. So I wanted to get away, before anyone could…” I make sure Tristian is looking me in the eye when I say, “But then there was you. You really just bulldozed over all those hopes, didn’t you?”

He clenches his jaw, looking away. “I already told you about that.”

“You apologized,” I acknowledge, ignoring Rath’s confused glances between us. “But it didn’t take it away, Tristian. What happened that night…it changed me. So I shut down all my sugar baby accounts and begged Daniel for the money to leave. Can you imagine what that was like? Begging the man whose had his hands on you—a child—for money to go away?”

Killian’s eyes are on me, unblinking. “What did he make you do?” It’s a question that makes a shiver roll up my spine, because I can hear the revulsion and fury in his voice, and for once—Jesus Christ, for once—it’s in defense of me.

“Nothing,” I assure, sniffling against the chill. “My mom was there the whole time. I guess he didn’t have it in to make a proposition.” Weirdly, he seemed agreeable to the prospect of boarding school. It hadn’t really taken much in the way of persuading him.

“Can we go back to this Ted fucker?” Rath asks, spreading his arms. “So what, he followed you around the country, apparently murdered your gay roommate, and you just decided…‘hey, might as well go see those three guys who done me wrong and hope he fucking kills them’?” He pushes a fingertip into his temple. “Are you fucking crazy?!”

“That’s not how it happened,” I say, but it’s only half true. I shift uncomfortably under their accusing stares. “Because there was a chance the three of you could beat him, too. And I thought…I don’t know…”

It’s Killian who finishes for me. “You thought at least one would get taken out.”

I guess it sounds pretty bad when it’s said like that. “I felt safer with you,” is my reply, and that at least isn’t a lie. “You hurt me, but I knew—I thought I could handle the three of you. I thought I could be your Lady, and you’d protect me.”

Rath’s tongue swipes out, running absently at his piercings. “You thought?”

With a heavy nod, I confess, “There came a point where I was just…so fucking mad at all of you. So tired of the things you did to me. I was impatient, and I acted impulsively by sending that picture—”

“You think!” Rath thrusts a hand at Killian, to the wound in his stomach. “Fucking hell, Story! You set this guy on us without even saying anything. How the fuck were we supposed to protect you from something we never knew existed?!”

“Stop,” Killian says, rubbing the dampness from his hair. “She couldn’t go through with it. Could you?” Biting nervously on my lip, I give him a nod. He nods back. “You don’t want to see us dead.”

It pains me to admit it. Maybe even more than all that stuff about Daniel, or Colorado, or Ted. “You’ve done a lot of really horrible things to me. You’ve hurt me, manipulated me, controlled me, pushed me to my knees time and time again. But I think…” I sink heavily onto the table, my eyes filling with unshed tears. “I see the bad in all of you, and it’s so ugly. But there might be some good there, too. I don’t know—there might be, right? Do I want to see it snuffed out?” When a tear falls, I swipe it away, looking at all the muddy tracks our shoes have made over the floor. “No. I don’t want to see you dead. I want to see you sorry. I want to see those good parts of you and know they’re the reason I keep coming back. I want to know I’m not broken—that I’m here because of…” I roll my watery eyes, rushing out, “Easters, and comfortable mornings, and car rides, and lunches. I need to know that, because otherwise?” Shaking my head, I decide, “Otherwise I’m nothing.”

They don’t realize this, but it’s as much a revelation to me as it is to anyone else. The truth is, I’m tired of pain. Tired of feeling it, and tired of inflicting it. I just want to fucking breathe. I want to be a good person—a whole person—the kind of person who doesn’t lay awake at night thinking about how to make other people suffer.

Even when those people maybe deserve to.

I think it starts with being better than them. Being stronger not because I can strike back, but because I choose to move forward. Being a survivor not because I step on someone’s back, but because I take what’s coming and handle it myself.

And I think it starts with saying this:

“I’m sorry.” They don’t deserve it—not for my own revenge, and not even for this. But it’s not about them. Not really. It’s about the way I’ve been feeling since leaving Colorado behind. It’s about the black, roiling sickness that’s infected my soul and the way it’s been driving me around like a parasite to a host. “I’m sorry for not telling you about Ted. For using you to get back at him. For using him to get back at you. I’m just…I’m sorry.”

It’s about freedom.

“Don’t.” Killian reaches up to rub his fingers into his eyes, the gesture slow and lazy but still somehow full of agony. “None of this would have happened if I’d—” His hand falls and he looks away, jaw flexing with a swallow that sounds as pained as it looks. “I was such a fucking idiot. Thinking you wanted him. That he wasn’t just taking anything he thought he could own. All those fucking things I did because I thought…” He doesn’t need to say it. It hangs heavy in the air between all of us. Everything he’s done, every injury he’s inflicted because he thought the worst of me. He lays his hand over his wound, eyes pinched. “Tomorrow, we’re going to work out what to tell my dad. We’ll explain about Nick, try to get a line on this Ted motherfucker and show him what it means to come at us. Story’s going to tell us everything she knows about this guy. Documents, emails, phone calls, texts—all of it.” Sliding his heavy eyes to mine, he finishes, “And then you’re going to leave.” It isn’t said ungently, but it still makes me pull in a long, steeling sniffle.

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t.” Killian doesn’t smile often, and though it’s hard to consider the sad curve of his lips anywhere in the ballpark, that’s what it is—an anemic, bitter-looking thing. “Tristian and I will give you money if you need it. I don’t know what it’ll look like for you to start a new life. Go to another school, if you want. Go back to Colorado to your band of thieves. Join the French Foreign Legion—I don’t fucking care. But whatever you do, you won’t belong to us while you’re doing it.”

Rath folds his arms, head bowed as he watches his feet. “We talked about it earlier. Before you found us, we were trying to figure out how to do it.”

Tristian, his blue eyes boring into mine, elaborates, “How to let you go.”

For a long moment, I’m speechless, unable to digest what they’re saying. “Why?” I eventually choke out.

It’s Killian who answers, the lines of his face worn and weary. “You don’t want us, Story. You never did. You came here because you wanted someone standing between you and some sicko creep. I might not have known that at the time, but…I could feel it.”

“Me, too,” Rath says, looking first at me, and then at Tristian.

Tristian’s head hangs heavy on his neck as he gazes into the crackling fire, lifting his palms to the warmth. “They say if you care about something, you should let it go.” There’s a long beat of charged silence, and then he finally lifts his eyes to mine. “For the record, that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. If you really cared about something, you’d put that shit behind lock and key and never let it out of your sight. I voted to make you stay.” He takes a long swig of the vodka, throat jumping with his swallow. “But none of us really feel like scraping your corpse up off your bathroom floor, so I guess Killer has a point. You can’t make someone want to be with you. Can’t say I haven’t tried.” Bitterly, he notes, “Once or twice.”

No one seems to have anything to add, and I’m too busy fighting back useless tears to bother thanking them—not that I should.

Rath heaves a hard breath. “This place got some dry clothes, or what?”

Tristian puts the bottle down, pushing to his feet. “Follow me.” He doesn’t look at me as they leave the room, and I get the sense that, buried in his insistence that he didn’t want to let me go, was a very significant declaration.

I don’t allow myself to see it.

Instead, I edge around Killian to approach the fire, desperate for a morsel of warmth as I crouch, shivering and coming down from the adrenaline high. As far as confessions go, that could have gone worse. But now I’m sitting here trembling in front of the fire and remembering that I killed someone. It doesn’t matter that he was a bad guy intent on killing other people for nothing but money. I took a life out of this world. There was a time the thought might have empowered me.

Instead, I just feel cold.

Something tickles my hip and I almost jump, except a glance reveals it’s just Killian’s knuckle, arm splayed out at his side to reach me. When I look over my shoulder, though, he’s staring into the fire, eyelids heavy.

“Remember that time I made you a sandwich?” he asks, sweeping his knuckle back and forth.

I take a moment to decipher what he’s talking about. But then this is how Killian works. He takes the best part of an otherwise shitty memory and uses it to define the moment. Easter. A truly terrible day, despite the night we spent in his room. The sandwich. The time he fed me after a particularly brutal mid-sleep fuck.

“Yeah,” I answer, remembering the peanut butter and jelly. The glass of milk. Eating it in his bed as he clicked around on his computer. The way I was with him after, making myself soft and cuddly and oh so grateful.

There’s a long stretch where he says nothing else and I find my attention returning to the flames, even though I feel his knuckle against me like a brand.

His voice is heavy and slurred when he suggests, “We could do that again.”

I give the fire three fast blinks, because he can’t be talking about the sex. He can barely sit up without looking like he’s in some serious pain. Chances are he isn’t asking to make me a sandwich, either. Since there isn’t any come dripping down my thighs for him to wash away, I can only assume he’s talking about the other thing.

“You mean…?” I chance a look over my shoulder, catching the way he’s worrying his lip between his teeth. “Now?”

His knuckle slides away with his gaze. “It’s not an order.”

Because they aren’t giving those to me anymore. They’re giving me away, letting me go. And tonight is the last night Killian Payne will ever watch me sleep again. Unbidden, I think of the words he spoke a few nights ago, too drugged up to realize he was telling me he loved me. I’m thinking of how I told him such a thing was impossible. Killian can’t possibly know how to love anything.

But he believes he does.

I know what I’m going to do, but it still takes me a long moment in front of the fire to work up the nerve. In the end, it’s laughably easy. I take off my shoes first, setting them close to dry. Then, I peel off my wet socks. I shrug out of the hoodie I’d stolen from Rath’s closet and then tug my damp shirt over my head. I stand up to shimmy my pants down my legs, leaving my panties on, but nothing else. It’s such an odd feeling now, undressing in front of these men. There was a time the thought would have made me shudder and curl in on myself. But nothing of my body hasn’t been seen, tested, or explored by them. I turn to my stepbrother without shame, and the way he’s looking at me–soft and surprised—makes an invisible fist clench around my insides.

When his eyes fall to the bandages on my chest, all of that softness falls away.

He’s warm when I press my body into his side, carefully resting my cheek on the bold, vivid Griffon inked into his shoulder.

“Griffons guard treasures…and they mate for life.”

He makes room for me, swinging his arm wide, and when it slowly comes around my shoulders to touch my bare side, I allow myself a moment of unforgivable self-indulgence. I imagine that we’re lovers—the kind who do things like this. Curl up with one another against the cold. Fingertips skating over skin. Warm breath puffed into my hair. I imagine those words he said were true. That he loves me. That he’d kill for me.

I allow myself to pretend.

Apparently, Killian wants to do the same. “What would you have done that night?” he asks, wide palm sweeping along my back. “If I’d kissed you.”

I know without asking that he’s talking about that night in his room years ago, but it’s hard to call up the memory of that girl. “I don’t know,” I answer honestly, unable to imagine it. Would he have been sweet and gentle, like he’s being now? Or would he have forced his way into my mouth, greedy and impatient?

“Would it have been like…with my dad?” His voice is a dull rumble beneath my ear. “Would you have wanted to run?”

This, at least, I can answer with certainty. “No.”

His chest dips with a deep exhale, and when his hand leaves my skin, it returns with the edge of the blanket Tristian had brought, lazily covering me with it. “Guess it doesn’t matter now.”

I listen to the sounds his lungs make—the beating of his twisted heart—and a lot of things have gone unspoken tonight, but none so much as this.

There’s no going back.

Some wounds can never be mended.

I wake up before I even realize I’ve fallen asleep. The fire is still burning and neither me nor Killian have moved an inch, his hand still heavy on my shoulder. I can feel from the deep, even rhythm of his breaths—from the subtle snore beneath my ear—that he’s fallen asleep, too.

Tristian is asleep beside him.

I’ve never seen Tristian truly unkempt and out of sorts before. The closest he ever gets is basketball games and fucking, and even then, his hair remains supernaturally well kept. Now it’s flat and limp, only half-dried from the rain and accompanying a shirtless chest and a pair of boxers that look a size too small. He has his arm thrown over his eyes, mouth parted with his measured breaths, and he’s clearly brought every blanket the Mercers have ever owned and piled them here on top of us.

I take a second to swim my way out of them, sitting up to peer around the room. I find Rath across the distance in the kitchen. He’s sitting on the counter, kicking his feet, fingers clutching his hair in two tight fists. I watch him for a long moment, awkward and unsure.

Killian barely stirs when I extricate myself from his side, careful not to jostle him as I wrap a blanket around my shoulders. Rath must be lost in thought, because when I approach, he jerks in surprise.

“Shit,” he breathes.

“We should get some sleep.” It goes without saying that there’s a lot to do tomorrow. Calls to make. Questions to ask. Ostensibly an appointment with an actual medical professional—Ray, at the very least.

Rath looks so far from being able to sleep that he’s practically vibrating as he jumps off the counter. “Then go back to your cuddle pile,” he sneers, wrenching open a drawer. “I’m on a mission to find one goddamn cigarette, and if I can’t, then I’m stealing your car and driving to the nearest store.”

I suppose he’s not feeling as forgiving as Killian.

Sighing, I turn and walk back to the mattress. It’s a big mattress, but not huge. Maybe a queen. Tristian’s fingers twitch when I edge around him to reach for my discarded clothes. But when I shove my hand into the pocket of the hoodie, I’m grateful to find that accidentally pilfered, crumpled pack of cigarettes is still there.

The look on Rath’s face when I return with them is probably the closest to forgiveness I’m going to get. “How the hell?”

Shrugging, I pull my arm back into the blanket. “Took them when I stole your gun.”

He pauses at this, brows furrowing as he opens the box of cigarettes. Then he snorts. “These aren’t cigarettes,” he says, pulling one from the pack. “They’re blunts.”

“Oh.” My face falls, although I don’t know why. Inexplicably, I really wanted to save the day. “Sorry.”

He gives me a confused but distracted look, pulling a box of matches from the drawer. “For what? These are like five times better than a cigarette.” Popping the end of the blunt into his mouth, he strikes the match and lights it. The ember glows red-hot as he sucks in a deep inhale and holds it in his lungs. “Fuck me,” he exhales, shoulders falling as the smoke streams from his mouth. He gives the blunt a lingering look. “Ignoring the fact that we’re only here because you killed a guy, you’re a goddamn angel, Sweet Cherry.”

The words are like a knife to my chest.

And I should know.

“Did he…” My voice cracks and I clear my throat, wondering. “Did he have a family?”

Rath slides back onto the counter, puffing at the blunt. “Ugly Nick? Not fucking likely.” When he sees my relieved reaction, he pauses, taking a slow hit of the blunt before extending over the distance between us. He gives it a little inviting bob and I hesitantly take it. “Don’t beat yourself up over that shit. One less Nick isn’t going to hurt anything. It was getting confusing anyway.”

The weed is smooth and harsh all at once, and my cheeks flush when I cough. “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I say, mouth slanted unhappily.

Rath takes back the blunt, and he’s not like Tristian. Rath wears the half-drowned rat look very well, hair falling into his dark eyes as they hold mine. “Okay, how about this? You see those guys over there?” He uses the blunt to point to the mattress. “They’d kill for you. No questions asked. Full stop.” Rath shakes his head, some of that manic energy disappearing from the line of his back. “Think what you want about us, Story. Think we’re twisted and cruel and heartless and controlling and empty. Maybe you’re right. But that’s real shit. How many people can say someone would kill for them?” He lazily flicks the ashes into the sink. “Maybe it’s less that you killed a man, and more like you saved three.”

I nod, ducking my chin into the blanket. “Maybe.”

He tips his head back against a cabinet, looking down his nose at me. “Did you get what you needed, Sour Cherry? Setting us up, getting your revenge?”

Since I’m too weary for the pretense he’s offering me, I open the blanket, asking, “Did you?”

The blunt halts halfway to his lips, and then his hand slowly falls. It takes everything in me not to take a step back when he slides off the counter and steps up to me, those black eyes locked on my chest.

When he reaches up to peel away the bandage, I let him.

Something dark and shuttered passes over his face at the sight of their initials. I haven’t looked at them yet and I don’t bother to now. I avert my eyes to the window above the sink, wondering how many hours are left with them.

His fingertip is gentle as it brushes the skin. “I know what you think,” he says, the words nothing but a gossamer breath. “You found out about the game and figured it was fake. And you’re right.” Even knowing it’s true doesn’t stop the way my heart twists at the easy admission. When he touches my chin, forcing my gaze to his, I have to set my jaw to stop it from wobbling. “Partly,” he amends, pinning me beneath his demon eyes. “The tutoring, the blow jobs…it’s true, they were fake. I was just having some fun. I liked having you there, toying with you, knowing you’d go down to your room and touch yourself because of it.” He slides his eyes to my mouth, looking unapologetic and yet strangely sad. “But there were some things that were real. I never used those mornings we were together. You can check the spreadsheet yourself if you don’t believe me.”

I’m not sure I can afford to do that.

It’s hitting me now that leaving these men will be hard enough without wondering whether those gentle touches and sweet kisses were perhaps genuine. I know myself well enough to understand the things I’d cling to.

“I regret being caught,” he says, eyes unabashed. “If you’d never found out about the game, then maybe you could have trusted me. And god knows I regret pissing you off, because you’re apparently really good at being a scheming bitch.” The crooked line of his mouth softens the words, even if what he says next shatters the levity. “But this?” His eyes fall to the skin between my breasts, hands coming up to hold the blanket away. He releases a long sigh as he inspects it. “It’s the closest I’ll ever get to being a part of you. To being inside of you. I want to say I regret it, but I’d be lying.”

He doesn’t sound happy about it. Not victorious or spiteful. There isn’t a hint of triumph in the way his eyebrows go low, as if maybe he’s disappointed in himself. For admitting the weakness? For having one at all?

He’s perfectly still when I strain up on my toes to push our mouths together. I don’t mean it to start anything. It’s just that the scraping disquiet inside my chest is desperate for one last taste.

One last taste of the easy mornings.

What I get is vodka and weed, Rath’s tongue delving inside the crease of my lips. His hands pushing the blanket from my shoulder. Grazing down my bare sides and landing on my hips. Dragging my body against his, curling his back to surge into me.

When he lifts me to the counter, my blood goes liquid hot at the feel of him between my thighs. I can feel his growing hardness, not just because of the bulge in his pants, but in the way he kisses me. Long, lingering plunges into my mouth, only to retreat and brush his wet lips against mine. It’s a tease, but it’s also a test.

“You can,” I breathe, pressing my heel into the back of his thigh. “You can fuck me.” He’s always most excited when I beg for it. “Please?”

He cups my jaw then, and the kiss becomes searing. I spread my legs for him, invite him in, twist my fists into the sweater he’s wearing and haul him closer. For a moment, things are rough—his fingers tangling into my hair, digging into the soft flesh of my thigh—but then he’s shuddering against me and sliding away.

He drags a wrist over his mouth, averting his eyes. “It’s going to be hard enough without knowing what I’m missing.”

I take the blanket when he extends it to me, sliding from the counter to wrap it back around my shoulders. That twisting disquiet in my chest just worsens at the rejection, and I don’t know how much of it is showing in my expression until it’s reflected back at me in his.

His shoulders sink. “Goddamn, girl.” He jerks me roughly into his chest, folding me into his long arms. I take too long to realize it’s a hug. To bring my arms around his waist. To tuck him into the cocoon of the blanket where it’s nothing but warmth and mornings and plans that he’ll never get to use.

He cups the back of my head in a wide palm, stroking my hair as he quietly speaks. “I’m about to give you some hard truth, Story. You might not want to be part of us, but deep down, that’s exactly what you are. Whatever gives that instinct to kill for someone? It’s not something you can shake off. If it were, then Killer would have done it years ago.” I can hear him swallow beneath my ear, voice dropping to a whisper, soft like a secret. “And I’d be doing it right now.”

It’s the best thing any of them could have given me—this proof that there may be hurt and misery here, but there’s tenderness too. There’s something good. Something worth wanting, even if it’s too agonizing to cling to it.

“Lay with us?” I ask, voice tight with things I refuse to say. Apologies, promises, and yes. Regrets.

He brushes a kiss into my hair. “No cuddling.”

“Never.”

I go back to the mattress and carefully reclaim my spot at Killian’s side. He hasn’t moved since I left and he doesn’t move now, the sounds of Rath undressing mingling with the crackling of the fire. Killian’s shoulder is still warm beneath my cheek, and I listen to the steady beat of his heart as I wait, refusing to feel conflicted about the gratitude I feel for hearing it—for knowing that he’s alive.

The mattress dips when Rath slips beneath the blanket and I already know what to expect. I say nothing when he slots up against my back, all that bare skin meeting mine as he drapes an arm around me.

Nothing but this.

“Goodnight, Dimitri.”