by Eve, Jaymin
My throat suddenly felt thick and scratchy. I couldn’t swallow and breathe properly.
“What did you tell him?” Beck asked, hiding his emotions fairly well, even though I could hear the pissed off in his tone.
Eddy lifted her eyebrows. “What do you think I told him? I said that I’d check with you all and let him know if he had any Riley privileges left.”
I waited for Beck to go caveman and start cursing Dante out and telling me I could never see him again. Then I’d have to bitch back and tell him he didn’t own me and I would be friends with whoever the fuck I wanted.
It was kind of our thing. Even though I felt a little too tired and fragile right now to really give it my all. Turning to Beck, I waited … and waited some more.
But all he did was smile. “Choice is yours, baby,” he said, and I was pretty sure my mouth dropped open.
“Wh—What?”
Beck’s grin grew, those perfect white teeth stealing my attention for a second before I remembered that we were having an actual conversation. “You’re not going to carry on about Dante?” I asked, not sure I believed a fucking word coming out of his gorgeous mouth.
Dylan snorted, but didn’t comment. I paid attention to him again for a moment, realizing that he was spending an awfully long amount of time fixing my leg up, his huge hands wrapped around my thigh. In fact, if he moved his hands just an inch higher…
“Dylan,” I said in warning. He just lifted his head, winking, and if I didn’t have Beck to compare him to, his breathtakingly handsome face would have knocked me over. But I did have Beck, and Dylan was going to have to take a small step back.
Just for now. Until we worked this dynamic out.
Because Dylan had been almost possessive since they got me back from Johnson, the fucking psycho. And I got it, but the lines were blurring. Not in my heart, but … maybe in the physical world.
“Move that hand any higher, Dyl, and you’re going to lose it,” Beck said. He never missed a thing.
Dylan lifted both hands in the air in surrender. “All fixed up. You can go back to discussing Dante.”
Yeah, anything to take the heat off him.
He wasn’t wrong, though, and I turned back to Beck. “You’re not going to fight me on Dante?” I asked again.
Beck shook his head. “No, Butterfly. I can’t fucking deny you anything. If you want Dante in your life, then I won’t stand in your way. But I will stand at your back and make sure that fucker doesn’t put a knife in it again.”
A smile burst across my face. “You’re so sweet,” I said, leaning over to kiss him, forcing myself to ignore the pain.
Eddy cracked up then. “Only Riley would think that was sweet. You’re both as fucked as each other.”
She wasn’t wrong.
25
It took Dante three days to find me. Three days where I did not make it easy for him. Eddy wasn’t allowed to message him. No one was allowed to talk to him at all … he needed to fucking prove himself to me. Now that no one was paying—or blackmailing—him to be in my life, did he really want to be in there? I needed to know.
Bang.
The door practically rattled on the third day, and I exchanged a glance with Beck and Dylan, both of them on their feet before me, stalking toward the door. We knew Jasper and Evan were at Delta meetings with their parents and shouldn’t be back for at least three hours. Eddy was with her mom shopping or some shit. Apparently when she moved out, Mrs. Langham decided she missed having a daughter.
Which left…
I moved slower, still recovering, but I was right behind them when they swung the door open, guns in hand.
“Dante,” I said, breathless all of a sudden.
He didn’t seem remotely fazed by the guns pointed at him, if anything he barely even noticed them.
“Riles,” he said, and in that one word there were a thousand memories. Dante had said my name so many times over the years in so many different circumstances. He’d been the first guy to steal my heart—as a best friend.
As my family.
“Let him in,” I said to Beck and Dylan, and they shot him one more long stare before both stepped back.
Dante leaned over to get through the doorway, and I wondered if he’d gotten even taller in prison. I didn’t remember him being so huge. His head was freshly shaved, black hair less than an inch thick. He had new ink too, it was visible right across the top of his chest, shiny, red in places, with some scabs already showing.
It was my butterfly. The car gleaming and blue, with a dark-haired chick driving it … no, not a chick. Me. He’d marked me on his skin again. In the most prominent place that existed. The only more obvious skin would be his face, and I was grateful I hadn’t ended up there.
“Riles,” he said again, his voice breaking as his eyes locked with mine. “Please.”
My hands were shaking; I tucked them in at my sides to hide the tremor. From the corner of my eye I could see Beck—he looked fucking furious. But he didn’t block Dante as he took another step to me.
I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d seen Dante cry, and those very rare times were mostly when we were children. But there were tears in his eyes right now. He might have been all bad boy with his black clothing, tatts, and masculine features, but there was no hiding the depth of sadness in his green eyes.
He looked broken.
Finally I stepped forward, freeing my hands, and reaching out to take his. The hand he’d held out since he stepped in the door.
“Hey,” I rasped out before clearing my throat.
Dante squeezed his eyes closed, head dropping down as he held my hand like it was the only thing tethering him to this world. “Fuck,” he sobbed.
Just one sob, but I knew he was about to lose it. Something he would hate to do in front of Beck and Dylan.
I turned to them. “Will you give us a few minutes, please?”
Beck’s jaw tensed, and if I looked down, I knew his fists would be clenched. He examined my face, searching for … something. Finally, he gave a single nod, and my heart swelled at that small gift from Beck. His trust. It had been a fucking long hard road to get here, but this was another step forward in our relationship.
“We’ll be next door, baby,” he said, brushing a hand over my back as he walked out the front door. Dylan did the same thing, a silent gesture of support, and then he was gone too.
As the door closed with a thud, Dante’s arms came around me in one sweep of movement. He crushed me to him, and I managed not to cry out, even though most of my injuries were still painful. But if I cried, I would bring Beck back, and right now, I needed this moment with Dante.
We both fucking needed it.
“I deserve to die,” Dante said into my shoulder, his voice a husky mess of emotions. “You should take Beck’s gun and shoot me.”
My heart ached at those words. At the thought of Dante not being in my world. “I have my own gun,” I joked, trying to ease the heavy in the room.
Dante pulled back, still holding me up, examining my face with his red-rimmed eyes.
“I wouldn’t blame you,” he said simply. And I could tell he meant that.
Narrowing my eyes on him, I roughly shoved him, not moving him an inch. “Don’t ever fucking talk like that again. You screwed up big time, don’t get me wrong, but you are not allowed to die. Not. Ever.”
Dante’s lips twitched, and I cleared my throat and wiggled for him to let me down. I stepped back. The air was heavy, filled with an ass ton of emotions, and after the last few days, I wasn’t really able to stay afloat in all the heavy.
“So, did you hear I was kidnapped?”
Way to break the tension, Riley. For fuck’s sake.
Dante’s entire demeanor changed, his face dark and scary, and there was the guy who managed to be part of one of the largest gangs in our area. Who managed to live in the world of Delta and not get completely annihilated. He was tough. Not Beck or Dylan level, but still up t
here. I’d always thought he could have fit in with the heirs, only now they would probably never trust him.
“Who do I need to kill?” he said, the words barely audible but the fury clear as fuck. Only someone that had lived our life, especially recently, would take my statement as truth and not laugh. Somehow, Dante knew I wasn’t joking around.
“It’s a long story,” I said as I moved toward the couch. Dante followed, his eyes assessing me closer this time, no doubt noticing the way I was moving quite gingerly.
“Tell me everything, Riles,” he said when we were seated, a few inches between us.
I turned to him. “I will, as long as you tell me absolutely everything that Catherine has done and manipulated in my life.”
He paled, skin resembling the white curtains behind me. “You got the files and the phone?”
I nodded. “Yes. But I want to hear it all from you. I want to know how you fought her.”
I had faith in him.
Dante nodded, and then he started his story. Beck and Dylan returned a few minutes after Dante started talking, and the three of us were silent, giving him his chance to explain. His chance for confession and redemption.
It was fucking painful for me at times, when he spoke about her manipulation, which was much further spread than I’d expected. One example was Dante destroying all of my college applications—except those in this state—to ensure I would never be able to go far from Catherine.
Beck’s chest was rumbling as he pulled me back into him, but I couldn’t look away from Dante.
“I did what I could though, Riles,” he said, his eyes pleading with me to understand. “Wherever I could lie to her and get away with it, I did, and I tried to stop your parents’ accident. I warned your father. But he did the fucking opposite of what I asked.”
He palmed the top of his head, rubbing a hand across the short strands when he closed his eyes. “It was a fucking mess, and I was saving money to try and get us all out, but…” he paused, and I almost held my breath waiting for him to finish. “There was a kid before me,” he said in a quiet, pained voice, “and I will never forget how she took her out.”
What?
“Who?” I said, body trembling.
He squeezed his eyes closed again. “Fuck. Riles. I hate being the one who has to tell you this.”
“Dante,” I snapped, fear making me mad. “I need to know. I need to know everything. You didn’t protect me from keeping me in the dark, you made me weak. I’m not fucking weak any longer.”
Beck stroked his hand down my side, and I felt a tiny bit better.
That seemed to strike a chord with Dante, because he stopped hesitating. “Your friend from elementary school, Scarlett … she didn’t just move away in the fourth grade.”
I paused. “What happened to her?”
He snorted but there was nothing remotely amused about it. “Her entire family was killed in an explosion. Final ruling was a faulty electrical board that caught fire and blew the car up. But I knew it was Catherine.”
My head spun as I tried to reconcile what he was saying with what I remembered. Scarlett and I were inseparable for years, but then she was just gone, and she’d never kept in touch.
“Her parents worked for Catherine,” Dante whispered, “and they used their daughter to keep track of you. But when they got scared and ran, Catherine had them killed.”
A choked cry escaped from my throat. My entire fucking life was a lie.
Dante reached out for me. “She never knew, though.” He was rushing to say this, trying to pull me from the dizzying spin I was in. “I didn’t have much time to know her before she ran—Catherine was bringing me in because they had expressed interest in getting out—but it was clear she never had a clue. She loved you, Riles.”
I held a hand up, unable to speak. Standing, I rushed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. Stepping farther into the brightly lit room, I let my gaze linger on my reflection. I looked pale, and small, with a mess of dark hair floating around me.
Catherine had reduced me to this. To a shell of the former person I was. A shell of the fucking person I could have been.
A scream ripped from me before I could stop it. An angry, pissed off, rage filled scream. Reaching forward, I smashed my hands through all the shit around the sink, sending it flying before I turned and moved for the cupboard nearby.
Strong hands caught me before I sent the rest of my makeup and toiletries flying.
I struggled for a beat, but common sense kicked in quickly. I was never going to shake Beck. He didn’t say anything, he just held me, tight enough that it … actually helped. After a minute, I no longer felt like I was going to shake into a million pieces, my fury and pain so strong that my cells could no longer contain it.
“Who the fuck am I?” I asked Beck, hating the broken in my voice. “Catherine has been controlling me since birth. Nothing was real. I’m not even sure my mom and dad were real at this point.”
They were too dead to tell me, but I had my suspicions that they might have worked for Delta too. Why else would my father freak out like that and try and run? A normal person would have gone to the police.
“Are you even fucking real?” I said, lifting my tear-filled eyes to meet his. The next words caught in my throat at the tumult in those stormy gray depths. Holy fuck.
“I’m going to say this one time, Butterfly,” he said in that quietly menacing voice. “This is the realest fucking thing that will ever be in your life.”
My body reacted involuntarily, pushing into Beck, needing to feel his hard body against mine. For some messed up reason, the madder he got, the scarier he became, the more I wanted to climb him like a fucking tree.
“The past doesn’t fucking matter, because after this vote, you’ll never have to worry about Catherine again. She’s going to pay. She’s going to have everything she loves and desires in this world stripped from her. I will make sure of that.”
“How long until the vote?” I said, needing this shit done in my life. I needed one normal day. Just one.
“Eight days.”
Eight more days until this was all over. Eight more days until I took my fucking life back.
Debitch was going down.
26
Dante didn’t go far from me; Beck let him stay in his old apartment, because we were now … living together. Something that should have freaked me the hell out, but it didn’t. Having Beck around was my comfort in life, and the officialness of “living together” didn’t diminish that at all. While I was still recovering, we spent the next few days at home, eating, sleeping, and Beck loving the fuck out of my body until I could barely walk. But this time it was completely okay with me. I hadn’t had many happy days since my parents’ deaths, but this week, it actually kind of felt like I was being given a gift.
If only it wasn’t the last hurrah before we were all destroyed. With the vote closing in, my nerves were completely shot. I alternated between relieved and terrified, because I had no idea if this was all going to go our way.
Either way, it would all be over soon.
* * *
Three days before the vote, I was leaving the bathroom, still drying my hair.
“Riley, what the fuck is this in the sink?” Beck yelled, and I pranced across, dressed in just a bra and panties, peering over his shoulder.
“Huh, guess I forgot to wash my bowl,” I said with a shrug, pressing my breasts to his arm because it felt good and I was somewhat addicted to Beck. “Who knew we could actually grow something green. I’ll tell that to the dead plants in the bathroom and on the balcony.”
A smile actually worked its way across his lips, and I shrugged again. This was one of our first little snags in living together. Beck was meticulously clean, and I was kind of a slob. Neither of us were working on making that mesh better either, and probably we’d need to get a cleaner in at some point—when we weren’t so suspicious of strangers—because cleaning was never going to be my thing.
But for now, we were all “odd couple bickering” which generally turned into the best kind of foreplay.
My nipples ached as I brushed them across his arm again. “Are you trying to distract me, Butterfly?” Beck asked, and he was the one distracting me, because I liked that rumble in his voice.
The towel from my wet hair hit the floor, and Beck’s hands were on my ass as he lifted me to the bench.
“Is it working?” I asked, breathless as he parted my knees and settled between them. He’d just jumped out of the shower before me, so he was only wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. Boxers which were strained far too tight over his erection.
Beck chuckled a dark, sexy sound as he captured my lips with his own, coaxing my mouth to open so he could explore with his tongue. Large, rough hands skimmed over my sides, reaching behind me to flick the clasp of my bra open and discard the garment somewhere across the kitchen.
His palms cupped my breasts, and I moaned into his kiss.
“I’d say it’s working pretty well,” he told me, his voice a husky promise of all the orgasms. Hell yes.
I looped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer as I sealed my lips to his, drinking him in like a fine wine and groaning when he ground against my core. If this was what living with Beck was like, I could safely chalk it up as one of the best decisions I’d ever made.
Seriously, it was like we couldn’t get enough of each other. Any time the opportunity presented we were clawing at each other, desperate to be closer...
The cold touch of metal at my hip made me pull back with a gasp, only to find Beck with a fucking butcher knife in his hand.
“Um...” I squinted at the blade, then quickly clued in when he swapped it to his other hand and sliced the other side of my panties open. Smart man, using the tools available.
He grinned at me, tossing my destroyed underwear over his shoulder then sliding the blade back into the big wooden knife block behind me.
“That’s better,” he murmured, trailing his fingers over my bare pussy. “We should just make a no clothing rule inside the apartment.”
