All He'll Ever Be

by W Winters

  Her words from last night, words that wrecked me and caused all of this shit. Those words come back and as I watch her, I believe her.

  “She told me,” I swallow before finishing my thought, questioning telling Jase any of this but deciding I need to tell someone, “She told me it wasn’t her all those years ago.”

  It takes Jase a moment before his expression registers what I’m talking about. He knows about that night. As well as Declan and Daniel, Sebastian too. That night changed everything. For her to deny being a part of it… I can’t fucking stand it.

  “Who else could it have been?”

  “No one.” My answer is immediate and unforgiving, joined with a similar pain in my throat as it tightens. My eyes close as I think to myself, how would I know? How could I possibly know if another woman was there?

  “Carter,” Jase’s voice cuts off the memory of that night. “What happened to her shoulder?”

  “I cuffed her to the bed. Well, she did, because I told her to.” Jase doesn’t waver as I lick my lower lip, hiding the shame. “I told her she could stay there until it was over.” My eyes lift and I find his as I explain, “And then she ripped her arm away until it dislocated and I uncuffed her, but she…” I can’t even finish.

  “She did it to herself?”

  “Physically... yes.” It feels like a lie on my tongue. I’m the reason it happened. It’s my fault.

  Jase’s nod of understanding is short and then he peers past me to the window. “Well, that explains why she ran.”

  “She’ll always run,” I tell him as the knowing defeat gets the better of me.

  “Stop lying to yourself.” Jase’s calm voice catches me off guard. “You love her. I know it. And she loves you. Don’t let anything come between you.”

  Love isn’t always enough, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. Instead my gaze turns to the floor in front of my desk, last night still reeling in my mind. The image of her lying there comes and goes with the blinking of my eyes. “You need to help me keep her safe.” I don’t know how I even speak. My body is stiff and my limbs are frozen.

  “You’re scaring me with the way you’ve been today.” Again Jase’s feet and posture shift, but his grip remains stiff, keeping him where he is.

  I look back to the sofa while I tell him the one thing that’s responsible for how I’ve been today, “I don’t want her to die.”

  “It’s not going to happen.” Jase’s answer is nothing but confident. I wish last night hadn’t stolen that same certainty from me. I almost tell him about the nightmare. About how real it was, and how it’s fucking with me.

  “Whatever’s gotten into your head,” he starts to say, the concern etched in Jase’s words making me look back to him as he finishes his thought, “get it out.”

  “I just didn’t sleep well.” I give him a half truth.

  “Well tell Aria you love her, fuck her until she forgets why she’s angry and sleep. Both of you need to sleep.”

  “Is that all I need to do?” I question him to lighten the tension, but it does just the opposite.

  “You can start with showing her more respect than you have in the past. More love. Tell her you love her.”

  “She’s not leaving because I don’t say it back to her.” I scoff at his suggestion.

  “I think that’s exactly why she’s leaving. That, and the fact that you told her what to do.” His words register one by one. “I think she would let you destroy everything in her world but you, so long as you showed her how much you loved her and told her often.”

  I don’t know when my brother became the voice of reason, but everything he’s saying sinks in deep and slow, numbing the anger, the need to fight. Numbing the guilt and the worries. It all seems to fade at the very thought that I can keep her. That it’s possible.

  “If she felt the love you have for her, she wouldn’t leave. No one would give that up.” His dark eyes shine with a memory of something else. Something I know has nothing to do with me, but his next words are exactly what I need to hear at this moment. “She doesn’t feel loved, and I know you can make her feel it.”

  How can she not feel everything I feel for her? How can she not feel this?

  Just as the question consumes me, the phone rings and it’s the same number as before.

  Marcus.

  Chapter 90

  Aria

  Maybe a quarter mile.

  The driveway to the estate is miles long. Miles. The cast iron streetlights that line it cast a pale yellow glow down the paved road that winds through the woods, and I got maybe a quarter mile from the gate before I heard the gravel kick up as tires moved behind me. Gazing to place where the woods begin, I think maybe they’re another quarter mile away.

  The car heading toward me isn’t driving fast and I merely walk to the side of the road and stand there crossing my arms when I hear it approach. I imagine I look like a petulant child, but it’s only because I’m cold. The evening air in the shade is bitter and unforgiving.

  My shoulder is numb, and so is all the pain. I’m ready for it to end. However it comes, I’m prepared for what’s next.

  The thought makes my throat tighten and that’s when the window rolls down. It’s Sebastian, not Carter. It takes me a moment to even recognize that it’s him. Addison told me about him when we were at his safe house. She showed me a few pictures of Carter and his brothers with Sebastian in them. I know it’s him, but that doesn’t dampen the disappointment that Carter didn’t come himself.

  “Carter sent you?” I ask beneath my breath. Hating that I even expected Carter to bother with acquiring me. Of course he wouldn’t. With the car idling, I wait for the man to speak.

  He’s obviously older, but his features are classically handsome. He’s the type of man who could get away with whatever he wanted; he could charm you into anything. Even if there is an air of danger that surrounds him.

  “Will you do me a favor and get in easy?” he asks me and a handsome smirk shows off his perfect teeth. “I’ll do you a favor in return,” he offers.

  Kicking at the driveway, I let my gaze fall and then feel the chill in the breeze before I ask him, “What’s that?”

  “I’ll drive; we can drive a bit until you calm down?” he offers. “You can tell me why you’re upset.”

  Although he’s seemingly kind, I loathe what he just said. “Upset?” I swallow thickly after speaking and Sebastian puts both of his hands up in defense.

  “I don’t want to make anything worse or step on anyone’s toes, Aria.” His voice pleads with me as he adds, “Just help me make this better if I can.”

  The sky darkens as I wait a moment. Watching this man and finding myself envious of him. He knew Carter. The boy before he turned into what he is now. Curiosity overwhelms any anger with that thought.

  My legs move on their own and I find myself climbing into the car. The door shuts with a dull thud, silencing the faint sounds of the forest.

  “I’m Aria,” I offer him even though he already knows. “I’m sorry we had to meet this way.” My manners seem to come back to me as he lets off the brakes and we move forward.

  The locks in the car are automatic and they slam down, sounding far louder than they should and reminding me what all of this is for me, a prison.

  “I’ve met people under worse circumstances,” he tells me. He keeps his word, driving slowly on the long path. So slow I could walk faster than this, but I’m simply grateful to be heading away from Carter’s castle of heartlessness.

  “I don’t want to go back,” I say absently. I don’t expect it to make any bit of difference. As the confession leaves me, I stare at the lock on the door, so easily lifted if only I were to reach out.

  “You know I have to give you back to him, right?”

  My pulse races and then seems to frost over as I remember Daniel offering me an out only days ago. I could have run, I could have accepted Daniel’s offer, although who knows if he truly meant it or not.

&nbs
p; “I’ve never seen him like this.” Sebastian starts to say something else, but then he shakes his head and waves off the thought. “I don’t want to get in between you two,” he tells me.

  “Everyone else is,” I answer flatly and then really look at him until his eyes dart to mine. “Everyone has always been between us.” That’s the sad truth. If it were only us, there’s no question I’d be by his side.

  Parts of Sebastian remind me of Eli, or maybe I simply long for someone to confide in, someone who understands and respects the situation the way Eli did. The thought brings a swell of emotion up my chest and I stare out of the window, at the dark green leaves strewn in between the dried-up amber ones.

  “Hey.” Sebastian’s voice brings my focus back to him.

  “Have you talked to him today?” The concern on his face seems out of place as he waits for me to answer.

  “I just got up, and…” I trail off to swallow the sickness rising up my throat, remembering what happened when I made it to the bathroom. “I haven’t.” There’s nothing left to say. That’s the truth of the situation, but I don’t bother to voice it.

  The silence in the car is awkward. Sebastian asks questions I don’t want to answer.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I don’t bother to even give him a response to that one.

  “Do you like the quiet too?” he asks me after a moment passes with neither of us talking.

  “You like the quiet?” I ask him to clarify and he shakes his head no.

  “Carter always did.”

  Again I turn to the window. It’s not shocking that the brooding man prefers silence. And the way that little fact tugs at me makes me wish I hadn’t climbed into the car.

  “Although some days he’d turn up the radio just to numb it all out.” He clears his throat and turns the car around. As he’s making the three-point turn to head back to the estate he tells me, “When he’d stay with me, back when his mom was sick, he always wanted it to be quiet. He used to say the quiet was his safe place, but then again, he grew up with four brothers and the only time it was quiet was when he wasn’t home… so…” He shrugs.

  “What was he like back then?”

  Sebastian regards me for a second and slows down as we near the estate.

  “Stubborn, ambitious,” he answers me and then says, “loyal to a fault.”

  He stops in front of the gate and I ask him to go around just one more time. My hands feel clammy as my gaze flicks to the lock and then back to him. I don’t think he saw though.

  “So he’s always been like this?” It comes out as more of a statement than a question, but Sebastian refutes it.

  “Carter wasn’t ever like this. He wasn’t brutal, he was fair. He didn’t…” Sebastian stops his thoughts again and this time a darker set of emotions plays on his face. “I should have never left,” he confides in me and I give him a weak smile.

  “If I could go back,” he starts to say, but I cut him off, stating, “You can never go back.”

  The moment ends with silence as the car continues to move farther away. Closer and closer to the point in the road where I’ve chosen. The place where he turned around last time. Where he slowed down the most, and the farthest down the drive that he’ll go.

  “Why did you leave?” I ask Sebastian, more to distract him than anything else.

  Sebastian doesn’t even spare me a look as I reach for the lock. He’s too busy pinching the bridge of his nose to keep whatever emotions are haunting him at bay.

  Click. I shouldn’t have turned to look at him, wasting the split second but also feeling guilty from the look of surprise and hurt on his face when he sees me rip the handle back and push the door outward.

  He hears the lock click up though and his fingers wrap around my wrist, my left one with the deep gouges from the cuff last night. Fuck! The pain travels quickly and in a single electric motion. I hiss from the sudden jolt of pain as I rip my arm from his grasp, nearly falling out of the car until I have both feet on the ground and run as fast as I can. I don’t stop. Not for a moment. Not when he cusses and puts the car in park. Not when I nearly trip moving from asphalt to dirt as I enter the woods. Every breath hurts my lungs as I heave in air.

  A few men’s voices are carried into the woods. I know there are more men who guard the estate, but I don’t know where they are. Somewhere they saw, which means they’re close.

  My legs are far too weak, and I can hear Sebastian’s car door open and then his hard steps on the pavement as I whip past branches. More men shout and the tree limbs lash out at me as if to punish me, and I take it. I take every bite of the thin boughs and when I get to a sudden edge, I fling myself over, eager to get away. To fall hard, and that’s exactly what I do. Landing on my back, I hit the cold dirt and roll.

  My palm braces against something at the same time my legs bash into the rough trunk of a tree. The bark tears at my legs and I bite down to keep from screaming in agony. It hurts to stand up, but I do. Feeling lightheaded and weak, I stumble at first but keep moving. The voices sound farther away now. I hope they are.

  I don’t know which way is which, but I run as fast and hard as I can. I can’t outrun Sebastian; he’s far too big, and I’ve never been a runner. But I’ll hear him when he comes, and I can at least hide.

  “Fuck!” Sebastian’s voice reverberates in the forest and it sends birds flying out of the treetops. Their sudden movement makes my heart lurch, and I’m staring up at them as I run into something hard.

  Something with hands.

  Something that grabs me.

  The scream in my throat is held back by a large hand over my mouth.

  My heart thumps and my anxiety spikes wildly until he shushes me, holding my small body close to his and hiding behind a thick tree.

  “Shh, be calm, Ria.” Nikolai’s voice is the most comforting thing I could have asked for in this moment. Tiny cuts on my arms and face sting as I cling to Nikolai. Tears burn in the back of my eyes.

  “I’ve got you now.”

  Chapter 91

  Carter

  “I thought there was nothing to talk about?” I answer the phone with Jase across from me. He’s slow to take his seat in the chair but quiet as he does it. There’s not a sound in the room other than my own heart beating until Marcus answers.

  “I forgot I wanted to mention something,” he tells me over the phone. “Are your brothers with you?” he asks me and then adds, “They may be interested to hear this as well.”

  “I’ve just messaged them,” Jase answers and sets his phone down on the table. It vibrates with a response and then another.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Jase,” Marcus says and I can hear the smile that must be plastered on his face. His voice carries through the space and over to the door as it opens, bringing Daniel into the office. He’s still catching his breath and slowing his pace after taking quick steps into the room.

  “And which one is that?” Marcus asks as Declan comes in next, his tablet in hand. “Is it the one attempting to track me?” Marcus asks and instinctively I move my gaze to Declan. He merely stares at the phone on my desk, not answering.

  “Of course we’re trying to track you,” I answer Marcus, slowly taking my seat and ignoring my own phone going off. “It’s only fair, and you know it.” He gives a low chuckle, but says nothing.

  “What is it you want to tell us?” I ask him and glance at the monitor to see Sebastian’s car parked in the street. I know he was talking to her. The nagging voice in my head is only concerned with Aria, but she’s not even back yet. This call is going to be quick. First I’ll handle this, and then I’ll deal with Aria.

  Soon. Soon I’ll have her back, and I’ll take Jase’s advice.

  “I have more information regarding the first time the lines were drawn in the sand,” Marcus says. “Lines you failed to see.”

  “No more riddles.” I cut Marcus off and grit my teeth before telling him, “I’m tired of games. Tell us who tried to t
ake Addison and Aria.” I harden my voice as I add, “I want names.”

  It’s quiet for a second and then another, but Marcus eventually speaks.

  “Jase, do you remember the articles I sent you?” Marcus asks and Jase’s gaze narrows as he stares at the phone, not with anger, but with recollection. And we all look to him.

  “About Tyler?” Jase asks and instantly my blood turns to ice. “The articles about the woman who hit him?” Jase clarifies and my mind races.

  Lines drawn in the sand.

  The first hit our family took.

  “Tyler’s death was an accident,” Daniel speaks up and then visibly swallows, walking closer to the edge of the desk and daring the voice on the phone to deny that truth.

  It was five years ago. Almost six now.

  Tyler’s death was before all this. Years ago. After I went against Talvery, once I started making a name for myself, yes. But I was no one. It’s only in the last few years that my name has become synonymous with fear. Jase and I had barely gained ground, let alone anything worth the attention of hurting Tyler.

  “His death was an accident,” I say steadily, repeating Daniel’s words.

  Still, the coldness doesn’t leave me. Slowly the memories come back of my youngest brother. He was the only good soul of the five of us. If ever a death was cruel, cutting his life short was just that.

  “What were the articles?” I ask Jase, but Marcus answers instead.

  “About her addictions…” Marcus’s voice drawls until he says, “About her sudden death while waiting for her sentencing.”

  Daniel’s face is pale and his eyes are glazed over. He saw it happen. He was there when Tyler was struck by her vehicle.

  “What are you getting at?” I question Marcus, keeping my voice even and not letting the emotion get to me.

  “She died in her sleep,” Jase speaks over me and Marcus responds without hesitation, to say, “She was murdered.”

  “A name, Marcus,” I remind him. “You wanted to tell us something, so tell us all of it. A woman being murdered in jail means nothing.”