“Julz,” he groaned, lower this time.
I bit my lower lip playfully, my hand on the back of his neck. “It’s because you’re afraid this is going to happen.” I leaned forward, pulling him down so that our lips touched. He tasted like beer and sunshine, his mouth cold and refreshing. He tasted pure. He tasted good. He tasted like everything I had ever wanted in that moment.
Everything except Jase, that was. But Jase wasn’t there. Jase was with his father. Jase thought I was dead.
He pulled away after a few moments, regret etched heavily into his face. “No,” he said, firmer that time. “You’re seventeen!”
“Exactly,” I answered. “I’m seventeen. And I’ve been waiting a long time for you, Elliot McRae.”
“You’re killing me, Julz,” he muttered. “You know that, right?”
I reached down to feel the growing hardness in his jeans. He yelped and slapped my hand away.
“It would be wrong of me to take advantage of you,” he said, his fingers firm on my shoulders. “We. Can’t. Do. This.”
I pouted. “What if we make a deal?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.
Elliot closed his eyes and muttered, “what kind of deal?”
I leaned closer, his arms crumbling as he stopped holding me back. I kissed a wet trail up his neck, giggling softly as he shivered underneath my touch.
“Oh, you’re laughing at me now?” he said lightly.
“Here’s the deal,” I said, moving back to his lips. “You let me take advantage of you tonight, and I promise I’ll never bother you again.”
He breathed faster as I tugged at the waist of his jeans, pulling him with me as I rested back on the kitchen table. Opening my legs, I jerked him toward me and wrapped them around his waist.
Pretty soon he was kissing me back with that same raw intensity, hunger dancing in his dark blue eyes. I liked that. That he was hungry for me. It made a dead girl feel alive.
Loved.
“Take me to your bed,” I whispered between kisses. He froze for a moment, turning his head to the side, his soft caresses stilled to crushing grips around my wrists. I craned my neck, trying to catch his gaze again. Reluctantly, he looked at me, panting with me.
I gathered all of the courage inside me. “Elliot,” I whispered, “I’m in love with you.”
His eyes searched mine, glassy and worried.
I swallowed thickly. “Do you—do you feel like this, too?”
He nodded slowly, and my heart leapt a little. The ghost I had become—the girl suspended in time, neither dead nor truly alive— felt the first stirrings of hope, of new beginnings and second chances. Because although he had saved me, although he was my Prince Charming and every beautiful thing a girl could ever want, we weren’t in a fairy tale. I wasn’t a princess in an ivory tower, and he wasn’t my gallant knight.
No, it wasn’t a fairy tale that brought Elliot to me. It was a fucking nightmare.
He’d risked everything for me. Given up his career to make sure I was safe, far away from L.A. and the Gypsy Brothers.
But despite all that, until that moment, until the very millisecond when he whispered that he loved me, I hadn’t really believed that I was worthy of being loved.
Not after what they had done to me.
I could see him still fighting inside, warring with his feelings, trying to push me away. I was losing him.
“I love you, Julz,” he’d said, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. “But I can’t. After what they did to you…”
My eyes had filled with tears at that moment, because even though it had been over a year since that night, I could still feel every single thing they had done to me as if it were yesterday.
“Elliot,” I whispered fervently, “My only time. My only time, and it was like that? You can make it better. You can fix me.”
I kissed him again, and he moaned into my mouth, his resolve slipping. “God, I love you,” he uttered, and from my head to my toes, a wonderful feeling of warmth crept over me.
“Elliot. I need you to show me,” I breathed into his mouth, because words weren’t enough for a broken girl like me.
And he did show me. Filled me so that I was whole again. So that I was loved.
After that first time, I felt nothing except pure, unadulterated relief.
Relieved that I wasn’t a ghost girl, after all, living in the shadows, haunting that poor boy who’d saved me from certain death.
Relieved that I had been lucky enough to be found by someone who could put me back together, piece by shattered piece.
The juxtaposition of our past and present couldn’t be more starkly contrasted. Innocence and guilt. Morning and night. Living and dying, piece by broken piece. My head pounds as I grip the robe around me tighter, suddenly feeling nauseous and exposed. I stagger over to the couch on legs full of pins and needles and drop onto my ass.
“Oh my god, Elliot. How many times do we need to have this conversation? You didn’t do anything wrong. I came onto you, remember?” A tear forms at the corner of my eye and I silently will it away. “I loved you.”
His face falls, and in this moment I just want to forget all about Jase, his brothers, and Dornan, and fling myself into Elliot’s arms. Because, it would be easier. He would never, ever, ever hurt me. He would love me and treat me like a queen until my last breath.
But it would be a lie.
He stops pacing in front of me and kneels, his eyes wide and imploring.
“You know why I finally left?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say dryly. “You were sick of me stealing your gun.”
A sad smile touches his lips, and he gives me that small smile before returning his gaze to the ground.
“You had nightmares, all the time.”
I nod. I remember night after night, tangled in damp sheets, screaming silently, stale air in my lungs like I was being suffocated.
“I did,” I agree.
“Do you remember how you used to call out in them?” he asks.
I stiffen.
“No?” he guesses. I shake my head. I don’t recall ever saying anything, only the burning pain and the terror. Always the terror.
Elliot rubs his bleary eyes. “I left because after three years, you were still calling out for him.”
A buried memory surfaces—long after it’s been covered in blood and dirt—shaking me to my core.
Jase! Jason!
“Oh,” I say.
“I know you thought it was because I wanted a normal life. Kids and marriage and all that.”
“Yeah,” I say, suddenly feeling empty and hollow inside.
“I never would have asked you for any of those things. I knew you couldn’t give them to me. All I wanted was you, Julz. What if I had just stayed? Fought through everything.” His voice breaks. “I shouldn’t have left you. I’m sorry. Every day, I think about you. What might have been. What it would have been like to meet you and take you away from that fucking club before they did this to you.” His hand presses lightly on my hip, sending searing jolts of remembered agonies along my spine, and through my shot nerves.
He lays his head on my lap, his stubble a welcome distraction as it scratches my bare knees, and wraps his arms around my waist.
“I think, if we had met before it all, we would have been okay. We would have been happy.”
I swallow a rock in my throat, one hand resting loosely on his short hair, the other tracing his lips.
“I guess we’ll never know,” I whisper into the darkness.
I cling to him like I’m drowning and he’s my life raft, both of us adrift in an icy sea, lost, together but alone.
He eventually disentangles himself and leaves me by myself while he makes us coffee.
And I am truly alone.
***
Before I leave—before it’s time to face the music and call Jase—Elliot surveys me wearily, his little girl still asleep, morning sun pouring into the kitchen window. We are standing in th
e kitchen by the bench, drinking coffee and exchanging small talk.
“So,” he says. “Your mom’s really still there, huh?”
I nod.
“You think she’ll figure out who you are?”
I shake my head.
“You think anyone will?”
I shrug.
“You gonna tell me everything one day?”
I laugh bitterly, his question like a dagger in my heart.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
He takes a step closer, looking down at me with those sad eyes of his.
“Try me,” he says, taking the empty coffee cup from my hand and placing it on the bench.
I shake my head. “You’d never speak to me again.”
His gaze is so intense, it’s like he’s boring a hole into my brain and searching for the answers himself.
“I might.” He pauses. “You really showed those guys, huh?”
I nod.
His eyes bulge. “I can’t believe you killed them.”
“Why not?” I say.
“I don’t know. It’s just…you. The girl who rescued lost kittens and fed the birds her crumbs every morning after breakfast.”
“The lost kittens and birds never hurt anyone,” I reply. “Besides, it’s not like you’ve never killed anyone.”
Nebraska had been a safe haven, a shelter from the storm. A new home for a ghost girl like me.
Only, one day, my past came hurtling into the diner Elliot’s grandmother owned. I worked there five days a week, collecting empty dishes, and sticking to the safety of the walled-off kitchen.
I was doing my rounds one afternoon after the lunch clients had cleaned out and the place was just about ready to close for the day. Elliot was waiting for me at the counter as he picked at a plate of cold French fries. He was covered in grease and oil, that intoxicating smell that clung to him always and that had made me feel safe wherever I was.
When fate stepped into the diner and almost finished me for a second time.
I heard the bell that signaled the front door had opened, and glanced up from the counter to see my worst nightmare.
A Gypsy Brother staring back at me.
Dornan’s cousin Marco had obviously been travelling by car, because I hadn’t noticed a motorcycle approach.
I clung to the counter, imploring Elliot with my eyes. I was frozen.
Elliot eyed me suspiciously and I mouthed the words “Gypsy Brother.”
He spun around, standing in front of me.
“We’re closed for the day,” Elliot said, shielding me as I ducked behind the counter.
“Juliette?” Marco said gruffly, ignoring Elliot completely as he sidled up to the counter and peered around.
“Well, well,” he had sneered, squatting on his haunches as he reached out a hand to me. “You look mighty fine for a dead girl.”
In the window, I watched Elliot’s resigned reflection as he drew his gun from his waistband, aimed it at the back of the Gypsy Brother’s head, and fired, splattering me with a fine mist of what looked like the ketchup I had just been wiping up.
Marco had slumped dead in the corner as I screamed, and Elliot turned the sign on the front door to CLOSED.
Elliot’s eyes darken, eyebrows pinched together. “Do you have to mention that?”
“Sorry.”
“I did it for you.”
“I know. You always did everything for me.”
His little girl rouses, calling out to her father from her bedroom; he kisses me on the forehead and I leave.
Back to the fiery pits, then.
Back to Dornan.
Back to Jase.
THREE
A few minutes later, I am in a cab, on my way back to the hospital. Elliot only let me leave after I promised him I’d meet him at the warehouse in a few days, to discuss my game plan. The thought makes my stomach sink. I know he’s going to try and talk me out of continuing, and I don’t want to hear that. I just want to kill every fucking Ross brother.
Except, Jase, of course.
I allow myself to briefly think about what Jase will do if he finds out who I really am.
If he knows I killed his brothers and tricked them all.
Maybe he’ll kill me, after all.
I must be completely screwed up, because part of me thinks that might be fitting, you know? To come full circle. For him to find out just how crazy I am and put a bullet in my head.
I’d much rather share my final moments with him than with Dornan, anyway.
I scan the front of the building nervously. No motorbikes in the parking lot. No Gypsy Brothers standing guard at the sliding doors. Phew.
I pay the cab driver with the money Elliot shoved into my pocket as I was leaving. Still dressed in nothing but a hospital gown and Elliot’s robe, I quickly walk toward the front doors. I am five steps away from entering the hospital foyer, when someone steps out and grabs my arm.
My face falls when I see him. Shit.
“You’re a real party girl, aren’t you?” Jase sneers down at me. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Jase,” I say, smiling with what I hope is casual indifference. “I was just going for a walk.”
He’s wearing aviator sunglasses with a mirror finish, and I cringe when I see my twin reflections in each lens. Elliot wasn’t exaggerating. I really do look like complete and utter shit.
Jase perches the sunglasses on his nose, peering at me over the top with those dark eyes that so devastatingly remind me of his father’s.
“A walk?” he echoes. “At three in the morning? For five fucking hours?”
“I don’t like hospitals,” I say awkwardly. Shit, shit, shit!
“And yet, you seem to keep putting yourself in situations where you’ll either end up in a hospital bed, or on a fucking stretcher in the morgue. Funny, that.”
You would think I’d look a sight, standing barefoot with nothing on but a thin hospital gown and a threadbare dressing gown over the top, but Jase is the one who stands out, dressed in a plain black leather jacket and dark denim jeans, his black helmet under his arm. Several patients sport outfits similar to mine, some wheeling IV stands. Most of them are smokers, eager to get their hit of nicotine before shuffling back to their hospital rooms to stare at the beige stucco ceilings and walls.
I look longingly at them, wishing I were a smoker so I could at least use that as an excuse to be out here.
“I’ve only been out here a few minutes,” I lie, squinting against the strengthening morning sun.
Jase smirks, pushing his sunglasses back onto his face.
“Liar. I never left this morning. I watched you walk to that fucking tattoo joint in Venice.”
I take a moment to collect my jaw from the pavement before I answer him. Suddenly, I feel very, very sick. “You followed me?” I sputter.
He closes his hand around my arm, squeezing tight as he pulls me along beside him.
“Where are we going?” I ask, panic bubbling up inside my throat. Holy shit. He followed me, and I was completely fucking oblivious. I’m slipping, getting too cocky.
“Shut up.” He continues to drag me, while I panic. I struggle against his iron grip. “Jase,” I say, pulling back. He doesn’t answer, just keeps dragging me. “Jason!” Nothing. I do the only thing I can think of. I sit down, on the middle of the sidewalk, refusing to budge.
Jase looks around at the passers-by, probably deciding whether anyone would care if he just shot me right here and left me to bleed out. I don’t know.
“Get up,” he hisses.
“No,” I say. “Not until you tell me where we’re going.”
He sighs impatiently. “I’m taking you back to my place” he says through gritted teeth. “Not that I actually want you there, but orders are orders.”
My heart sinks. “Whose orders?”
He spreads his palms wide. “Who do you think, Sammi?”
He’s still calling me Sammi, at least. T
hat’s a small relief.
“Are you going to hurt me?” I ask, quietly enough so that only he will hear it.
Alarm springs up on his face and he removes his sunglasses, peering at me with a troubled look on his face. “What?”
“Well, are you?”
“No,” he says firmly. “Nobody is going to hurt you. I will probably call you an idiot for what you did back there with my brother, but no, I won’t hurt you.”
He offers his hand and I hesitate for a moment before taking it. He hauls me to my feet, still looking at me curiously. “Geez, somebody really did a number on you, didn’t they?”
You have no idea.
“Something like that,” I say weakly.
“Well, you’re really in the shit now. My dad finds out you were the one who brought that coke to Maxi’s party, he’ll kill you.”
“It wasn’t me,” I say weakly.
Fuck! He thinks it was me?
“Whatever,” he says as we round the corner of the hospital to arrive at his motorcycle, parked in an ambulance bay. Nice. He hands the helmet to me. “Put this on.”
“What?”
Jase looks impatient and tired. “Put the goddamn helmet on. The last thing I need is your skull plastered all over I-5 freeway because you didn’t wear a helmet.”
I search the bike with my eyes. “What about you?” I ask, taking the helmet and pulling it down over my head. I don’t move as Jase does up the chin strap, his warm fingers brushing my cold neck.
“I’ll be fine,” he says gruffly. He takes a step back and eyes me warily. “Chad was right, you know.”
My heart skips a beat, or at least it feels like it does. “What?” I splutter.
“Your accent sucks balls.”
With that, he swings his leg over the bike and kicks up the stand with his black boot.
“Samantha,” he says gruffly.
“What?” I whisper.
“Get on the fucking bike.”
I stand there, frozen, my feet firmly planted on the sidewalk. For some odd reason, I suddenly wonder where my corset is. My corset and my black patent heels. Probably in the hospital’s dumpster. Oh well.
“Sammi,” he says, more forcefully. “Get. On. The. Bike. Now.”
I sweep my eyes around me, deciding that I don’t have a choice. To go with Jase is safer than running and having the likes of Dornan and the other brothers after me. Jase I can reason with.
Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series Page 18
