Tangled Love (Chaotic Rein Book 1)

by Haley Jenner

  “That’s what you meant when you said she had the ability to crush you,” I test and he ducks his head to hide the emotion disturbing the smooth lines of his face.

  “I couldn’t risk you thinking you weren’t mine, because you are, Codi. In every way that matters,” his open palm patting the part of his chest his heart beats steadily behind.

  I nod through my tears.

  “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t frightened you’d want to meet him. Marcus Dempsey had evil running through his veins, I couldn’t let that touch you. Maybe I shouldn’t have lied to you, but as long as you know there was never any malice behind my deceit, that it was all done in love,” he shrugs, the hopeful glint in his eyes shining brightly.

  “Did you know it was him, from the beginning?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Not until after Kane died. They became reckless, they knew murder wasn’t my style, they didn’t care if I knew.”

  I watch him for a quiet second. “Did it hurt, knowing she was cheating?”

  He smiles ruefully. “No. I quite enjoyed the days she’d disappear with him. It was just you, me and Camryn.”

  “The three amigos,” I laugh softly, recalling my childhood.

  Wrapping an arm over my shoulders, he pulls me in close, dropping a kiss to my forehead. “The three amigos.”

  We were good, and that left me all the time in the world to stew about Parker. Rocco was right, we fell hopelessly in love and in love hopelessly. The situation was tangled and thorny. Like Parker’s roses; beautiful and flourishing. But in reality, when you looked hard enough, when you really got down to the inner workings, it was barbed and bound to cause pain the harder we tried to hold on.

  Swallowing my nerves, I push against the heavy metal door at the side entrance of Ruin, wanting to vomit the moment it inches open. Forcing my doubts aside, I use greater pressure to move the door, cringing when it slams with a loud bang behind me.

  I pause briefly, listening for any sound to indicate company but only silence waves back at me in the darkened space.

  It takes me a second to find my bearings, completely turned around by the entrance I took into the club. It’s different in the light of day. Still dark, but not enough to cut off my vision. I turn for the main stairs, Parker’s office my destination. I went to the loft first, but no one was home. Thank God. Truth be told, I wasn’t ready to step foot into the space just yet. Standing on the other side of the closed door, I could visualize it all. Mira’s body, Marcus’, the pools and splatters of blood.

  No, I’m happy he wasn’t home. Talking this out will be hard enough without Mira and Marcus’ ghosts dancing around us. Their presence in our lives is heavy enough.

  The door to his office is closed and I knock softly as I try the handle. It opens without issue, and I slide inside, my back resting against the wood as I lean against it to close it over once again.

  “Roc,” he starts, back to me, a sigh long and heavy in his voice. “Told you to leave me be. I don’t wanna talk about it. Not about what happened, about them, him and I sure as fuckin’ shit don’t wanna talk about her.”

  God, I missed the sound of his voice, the thick, rough rasp when he bites out.

  “Random fact,” I clear my throat and he whirls around, the drink held in his hand spilling along the carpet. “It’s too early in the morning to drink.”

  He watches me cautiously, moving backward, away from me to rest his butt against the brick ledge of his window. He twirls his glass in his hand, considering it for a moment before swallowing the contents and discarding the glass on the surface next to him.

  “That’s an opinion, not a fact. Try again.”

  I let go of the breath that was held tightly in my lungs, my eyes scanning over him in eagerness.

  His jeans are tight along his thick thighs, the material pulled taut, his legs spread wide, knees slightly bent, pulling at the dark light washed denim. Inked arms are crossed over his chest, the white shirt stretching over his large frame. The meticulous attention to his hair is lost, no effort having been placed in making it look presentable, it standing on end in every direction. The dark shadows under his eyes are heavy, the glint in his eyes lost, clouded with a cocktail of painful emotions.

  God, do I miss him. And I’m mad at myself for needing to admit that.

  He lets my gaze drift over him without a single spoken word, waiting patiently for me to speak again.

  “My dad’s name is Dominic Rein.”

  An emotion close to relief settles through his body, his eyes closing briefly before landing on me again.

  “That’s good to hear, Sugar.”

  My heart twinges at the endearment, so easily slipping from his lips. I’ve missed the coarse gentleness in the way he says it. The emotion behind the simple word.

  It’s not hard to miss the regret, the remorse in his simple statement. He wasn’t there to help me through one of the biggest moments of turmoil in my life. He let me wade through it alone and I can tell now that’s eaten away at his conscience. The guilt remains, but still, he’s pleased I came through it, relatively unscathed.

  “I had some assistance from an unexpected source who helped me find reason.”

  He raises an eyebrow and I smile unintentionally, shrugging. “Rocco.”

  He grunts out a silent laugh, the sound showing no inclination of surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t, Rocco admitted he tried to talk Parker around. Unsuccessfully, but still, he tried.

  “Your turn,” I whisper when the quiet expands between us.

  He inhales heavily through his nostrils, indecision dancing along his face.

  “Fact,” he finally speaks. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  My chin wobbles involuntarily and I bite my bottom lip to stop it, trying in vain to ignore the stabbing pain in my chest.

  “That’s an opinion. Not a fact. Try again.” I stumble over the words, my voice cracking more than once.

  He looks away from the challenge, shaking his head, dismissing me. The pulse in his neck ticks, pounding in rhythm with his erratic heartbeat.

  After a long, uncomfortable silence I try again.

  “Random fact.” He turns back to the sound of my voice, a twisted look of appreciation and agony in his eyes. “I feel hate inside me. So much of it. Against Marcus. Against Sarah. Against the circumstances that brought us together. But more than anything, the hate I have that floods my insides is for myself.”

  He looks wounded by my declaration, his feet stumbling backward at the pain in the words I speak.

  “Sugar,” he whispers. He didn’t mean to do it. Speak. He wanted to remain dormant. Silent. He wanted to appear unfeeling, unaffected by my presence, by my words. But his mind, his body, they working their damnedest to give him away.

  “I hate myself because I should hate you. I should despise every single thing about you, Parker Shay. I tried to convince myself I that I did. That I loathed you for what you did. I tried so hard. So hard.”

  I see the effect of my words, the emotions they stir.

  “You should go,” he croaks out, denying his feelings. Denying me.

  I take a step forward and he stands to full height, his bracing himself against my words.

  “But I don’t,” I bite out, demanding he listen. “Hate you, not even slightly.” I pull at the sleeves of my sweater, nervously playing with the material, working to find some comfort in the barrier it’s supposed to provide. But it’s futile. I feel naked. Open. Bared. Standing before him, letting him see my heart struggling to beat without him.

  “It’s not possible,” my voice cracks over the tortured whisper. “How can you despise someone whose love makes you feel so complete, you couldn’t imagine ever finding happiness without them? How can you hate someone when they’re your reason for breathing? The reason that you want to get out of bed in the morning. The reason you smile. The reason you laugh. The reason you wanna live when your life is falling apart around you.”

  I wait quietly for
a single moment, for the smallest indication that he’ll give me something. Anything. But he doesn’t, only continues to stare at me.

  “Random. Fact,” I punctuate. “I trust that everything you gave me, every small detail of your life you shared, empty or not, was real. Everything we felt. Everything we shared. Everything that grew between us. It. Was. Real.” I massage the spot my heart beats steadily behind.

  “I can see it. Even now. My heart is standing right in front of me, the monster in his mind dancing behind his eyes, forcing him to second guess everything.”

  I see the unintentional tick of his jaw. The thick up and down movement of his Adam’s apple. The almost undetectable quiver in this shadowed line of his chin.

  “Push it away, Parker,” I plead. “Baby, please. I’m standing right here, telling you I love you.”

  My declaration swims between us, hanging heavily in the air. He wants to reach out and grab hold of it.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t.” I shrug when he continues to choose silence. “Maybe it’s not typically right. But I don’t care. I know what I feel.”

  The inked fingers on one hand, rub forcefully against the inked palm of the other and I watch the violence in the gesture. He’s torn. Caught between what he thinks is right and what his heart is telling him to trust.

  “Tell me you don’t feel it back. Tell me you don’t love me,” I challenge, taking a step forward, but he moves out of my path, forcing the distance between us to remain.

  “You asked me if I believe in redemption and I said it’s about perspective. I said that really, in the end, you have to find forgiveness in yourself.”

  His tongue drags along the clean line of his top teeth before he bites down hard. Swallowing deeply, his lips push forward in a grimace, the thought of self-forgiveness coursing distastefully down his throat.

  “I don’t deserve forgiveness. From anyone.”

  He won’t meet my eyes, his face turned away, his stare focused on the empty wall to his right.

  “You’re right. You don’t.”

  He startles at the hostility in my agreement. He was expecting me to argue, to dispute him, so the look of complete shock coating his features makes me smirk. He’s confused, my behavior throwing a cloud of unease over him, making him shift uncomfortably where he stands.

  “Not gonna disagree with you, Parker. You planned to kill me. Of course you don’t deserve my forgiveness.

  The self-loathing darkening his person magnifies and I sigh. Loudly, pulling his attention.

  “Yet here I am,” I shrug in defeat. “Against my better judgment, against what I know to be right, I’m giving you mine. Whether you want it or not.”

  His large inked hand reaches up, pinching the bridge of his nose before sliding roughly down his unshaven face.

  “You just need to forgive yourself,” I test, eyes trained at my feet. “It’s the least you can do and the only thing I’m asking you for.”

  Quiet descends and I let that fire my hope. I let his indecision in that single moment spike my faith that we’ll find our way back to one another.

  Parker coughs, clearing his throat, working to pull my attention. I give it to him, my head lifting slowly to let our eyes connect.

  “You think you could look at me, for the rest of your life, knowin’ what I did, what I had planned, and not hate me, worse, be afraid of me?”

  I nod, well before his sentence has finished and he shakes his head in disagreement.

  “How?” he bites out.

  “Because the alternative of living life without you is too painful,” I whisper. “Because I know, deep down, you would never have hurt me. I trust what I felt, that what grew between us, was, is, real.”

  His hand massages his neck uncomfortably. “Fuck, Codi. You were right to try and hate me. It’s more than I deserve.”

  Silence descends, our eyes connected and I hate the void he’s intentionally building. Physically. Emotionally. He’s detaching. Fighting to anyway. I see the wall he’s struggling to form. But he won’t stop. Each time his self-loathing is torn down, he works doubly as hard to replace them with something new. Something darker, more disconnected.

  “You think you love me because I was the first guy you let fuck you. Women do that shit all the time,” he waves me off dismissively, “convince themselves it was somethin’ more.”

  I feel as though he’s hit me. Thrown the hard brutality of his fist into my stomach, robbing me of air.

  “Don’t.” I shake my head. “Don’t you dare turn asshole to push me away.”

  “News-fucking-flash, Codi. I am an asshole,” he spits, his words spiked in hate. They’re directed at himself, saturated in disgust, dripping with contempt. “Sooner you fuckin’ realize that, sooner you’ll move on with your life.”

  “No,” I stonewall.

  “No?” he snarls. “No fucking what? You wanna random fact? Here’s one for you. Random. Fucking. Fact,” he growls, his voice rising with every syllable. “There was no plan for me to actually know you. I was doin’ recon and I like the fucking way you looked. I wanted to fuck you, Codi. That’s it. I saw you and thought, fuck, she’d look nice riding my dick.”

  My body shakes in anger, but I’m afraid to speak. Petrified that if I attempt words, I’ll cry. That I’ll beg for him to stop.

  “Another one?” he yells, sliding the phone on his desk off with excessive force. It’s still plugged in, the cord choking its path, causing an almighty bang as it hits the side of his desk, the dull dial tone echoing across the stillness between us. “Random fact. I took your virginity knowin’ my brother and I were going to kill you.”

  His eyes challenge me to argue. They dare me to disagree, to dispute his claim. But how can I? There’s nothing to argue, to dispute. It’s true. Every painful word.

  “Random fact,” he speaks quietly, stepping out from behind his desk and moving toward me, the menace in his voice tickling at the base of my spine and traveling upward. He stops when he’s directly in front of me, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. “I led you on. Made you fall in love when my end goal was always to look you right in your pretty purple eyes and decorate your skull with a bullet hole.”

  I lift my chin with a confidence I don’t feel. Meeting his eyes, while hoping he can see the fire burning inside of them. More importantly, I’m praying he mistakes that fire for fight and not panic.

  “Our relationship was built on deceit. I can’t deny that any more than you can. But you’ve never outwardly lied to me. In fact, you worked your hardest to convince me to remain cautious, to guard myself.”

  Recollecting on the few months we spent together, in truth, Parker warned me away at any given opportunity. He begged me to remain wary. He used the acid in his personality to hint at the damage he could cause. I chose to push all that away. I made the decision to ignore his warnings and let my heart become tangled with his. I opened myself up in every way possible and he took it, because whether he wants to admit it to me or not, he did the same. He’d argue what he let me see was hollow, nothing. But the truth is, every small snippet of time we spent together, Parker offered me that little bit more of him. And before he knew it, he was lost, tangled and caught on the thorns of our beautiful disaster just as much as I was.

  “Just then, that was the first time you’ve actually lied. You like to think you’ve built up this impenetrable wall, but I got through. I. Got. Through.” I stab a finger at his chest and he scowls down at me, displeased at being called out.

  “And now I’m pushin’ you back out. I’m sorry I broke your heart, Codi,” he speaks, sounding anything but apologetic. He’s gone flat. Emotionless. Vacant. “I’m not doin’ this. Not now. Not ever. I want to be done with all that shit from my past and that includes you. Maybe in a different life… under different circumstances,” he shrugs, taking a loaded step away from me. “You’re better off without me. Find someone to fall in love with the right way. Learn from this. Most guys are pricks. Guard your heart.
It’s precious, Sugar. It just ain’t mine.”

  He’s turned away from me before he’s finished the quiet words that cut into my already damaged soul.

  Everything inside of me is screaming to fight. To keep pushing. Everything but my heart. It’s endured enough and right at this moment, it’s done with hurting. There’s only so much one measly organ can take before it decides it’s had enough. And this is that time.

  So I don’t speak another word. I close my eyes, exhale heavily, turn and walk from the club with tears in my eyes and a large part of me still standing in his office.

  There’s only one place I want to be right now. The one placed I feel most loved. Protected. Cared for and needed. With my dad. He’s the only person who in this horrible mess can make me see there’s always hope.

  Twenty-Nine

  Parker

  I lean forward again, pressing play on my laptop before slumping back into my chair. I bring my drink to my lips, tasting the cool bitterness of my gin slide along my tongue and down my throat. I’m torturing myself, but I can’t convince myself to give a shit. This way I can keep her. Even if it’s just within the confines of my fucked-up mind. I can recall every line of her face, every curve of her body, the perfect blonde of her hair and the creamy buttered tone of her skin. Shit, if I close my eyes and focus hard enough, I can still smell her in my space.

  So sweet.

  So tempting.

  So far from mine the scent burns like acid in my nostrils.

  I watch the hurried movements of her legs as she rushes down the stairs, working in haste to put as much distance between us as possible. My doing. Still, stings like a fucking bitch. The footage ends with the door slamming shut, her no longer visible and I lean forward and press play once again.

  Twenty-four hours. The length of time my ass has remain planted in this stifling hell of an office, Codi running away from me on loop. I’ve drunk myself sober, worked my way to well past inebriated and moved back into soberness. I’m stuck in a perpetual state of hangover. I’m tired. Weary. Quenching my resounding thirst with more booze. I haven’t slept in days. My hand shakes holding my glass. My head feels hazy. I have to blink to remove the double vision that forces its way into my line of sight.