by Linda Kage
I turned to look at my beautiful, amazing Bella. She was so tough and fierce, but this had affected her without her even realizing it. We could’ve gotten help for her a fucking year ago if I’d just—
“What is she going to tell me, Fox?”
Both her hands were wrapped snugly around the steering wheel and her jaw was tense as hell. The cracks in her composure were growing wider.
I heaved out a breath. “You know what she’s going to tell you,” I said. “Somewhere in there, you have to have always known. You’re just tucking it away and hiding from it like you do when you’re scared of something, pretending it doesn’t exist because you don’t want to believe it’s true.”
Her chin began to tremble faster, and her gaze stayed steady on the road as she said, “It’s the blank nights, isn’t it? The nights I don’t remember. When I just thought I drank too much.”
There was the tough girl I knew she could be, facing it head-on.
Watching her face it without falling apart made me want to fall apart, though. For her.
I started to cry again because I couldn’t help it. I hated this helplessness. There was nothing to do for her, all these months after the fact. There would be no justice good enough to make it right, no words pure enough to immediately heal her wounds. I wanted to rage and inflict pain and somehow make it all go away for her. But that wasn’t going to be possible.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out, trying to control myself. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
She didn’t say anything as she pulled into her drive and killed the engine. Then she turned to me. “Do I still have to listen to her?”
I smiled softly. “Yes. If not for you, then for El. And for Gray, too. I think they really like each other. So you can’t keep hating her after this.”
Growling out her annoyance, she rolled her eyes. “But being nasty and rude to her has helped hold all the pain and insecurity inside me at bay. Hating her has been the only thing that’s kept me level.”
“Well then, I guess I’ll have to be what keeps you level from here on out,” I offered with raised brows.
That seemed to melt her resistance. Leaning toward me, she clasped her hand around the back of my neck as we pressed our brows together. “Are you disappointed by how terrible I was to her at the gym?”
The vulnerable tremble in her voice nearly slayed me. Cupping her cheeks in my hands, I made sure she looked into my eyes before I said, “I think you were gripped by an extreme emotion you couldn’t control, and it exploded out of you in the fastest, easiest way it knew possible. Everyone experiences them. It happens to all of us. But it’s how you’re going to respond to it now that’s going to make all the difference. And I have every confidence you’ll make me proud to be the one at your side.”
“God,” she rasped, her eyes swirling with tears as she smiled big. “I don’t deserve you. You are by far the best man I’ve ever been with. I love you so much.”
Wait, what?
I jerked back to gape into her eyes. “Am I hearing things, or did you just say—?”
“Yes,” she confirmed with a watery roll of her eyes and a nervous laugh. “I love you. I actually told Gracen I loved you first—sorry about that—so I don’t see the need to hide from the truth any longer. I love you, and it’s strangely the easiest thing ever to admit. I want the world to know, and I have no idea why I hid from this for as long as I did, but—”
“Doesn’t matter,” I assured her. “You’re saying it now. That’s all I care about.” Literally trembling from joy, I rasped, “I love you too.”
Our lips came together over the center console, and I cupped her face in my hands as she knocked my hat off to bury her fingers in my hair. “Forever and forever,” I swore between each heated peck.
But the moment was broken all too soon when an annoying set of knuckles rapped against the passenger side window. I turned to scowl out the glass at Gracen.
He merely arched an eyebrow, letting me know he wasn’t too happy with me, either, probably for keeping my relationship with his sister from him. But all he called through the glass was, “Wrap it up. We got shit to sort out.”
Bella made tea. After telling the rest of us to sit at the table, she made herself busy, bustling around the kitchen to keep from thinking about what was to come.
“Can I help?” El asked, hopefully, appearing to need something to do to occupy her time as well.
But Bella shook her head. “No, I got it.” She no longer looked full of rage or spite whenever she met the other woman’s gaze. So Yellow nodded and quietly sat down next to Gracen, who’d propped his elbows on the tabletop and clasped his hands together moodily as he frowned at me.
“You look like shit,” he finally said without a whole lot of sympathy in his tone.
I sent him a dry glance. “Thanks. I feel worse.”
With a sniff, he glanced toward his sister, who was taking four mugs down from the cupboard. Then he hitched his chin her way as he addressed me again. “You told her. In the car. Didn’t you? She’s all placid and calm now. She’s gotta know something.”
I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to.
“Great,” he sneered, throwing his hands into the air and falling back in his seat. “That’s just fucking great. Guess that means I’m the only one here who doesn’t have a clue as to what’s going on right now. Always lovely to hear.”
He jerked forward again to rest his forearm on the table so he could impatiently tap his fingers against the wooden surface.
I ground my teeth, more annoyed by the sound than I would’ve been under any other situation.
As if sensing everyone’s growing anxiety over his nervous tapping, El silently reached out and covered Gray’s hand with her own. He looked at her, his gaze swirling with worry, then he turned his wrist over and grasped her fingers before lifting them to his mouth and kissing her knuckles.
I shifted my gaze to Bella. She watched them from across the room with a weary kind of acceptance.
“All right then,” she said, lifting the first two mugs and bringing them to the table.
As soon as she set them down in front of Gray and El, her brother reached for his and took a long drink, as if it were a shot of alcohol. The rest of us paused to watch as he drained the mug and slapped it back down on the table.
When he realized he had all our attention, he muttered, “What?”
Bella sighed and left to return with the other two mugs. El reached for some sweetener, Bella took a small sip, and I just sat there, knowing my stomach couldn’t handle anything right now.
Gray finally burst out, “Can we just get started already?”
El blushed and cleared her throat before setting the packet of sweetener down. “Sorry. Yeah, we can—”
“He raped you, didn’t he?” Gracen burst out. “He fucking raped you. The signs were there all along, glaring me right in the face, and I never freaking saw them. But how the hell did it happen twice? And why—”
“Lowe,” I growled, frowning at him. “Will you just shut up and let her talk?”
He closed his eyes and blew out a steadying breath. “Right,” he said, opening his lashes to focus on El. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I just—hell, I can’t sit down for this. I need to pace.”
After lurching to his feet, he circled the table before crossing the kitchen and returning to us. El watched him make one round before she turned her attention to Bella.
“The first night,” she started. “He texted me, asking to meet for drinks at our usual group hangout.” Her face paled as she ducked it shamefully and admitted, “I thought you both would be there. I thought you were going to throw me some support since all the other women in the group were talking smack about me for going out with Chad after Liam and I broke up.”
“I did support you over that,” Bella admitted quietly.
El sent her a grateful, watery smile. “Thank you.” Then she sighed and rolled her eyes. “I should’ve known it
was the first red flag when you weren’t there when I showed up. I even checked my text messages later the next day and saw that he had written meet us as if to include you. So I had every reason to expect you.”
Closing her eyes, she took a moment to decide what to say next. Then she opened her lashes and studied the wall as she spoke. “He was already drunk when I got there—at least, I thought he was. And he was upset, saying you had broken up with him, and he didn’t know what to do.”
She paused to glance up at Gracen who’d approached the table to grip the back of his chair as if it were Ethan’s neck he was wringing.
Her gaze slid to Bella. “Well, I thought I was the last person he should’ve called. If I had felt that I was in good standing with anyone else in the group, I would’ve called them right then to come and take care of him. And obviously, I couldn’t contact you because I thought you’d dumped him. So I—I offered to take him home because he couldn’t stay there like that in the condition he was in. He talked me into having one drink with him, and then he agreed to ride back to his place with me.”
“Motherfucker,” Gracen sneered, letting go of his grip on the chair and straightening so fast that he caused it to wobble after his absence. He ripped an aggravated hand through his hair and began pacing again.
“I don’t—I don’t remember anything else after that,” El quietly admitted to Bella. “Until the next morning when I woke up to you screaming.”
Bella didn’t say anything. She merely blew out a long breath and propped her elbows on the table to cover her mouth. I remained in the same pose I’d been in the entire time, slumped back in my chair with my hat tipped low to shadow my eyes from everyone else but still see out. With my knees spread slightly, I laced my hands together as tight as they’d go, resting them on my stomach.
“I was so confused,” El confessed. “I was sure I hadn’t drunk that much, but he convinced me that I had gotten plastered once we’d reached his apartment, and that I had come on to him. When I asked about his story he’d told me at the club of you guys breaking up, he just kind of shrugged it off, saying you two had been in a huge fight, and he assumed it was over. But it all just kept bothering me. So I went back to his place a week later to confront him with more questions.”
“Ah fuck,” Gracen muttered from across the room and began to crack his neck from one side to the other to relieve the tension he seemed to be experiencing.
“This time, I remembered a little more. He offered me a drink when I first showed up because I was acting so nervous. It wasn’t alcoholic, and I still thought I’d just drunk too much the first time, so I accepted because my throat was so dry. And then I really started grilling him about our night together, but things started to get dizzy and blurry. I remember the creepy leer he sent me when he realized what was happening to me. He was like, ‘oh, they’re kicking in, now, aren’t they? Feeling the drugs, are you, Yellow?’”
“Son of a bitch,” Gracen hissed as Yellow shivered in disgust.
He slowly wiped his hands over his face as if trying to scrub out all the mental images he must have going on, and Bella closed her eyes, her lips pressed together tight.
“I was like, ‘drugs? What drugs?’” Yellow went on. “And then I flipped out, realizing he’d given me a date rape drug. I remember trying to run toward the door, but the more I tried to reach it, the further away it seemed to get. Then it tilted sideways, and all of a sudden, he was behind me, right up against me, and I couldn’t seem to go anywhere. I think I was sobbing, but he told me to calm down, and that it was going to be okay, I wouldn’t remember what happened in the morning. ‘Bella never remembers,’ he assured me.”
“What?!” Gracen shouted, spinning to gape at her. “What the fuck do you mean, Bella never remembers?”
He turned to his sister, his lips parted in shock, but she only folded in on herself and started to weep.
“Hey, hey,” I murmured, reaching for her. “Come here.”
She readily crawled into my lap, and I held her close, stroking her hair as she cried.
Her twin just gaped at her in disbelief, before he whirled to Yellow for answers. “He raped Bella too? He raped my sister?”
El gave a small nod. “He probably drugged her more than he ever drugged me.”
Gracen made a pained moaning sound before he covered his mouth and turned away, only to spin back and accuse with flaring, angry eyes, “But we saw you. We saw you the next morning, coming out of his apartment. With your bra…” Swearing savagely, he gripped his head. “Christ, you really did look as if you’d been drugged and raped. There was this wild, horror-stricken look in your eyes, but I thought it was just because you were afraid of Bella.”
“Well…” El shrugged and gave a small hiccup of a laugh. “I was afraid of her too.”
“But what—why—why the hell didn’t you say anything then? We were right there. You could’ve just told her. You could’ve…” He shook his head and swallowed, seeming to lose his train of thought. “We would’ve helped you.”
“I didn’t know that,” El admitted, her eyes filling with tears. “I thought Bella hated me. And besides, I was in shock. When I woke up next to him and remembered those parts, my fight-or-flight instincts kicked in. I couldn’t have told anyone anything at that moment if I tried to. I just had to run and escape it all. I’m sorry, though, Bella. I’m so sorry I couldn't tell you then.”
“It’s okay,” Bella rasped, lifting her face from my shoulder to wipe her nose. “Who knows? I very well might’ve done the same thing in your shoes. I’m not sure.”
“It’s possible I would’ve told you later,” El admitted. “But then I started having nightmares when I was asleep and panic attacks when I was awake. I became bulimic for a hot minute and super depressed, had a touch of agoraphobia and haphephobia. Things got bad for me. And I didn’t want you to have to go through that, too. Since you had already broken up with him, I thought you were safe. You were free from it. You could think I was the bad guy, and just, you know, go on to live the rest of your life in peace without ever knowing what I knew.”
“Except it didn’t quite work out that way,” Bella answered, cuddling closer to me. “My instincts were still aware that something wrong had happened, and my emotions responded accordingly. If it weren’t for Gracen, and then Fox, I probably would’ve gone off the rails completely by now and ended up worse off than you did.”
Yellow nodded, smiling sadly in understanding before she glanced at me, then Gray. “Parker and Gracen really are the best. They’re the two people who helped me through it the most, too.”
Gray’s shoulders deflated, and he shook his head miserably as he shuffled toward her. “I don’t see how I helped you at all. I said some awful shit to you.” Falling to his knees before her, he looked up as if begging for forgiveness. “I don’t know how you can even stand to look at me right now.”
Rolling her eyes, Yellow reached out and ruffled his hair lovingly. “You weren’t that bad.”
“I was an ass,” he muttered, crawling forward to lean against her knees.
“But everything you said to me was to show your support for Bella. You were just being a good brother.”
“And probably hit every trigger you had in the process, too,” he argued, laying his head down on her thigh and sighing. “You should’ve just told me to go fuck myself.”
“Uh, I think I did once,” she reminded him, appearing amused. “In the theater, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” He lifted his face and grinned, nodding over their good times. “That was epic.”
“You two are weird,” Bella announced from my lap, where she was still curled around me as if she might never let go.
When they turned in unison to glance our way, I agreed, “Yeah, they are. But it seems to work for them, so I kind of like it.”
“You want to know what’s weird,” Gracen shot back. “Seeing you two, you know, together. The rest of the family is going to lose their shit when they f
ind out. The moms will probably throw another baby shower in mere anticipation of you guys reproducing.”
Bella lifted her face from my shoulder so she could look at me when she answered, “That’s okay; we’re ready for it.”
Yes, we were.
When she leaned in to press her forehead to mine, Gracen cleared his throat. “So have you decided whether to disown me or not yet?”
His sister glanced at him. “Hmm?”
He looked up at El. “Over the fact that I’m not going to give Yellow up.”
Bella heaved out a long sigh. Then she regretfully muttered, “You know what that’ll mean, don’t you? If you insist on keeping her in our lives? Then I’ll have to grovel—a lot—to get her to forgive me for the way I’ve treated her for the last year.”
“Oh, you don’t have to apologize,” El insisted. “From your perspective, you had every right to—”
“No, no,” Gray cut in, waving his hand. “Let her grovel. She so rarely does, and it’s one of my favorite things to watch.”
His sister scowled and flipped him off, only to turn back to Yellow, growing serious. When she opened her mouth to speak, however, she choked on the words.
Tears filled her eyes, and she shook her head. “I’ve been such an asshole,” she admitted, sniffing as her shoulders began to tremble.
“No,” El argued softly, her expression worried as she reached across the table with both hands. “You thought I had betrayed you. You—”
“Still didn’t need to be an asshole about it,” Bella cut in, leaning forward to take El’s hands so she could squeeze them tightly. “And I’m sorry for that. More than you’ll ever know. Please forgive me.”
“Done,” El said easily, smiling brightly as she pulled away. “You’re forgiven.”
