Chapter 42
“What doyouwant to happen to Maverick?”
With my fork hovering in front of my mouth, I glance up at Damon across the kitchen island where we’re all eating breakfast. He’s looking at me and Derek.
“I want him to pay for what he’s done,” Derek says. “I want him behind bars?—”
“I want him dead.”
Derek’s mouth snaps shut. Kai’s hand tightens in mine while all eyes swing to me. They don’t ask me why, but I’m pretty sure they already know. If he’s dead, he can’t ever hurt another person I care about. He can’t touch the people I love.
Him.
Them.
He can’t touch them.
“We’re not going to kill him.” Elijah speaks up as he walks into the kitchen, pouring himself a coffee.
“Why not?”
“We don’t murder people, Hailey.”
“That’s not what I heard,” I say bluntly. “I know about Killian Matthews and Frank Whitlock.” Levi’s father and his friend, the men who hurt Callie and Levi. “They’re dead.”
Surprised, he looks at Kai and the others, then me. “They didn’t kill them.”
“They beat them, put holes in them, and left them to bleed out. It’s the same thing.”
Refusing to argue with me over a technicality, he says no more about it. He knows I’m right though. His children are killers. All of them. And maybe it makes me a terrible person, but the way I feel about them hasn’t changed because of it. If anything, I like them more for it. I’m happy those men are in the ground where they belong.
“I can ensure Maverick spends the rest of his life in prison,” Elijah states, still looking at me when he adds, “He will never touch any of you again.”
“You can’t guarantee that.” I shake my head. “There is no evidence, Elijah. He’s been getting away with murder for my entire life. Maybe longer.”
“I’ll find it,” he promises.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Stealing Callie’s gun and putting a bullet in Maverick’s stomach,” I say to Kai over my shoulder while I fold my jeans on his bed. I barely use my own room anymore. All my clothes are in his closet. My toothbrush is in his bathroom. I even brought my favorite picture of me and Val in here and put it on the nightstand on my side of the bed.
He raises a brow at me.
“What? That would be badass. Admit it.”
He chuckles. “Why his stomach?”
“It’d make his death slower. More painful.”
Pulling me back into him, he buries his face into my hair. “You’re a little bit of a psycho, aren’t you? That’s hot.”
I dip my head and smile like a fool.
I don’t miss the way he never takes his eyes off me, the way he likes touching some part of me at all times, his apparent obsession with me…
I like it more than I should.
“Are you really obsessed with me?”
“Yes,” he rasps.
“It wasn’t just a joke?”
“No.”
I chew my lip. I think somehow, against my better judgment, I’ve become obsessed with him too.
My mouth opens, and I almost tell him so, but I stop myself just in time.
“I can feel you holding back, you know?” he whispers, and I go completely still. “I know you’re falling for me, even if you don’t want to, but you won’t let me see it. Why?”
Because I’m terrified.
When the chase is over, when this thing between us is no longer new and fun and exciting for him, I worry he won’t want me anymore, that he’ll toss me aside and move on to someone else. And I’ll be the dumbass who gets left behind to pick up the pieces of my broken heart.
Removing his arms from my waist, I forget my laundry and turn around to face him fully, studying his face, his perfect jaw, his baby blue eyes…
“Tell me about the daisies, Hails.”
“No.”
“Please.”
God, he looks so serious, so desperate to know, but still, I shake my head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s personal.”
That makes his jaw clench, his hurt and disappointment clear as he nods. “Personal.”
“Kai.”
He stares at me. I stare at him. When he cocks his head, I cock mine right back.
“Tell me why you want to know,” I demand.
“I want you to let me in.” He steps closer, his chest almost touching mine, his hands flexing at his sides as he fights the urge to put them on me. “I want to know things about you. I want to know everything about you. I want to know more than anybody else does. I…I want to be your person.”
My person.
I swallow, looking into his eyes, finding nothing but sincerity and longing, a need for me that I’ve never experienced before him. No one’s ever needed me the way he needs me, and I’ve never needed anyone the way I need him. It scares the shit out of me.
“Sit down.”
He drops his ass down on the bed, his palms gliding up my thighs as I straddle his lap. I reach over to the nightstand and grab the picture Valerie framed for me when I was little. I remember the day she gave it to me. It was the same day she told me she wasn’t my biological mother. I was heartbroken, and so was she, but I know why she did it. She didn’t want me to be in the dark. She didn’t want me to be clueless and vulnerable. She wanted me to know who my parents were and who took them away from me, so that if that man ever came for us, I would be prepared.
I wasn’t prepared the day he killed her.
Nothing could have prepared me for that.
When Kai looks down at the photo, I instinctively pull it to my chest, my eyes hard.
“Hails?”
“I hate that nickname,” I blurt out. “The only person who ever called me that was Valerie.”
And now him.
His brows jump. He opens his mouth, but I don’t let him say whatever it is he’s about to say.
“If you hurt me, after all this, after chasing me relentlessly and pulling me into your web just to spit me back out, I’ll show you what a psycho really is.”
He chokes out a laugh. “What?”
“I’m serious. When I let all my guards down—if I let all my guards down,” I add when his smile is too big for my liking, “and you leave me…” There’s another threat on the tip of my tongue, but instead, what comes out is, “It would break me, Kai.”
“Look at me,” he says seriously, so I do, my chest swelling at the look in his eyes when he says, “I’ve never kissed anyone before. Only you. And Freya.” He scrunches his nose. “But that doesn’t count because I was pretending to be Wren.”
“What? Why were y?—”
“I’ll tell you later. Do you know how many girls I’ve been with since I met you?”
I steel myself. “How many?”
“None.”
I frown, pulling my head back. “Since you met me, or since I started going to Westbr?—”
“Since I met you, Hailey,” he reiterates. “The last girl I slept with was Callie. That was the night before I walked into your coffee shop. I haven’t touched or even looked at another girl since the first time I saw you.”
But it’s been months.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t think about anyone but you,” he says simply. “You’re all I can see, baby.” His arms come around me again, his head touching mine. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but the first time you looked at me like you wanted to cut me, it felt like my fucking heart stopped. After I left, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And I didn’t. From that moment, it was all you. No one else. Only you.”
Loosening the vice grip on my photo, I leave it resting between his chest and mine and slip my arms around his neck. He takes my face in his hands, looking right into my glistening eyes. My lip wobbles as a tear runs down my cheek.
“I love you. I’m so fucking in love with you. And I will never hurt you. Do you hear me?”
I nod.
“Do you believe me?”
I nod again, meaning it. “Yes.”
He inhales a long breath, then exhales, his eyes still on mine. “You’re so beautiful.”
I stick my bottom lip out. “I look ugly when I cry.”
“No, you don’t,” he says softly, using his thumbs to wipe the tears away. “Average, maybe.”
I let out a weird sounding laugh and smack his hands away, making him smile.
“Do you like it when I call you Hails?”
“Yes,” I say begrudgingly.
His smile grows even bigger.
Sighing contentedly, I grab the photo and turn it around, letting him see it clearly and up close for the first time. Valerie’s sitting on a bench in the park across the street from our apartment building, her long, blonde hair blowing around her face. Seven year old me is behind her, my arms wrapped tightly around her neck, my chin on her shoulder. There are several little daisies in her hair, her hand resting on my forearms as she grins up at me.
“We used to make daisy chains in the park when I was little. They were her favorite flowers. Sometimes I pick a few and make daisy chains at her grave when I visit her at the cemetery.”
Taking my hand, Kai rubs his thumb over my daisy tattoo. “You look like her.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
Carefully taking the backing off the frame, I take out the older photo I stashed in the back. This one was taken before my biological parents were killed. I was a little over a year old. Valerie was only two years older than I am now in this picture. We look almost identical, but that’s not what has Kai frozen in place. Sitting with us on the grass is Claire Kingston, Kai’s mother, and in front of her, a dark haired little boy with a huge, goofy smile on his face. His mom is picking daisies and giving them to him, and he’s giving them to me.
“Is that…fuck, is that you and me?” he chokes out. “If that’s Wren, I’m gonna beat the shit out of him.”
I laugh. “It’s you. Your dad told me we spent a lot of time together when we were little.”
“My dad knows about this?”
“He’s the one who gave me the photo.” I run my hands through his hair, and he leans into my touch, once again looking down at the picture.
“Is this why you were so horrified the first time I brought you a daisy?”
I laugh. “Yeah.”
I was horrified. I thought he’d figured out who I was. I thought he was fucking with me. It only took one look at him to realize that wasn’t it. He picked a daisy on the way to the shop and gave it to me just because. Because it made him think of me. Because he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about me all this time…
No one else. Only you.
“What did my dad and Valerie tell you about us? About me and my brothers?” he asks, carefully running his finger over the edge of the photo.
“Just that we used to be family but we weren’t anymore. That it was safer that way.”
“Because of Maverick.”
“Yeah.”
His teeth clench. “I hate him.”
“I hate him too.”
“I…” He shakes his head. “I could have known you my entire life. I hate that he took that away from us. I hate how much he’s taken from you, baby.”
A wobbly smile touches my lips as I bury my face into his neck. “We’re together now.”
“Are we?”
“Yeah.”
“For real?”
Tightening my arms around him, I nod, feeling his racing pulse beat against my lips. “Yeah. Yes?—”
A throat clears, and we both look up, finding Levi standing awkwardly in the open doorway. “Hailey, uh…”
My hackles raise. “What is it?”
“Derek’s gone.”
Derek
I know what I’m doing. Don’t come for me. Stay with him. Promise me.
I sneerat the text message on my phone.
I’m not promising him shit.
Exiting the elevator, the receptionist behind the desk doesn’t try to stop me this time. She doesn’t even get off her seat, frozen in place as the Kingstons and I head toward Elijah’s office. I don’t knock. Barging inside with Kai at my back, I walk right up to the desk and take the cell phone Elijah’s holding to his ear, glancing down at the screen. It’s James, who just so happens to be missing as well.
Derek wouldn’t have been able to get out of here on his own. This place is a fortress, crawling with guards who watch our every move.
Pressing the phone to my ear, I glare at Elijah, speaking to them both. “Where the hell is my brother?”