Chapter Thirty-seven
Killian
Brynn and I go to bed a little early tonight.
I wasn’t planning to fuck her after the story she told me earlier. Just didn’t feel right.
But to my surprise, she’s the one to initiate. She curls close and starts kissing my neck. Her tits press against my chest, and she hooks a leg around mine to pull our bodies even closer. Her touch is as soft and tempting as her lips when she kisses me, and there’s an added something special there tonight. Something adoring and vulnerable. Something grateful. Every stroke, every smile is infused with trust I don’t deserve, and when my cock turns to stone, she slides her soft hand down to caress it and coax me closer.
And hell, I’m not that noble.
So I make her come a couple of times and fill that sweet pussy full of cum, and then my perfect girl curls up in my arms, her dark hair spread across my pillow, and falls asleep like an angel.
I’m awake a lot longer, plotting out all the carnage I want to inflict upon her family. I’ll only kill the pervert who touched her, but I want to fuck with her mom and sister, too, and I need to figure out how best to do it.
As vehemently as she made me dislike them with that one single story, I enjoy thinking about it.
But eventually, I fall asleep.
I don’t know what wakes me.
I’m not the lightest sleeper, so the simple act of a phone lighting up in the dark definitely shouldn’t do it, but when my eyes open, that’s the only thing that feels off in the room. Brynn is still sleeping soundly curled up against me, and the bedroom door is closed so none of the “shadow murderers” Brynn is convinced spawn in the next room over if a bedroom door is left open while people sleep have snuck in to kill us. There’s no movement in the room, no indication we’re not alone in it.
The room goes dark, and I glance over at my nightstand, careful not to move too much since I don’t want to wake Brynn up.
Don’t look.
I don’t know where that instinct comes from, but dread builds up inside me real fucking quick.
Don’t look.
But I have to now.
It’s not my problem, but Dare is settling a score of his own tonight and someone could be reaching out because something went wrong. I don’t relish the thought of leaving Brynn alone in this bed to sneak out and help them with whatever shit they’ve stepped in, but I guess I will.
I reach for the phone, but I’m watching Brynn to make sure she stays asleep.
She does.
So I check the phone, and then I kinda wish I hadn’t.
Luckily, I don’t have to swipe open the message to check it since it’s just one line, so I don’t have to answer right now and she’ll just assume I’m sleeping, but that one line makes me uneasy.
It’s Sloane. I need to talk to you.
She was helping them out tonight, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility this could still be about that, but since I haven’t heard from the guys, I kinda doubt it.
I put the phone down on my stomach and reach over to open my bedside drawer so I can check my burner.
Nope, nothing from the guys.
This message isn’t from Sloane’s phone, though, so that’s weird. I didn’t give her a burner, and I don’t see why anyone else would have.
Unless it’s Dare’s burner and something went so wrong, he’s not able to call me himself.
Fuck.
Rather than text her back, I text Hex. “Hey, was everything all right earlier?”
I wait a minute for him to answer, but he doesn’t.
I wait another minute, and finally my phone lights up.
But it’s not Hex.
It’s Sloane on her phone now. “Are you awake?”
She wants to talk now?
No way I’m answering that one.
That feeling of uneasiness grows and I look over at Brynn, fast asleep.
It’s a fleeting impulse, one I know I could never act on, but for just a second, I imagine waking her up, grabbing a bag and telling her to fill it with everything she needs, then grabbing Toast and getting the hell out of here.
Out of Boston.
Out of Massachusetts.
Go somewhere, anywhere, where none of the bullshit can touch us.
It’s a nice dream.
But about as impossible as the one she had about being rescued by a fucking opera ghost.
I have friends who would help me disappear if that was a thing I needed under most circumstances, but not these ones.
Not when you break the cardinal rule and fuck over one of your own.
I close my eyes and draw in a breath, then I release it.
It’s fine.
Everything’s fine.
She just wants to talk.
I still have time.
But it doesn’t feel that way, and not for the first time, I feel like there’s a noose tied around my neck and I’m just waiting for someone to kick the bench out from under me.
And the worst part is, I braided the rope myself when I thought my neck was made of steel.
I told Brynn I didn’t believe in love, and I meant it.
But I’ve never felt what she makes me feel.
My phone lights up again.
I want to pretend if I ignore her, she’ll just go away, but this insistence is unlike her.
And the cowardice is unlike me, but I still find myself refusing to look at the fucking phone. I’ve never been one to hide from accountability. In fact, I can’t fucking stand people who do, but it feels like things are spinning out of control, and if I just don’t look…
The goddamn phone vibrates again, so I rip it off the charge cord and chuck it across the room.
Brynn jerks when the phone hits the wall, and I freeze. Her brow furrows and she shifts, throwing her arm over my abdomen, then falling back into a peaceful slumber.
I close my eyes, ignoring the light from my phone, ignoring the feeling of impending doom, ignoring everything that isn’t in this bed, because I don’t care about any of it right now.
Just when I finally get myself under control and I feel like maybe I can fall back asleep, I hear a noise that stops my heart.
The front door.
Fuck.
Heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, I ease away from Brynn and slide off the bed. I bend to grab my sweatpants and step into them as I’m walking, but I don’t stop to grab my phone.
A light switches on in the living room.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I ease the door open, stealing a quick look back at Brynn, then easing the door shut so I don’t wake her up.
Then I turn to face Sloane Whitley, standing in my kitchen with a key card to my apartment in her hand.
“What the fuck, Sloane?”
“I told you I was coming over,” she states. “You didn’t answer.”
“I was asleep. It’s the middle of the night. And have you ever heard of knocking?”
“I don’t need to knock on the door of my own father’s apartment, Killian.”
She sounds tired, but she also looks surprisingly out of sorts. Her blond hair is up in a Tinkerbell bun, but it’s sagging and strands have escaped. She’s wearing heels and what appears to be an extremely skimpy dress underneath an oversized, white Calhoun University sweater.
“Is everything all right?” I ask her, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. “Did the job go bad?”
“No. Well, yes,” she says, scowling at me. “I thought he was gonna fuck the guy up, not kill him. That was a lot to witness, and then I had to ride back to my sorority house in the murderer’s car, so… yeah, a heads-up about the extent of tonight’s work would have been appreciated.”
“To be fair, I did ask if you had any questions,” I state.
Her blue eyes widen. “Okay. Fair. You did. And I did ask a question, and that is what we need to talk about.”
Feeling my guard go up, I cross my arms over my chest. “Paris? I already told you it was cold. What more did you need to know?”
Sloane looks away, shaking her head. It takes her a moment, but when she looks back at me, she asks slowly, “Do you know how many times I’ve looked at that screenshot of her kissing your cheek? I don’t even want you to know because it’s pathetic. And you made me feel pathetic, Killian, when you humiliated me at my own event—”
“Oh, you mean when you were trying your best to pimp her out? You knew none of my friends would fuck with her, so you tricked her into participating and then you invited Alpha Chi trying to get one of the spoiled frat boys or a member of the douchebag society to bite. It was fucking transparent, Sloane. I saw the guys in that crowd, I know who you invited, and I know why you invited them.”
“Well, you showed me, didn’t you?” she explodes, eyes wide. “You took her to fucking Paris!”
Eyebrows rising, I take a step toward her. “I need you to lower your fucking voice right now.”
She swallows, her gaze shooting to my bedroom door. “I take it she’s asleep in there.”
“Of course she is. Why are you doing this?”
“Why am I doing this?” she echoes, but it’s not a question, it’s the warning of a person seconds away from exploding on some motherfucker who has pushed them too far.
I intervene before the eruption can occur and pour molten lava over my life. “Please do not wake her up.”
She stares at me, her pale features flushed with barely suppressed anger, but she takes a second, takes a couple of breaths, and then calms her little ass down.
Once she’s able to speak without screaming at me like I can tell she wants to, she says, “I know we talked about this and came to what felt at the time like a very mature, very reasonable agreement. I know you have not done anything technically wrong. When this all started, I wanted you to have your freedom. I wanted you to have this time in college to explore and satisfy any desire you might have to be with anyone else. I wanted you to do that now so you wouldn’t feel the need to later when we would be married and I would never be able to forgive you for it.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I acted in the best interest of our future relationship, and it was my understanding—my expectation—that you were doing the same thing. And I think you have been. Until you met Brynn.”
I swallow, but it feels like a log of fucking dread is lodged in my throat.
“And I thought this was common sense, Killian. I thought you knew there was an unwritten rule in this agreement that you were free to fuck anyone you wanted as long as you were responsible about it. That means you do not allow what you’re doing with anyone now to threaten our future. It means you don’t fuck my friends because that would embarrass me, and it means you don’t catch serious feelings for any of the girls you fuck because you know there is no future in it. And maybe, maybe I could understand you squeezing in one last whole-ass relationship if it was junior year and you still had loads of time left to enjoy your remaining single days, but we are a month and a half away from being engaged, Killian. It’s too late in the game to do that now. The second you felt feelings coming on for that girl, you should have ended it. You should have done that to protect us,” she says, sounding legitimately hurt. “But instead, you deliberately embarrassed me in front of my friends for the benefit of some other girl, and then you took her to Paris. And it’s really hard to take that any other way than being an absolute slap in the face that I have done nothing to deserve.”
She’s teary-eyed now, her voice breaking, and to say I feel like a first-class asshole would be an understatement.
She’s right.
She’s right about all of it.
And I have been operating under that agreement and respecting even the unwritten rules since sophomore year when I signed my life away in a deal that felt at the time like the opportunity of a fucking lifetime.
She deserves an apology, and more than that, she deserves a man who wants to give it to her.
Because despite knowing I’m in the wrong here, and she has every right to be hurt, I can’t find it in me to be sorry for any of it.
I did what I did for Brynn, and if I knew Sloane would react that way, I’d do the exact same thing a second time without a moment’s hesitation.
Sloane sniffles, getting herself together since I’ve missed my opportunity to be her hero.
I imagine she hoped this would go a little differently. That I’d tell her she’s right and walk over to her, grab her by her slim shoulders and pull her into my arms for a remorseful embrace. I’d tell her I’m an asshole, and I’m sorry for hurting her, and she doesn’t have to worry; I’ll take care of this and get back on track, and nothing like this will ever happen again. If I were her hero, even a flawed one, I’d tell her it was a mistake while I’m holding her, and then I’d go kick the other girl out of my bed to make room for her in it. I’d spend the rest of the night making it up to her because she’s the woman I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with.
And I should want to do that.
And maybe I would have wanted to do that if this were about anybody else. Sloane has watched me hook up with random girls since sophomore year and never once batted an eye. If she had sooner, I would have stopped.
But we had an agreement, and I’m supposed to be free to live my life as I see fit until the end of this year.
And unfortunately for all of us, I had the shit luck of meeting Brynn Blakely on the last day of October.
Sloane clears her throat, then she says, “I’ve second guessed if it was even a good idea to begin with, honestly. My logic was sound; I’ve watched infidelity rip apart marriage after marriage in my circle and all I wanted was to not have to go through that. There’s no divorce in a marriage like ours, so I wanted a husband I would be able to trust and count on, and it’s supposed to be you. I picked you. And I want it to be you,” she says softly, with vulnerability I can tell makes her uncomfortable. “I still want it to be you. But maybe we should have ended this period of being unattached earlier. I’ve watched other girls with their boyfriends making memories in college, and I can’t help thinking maybe that should have been us. I know we’ll have spring semester, and we’ll technically be engaged, but we’ll only really be starting our relationship then. Maybe waiting was a mistake. Maybe we should have started nurturing our own bond last year, that way by now we would be established and enjoying each other…” She trails off, shaking her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” she says. “What’s done is done, and all we can do is move forward. But one thing we absolutely should not be doing is nurturing attachments to other people. And one thing I am absolutely sure of is that you have to end things with Brynn now, before you get in any deeper.”
The problem is, the one thing I am absolutely sure of is that there’s no fucking way I’m going to do that, and I don’t know how to say it.
Not because I’m worried about her feelings. I’ve made it pretty fucking clear I’m not, and that’s why she’s standing in my kitchen, but this isn’t about some sorority girl’s feelings.
And Sloane Whitley is not just some sorority girl.
She’s the daughter of Roger Whitley, a prominent Blue Blood I made a deal with to marry his daughter and inherit his fucking kingdom since he no longer had a son to carry on his legacy.
Breaking it off with Sloane isn’t just fucking over a girl who has already started planning our wedding and probably drafting trendy but classic names for our future children.
It’s breaking my word to another Blue Blood.
It’s a fireable offense, and there’s only one way to get fired from this gig.
There’s no walking away from a blood oath, and when I made this one, I thought I was getting an incredible deal.
And the truth is, I was.
But I’d rather have Brynn than marry Sloane Whitley, even with all the benefits that come with her.
It’s hard to imagine Sloane still wanting to marry me once I tell her that, but the truth is, she may not have a choice at this point. She may have picked me out of the available Blue Bloods, but once the deal was struck, it was a done deal for both of us. Even if she wanted out of it now, I doubt her father would allow it.
He’s made too much of an investment in me at this point, and his daughter’s enduring happiness is pretty far down his priority list.
We’re both stuck in this deal, whether I decide to make us miserable about it or not.
I know that, logically, but I still find myself wanting to further fuck myself by telling Sloane just how little interest I have in being with her.
But before I can utter a single syllable, I notice her gaze drift to my bedroom door.
And my heart sinks as I turn because I already know what I’m going to see.
I feel a surge of pointless hope that she’ll have just woken up. She’ll be sleepy and confused, but she won’t have heard a word we just said.
But then I see her face.
And I can practically hear her heart breaking.
And I know… she fucking heard everything.