Chapter Forty-five
Brynn
While I never actually became a Zeta, I did keep the little welcome kit Sloane packed for me. It was full of goodies, but one of the things I became addicted to was the coconut foot masks.
So, I’m sitting on the couch with my feet getting pampered in their little coconut packets and my cat curled up on my lap, enjoying a lazy Sunday when the doorbell rings.
Sally gets it since she’s in the kitchen closer to the door, and a moment later, Aiden comes sauntering into the living room.
I gasp, wanting to throw the blanket over my head since I am a hot mess, but he just smirks.
“What are you doing here?” I ask awkwardly, before looking at Sally. “Also, in case I didn’t mention this, can you not grant strange men who show up on our door access to the apartment? That’d be… great.”
“I’m here to take you shopping,” Aiden says.
“Um… I… I’m busy?” It comes out as a question because I am obviously not busy. “Also, why?”
“You need a dress for the party we’re going to together,” he says vaguely, since Sally is still lingering in the room checking him out.
Behind him and off to the side, she wiggles her eyebrows at me, and I make a shooing gesture at her.
Yes, the crazy ones are always hot. This isn’t my first rodeo.
“I have dresses.”
“You need a nice dress,” he specifies. “There’s also a certain look I’m going for, and I don’t want you wearing a dress he bought you. I do want you in black lace, but… I’ll pick out your dress.”
I swallow. “Um, I guess I could get dressed.”
“Make it quick,” he says, and it annoys me a little bit, but I move Toast and go to my bedroom to change anyway.
I feel nervous as I’m getting dressed and trying to do something with my hair without showering. Rude of him to just show up. He could have texted first. I did give him my number since I agreed to go to the thing with him, and he hasn’t used it once.
Killian still does.
Every day.
I catch sight of myself getting ready to go out with someone else in the mirror and feel a heavy sense of guilt.
I sit down on my bed and open my text chain with Killian. I have to fight the urge to type something, just a check-in text…
But I know there’s no checking in with him.
It will always lead somewhere with him.
The only thing I can do is stay away.
And eventually, even if it’s not Aiden, that will mean dating someone else, so maybe I should suck it up and go practice.
I leave with him, but I feel weird about it.
I keep my phone out and in my lap because there’s also at least a ten percent chance this entire masquerade thing is a total ruse and the lunatic is planning to kidnap me or something.
I have got to stop dating kidnappers.
It occurs to me when we get to the department store that we probably should have talked on the way, but we didn’t. He seemed content to sit in the quiet and I was busy watching landmarks to make sure we really were going where he said we were—and to text my rescuers about where he took me, if not.
It’s not a kidnapping, though, it really is a shopping excursion.
He follows behind me while I look at dresses, but he doesn’t ask what I like. He picks dresses he likes, and once he’s found a few, he leads me to the fitting room to try them on.
I feel weird about trying on clothes for him the way I did Killian, but I guess he wants to match his outfit to mine.
My memory stirs, something strangely familiar about this whole interaction.
Even the way he gave me his number.
My stomach lightens a little when I have a nearly identical memory of Kyle at the coffee shop what feels like a million years ago, charming me with glints of a personality I never saw in him again.
It hits me when I’m in the dressing room, so when I pick up the skirt of the first dress and go out to see him, I’m not focused on the dress.
“When we exchanged numbers,” I say, and he looks up from his phone, “you… you handed me your phone and told me to put my number in it.”
He watches me, but doesn’t say anything.
“Is that how you usually get a girl’s number?”
He thinks about it briefly, then shrugs. “I guess so. Why?”
I shake my head. “I just remembered… this is weird, but that’s how Kyle gave me his number. Exactly like that. I mean, that probably sounds silly because I guess a lot of people give out their number in a very similar way, but it even felt the same when it happened. I remember it so distinctly, I can’t explain…”
“Oh.” He nods, understanding flashing across his face. “Yeah. The guy was a shameless fucking copycat. Never had an original idea in his life. He probably saw me do it once, thought it looked cool, and put it in his generic bag of tricks to sell undiscerning women.”
There was definitely an insult in there, but that’s not what sticks in my brain as I turn around to look at myself in the dress.
It’s the fact that the very first interaction I had where I felt attracted to Kyle, he was just imitating Aiden. And, according to Aiden, it’s not even that surprising. He did it all the time. So what other mannerisms of his might he have been borrowing?
Did I ever really like Kyle?
Or… did I only like him because he was cosplaying as Aiden when I met him?
“That’s the one.”
I glance back at Aiden, startled, as his sharp gaze is locked on my reflection in the mirror.
I haven’t even noticed the dress yet, and it’s the first of three I have to try on, but when I look in the mirror, I actually see the dress now.
It’s a beautiful black lace dress that showcases my cleavage, but not in an overly showy way. Off-the-shoulder sleeves of delicate lace hang down each arm, and the middle section of the dress fits extremely well. It’s snug to keep everything in place so I won’t have to wear a bra with it, tight around the hips and it hugs my curves beautifully, but below the knee it turns flowy and loose, so I’ll be able to walk.
It’s sexy and elegant and absolutely beautiful.
It’s also expensive. “Do you want to look at the price tag first?” I ask, glancing back at him over my bare shoulder.
“Nope. Go change back into your clothes and we’ll pick out some shoes to go with it.”
“You don’t want to at least see the other two dresses?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Don’t need to. Once I see something I like, that’s it. I don’t change my mind.”
“Okay then,” I say, picking up my delicate lace skirt and making my way back to the dressing room.
___
I spend the rest of my evening after Aiden drops me off from the shopping trip listening to Begin Again—the song I listened to back when I was a clueless idiot who had bumped into Kyle in that café—and re-examining things.
Looking closer, I feel like the jokes were stupid and maybe even mildly offensive, it was the commanding style I responded to. Kyle felt self-assured that day, but he wasn’t. He felt like he knew what he was doing, but he didn’t.
Aiden is. Aiden does.
And the more I think about it, the more weirded out I get.
Because what if I liked Aiden all along?
There are things about him that definitely irritate me, but there are things Killian did to irritate me, too. Those things mostly ended up being sexual tension, or at least turning into it.
I don’t truly want anyone but Killian, but…
Aiden isn’t engaged to someone else, so that’s a big point in his favor.
I fall asleep petting Toast and thinking about the past, but at least it’s part of the past that doesn’t make me sad.
I wake up to my phone vibrating on the bed beside me.
I shake myself awake, grabbing my phone and turning the screen to look.
It’s my mom, but it’s late. Why is she texting me this late?
And then my phone buzzes again and I realize it’s not a text. It’s a call.
I push myself up in my bed, leaning back against the wall and looking down at my phone like it’s a rat that might crawl on me. I don’t touch it until the ringing stops, and then I see a text flash across the screen.
“Please answer your phone, I need to talk to you!!!”
Excessive use of exclamation points, but… something might be wrong.
Do I care? She certainly didn’t care when something was wrong in my life, and I’ve washed my hands of them completely, so I’m not sure I do.
But it’s the first time I think about texting back.
Turns out, I don’t have to.
Another text comes through.
“We’ve been robbed! Someone broke into our house Brynn!! They shot AJ. They took your sister and no one believes me. They think she’s involved, they found these sick letters and they say she wrote them but she wouldn’t write this shit! I need you to talk to the police and tell them she wasn’t a writer. That she’d never write this kind of crap. They’ve got it all wrong and they won’t listen to me!!”
My blood runs cold, and acting on instincts I thought I’d buried, I dial her number to make sure everything is okay.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh,” she says, whining. “Oh, Brynn. I need you to come home. I need you to—you know that chest you used to keep your writing stuff in when you went through that phase? Those notebooks and stuff. I looked for them, but they’re not in your bedroom closet anymore. It sounded more like something you would write, not your sister. But it was in her handwriting, and it described exactly what they did but with all this perverted stuff. They said she’s involved, but she would never be involved. She loved her father. She would never do this. And I’m telling you, they planted these letters, but no one believes me. They say it’s clearly her handwriting, they compared samples, and I don’t know what to do. They won’t even look for her and I… I don’t know where she is or if she’s even okay.”
I try to process everything she’s saying, but her words always tend to come out in a chaotic ramble.
I think I get the gist.
Intruders.
Robbery.
Some of my stuff is gone, because I never took my story chest out of my closet. It’s one of the things I had to leave behind because it wasn’t essential, and I could only fit the essentials in my car.
But my sister is missing.
We aren’t close, obviously. We haven’t spoken since I left home, but…
“I… I shouldn’t have called. I have to go.”
“Brynn!”
I ignore her attempt to keep me on the line and hang up my phone.
And then I block her number.
But I text a different one.
“Where are you?” I ask Killian.
He doesn’t text me back.
That probably means he’s asleep, but I still keep my phone open on my bed in case he answers.
I fall asleep waiting for him, and when my alarm wakes me up, I see he still hasn’t responded.
I frown, realizing I got so caught up yesterday, I didn’t notice…
He didn’t text me at all.
He hasn’t missed a single day since I left his apartment with Sloane.
Is he okay?
I’m up off the bed, feeling mildly panicked and trying to think who to call. Hex is the only other Blue Blood I have a phone number for and I’m not texting him; he’s frightening.
I text Addison instead and ask if she can give Ryan my number and have him call me. She says she will, so I turn the sound up on my phone before I hop in the shower to get ready for school.
It’s finals week, so I should really be studying instead of distracted worrying after Killian’s welfare, but… here we are.
I haven’t checked it in a few days, but I even look at Sloane’s social media to see if there’s a Killian sighting from yesterday. Unhelpfully, there is not.
My shoulders are tense and my stomach is in knots as I pack my bag with my Monday essentials. I bring my notes and books just in case I’ll have time to squeeze in a last cram session before class, but—
I pull open the door to leave, and Killian is standing on the other side.
My anxiety subsides in an instant.
I breathe a massive sigh of relief.
I might hug him if not for the floral chest and little pink ballerina jewelry box he’s carrying stacked one on top of the other.
It’s a child’s jewelry box and there’s absolutely nothing valuable in it.
The chest isn’t even made of wood, it’s reinforced cardboard that bows a bit in the center from age and has a slightly warped lid, but it’s the box that contains every bit of garbage I wrote when I was a little girl going through it and needing to find a way to hold on to my sanity.
I swallow, meeting his gaze.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I say back.
“I thought you might want these.”
I nod, too overcome with emotion to speak.
I take a few steps back, and Killian brings them inside. He glances around just to make sure, but we’re alone. Sally isn’t here.
Good thing, too. She’d probably tease me about inviting strange, hot men into the apartment when I told her not to.
I also have a hunch there shouldn’t be witnesses to whatever he did to get these boxes, and while she would never know that…
It’s second nature to want to cover his ass, I guess.
When I finally recover the ability to speak, I say, “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Swallowing a lump of emotion again, I ask, “My mom called me. I take it you…?”
He nods, but it’s a formality. We both know he did it.
I lick my lips uncertainly. “Um… she said Angelica is missing.”
“They’ll find her in a few days.”
“Alive? I didn’t want you to hurt her, just… just AJ.”
“She’ll live,” he assures me. “I have a friend watching her right now.”
“Can you just let her go back home?” I ask.
“Yeah. When I’m good and ready to.”
“I meant now.”
“Oh. Then, no.”
I sigh, absently hugging myself. “Is she—?”
Killian seldom interrupts me, but he does this time. “I don’t want to talk about her anymore. I told you I’d handle it. You knew I’d do it the way I saw fit. Now the score’s been settled to my satisfaction. He’ll hold her for a couple of days, then he’ll take her back home. She’ll be fine. You were fine, weren’t you? She wasn’t worried about you.”
It’s definitely strange to be talking about my sister’s kidnapping that I know he coordinated, and I don’t know how to feel about it. I don’t want her to be kidnapped, but I know there’s little use arguing with him about it.
That’s so fucked up.
These are extremely depraved circumstances to be seeing him under, but I guess when aren’t the circumstances depraved with us?
I swallow. “I texted you. When you didn’t answer, I got worried.”
A glint comes into his pretty blue eyes and he doesn’t bother to hide his smirk. “Oh, yeah?”
I sigh with annoyance, but I can’t entirely stifle my smile. “You didn’t text me yesterday either, so I thought… maybe something happened.”
“I didn’t take my phone with me. I had a burner, but I left my actual phone home so I couldn’t be traced to your hometown when I had no reason to be there and a crime connected to you was going down. They can check that, see if your phone pings on the local towers. Not that I plan to get caught, but…”
“Got it.”
He nods, his gaze drifting to my lips and unleashing a swarm of butterflies in my stomach.
Absently grabbing my bag’s shoulder strap, I tell him, “Well, I was just about to leave. I have a final, so…”
“Wouldn’t want you to be late for that.”
I shake my head.
I hate this, and I love it at the same time.
I love him being in my apartment. I hate feeling… everything I’m feeling.
I need a constant supply of Tums when I’m around this man, I swear.
Killian walks me out and checks to make sure the door is locked behind us, then he walks me to my car.
I slide in and look up at him, and my stupid heart memorizes the way he looks looking down at me.
“Goodbye, Killian,” I say softly.
He doesn’t say it back, just watches me pull my door closed and settle my bag in the seat next to me.
Finally, he turns and walks back to his own car.
He backs down the road enough for me to pull out and leave ahead of him. I keep an eye on the rearview mirror since he’s following me, but at a certain point, he turns and goes his own way.
It makes me immeasurably sad.
Because I wish I could go wherever he’s going, always.
But I can’t.
And that’s just the way it is.