41. Ozzy
FORTY-ONE
ozzy
“So, you’re sitting here trying to tell me…that you want to fuck her because you can’t kill her …because, not only will Emilio fuckin’ off your ass but because we all know you don’t have the balls to do it.”
Cairo stares down Torin like he’s actually gone off the rails and lost his mind.
He has.
He doesn’t know if he needs to stay mad, sad, vengeful, or permit himself to move on with his life.
I don’t tell him what I know. I’m certain Bay didn’t murder Judah, but that would be giving away a lot of other things I can’t mention right now.
Besides, he won’t listen to anyone about it.
Regardless, this is a mess I’m in the middle of cleaning up, but I didn’t understand how difficult it would be. My brothers are stubborn as well as equally irrational and not used to having anyone outside our group that we had to look out for.
Bay is my responsibility that I’m trying to get better with now that she can actually see me, but it still means something. To Torin, he can’t decide if I’ll kill him for hurting her in any way, shape, or form, or if I’ll permit him to do whatever it is he wants to do. He keeps stealing glances at me to see if I’m about to lose it or not.
The answer to that is I’ll cut his throat if he tries to harm her. She may be a handful, something I’m not totally comfortable handling when she’s so fucking pretty and…weird.
She’s always watching me when she doesn’t think I notice. She’s careful sometimes not to say the wrong words, but when I upset her, she goes off the handle, and I don’t mind that.
I married her to safeguard her from everything surrounding our group, including my brothers who currently still can’t pull their heads out of their asses, and no outsider was going to interfere in that.
Technically, though, I’m on the outside looking in. She doesn’t fully trust me yet, but she’s trying. I can’t expect to make miracles happen, but I can keep Torin from fucking shit up any more than he already has and to get Reeve to stop doing drugs before he kills his fucking self.
“Pretty much,” Torin deadpans, lighting the blunt that hangs from his lips. He kicks his seat back, the bottom of his dirty-ass shoes kicked up on the edge of the patio table, and enjoys the sun like he hasn’t seen it in years.
This is his second blunt of the afternoon, he’s on his fourth beer, and he’s been out here for fucking hours locked in his own head.
“Stay the fuck away from her,” Cairo seethes through his teeth, always the leader, the fixer, the one who just wants this all to disappear. We all need her in some sort of capacity, even him.
For me, I just need her to be present for the boys. I can’t handle any more.
That alone fits me just fine right now.
“She’s ours, isn’t she?” Torin counters back through a cloud of gray smoke. “That’s why Ozzy married her fucking ass.”
Cairo shakes his head, glimpsing over his shoulder at me for help, but I learned my lesson with Torin a long time ago.
He’s a righteous prick who believes it’s his way or the highway.
But he’s wrong now, and he’ll continue to act like he’s right until he has proof that says otherwise. And that’s why I’m helping Bay get a copy of that tape of Judah.
“Did you find anything on Matteo?” That comes from Cairo as Torin slides his legs off the table and allows the front legs of his chair to slam into the cement patio with unadulterated interest.
“You mean her ex-boyfriend who she’s probably fucking and has been fucking since us?”
“She’s not,” I tell him confidently because I would know.
“You with her all the time?” He narrows his eyes at me as if I’m not doing my job right. That I’m not capable of doing what I have been. All Torin knows about Bay is because of me.
“She hates Matteo.”
Torin tsks. “Yeah…but she loves dick, though.”
I ball my hands to keep from raising my voice. “She doesn’t like him.”
My cousin shakes his head at me as if I’m daft. “Listen, Oz, I know you’ve watched her for, like, ever and a day, but she’s poison. She’s capable of eating you up and spitting you out. That’s why you never came out, and that’s why we’ve kept you at a safe distance.”
“Like she did with you,” Cairo shoots back. “That’s all you, brother. You just haven’t come to terms yet with whether you hate or love her. If you should allow and look into more of this because you’re afraid of what you might find.”
“Ayyeeee, dipshits,” Reeve hollers, breaking into the forming tension, clearly half in the bag himself because his words are already slurred. But his focus instantly lasers in on me.
He’s doped up on coke—that’s my first observation.
My second is that he hasn’t seen me since I married Bay, and he’s had my number since the day he found out and vowed to “kill me”.
His speed is pretty on point as he rushes me, dropping the white box of something that he had in his hands like beating my ass is more important than eating.
I don’t bother to dodge him.
Maybe this will make him feel better.
His first punch barely makes its mark along my cheek as his full body weight lands on me, sending the chair I’m sitting on backward and into the cement behind me.
He grunts, legs tangled in the chair somehow as he tries to regain his footing while I attempt to sit up before he’s on me again.
Reeve’s chest hits mine like we’re sumo wrestlers before he straddles me and throws another punch, slamming into the side of my jaw this time and rattling my teeth. The pain immediately shoots to my temple, and a high reverberating sound rings in my ears as he shouts something at me that I can’t fully hear.
He’s allowed two more hits before I put him on his ass when I hear him break into a vulnerable, pissed-off whine of fury.
“I loved her, and you fucking took her from me, you piece of fucking shit!” Another blow, this time to my nose, and I feel the gush of blood free itself. “She was supposed to have my fucking last name!”
I mean, I don’t think she has mine, but if he wants her to have his, I don’t care.
“Reeve, get the fuck off.” That comes from Cairo, but he still delivers another slug before he’s ripped off me as I lie flat on the cement to catch my breath.
But when another body lands over me, careful not to touch me, I don’t think I’m seeing what I’m viewing properly.
In fact, my pulse rapidly pumps as sky-blue eyes peer down at me, and dark raven hair hangs down from her face as it twists in…I don’t know.
“What the fuck?” Bay leers, glowering down at me like I just did this to myself.
I guess it depends on who you ask.
She straightens her spine and glances over her shoulder at something. “You fucking animal. Are you fucking crazy? Why would you do that to your brother?”
She must be yelling at Reeve; however, I can’t see him.
All I see is an Eminem shirt that says I’m the Real Slim Shady and the creamy skin of her torso underneath it.
I’ve never seen anything as beautiful and wild as Bay Astor.
I was okay with standing in the background forever until I had to make a detrimental move to keep her out of Ramsey’s deathly grasp.
I don’t do well with this.
She leans over me, and I freak, shoving her back so she gets away from me. I don’t want to hurt her, but I can’t have her near me either.
I don’t feel comfortable.
I can’t control the things my body feels when she’s near me. It feels powerful and violent, foreign, and I don’t know how to translate it like the guys do.
All I know is I can keep her safe and not touch me.
When I’m on my haunches, she’s thankfully caught by Cairo, his hands tucked under her arms as he pulls her up to her feet.
However, those clear blues don’t leave me for a second, and I feel stupid and judged in her eyes.
Cairo whispers something along the edge of her ear, probably to tell her how much of a freak I am. How I’m not someone you just keep captured anywhere, against any surface because I’ll snap. And while I expect her to blatantly ignore me, she steps from my brother’s grasp and toward me as I stand.
I study her face. The perfect outline of her cheek and jaw, that bottom lip that I’d like to know how soft it is.
I hold my next inhale as she gets closer, and I squeeze my fisted hands, digging my fingernails into my palms.
“You okay?” she asks me, her voice dipped so that only I can hear her. Now, I feel more inadequate in her eyes because I can’t even have her touch me like the others can. I give her a curt nod and avert my eyes from her, needing something else. To leave. “We’re gonna keep working on that.”
My focus slices back to her as she lifts her hand and extends it. I don’t understand why she’s even here right now.
“You too cool for high-fives, or do I get one?”
What the fuck?
Looking at her long fingers, I tell myself it’ll only be less than a second that we’re touching.
That she’s not going to want more and grab my hand. That she can’t hurt me because I’m not emotionally attached, just strategically for my brothers.
Quickly, I hit her hand and retreat, and she smiles—bright, pretty, and hazardous.
It’s already apparent the boys can’t do without her.
Well, maybe everyone but Cairo.
Even then, he talks a big game, but he makes sure she’s taken care of. Even let her sisters stay with his parents because he didn’t want them in a shitty house with a shady family that wouldn’t take care of them.
“Cairo, babe, we’re late!” That voice slowly sets every single nerve ending in my body on end and stirs up panic in my chest and head.
Jerking my head toward the house where it came from, I start mapping out my escape.
I don’t want to see her.
I can’t.
Not when she hurt me, and her betrayal got me five years in prison because I believed she cared about me.
That’s what she kept saying.
That is what she came to prison to tell me.
“ I’m so sorry for what happened, Ozzy.” Her chin tucks into her chest, and I see a single tear fall to her lap. “It’s my fault.”
I shake my head because it was mine for getting caught.
It was mine for being too slow and not finishing it quick and easy like we spoke about.
She was hurt—raped by some football player—and I wanted him to pay for the emotional damage he caused her. How she cried in my chest and was the first person I’ve ever held in my arms without being interrupted.
“How can I get you to forgive me?” She heaves her head slowly up, as if it weighs a million pounds. “What can I do?”
I just want to go home.
That’s really all I want, but there’s no way she can make that happen. She said she already asked her father, the attorney general, and it was a no-go. I’m going to prison for a long-ass fucking time for attempted murder.
“How about when you get out…” She doesn’t finish her sentence, a flush of red blanketing her face in what appears to be embarrassment.
“What?” I mutter into the phone, watching her through the thick glass of the visitation room. She looks beautiful, her light brown hair curled around the soft features of her face. Her backpack is still wrapped around her shoulders because she just came from school.
“When you get out of prison…we can be together.”
My eyebrows knit. “Cairo.”
She’s been with him since they were twelve.
He loves her—did love her. He tells me he doesn’t anymore, but I think he’s just angry after what she asked me to do.
“He’s being…mean to me,” she claims. “He’s so angry and hurtful, Oz.”
“He’s mad.”
“Why?” Her voice steeps into almost a shrill tone, causing me to pull the black phone away from my ear a bit. “I was the one…” She lowers it. “Raped.”
My eyes close on their own at the thought of Kyle Bowman forcing himself on her. Holding her down while she screamed and thrashed. How we weren’t there to save her at the party.
“He’ll come around,” I emit which gets her to roll her pretty brown eyes.
“He won’t. He said we’re over.” I shake my head. “Yes, that’s what he said. And you saved me, Oz. He’ll never come around me again.”
“I didn’t kill him, though.”
Her lips quirk in a smile. “You did. He died at the hospital.”
“Why the fuck are you in our house, Vivian?” Torin drawls, too drunk to even make a threat to kick her out. Too in the clouds to notice I’m on the verge of having a full-blown panic attack.
She did more than those prison visits.
She received more from me than what she was worth.
She fucked me up so bad that her voice is torture.
“Sit down, Wildes, before you fall down,” I hear her say in that haughty tone as if she rules the world.
She ruled mine.
She did for a really long time, and I think she still does.
“Hey.” The female voice close to me is deeper, quieter, as my head and eyes get on board to search for it, I find Bay standing in front of me, blocking Vivian from my view. “What’s wrong?”
“Get the fuck out,” Cairo barks out, malice laced in every syllable of his words. “I told you I’d pick you up.”
“I didn’t want to—is that, Ozzy?”
I can’t breathe.
She’s getting closer. I can imagine it in my head. The perfectly styled hair, her nails painted red like they always are, and an expensive pair of heels. I hear them clicking against the cement, but my own feet feel like cement blocks, not able to move because she holds me still. She demands I stay for her to do whatever it is she wants with me.
“Stay the fuck away from him, Vivian.” The dip of violence in Reeve’s tone would impress me if I wasn’t malfunctioning.
He says something else, but I don’t form it into real words. Everything feels like it’s spinning, and I’m out of control.
Until I’m slightly bumped, forcing my eyes to land on Bay’s face.
A look of calm illuminates every single one of her features, and I want to sink into them. I want to heavily study something else because I can see Vivian’s outline, but I refuse to look at her. I’m taller than Bay, so I can see over her if I really wanted to, but I concentrate on the pitch-black color of Bay’s hair and the smell of motor oil and something floral wafting in my nose.
“Asshole, this is my man’s house,” Vivian leers back to somebody. “I’m welcome—” Bay suddenly pivots, and I wish she hadn’t. She’s close, but not close enough to touch, and I need her to ground me.
I need her to breathe.
“You must not have learned from the other day,” I hear Bay profess evenly. “If I have to warn you, you’re gonna be a cripple by the time I’m done.”
I hear Vivian scoff, and I inch closer to Bay, finding the creamy skin of her neck another fascination.
“Is that a threat?” Vivian is purposely pushing Bay’s temper, and I should be on alert so she doesn’t get hurt, but I’m still comatose, still unable to function properly.
“Promise.”
Bay disappears from my view, and I hear a blood-curdling scream ripple through the air, sending a violent chill through my veins.
Bay needs me.
Bay needs me.
“Come on.” A large hand finds my bicep, and I smell weed and fresh salt air.
Reeve.
I shake my head, muscling myself to look at my brother. “Bay…”
“Is currently beating the shit out of Vivian,” he muses through a female grunt. “You better get used to it, you piece of shit.”
I know this.
Except, I don’t expect to always be around it so closely.
“Focus on me,” Reeve says gently, turning my body to fully face him. “You guys gettin’ along?”
I don’t know what that even means.
“Why did you do this to yourself? Are you…” His hazel eyes search mine as he blows out a breath, clearly not wanting to talk about this as much as I. “You comfortable with her?” I shake my head and he glowers. “Then why the fuck didn’t you ask one of us to do it? I would’ve stepped in you dumbass?—”
“Reeve, get your ass over here and fucking help!” Cairo’s command poses no lack of urgency as Reeve quickly goes to assist.
Meanwhile, I continue to stare out at the pool and get my bearings. However, I don’t miss Bay’s next words.
“I’ll fucking kill you if I see you by him again!”