47. Bay
FORTY-SEVEN
bay
Matteo’s obsession with the woods is an evident indicator that he likes to be secluded. That he could easily slip away and lure someone to do fuck-knows to them. It must provide some special haven for him to carry out his bullshit gang crap and feel safe in a world where not a lot of men like him and what he stands for. I’m aware of the things he does between the trees and brush. How he overlooks events and never stops to help.
I’ve always wondered when he found me and Judah. Was it when he was on top of me, his hands wrapped tightly around my throat as I pleaded with my eyes for Judah to stop? Or would he have allowed me to die that night if I didn’t fight back?
I never asked him.
However, it changed everything in our dynamic.
So much so that even with Levi, Hot Rod, Juice and Ozzy present somewhere around here, I’m uneasy. My steps are slightly unsteady as I breathe in the smokey smell of the giant bonfire raging in the middle of the clearing.
This feels too familiar, and I can’t say I’ve been in the middle of the woods since that night.
Matteo would still throw his parties here, but after Judah’s death, I never went with him. He’d keep me under lock and key with his boys to make sure “I stayed safe”.
“If You Ain’t From My Hood” by Project Pat blares off the sound barrier created by the surrounding woods as I silently search for the man himself. A throng of people dance, and some watch a bunch of dudes stand upside down on a keg.
It’s cold tonight, small gray clouds of people breathing filling the space overhead. Brave girls in shorts and crop tops strut around for attention, gaining a few eyes as they make their rounds which makes me spot the line of coolers by a table of stacked pizza boxes.
Stealing a beer, I crack it open and drink some down for liquid courage.
I don’t want to be here.
I couldn’t make that clearer to Levi. He must’ve seen something in my eyes because he called it off before I double-backed and said I could do this.
I needed to.
That fucking video is taunting the living shit out of me, and I want this to be over.
But honestly, I’ve been asking myself what does it change and chiding myself that it’ll change nothing between Torin and me. I feel nothing but fear and unease underneath his tawny gaze. His pretty boy features only define what I always thought him to be.
Entitled.
Vicious.
And undeniably petty.
I’ll never be able to forget what he did to me. Even though I was allotted that sucker punch, I only did it because I had the opportunity. Because he thought he could still order me around with what I was and wasn’t going to do with my ex.
The shit was as nauseating as it was satisfying after I hit him.
Pulling at my Miller Lite, I push back memories. I force the guilt that wants to form in my chest from what happened to Judah to the wayside because I don’t have the time nor the energy to reminisce on shit I can’t change.
No matter what anyone says or thinks, I didn’t lead Judah Wildes on. I had a crush on him once upon a time, yes, but I didn’t flirt with him. I didn’t bat my eyelashes and walk around half-naked in front of him like a lot of the other girls used to do. I’m not sure why he started to think it was time to make a move on me when it was no secret Matteo and I were dating, but something set him off. I’m not sure if it was drugs, alcohol, or a shot of bravery, or all three options, but I wish he hadn’t.
I wish I never told him I had a crush.
Because maybe it would’ve saved his life.
Nonetheless, I may desire many things, but I can’t stop them from being real. I’m not able to take away the pain I see living in Torin’s eyes. It’s real, and even though I can’t relate to the how, the loss of Dad is crippling when I find myself alone with nothing to do.
I can’t imagine waiting around for years and finally finding out.
“Well, if it isn’t the Queen of South Shore herself.” Matteo’s sardonic tone licks up my spine and isn’t lost on me over the sound of the music as I take another casual drink and stare at the fuckery going on in front of me. “I don’t know if you’re plain stupid or you just missed me and my cock.”
“And here I thought I lived in La La Land.”
He chuckles, and a cautionary wave of goosebumps lines my skin. “You liked my filthy mouth, Bay. It made you come more times than you can count.”
Ever want to disappear out of thin air?
This would be the moment for me.
“Word on the street is Torin Wildes still wants you fucking dead.” My eyes bulge from my head before I right myself. I need to remember not to be so easily fucking swayed by anything that comes out of my ex’s mouth these days. “I guess his little rescue didn’t help things, did it?”
“You know how boys are when they get their feelings hurt.” Matteo steps out in front of me as the words leave my lips, and I meet his chocolate brown eyes and cleanly shaven tan skin. He looks like how he did when we were kids—a fucking tool.
“Wouldn’t know. You ruined all females for me, Bay.”
“You don’t have feelings, Matteo.”
He drops his disgusting gaze down my body slowly, as if to see if I’ve changed since the last time he’s seen me or if I’m hiding a machete in my pants, who knows? “You did when you said you weren’t interested in Judah. However, I am stumped on why you’d be here, so color me curious.” His eyebrows clash together, turning into his old self. “What the fuck do you want?”
Well, no sense beating around the bush.
“I want that video.”
“What video?” He fishes into his jeans and pulls out a box of Newports.
“Judah’s.”
Matteo slices his attention back to me and bores daggers at my head. “What the fuck did I say about you mentioning his name around me again?”
“Whose?”
Two can play the stupid game.
He tsks at my antics and pulls out a fag. “What the hell do I have to feel guilty about when you lured him into those woods, Bay?”
I didn’t, and he knows it. We’ve only fought about it a million times.
“You have me on his hit list, Matt. Torin thinks I murdered his fuckin’ brother.”
“Bitch”—he takes a single step in my direction, and I mindlessly shy back—“call me Matt one more time, and I’m gonna teach you again how to speak to me.” He lights his cigarette before inhaling a long hit, and it seems to settle him down, but he waits a few beats before speaking again. “He’s not for you. He’s weak. Look how quickly he fucking turned on you.”
Like you, fucker?
“Heard you got married.”
“That’s old news. I’ve been married, Matteo. It’s nothing.”
“Sounds like something to me. You don’t just marry into that family and not expect shit to happen.”
“Oh, I expect shit to happen.”
“Like?” I hit him with a you’re fucking with me, right? look to which he scoffs at. “I didn’t think you were that stupid. I always said you could come to me, Bay. Why do you insist on fuckin’ with those white boys?”
“Why would I run to the prick who turned me in?” He quirks a brow.“Oh, so now you’re back to playin’ stupid again?”
“I did it for you.”
“Me? Getting me underneath Torin’s radar was for me? How so? I’d love to hear your fucked up logic.”
“Got you to see their true colors, didn’t it?” I glower at him as he takes another hit. “Don’t get into your feelings, girl. You’ll see one day what I mean.”
“Don’t pretend you did it for anyone else but yourself,” I retort, clenching my hands into tight fists to keep from freaking out at how painfully close he is. “Give me the video.”
“For what?”
“To show that I wasn’t responsible.”
“For stabbin’ Judah?” He tsks. “You were.”
“But I didn’t put that last bullet in him, did I?”
He lifts his shoulders dismissively. “I don’t recall that shit.”
He must think I’m recording him because, normally, Matteo is proud of his, what he’d call, accomplishments.
He wouldn’t deny them.
“Remember when you said us working together would be beneficial? Don’t make me an enemy.”
“I did say that.”
“Then recall who and what I am.”
“All you have is Wallace. And I’ve been fighting with him for years.”
“And The Landings’s seat. I am Emilio Wildes’s daughter after all. So, do you want me to enforce Daddy’s soldiers or do you wanna play nice?”
He loses the space between us, purposely bumping his chest into mine to intimidate. It works. I’ve fought Matteo off before and never won. “You threatenin’ me now, puta ?”
“Promising, foreshadowing…whatever you want to call it.”
“Think so?” He ashes his cancer stick to the side and sets his focus on me as if he’s gonna act and make me retract what I just said.
He knows it won’t stop the reality.
Even when Matteo raises a gun from somewhere on him and begins waving it around in my peripheral, I’m still the daughter of the most powerful man around here. And if Matteo kills me, he’s dead by the end of the week. “How about now? Maybe I’ll just finish off what Judah planned to do all those years ago.”
“Your funeral,” I mutter, barely able to get the words out because my stomach is strangling them to death, and sweat begins to form at the back of my neck.
“Now,” he coos with a shitty smirk. “Why would I want to do that?”
The gun disappears, but I’m still on edge. I don’t know what Levi expected me to do here. He said to distract him, but I knew I was walking into a losing battle.
I came here for one thing and one thing only, and it’s done.
Matteo isn’t going to hand me over shit and I’m wasting my time and energy here.
“You’re so fuckin’ confident that your daddy’s name is gonna save you?” I blink and pull Matteo back into my focus. “You need to reevaluate, Bay. If you don’t believe I’ll put a bullet in you, then fuck you silly like I used to.” He leans closer, hovering his lips over mine and setting off a flood of goosebumps along my skin. “You know I used to drive you crazy, girl. You have the gall to come over here and not expect to suffer some of the consequences? Especially since you were out savin’ those motherfuckers the other night. What did you think was going to happen?”
“I’m not about to get hit for more murders on those boys. Do you think I’m fuckin’ stupid?”
“Yes,” he immediately answers. “You are. All this talk and no results.”
“Shit takes time.”
“And you’re slow moving. You think I’m gonna think my girl forgave me for all those years ago and you’re going to side up with me?” He slowly rocks his head back and forth. “I may mention it, Bay, but I’m not banking on it.”
“And how do you expect me to trust you?”
“You don’t,” he replies matter-of-factly. “That’s the fucked-up thing about us, isn’t it? I hurt you, you went home and cried about it. You broke up with me, and now you keep running.”
“You see me runnin’ from you?”
“You’re not because Wallace is present. You didn’t think I missed him, did you, mi reina ?”
Fuck.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” I clip back, trying to home in on calm, but all I can think about is that Matteo has already set out a few of his dudes to go after Levi. “You just said?—”
“Despite your misgivings, Bay Astor, you will be back at my side one day. It may not be tomorrow or the next day, but it’ll be someday. That’s if Torin Wildes doesn’t grow a pair and takes you out himself.”
“You set me up perfectly for that to happen.”
“ Mi reina , I’ve said it time and time again. You shot Judah. I just protected you.”
I hate him more than I’ve ever had before. He’s fucking with me, and I’m allowing it to happen.
Levi is handling it.
Your job is to keep him away.
“However, you’ve grown up to be scrappy and adaptive. How will I ever trust you when Wallace is always present and wants my head on a silver platter.”
“You can’t,” I reply, and it’s one of the easiest things I’ve said thus far. “That’s the fucked-up thing about us, isn’t it? He hurt you because I went home and cried about it. Now, we’re not together, and you thought I was going to come running back home.”
Matteo’s lips lift, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s about to lose his shit or he’s amused. “It’s not nice to taunt me, Bay. You know I’m not a patient man. You also know that I’m not happy about what you did the other night.”
I lift my shoulders. “I wasn’t there to follow your orders.”
“But you called Wildes in for help after I specifically told you to come alone.” He looms closer, and all the hairs on my arms stand on end. “You disobeyed a direct fucking order from me.”
“I’m not your—” His gun appears, and it jams right underneath my jaw, causing me to gasp in equal parts pain and surprise.
“You’re always my fuckin’ whatever, mi reina . Let’s get that fuckin’ straight right now. You might run with Wallace and land under his protection for now, but that will come to an end. You’re pushing me, and I’m starting to grow impatient with all this. I’ve been in this game a lot longer than you. In the trenches of it. I don’t give you something without something given to me in return. And I’ve got a list.”
Of course, he does.
But it doesn’t matter what it is, Matteo will never give me the video that will have all four of the Forsaken Boys on his ass.
He’ll be dead before the week is out.
“Don’t you wanna ask me what that list is?” Matteo taunts when I don’t answer back.
“No.”
Because I’m never going to do it.
Ever.
“That’s a shame,” my ex emits. “And here I had so much promise of a happily ever after for us.”
I open my lips before a familiar melody of guitar strings hits my ears, and I immediately locate the song title in my head that follows Matteo’s instant glower at the sudden genre change that definitely doesn’t match his party.
“Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” by Edison Lighthouse causes Matteo to completely forget what the hell we were just speaking about before he pivots and storms toward whoever is in charge of the music.
But then he steps in my line of sight.
Equally as dangerous and capable of hurting me, Torin Wildes wastes no time closing the distance between us as a shock of electricity fizzles throughout my body.
In a white t-shirt rolled up at the sleeves, the veins at Torin’s arm bulge, and I’m not sure if it’s because he just drank poison and he’s bugging out or if he just got done doing something strenuous, but there’s no time to ask.
No time to do anything when he ungracefully yanks me to his chest and wraps his other arm around my waist.
He’s wearing black-rimmed glasses, and his hair is styled as though he just threaded his fingers through it. The familiar smell of trees and mint assaults the living shit out of me and—he wasn’t part of the plan.
He’s not supposed to be here.
Yanking my hand out of his grasp, I take a well-needed step back but am barricaded by Torin’s forearm. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Torin’s gold eyes scan and evaluate my face as though he didn’t hear me before his attention stops where Matteo’s gun was just residing. “What did I tell you about being near Matteo De Leon?”
Here we go the fuck again.
Why didn’t I see it before?
Torin and Matteo are from the same damn lineage of assholes. They bark out orders, expect them not to be defied, and continue on their way. I wish I had that kind of faith in the human race that everything I said was going to be followed.
And here I thought I was a moron half the damn time.
“You’ve wasted your time,” I ground out as I pin a glower onto him. “And you lost that privilege, Pretty Boy. Do I need to remind you?”
He doesn’t flinch nor does he show any remorse at what he’s done, and that hurts.
A lot.
It hurts like a bitch.
“I was there,” he deadpans, and I feel my heart—the part that’s left—chip off a little bit more.
My nose wrinkles in loathing at how easily he turned, and I attempt another escape from his hold. “Go fuck yourself. And get away?—”
“I’ve been going easy on you, Wildfire. I’ve stayed away. I had hoped it’d get easier. When you’re not in my view, I can almost pretend like you never existed at all.” He blinks once and, for a second, I think I see him. I’m almost certain I just saw my Pretty Boy before he disappears behind glossy eyes that hold nothing at all in them. “But then I remember. I recall all the times I said I would protect you. That I’d gladly give you anything you ever wanted. Every warning and red flag I dismissed because I wanted you. I needed you, and there was nothing that was going to stand in the way of that.”
“Torin—”
“But Judah isn’t something I can easily forget. In fact, he haunts me every single fucking night, and I can’t deal. He was supposed to be alive—here. The Landings’ seat was all his. I was never going to take it. Now, it’s yours, and all you’re going to do is try to murder me with it.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. As fuckin’ stupid as that makes me.”
He slowly shakes his head. “You would. Once you get a feel for that power, baby…however, you won’t have to fight me about it. I’d gladly give myself away just to end the guilt trip I have for not allowing you to drown. But I can’t because of Cairo, Reeve, and Ozzy. I don’t trust that you wouldn’t stab them in the back. How can I leave when you hold so much of me in them?”
I understand his trepidation. How little confidence he has in me. I played a part in Judah’s murder. How the hell do you come back from that?
“If you’d let me speak, for once in your goddamn life,” I clip out under my breath. “Maybe you’d understand what the hell is going on here.”
He gives me a weak smile, but it does nothing to appease me. It only speaks volumes about the guilt that resides in him and the agony of losing his brother again after all this time. “Go ahead and tell me, Wildfire. You didn’t kill Judah. The video was edited. Tell me everything, baby.”
It’s my opportunity to say all those things, but he says them like he already knows. However, I can’t read his mind, so I’m not entirely sure what he’s finalized in his head.
Torin bends forward then, capturing every piece of oxygen that leaves my lungs like he just gained access to them. “Let’s say it was, for shits and giggles, Matteo who put the bullet in him and you had nothing to do with anything. You didn’t stop him. You didn’t get help. You never went back to see what happened to him. You let him die, Bay.” He straightens his spine and hits me with a look of disgust. “So, you’re just as guilty as the one who pulled the trigger.”
He suddenly drops his hold on me and steps back. My body mindlessly follows before I stop myself because Torin—regardless of his entitled-ass ways—was mine.
And I was his.
And he’s right.
I never went back. I worried about Judah, but I knew he was dead.
That’s what Matteo told me. He took care of the problem, and I was safe.
“Come on, Little T. We gotta go.”
It takes me several long seconds to register Cairo’s voice because I’m held hostage by Torin’s unsettling gaze and how he hasn’t pried it off me once.
Through the emptiness of those tawny eyes, I can still see him. All the things he said to me. Every stolen moment we once had.
The way we were going to end the rivalry between South Shore and The Landings.
Together.
And, as heartbreaking as it is, I don’t want to leave this moment. I don’t want to leave him. I wish for so much, but I never fully get it. This is just another nail in the bucket of dreams and wishes that will never come true.
Torin and I were fucked before we even tried.
But it doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about him. Even though the motherfucker tried to kill me.
A hand wraps around my bicep, and I’m gently tugged to the left without being asked again.
Then, several gunshots go off and…yeah.
I think I know who just reentered the party and discovered the boys.