Chapter Nineteen #3
I’ve already looked away like a coward, staring as Thorin and Khalil take turns diving from the outcropping of rocks near the falls and into the water. Khalil is currently doing his best to drown Thorin after he beat him at whatever competition they’re having now.
“Am I a dick to you?” Zeke practically whispers.
I continue staring at the beautiful, sparkling water below that reminds me of Zeke’s green eyes. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“And you don’t…hate me?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Why?” he challenges gently. “Because you feel sorry for me?”
I turn my head to face him and meet his stare dead-on.
“Because I know what it’s like to be betrayed and how hard it is to trust again after.
Because I know what it’s like to be used and abused by someone you share blood with.
Because I know what it’s like to love deeply and have it all fall apart.
I don’t feel sorry for you, Zeke. I just feel you. ”
“You’ve been in love before? With the bodyguard?”
I snort. “No. Not with Tyler.” I smile like I’m sharing a naughty secret. “It’s a recent development, but already it feels like I’ve gone ten rounds in the ring.”
“You’re still upset,” he says like it only just occurred to him.
“Of course I am. You can’t seem to decide if you want me or hate me, and I haven’t forgotten you all lied to me about Tyler. Well, not you,” I correct with a grumble. “The other you.” Seth.
“You know you really should let that go,” he says gently to not come across as dismissive. “Your feelings are valid, princess. They just won’t change anything. When it comes to other men, Thorin and Khalil are not going to apologize for wanting to hoard you for themselves.”
“And what about you? You don’t want me all to yourself?”
“I don’t think I should answer that,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to send you anymore mixed signals.”
“Will you answer something else for me then?”
“Sure.”
“Why do you call me princess? Is it because you think I’m spoiled?”
Zeke chuckles derisively, but it feels aimed at himself. “It’s what I told myself at first so that I didn’t have to face the truth, but no. I don’t think you’re spoiled.”
“It’s okay if you did. I am a little.” Zeke laughs, and I join him until it dies off shortly after. “So why?” I ask when my curiosity won’t allow me to let it go.
Zeke’s olive-toned cheeks turn a startling shade of red, and he barks out a nervous laugh.
“Because every time I’m near you, I can’t help but feel like you should be wearing a crown and I should be kneeling at your feet.
” He stares at his palms as if his head is asking him what the hell he’s doing admitting all of this to me.
My head however has left the chat, and my heart is doing backflips in my chest. “You want to kneel for me?” I whisper.
“All the time.” Feeling like there’s more he wants to say, I wrap my arms around myself and stare at our feet dangling over the sixty-foot drop. “I don’t want to be a Damien,” he finally confesses. “I don’t want to wait until it’s too late to tell you that I want you.”
I swallow past the emotions that threaten to choke me. “I’m sensing a but in there somewhere.”
“But… I don’t know how to want you without this voice inside my head warning me that none of it is real. That it’s all going to come crashing down on me.”
“Bane?” I gasp, and it feels like a blind reach in the dark for a way to understand him.
Zeke’s eyes are sad when he shakes his head. “A different kind of voice. The kind you and I both have.”
This time the sadness I sense is my own. It isn’t paranoia, resentment, or a broken heart telling Zeke that I’ll betray him. It’s intuition.
But no, that’s not quite right either. Zeke’s concern has never been for himself. This terror that kept him from loving or even accepting me is also for his brothers.
Tears threaten to spring free. “Oh, Zeke.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. And I don’t think they would either.
” He jerks his chin toward the bottom of the cliff where Khalil and Thorin are, and we watch them trade matching violent grins as they circle one another in the water.
“If you’re going to hurt us, do it gently, princess,” Zeke begs.
“If there’s any part of you that isn’t sure, if you’re just biding your time, tell me now.
” Zeke’s green eyes grow darker when they swing my way, and it feels like a warm vise around my neck.
“Because I’m losing, Aurelia. I don’t want to listen to that voice anymore.
” I stop breathing when Zeke gently takes my hand and places it on his searing chest where his heart is pounding fast underneath.
“I’d rather follow this if it means falling into you. ”
“Zeke…”
“Tell me now,” he pleads again. “Once I’m cured of this fear keeping me from you, I won’t be able to turn away. No matter where you go or what you decide later, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, princess. I’ll live only for you.” Quietly, he adds, “Even if you don’t want me to.”
I don’t know what to say to that, and since I have the feeling Zeke isn’t expecting a response to his—what even was that? A promise? A threat? A proclamation of love? Somehow, it feels like all of the above, and my stupid heart is eating it up.
Am I seriously going to let Ezekiel Cura win me over that easily?
Yes.
We sit on the cliff above the waterfall in comfortable silence, watching the sun set and only speaking to make fun of Thorin when he keeps tripping over the same rock.
“It’s getting dark,” Zeke says when my stomach growls loudly. It’s only then I remember that I never got to eat.
We both head down just as Khalil returns from taking a leak.
“I don’t know if I can walk back,” I say as I wiggle my aching toes. “I’m pooped.”
“Good. Because we’re not going back tonight,” Khalil says as he reaches inside the extra pack he brought and pulls out a tent. “We’re camping here.”
After dinner, the four of us find ourselves back in the water under the full moon, but this time we decide to skip the swimsuits after the guys goaded me into a striptease.
The three of them are sipping on the warm beers they stowed away in their packs.
I had a sip of Zeke’s, who surprisingly had been the first to tip his toward my lips when I mentioned wanting to try it.
It was gross, so the guys grimacing after every sip is definitely warranted.
“I think we should kill my uncle,” I blurt as I stand in the water near the rocks. The waterfall behind me almost drowns out the words, but when the relaxed expressions of my mountain men morph into tight jaws and tense lips, I don’t have to question if they heard every word.
“And if he’s already left Hearth?” Thorin asks.
“Then we follow him back to the States. Kill him there.”
Khalil and Thorin glower at me. I can’t see Zeke’s face, but I feel and hear him push through the water to stand a little closer behind me. “You know we can’t do that,” Khalil says bitingly.
“We have to. My uncle will never stop, which means I can never stop. Next time, he won’t send more men. He’ll get more creative than that. My death was always meant to look like a tragic accident, and I’m not wild about all the ways he can make that happen. We need to go on the offensive.”
“It’s not safe for us to return home. Isaac could still be looking for Zeke.”
“So we kill Isaac first.” I shrug.
Khalil gives me a weird look before shaking his head and staring at the water.
“Weed makes you bloodthirsty,” he grumbles.
I bet he’s regretting talking me into trying it now.
It took me an hour to stop giggling and another two before I was no longer convinced the woodland animals were rising up against me.
“I’ve actually been thinking about this since the death squad showed up on our doorstep,” I correct. “So that’s the plan then? We kill Zeke’s brother and then my uncle? Any more family members we should put on the chopping block?”
Thorin flashes a condescending smile. “If it were that easy to kill Isaac, we would have done it by now.”
“It’s been ten years. Do you even know if he’s still alive? A man like that has to have enemies. Also, karma. Also, what he’s doing to people is incredibly illegal. Who’s to say he’s not in prison by now?”
“He’s not,” Khalil confirms. When I give him an inquisitive look, he matches Thorin’s condescending look. “You really think we’d let ourselves stay in one place for so long without keeping tabs on him?”
“How?”
“A friend from back home. Someone Isaac would have no reason to connect us to.”
“So call him. Get the four-one-one so we can one-eight-seven his ass.”
“It doesn’t work like that. Quentin will only send us a message if we have a problem. No message, no problem. It’s safer this way.”
It’s quiet for a while, and then I let my intrusive thoughts win. “What if Quentin’s dead?”
Khalil gives me a blank look. “Then someone he trusts will let us know.”
“Right, okay, sure. I still think murder is the only way.” Thorin, Khalil, and Zeke visibly clench their teeth, and I spot at least one twitchy palm.
“Aurelia may be right,” Zeke says, weighing in for the first time. “We’re too exposed here now.”
“There is another solution. We can leave,” Thorin says with his dominating gaze locked on mine. It’s all I can do not to squirm and agree to whatever he says. “Disappear again.”
“Like…forever?”
“I wouldn’t mind somewhere warm and tropical this time,” Thorin says as he tips his warm beer to his lips and takes a swig. “Aruba, maybe.”
“But like…forever?”
The three of them stare at me, but Khalil is the first one to break the stony silence. “You agreed to this, Aurelia.”
“No. I agreed to a life with you. I’m just trying to offer an alternate reality of what that looks like.
You have more reason to go back than any of us.
Don’t you want to see your family again?
” It was a redundant question because I’d glimpsed Khalil’s sadness when he thought no one was looking.
Of the three, he had given up the most, leaving his old life behind—a rising career, a chance at marriage and kids with someone not in love with his best friends, and his family.
“Of course I do,” he snaps back. “But I’m not willing to risk any of you to make it happen.”
“It doesn’t have to be your burden alone. If we could just be on the same page for once, we could do this together. Share the risk together. We wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders. We could be free.”
“And is this what you need?” Zeke asks. I turn in the water to face him, and for a moment my focus is locked on the troubled pinch between his brows. “To be happy…with us?”
“No,” I answer easily, and the furrow clears. “Killing my uncle and your brother will just be the cherry on top. I think it’s what we all need to finally feel safe, and I don’t think we should have to choose between one or the other. We can and should have both.”
“Okay,” Thorin says and I’m turning again with my wide eyes shifting between the three of them.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Khalil says and then downs the rest of his beer and tosses it onto the shore. I frown at that and make a mental note to make him pick it up later. This place is too beautiful for him to litter. “If that’s what you want, then fuck it. We’ll kill them all for you, baby.”
I only just remember not to smile like a loon at that and choose to appear responsibly grim about taking a human life instead.