Chapter 21 – BELLS
Chapter
Twenty-One
BELLS
For the first time in weeks, I don't feel like I've been run over by a fucking truck.
It wasn't great sleep. It wasn't the kind that leaves you refreshed and ready to conquer the world. I'm in Rex Steele's bed, for fuck's sake. But it was actual sleep, the kind where you lose consciousness for more than two hours at a time without jerking awake at every creak in the walls.
Progress.
The room is still dark with the blackout curtains covering the bulletproof windows, other than the cameras in the corners blinking red. The reinforced door stayed locked all night. The panic button sits untouched on the nightstand.
Nothing happened.
Nobody got in.
I'm safe.
The thought should probably be comforting, but it just makes me more aware of how fucked up it is that I need Fort Knox-level security just to sleep without nightmares about Bryan finding me again and finishing what he started.
I force myself to sit up, and my ribs don't scream in protest for once. That, too, makes everything worse somehow. Because I know the second I leave this room, the armor goes back on.
Twenty minutes later, I'm dressed. Binder secured, prosthetic in place, oversized white rabbit hoodie hiding every curve. The leather collar sits against my throat like it always does, covering the scar.
I check myself in the medicine cabinet mirror one last time.
There. Bells again.
When I open the door, the smell of coffee and something sweet hits me immediately. The sound of voices drifts from the kitchen—Phoenix's deep rumble and Rafael's sharper tones.
I follow the scent like a cartoon character floating toward a pie on a windowsill.
When I pad into the kitchen to find Rafael and Phoenix demolishing a box of donuts, they don't notice me right away.
Probably because Phoenix is sucking the cream out of one end of an eclair like it's a chocolate-frosted cock and Rafael is laughing his ass off.
"Jeez, Phoenix, I didn't know your mouth could do that—"
Phoenix spots me and chokes on the eclair. "Holy shit, Bells, are you and Rex fucking?" he blurts out, his eyes shooting from me to Rex's hall to me again, like the fact I came out of Rex's room means… that.
I don't even have an eclair stuffed in my mouth and I almost choke. "What? No!" I croak. "We just switched rooms—"
And Rex materializes like a ghost.
Phoenix jumps off his stool with a startled shout, flinging the chocolate eclair. It hits Rex square in the chest with a wet splat before sliding down his crisp black shirt, leaving a trail of cream and chocolate.
"You can't just pop up like that!" Phoenix yells.
Rex stands perfectly still, looking down at his ruined shirt. Without a word, he reaches down and pulls the shirt up, the black tank underneath riding up as he peels the shirt off over his head in one smooth motion.
I try not to stare.
I fail.
His torso is all lean muscle and sharp angles, like he was carved rather than born. Old burn scars web across the right side of his torso, crawling up his collarbone, licking along his ribs and the sharp cut of his hipbone above his pants.
Oh no.
He's hot.
I force my eyes away, but not before catching Rafael doing the same thing. Even Phoenix has gone quiet as he takes in the full extent of Rex's scars.
Rex tosses the ruined shirt onto the counter and pulls on a hooded black canvas jacket from the coat rack. "Get dressed," he says to me as if nothing just happened. "We have an appointment."
I gesture to my outfit. "I am dressed."
He glances at me like he'd rather not look. The fuck is his deal? "Fine. Then let's go," he mutters.
"Where are we going?"
"You'll see."
"That's not ominous at all," Rafael says under his breath.
Phoenix points at Rex with a cream-covered paper towel. "If you murder him and dump his body in the woods, I'm not helping you hide the evidence. Not this time."
"Noted," Rex says without inflection.
"This time?" I echo.
"He's joking," Rafael says quickly.
Rex is already heading for the door. I grab a donut—vanilla with rainbow sprinkles, my favorite—and follow him, licking the frosting off my fingers while while trying to ignore the way Rafael and Phoenix are both tracking the movement.
What the fuck?
The elevator ride down is silent. Rex stands with his back to the corner, arms crossed, that single visible eye fixed on the doors like they might open and reveal the gates of hell. I lean against the opposite wall, studying him when he's not looking.
He isn't wearing bandages under the mask today.
Or if he is, they're not as extensive as the ones he came home in.
Maybe they'd just overdone the coverage to conceal his scars while he was in the hospital.
But I can still see the slight tension in his jaw, the way he favors his left side. He's still healing.
Wounded or not, Rex is still the most intense fucking alpha I've ever encountered in my life.
"So," I say around my last mouthful of donut.
Shit, I should've brought a napkin. I settle for licking my fingers off, acutely aware of the tightening of his jaw and the slight shift of his pupil as he watches me out of the corner of his eye without actually looking at me.
"Are you going to murder me? Is that what this is about? "
"If I wanted to murder you," Rex says, still staring straight ahead, "I wouldn't need to leave the building to do it."
"That's... not as reassuring as you think it is."
His lips quirk. Just barely, but it's there. A ghost of amusement that makes him seem almost human for half a second.
"How are you feeling?" The question slips out before I can stop it.
His eye flicks to me this time, but he doesn't turn his head. "Fine."
"Liar."
He doesn't respond.
"Shit, give me something to work with," I mutter, following him out of the elevator when the doors slide open. "It's like talking to a statue. Makes me feel like a fucking dumbass."
His eye flicks to me again, then back ahead. "Why do you want to talk to me?" he asks in that flat, bored tone that only ever changes when he's emotional. So far, the only emotions I've seen from Rex are annoyed, pissed, and deluxe pissed.
I start counting off my fingers. "We're bandmates, I sleep in your room, now I sleep in your fucking bed—"
"You can sleep in Rafael's room if it means you'll leave me alone," he replies, but there's a slight edge of dry humor to his voice that wasn't there before.
He blows a puff of air through his nose.
Never knew breathing could sound sarcastic.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to befriend me. "
"That would be better than enemies, wouldn't it?" I challenge him. "Then we could stop fighting constantly and you could get revenge on Stephen."
The mention of Stephen's name makes his jaw tick. "We're never going to be friends, Bells."
"Not with that attitude," I mutter, snorting.
The parking garage is dim and echoing, our footsteps bouncing off concrete walls.
Rex leads me to a black sedan that's more understated than I was expecting.
I don't know why I pictured a bright red convertible to the point I was almost looking for it.
Rex is flashy as fuck onstage, but now that I'm thinking about it, when he isn't performing, he acts like he'd rather not be noticed.
I slide into a buttery-smooth leather seat on the passenger's side and Rex slides in beside me, the masked side facing me, impassive and solemn. The engine purrs to life. He drives in total silence, one hand holding the wheel loosely, fingers barely brushing it, the other resting on his thigh.
No music. No conversation. Just the sound of Seattle rain pattering on the windshield and the foggy city waking up around us with the occasional honk and tires squealing on wet roads.
We head east, away from downtown, toward the outskirts where buildings give way to trees. The roads get narrower, more winding, remote enough that there are no guardrails between the car and drop-offs that seem to go on forever into the fog like we're driving into the clouds.
"Are you taking me to be sacrificed?" I ask dryly, only half-joking.
"Yes," Rex says, deadpan. "To the devil."
I blink. Was that... a joke? From Rex?
"I'd rather not go back to Stephen," I say.
He snorts.
I got a fucking snort out of Rex Steele.
"No," he mutters as we pull up to a tower. "Stephen doesn't deserve that much credit."
Not like, a radio tower or a cell tower.
An actual stone tower that looks like it was ripped out of a gothic fairy tale and dropped in the middle of the Pacific Northwest woods. Ivy crawls up weathered gray stones. Gargoyles perch at intervals like sentries. There are actual fucking battlements at the top.
I stare up at it through the rain-speckled windshield, my brain refusing to process what I'm seeing.
"You know I'm not going in there, right?"
Rex kills the engine. "It's perfectly safe."
"That's what people say right before they die."
"You watch too many horror movies."
"You literally brought me to a murder tower in the middle of nowhere." I cross my arms, sinking deeper into my seat. "And you're menacing as fuck even in broad daylight in the middle of a fancy restaurant, let alone the set of Silent Hill."
His mask shifts against his temple, which means his jaw is clenching. He doesn't say anything. Just sits there in silence, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Then he breathes in slowly, his broad chest expanding, and lets out a long sigh that sounds almost…
Sad?
Did I actually hurt his feelings?
Fuck.
"Menacing because of your winning personality, not the way you look," I add, and his head turns slightly so he can glare at me properly and not just through the mask.
Whew. That's better. Sad Rex is by far my least favorite variant. I'd take Deluxe Pissed? Rex any day over that.