Chapter 22 – REX
Chapter
Twenty-Two
REX
The wiper blades scrape against the windshield, pushing aside rain that immediately reforms. Back and forth. Rhythm without relief. The sound fills the sedan's interior because I'm sure as shit not turning on music or attempting conversation.
My fingers grip the steering wheel tighter than necessary. The leather creaks under my knuckles.
Jamie's offer keeps replaying in my head like a scratched record stuck on the worst possible verse. Sometimes I like to have betas over for bonding activities. The way he'd said it, all cheerful and innocent while propositioning Bells for a threesome like he was offering her fucking cookies.
The territorial growl that had wanted to tear out of my throat in that moment still sits lodged somewhere between my ribs and my spine.
I'm not fucking jealous.
I have no claim on Bells. None. Zero. She's a means to an end—the atomic weapon I'm wielding against Stephen Hughes. That's it. The fact that she's also apparently the only person who can look at visible scarring without flinching or staring is irrelevant.
Completely fucking irrelevant.
Orion's scars are extensive. I don't just know this because Jamie chatters away the entire time he works on my masks.
The golden skull mask hides most of it, but the pink scar tissue that branches up from the edges tells enough of a story.
Whatever happened to Orion destroyed his face from the cheekbones down.
People react. They always react, even when Orion is wearing a mask. Same bullshit I have to deal with. Jamie's told me this in those rare moments when the omega gets serious and drops the sunshine-and-gumdrops act.
But Bells?
Despite her fear of alphas and apparently thinking Orion was a fucking ghost when she saw nothing but a floating skull mask up in the window, she just..
. talked to him. Complimented his boots like they were the most interesting thing about him, not the mask or the visible scarring or the fact that he's a seven-foot-tall alpha who resembles a prince from hell.
She saw past all of it.
The same way she saw past my mask in that tunnel and didn't run screaming. Didn't tell anyone. Protected my secret when she had every reason to weaponize it. Yeah, she knows the consequences of fucking up will be dire, to say the least, but she hasn't held it over my head even in private.
It settles under my skin like a splinter I can't dig out. Uncomfortable. Persistent. Impossible to ignore no matter how much I want to.
I tell myself it's because of the pain. That's why I'm overthinking and feeling weird shit dangerously close to possession. Dangerously close to jealousy. The pain from the lingering infection must be screwing with my head.
And I tell myself if I took the painkillers the hospital sent me home with instead of refusing because of what shit like that did to Nash, it would stop.
It would stop, and I'd go right back to thoroughly hating Bells and not thinking about how close we came to fucking kissing in the goddamn tower when I stumbled and crushed her against the wall.
"You're quiet."
Bells's voice cuts through my spiral, laced with that amusement that means she knows exactly what she's doing by opening her mouth right now.
I keep my eye on the road, watching Seattle's outskirts give way to denser cityscape. The rain's getting heavier.
I snort. "Just giving you time to think about the 'offer.'"
She laughs, and the sound fills the sedan's interior like bells. Like her fucking stage name, which I'm starting to realize is either the most ironic or most accurate pseudonym in existence.
"I'm, uh, not really interested in flings," she says, and there's something in her voice I can't quite identify. "Besides, I think it would be a problem. You know. Me being a girl."
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache.
"No," I say flatly. "It wouldn't be."
The words come out before I can analyze them, before I can shove them back down where they belong. Apparently my mouth has decided to operate independently of my brain today.
Bells shifts in the passenger seat, and I catch the movement in my peripheral vision. She's turned to face me now, those honeyed eyes tracking my profile like she's trying to solve an equation.
"Jamie likes betas," I continue, rolling my eyes, because apparently I'm committed to this conversation now. "Regardless of gender or whatever. Orion too. They've had partners of all types."
"How do you know that? Are you friends?"
"I don't have friends."
She snorts. "You seemed pretty friendly."
"Jamie's friendly with everyone. And Jamie talks." I take a turn harder than necessary, the sedan's tires hydroplaning slightly on wet asphalt before gripping again. "A lot. Whether you want him to or not. Especially when you're a captive audience because he's working on your masks."
She makes a thoughtful sound, and I can practically feel her smirk without looking at her. "So you're saying if I wanted to take them up on their offer—"
"I'm saying it's your choice," I interrupt, my voice coming out sharper than intended. "Why are you asking me like you think I care?"
She shrugs. "You know them. I want to know if there's anything weird I should know about if I'm considering it."
I shoot her a look. "Are you?"
"Maybe in the future. Who knows? If you leak that I'm a girl and I don't have to guard any secrets anymore, I might as well have some fun to keep my mind off shit."
My hands tighten on the steering wheel.
She's baiting me. Testing to see if I'll react, if I'll give her ammunition to use against me later. It's what she does—pokes and prods until she finds the weak spots, the places where the armor doesn't quite fit.
I should ignore it. Should let the comment slide off me like rain off leather.
"The scars wouldn't be a problem for you?" The question comes out before I can stop it, rough and coming off as too fucking interested. "Orion's scars?"
Why am I fucking asking?
I don't give a shit if she cares about scars or not. Everyone does. It's a stupid question to begin with. Jamie accepts Orion the way he is, but Jamie is insane. His collection of cursed artifacts displayed like they're decor from Michael's is proof enough of that.
Bells shifts again, and I catch her shaking her head in my peripheral vision. "No. Why would they be a problem?"
She's just fucking with me.
That's all this is. She's testing me, pushing to see where my boundaries are, how far she can poke before I snap.
The problem is, I don't know where those boundaries are anymore.
Before, I would've been indifferent. Bells could fuck the entire Seattle rock scene for all I cared, as long as she showed up to rehearsals and performed Nash's music the way it deserved to be performed.
Now? Now the thought of her in Jamie and Orion's bed makes something ugly and possessive coil in my gut like a snake preparing to strike.
And I don't fucking know why.
"They're bad scars." The words spill out before I can stop them, tasting like broken glass in my mouth. "Extensive. He can't eat normally. Can't drink without..." I trail off, jaw clenching.
Can't finish that sentence without reminding her of my own limitations. About the grotesque reality of trying to function with a mouth that doesn't work right, with a face so damaged that even basic human activities become exercises in humiliation.
"Yeah," Bells says simply. "I figured."
I risk a glance at her. She's watching the rain streak across the passenger window, seemingly unbothered by this entire conversation. Like we're discussing the weather.
"You figured." I repeat the words flatly, trying to process this response that makes no fucking sense.
She shrugs. "I'm not blind."
"And that doesn't bother you." Still not a question. A confirmation, because apparently I need to hear her say it again.
"Rex." She turns to face me fully now, those honey-gold eyes fixed on my profile with an intensity that makes those instincts I thought were long dead rise up again. "I don't care about what anyone looks like. I'm gonna sound like a fucking cheeseball here, but I care what's inside. That's all."
Liar.
The word sits on my tongue, ready to launch. What's under my mask is the kind of thing that made Nash—who loved me more than anyone in the world—unable to look directly at me without horror flashing across his face.
Even after years, that instinctive recoil never quite went away.
But Bells just sits there, completely unbothered, waiting for me to argue with her.
I don't.
Can't.
Because if I start down that road, I'll end up revealing exactly how much her casual acceptance is fucking with my head.
How the fact that she looked at Orion and saw a person first, scars second, makes me want things I have no business wanting.
How the only reason she jumped was because he's an alpha, and I actually fucking believe that.
The silence stretches between us, broken only by the rhythmic scrape of wipers and the drum of rain against metal and glass.
"If I didn't know better," Bells says, and I can hear the grin in her voice without looking at her, "I'd think you were jealous."
My foot presses harder on the accelerator than necessary. The sedan surges forward, and I have to consciously ease back before we hydroplane.
"I'm not jealous," I grit out. "Do whatever the fuck you want. I don't give a shit."
"Uh huh." That fucking amused tone again. Like she can see right through me, past all the walls and armor and carefully constructed defenses. "Sure you don't."
"I don't. Why the hell would I care what you do with your free time?"
"Okay."
"I'm serious, Bells."
"I believe you." She's laughing at me. Not out loud, but I can hear it underneath the words. Feel it in the way she's settled back in her seat with that relaxed posture that says she knows exactly how much she's getting under my skin.
And it's pissing me off.
So does the fact she just told me point blank it's the inside that counts, like a fucking fortune cookie, and I'm irritated that I believe she means it. And I'm irritated that there was a pointed edge to her words, like my inside counts against me, and she wants to remind me of that.
She doesn't say she means me. Doesn't have to. It's written in every word, every careful emphasis. She's reminding me that I'm the asshole who blackmailed her into this band, who threatened to destroy her entire life if she didn't comply.
Not exactly prime boyfriend material.
Not that I'm trying to be her fucking boyfriend.