Chapter 11 – Bells
BELLS
Rex's jacket is heavy on my shoulders, soaking wet and probably making things worse instead of better, but I pull it tighter anyway because it smells like him. Sterling silver and leather and smoke, even through the rain. Even through everything.
Tell him.
The thought surfaces, immediately insistent. Tell him why you're really here. Tell him you're his scent match. Tell him biology led you to this cemetery like a fucking homing missile, that you felt the pull in your chest the moment you stepped out of Phoenix's car and just started walking.
But I can't.
Because telling him that means telling him I'm an omega. Means revealing the one secret worse than being a fucking girl. And more than that—more than the practical reasons, more than the self-preservation—I don't want him to think I'm here because of my biology.
I want him to know I chose this.
Because I did.
So I keep quiet about the scent match bullshit and just... stay.
"Stephen sent me an ultimatum."
Rex's voice is rough and hollow. He's not looking at me, just staring straight ahead at the rows of headstones stretching into the distance.
"Before the pictures dropped," he continues. "Said if I didn't send you back to him, he'd release them."
My stomach drops. "Rex…"
"Doesn't matter now." He gives a bitter, exhausted laugh. "The worst already happened. The whole fucking world saw my face." His jaw tightens beneath the mask. "Stephen's leverage is gone. The blackmail doesn't matter anymore."
I process this slowly. Stephen had photos from Rex's surgery. Photos he threatened to release. Photos he did release, apparently, because Rex wouldn't hand me over.
Rex chose to let his worst nightmare happen rather than give me back to Stephen.
Why?
"Your blackmail's worthless now too," he says. "You know that, right?"
I go still.
"I'm not—" He stops, jaw working beneath the mask.
"I'm not saying it like that. I'm just..
." He exhales, slow and ragged. "I don't know what we are anymore.
I had something on you. You had something on me.
That was the deal. That was why any of this…
" He gestures between us. "But now you've got nothing, and I've still got your secret, and I don't..."
He trails off.
The rain fills the silence.
"You don't what?" I ask quietly.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that." His voice is barely audible over the downpour. "I don't know what any of this is anymore."
"You're still you," I murmur. "The picture doesn't change that."
"Everyone knows I'm a monster."
"You're not—"
"I am." He turns to face me fully, and even through the mask, even through the rain, I can see the devastation written across every line of his body.
"That's what they're calling me. Monster.
Freak. Thing. And they're right, Bells. They're fucking right.
You want to know why Nash couldn't look at me?
Why my own twin brother—the person who loved me more than anyone in the world—had to turn away every time I took off the mask? "
His voice cracks on the last word.
"Because I'm horrifying. Because looking at me makes people sick. Because I'm not human anymore, I'm just... this. This ruined, grotesque thing that should've died in that fire instead of—"
"Stop."
The word comes out harder than I intended. Harder than I knew I was capable of right now.
Rex goes silent. Stares at me with that single eye, chest heaving, rain streaming down his mask.
"You want to know why I'm here?" I ask, and my voice is steady even though my hands are shaking. "You want to know why I tracked you down through a fucking rainstorm to a cemetery in the dark?"
He doesn't answer.
"Because I saw the pictures." I hold his gaze, refusing to look away.
"I saw every detail. The scars, the exposed teeth, the eye that won't close.
I saw exactly what you look like, Rex. Not a flash in a dark tunnel.
Not a glimpse through shadows. Everything.
In high-definition. And you know what my first thought was? "
Still nothing.
"Where is he." I lean closer, close enough that I can see the way his jaw is clenched beneath the mask. "Not holy shit or that's terrifying or any of the bullshit those commenters are spewing. I thought where is he and is he okay and I need to find him."
"You're insane," he whispers.
"Maybe." I shrug, rain dripping off the coat he threw over my shoulders. "But not for the reasons you think. Either way, I'm here. I saw the photo, I understood exactly what I was looking at, and I'm still here. You can either accept that or keep pushing me away, but I'm not leaving."
The silence stretches between us, heavy and electric. Rex's eye searches my face like he's looking for the lie, the catch, the inevitable moment when I'll realize my mistake and run.
He won't find it.
Because there isn't one.
Another shiver wracks my body. This one's violent, my teeth chattering hard enough that I have to clench my jaw to keep them from cracking together. The cold has seeped into my bones, past the wet clothes and the soaked binder and straight into my core.
Rex notices immediately.
"You need to go," he says, and there's something different in his voice now. Softer. Almost concerned.
Oooh, Concerned Rex is my least favorite version of all. I wish he'd just fucking yell at me.
"Then get up," I say.
"What?"
"Get up." I point toward the cemetery path. "Your car's that way, right? So either you get up and walk back to it with me, or I sit here and freeze to death with you. Your call."
He stares at me like I've sprouted a second head. "You're fucking insane."
"You already said that."
"No. This time, I said you're fucking insane."
"Rex." My teeth are chattering so hard it's difficult to form words. "I'm s-serious. I'm not leaving without you. So either we both go, or we both stay. Pick one."
And I genuinely think he's going to choose the second option. Where I think we're both going to sit here in the mud until the rain stops or we turn into popsicles, whichever comes first.
Then he moves.
It's abrupt, almost violent. One moment he's sitting against the headstone, the next he's on his feet, reaching down to grab my upper arm and haul me upright with enough force that I stumble into his chest.
"You're a pain in my ass," he growls, but he's already steering me toward the path, one hand firm on my elbow like he thinks I might collapse if he lets go.
He might not be wrong.
My legs feel like they belong to someone else. Numb and clumsy, stumbling over the uneven ground as Rex guides me through the cemetery.
The rain hasn't let up. If anything, it's gotten worse, coming down in sheets that make it hard to see more than a few feet ahead.
But Rex knows the way. Of course he does. He's probably walked this path a thousand times, in every kind of weather, coming to talk to his dead brother because he has no one else he trusts.
His car is parked at the edge of the cemetery, that black sedan I remember from the drive to the stone tower. Rex unlocks it with a beep, yanks open the passenger door, and practically shoves me inside before rounding to the driver's side.
The engine roars to life. Heat blasts from the vents, so sudden and intense that it almost hurts against my frozen skin.
"There's a blanket in the back," Rex says, already reaching behind the seat. He pulls out what looks like a moving blanket. Thick, quilted, the kind you use to wrap furniture. "Here."
I take it with numb fingers, trying to wrap it around my shoulders, but my hands won't cooperate. The shivering has gotten worse now that I'm out of the rain, my body finally processing exactly how cold it actually got out there.
"F-fuck," I manage through chattering teeth. "This is r-ridiculous."
Rex watches me struggle for about three seconds before he makes an irritated sound and climbs into the back seat, hauling me with him.
"What are you—"
"Get back here."
"What?"
"You're going to go into shock if you don't warm up faster." He's already pulling the blanket from my useless fingers. "Get in the back. Now."
I don't have the energy to argue. I let him pull me between the seats—graceless, awkward, my frozen limbs refusing to cooperate—and collapse onto the back seat beside him.
"Your clothes are soaked," he says flatly. "They need to come off."
My brain short-circuits. "E-excuse me?"
"You're in danger of hypothermia. Wet clothes make it worse." His voice is clinical, detached, the same tone a doctor might use. "I'm not going to look. Just get them off and wrap up in the blanket."
He's right. I know he's right. The binder alone is a sodden weight against my ribs, leeching whatever warmth the car's heater is trying to provide.
"Turn around," I manage.
He does, shifting so his back is to me. I struggle out of my wet clothes. Shirt, binder, jeans, everything except my underwear.
The moment I reach for the blanket again, he turns and quickly wraps it around me like I'm a burrito. Layers of quilted fabric tucked under my chin, around my sides, beneath my legs.
Then he pulls me against his chest, one arm locking around my shoulders, the other pressing me closer until there's no space left between us.
The heat of his body is a shock after the cold. He's warmer than any normal person has a right to be after sitting in the rain for hours. Maybe it's an alpha thing. Maybe it's just Rex.
Either way, I press closer, burrowing into his chest like he's a furnace I'm trying to crawl inside.
"You're s-still an asshole," I mutter against his neck, teeth chattering. "Making me s-sit out there for f-fucking ever before you'd g-get in the car."
"You're the one who sat down in the mud."
"You were already t-there!"
"I didn't ask you to join me."
"Yeah, well, too b-bad." My fingers find the fabric of his shirt, clinging to it like a half-drowned koala. "You're s-stuck with me now."
His hand shifts on my back, trying to find a position that doesn't press against the wet fabric bunched at my waist, and his palm grazes the side of my breast.
He jerks back like I burned him.
"Sorry—" The word comes out strangled. "I didn't mean to—"
"Rex. Relax. It's just a boob."
But he's gone rigid against me, his control slamming back into place so fast I can almost hear it. His arm hovers somewhere behind my shoulder blades, not touching, like he's suddenly terrified of where his hands might land.
"Oh my gods." I grab his wrist and physically place his hand back on my shoulder blade. "I'm not going to break. I'm not going to sue you. Just…"
"You don't understand." His voice is barely above a whisper.
"Then explain it to me."
He doesn't answer. His hand stays where I put it, but he's holding himself so carefully still that he might as well not be touching me at all.
"Rex."
Nothing.
"Rex."
"I don't—" He stops. Swallows. When he speaks again, the words sound like they're being dragged out of him with hooks. "I don't know how to do this."
"Do what? Share body heat? It's not complicated. You just—"
"Any of it."
I tuck my head under his chin, settling back against him. "Just hold still and let me leech your body heat. That's the only assignment right now."
A pause. Then, so quiet I almost miss it, "Okay."
I don't respond to that. He doesn't say anything else either. Just holds me tighter, one hand rubbing slow, awkward circles on my back through the blanket like he doesn't know what else to do with me. The motion is almost gentle. Completely at odds with everything I know about him.
Maybe he really has lost his mind.
The shivering starts to ease after a few minutes.
The combination of body heat, blanket, and the car's heater finally penetrating through the layers of cold that had settled into my bones.
I can feel my fingers again. My toes. My brain is starting to function normally instead of in the sluggish, hypothermic haze of before.
"I'm going to find you something dry," Rex says eventually, and his voice is different now. Quieter. "Stay here."
He extracts himself carefully, making sure the blanket stays tucked around me, and climbs out of the car. I hear the trunk open. Rummaging. Then he's back, shoving clothes through the gap between the front seats.
"Hoodie. Sweats. They'll be huge on you, but they're dry."
I take them with hands that are finally steady. "Thanks," I mutter.
"Don't thank me." He's already climbing into the driver's seat, adjusting mirrors, checking gauges. Anything to avoid looking at me. "Just get dressed so we can go."
The hoodie smells like him. That scent that's been following me around for weeks now, lodged somewhere in my hindbrain where I can't shake it loose.
I pull it over my head. The fabric swallows me whole—Rex is at least a foot taller than me, broader in every dimension—but it's warm and dry and right now that's all that matters.
The sweats are even more ridiculous. I have to roll the waistband three times just to keep them from falling off my hips. But they're soft, and they're dry, and when I climb back into the front seat, I feel almost human again.
Rex doesn't say anything. Just puts the car in drive and pulls out of the cemetery parking lot.
The drive back to the penthouse is silent.
Not the hostile silence of our early days, when every interaction felt like a battlefield. Not the charged silence of the stone tower, when we were both too aware of each other and trying desperately not to show it.
This is something else. It sits between us like a third presence, taking up space neither of us knows how to fill.
I watch the city lights blur past the rain-streaked windows. Watch Rex's hands on the steering wheel, steady and sure despite everything that happened tonight.
He's not okay.
But he's here.
He walked out of that cemetery. He let me drag him back to the car instead of sitting there until the rain finally won.
That has to count for something.