Chapter 12 – Bells #2
"I don't know why the fuck I'm telling you this."
The words come out muffled. Bitter.
I stay quiet.
Part of me wonders if I should tell him about the scent match. That might explain why he's spilling his guts to the woman he blackmailed. But not now. Not while he's like this.
The thing is, I don't think it's just biology making him talk. And now his walls are crumbling and I'm the only one in the room.
"You done?" I ask, because aggravating him might bring him back to himself.
He lifts his head just enough to glare at me. "What?"
"The self-flagellation. Are you done? Because I've got a plan, but I need you to stop spiraling first."
"A plan?"
"Yep." I'm already rummaging through Rafael's nightstand.
"What are you doing?"
"Looking for something to keep you safe."
His eye widens slightly in dread that would be comical in any other situation. "In Raf's nightstand?"
"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone about his secret stash of tits-and-dicks-out-right-on-the-cover vampire erotica novels." My fingers close around exactly what I was hoping to find. "Perfect. I knew he'd have something like this."
I pull out fuzzy black handcuffs.
Rex stares at them. Then at me. Then back at the handcuffs.
"Are those fucking handcuffs?"
"Fuzzy ones. Nice padding," I say, dangling them up for him to see and waving them back and forth. His eye tracks them, the pupil dilating. Kind of like a big cranky cat.
"Why does Rafael…"
I snap one cuff around my own wrist.
Then I reach for his.
"What the fuck?"
The second cuff clicks shut.
Rex stares at our connected wrists with an expression of pure baffled outrage.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" he snarls.
"Many things. But right now, specifically, I'm cold and you're warm, and you're a flight risk." I settle back against the headboard. "You can either deal with it or gnaw your own hand off to escape. Your choice."
He yanks at the cuff. It holds. "This is insane. You're insane. I am not going to—"
"Then don't. Lie down. Go to sleep. Pace if the chain reaches." I shrug. "But you're not getting rid of me tonight."
He stares at me like I've grown a second head.
"You realize I could break this chain."
"Yep. And then you'd probably break my wrist too, and then Phoenix would cry and ask you 'why' until your head explodes, and neither of us wants that."
His jaw tightens. "You're handcuffing yourself to someone who hates you."
"Do you?" I ask. "Is that why you didn't send me back to Stephen? Because you hate me?"
He goes still. That single blue eye searches my face.
"I don't know," he grits out finally. "I don't know what this is anymore."
"That makes two of us." I tug the chain. "Eat while I steal your body heat. That's the only assignment."
Rex stares at the plate of pasta like I've just handed him a live grenade.
I take a deep breath when I see the fresh tension coiling through his shoulders and the way his jaw ticks. "I'm not going to watch you," I say. "But you need to eat something. You can't just… not eat, Rex."
He's still muscular and fucking intimidating, but he's lost weight since we met. There's a lankiness to his build that wasn't there before. But he just keeps staring at the food like it's going to bite him.
"I'm actually fucking worried about you," I admit, forcing the words out. "Really worried. Do you know how annoying that is for me after everything?"
He doesn't respond. His eye is still blank and dissociated.
And I get it. I do. I'm asking him to do something that probably requires removing his mask, which means trusting me not to look after all the horrible shit that's happened today.
Trusting someone—especially trusting me, his sworn enemy—isn't exactly a position he's used to being in.
"Rex." I tug gently at the chain connecting our wrists to get his attention.
His gaze flicks to me and he watches me in silence through his lashes.
They're light, I realize, almost white-blond.
Not like his dark hair. The one eye I can see is actually…
beautiful. I'm only noticing that because he isn't glaring at me or telling me off right now.
It takes my brain a moment to stop glitching out.
"I'm going to turn around," I continue. He keeps watching me. "You're going to eat whatever you can manage. Neither of us is going to make a big deal about it. Deal?"
Still nothing.
I shift on the bed, turning my body toward the window so my back is to him. The rain is still coming down in sheets, blurring the city lights into smeared watercolor. It's pretty. He would've fucking frozen to death. And I think that's exactly what he was intending on doing.
Hence the cuffs.
Behind me, I hear the soft clink of the plate against the fork.
I don't look. Don't even glance over my shoulder. Just stare at the rain and count the seconds between lightning flashes while Rex eats in silence, carefully and slowly, and I try not to pay attention to how long it's taking him so I don't freak him out and he doesn't stop.
It shouldn't make my heart do whatever it's doing right now.
I ignore it.
The rain keeps falling. My breath fogs the window slightly, and I trace a meaningless pattern in the condensation with my free hand. A rabbit, because that's pretty much the only thing I can draw. I mastered that shit at age six. The handcuff chain jingles softly with the movement.
After a few minutes, the sounds stop.
"Done?" I ask, still facing the window.
"Yeah," he says quietly.
I turn around. The plate is maybe a quarter empty. Not much, but more than nothing. Better than I expected, honestly.
"That's all?" I keep my voice neutral. No judgment. No pressure.
"Don't feel good," he mutters.
"Fair enough."
I don't push. Don't make a big deal about the fact that he just ate in front of someone for what might be the first time in years. I just accept it and move on, because that's what he needs right now. He doesn't need to be pushed. He needs this to be as normal as possible.
Whatever passes for normal when you're handcuffed to the female omega you're blackmailing, the female omega you don't even know is your fucking scent match, or an omega for that matter, in a borrowed bedroom.
Rex shifts like he's about to stand, then seems to remember the chain connecting us. His eye narrows.
"I need to clean up," he says flatly.
"Okay."
"Which requires me to move."
"Yep."
"Which requires you to move."
"I'm aware of how handcuffs work, Rex."
He makes a sound of profound irritation. "Then move."
Instead of getting up, I reach over to the nightstand where I'd set a damp towel earlier. I'd grabbed it from the kitchen before coming in here.
I hold it out to him, averting my gaze to give him privacy. "Here."
He takes it with a low growl. I feel the slight tug on the chain as his arm moves. He must have taken the mask off or at least lifted it. I hear the towel rubbing against his skin. I keep my eyes fixed on a very interesting spot on the wall.
But I'm suddenly aware of how tired I am.
The kind of exhaustion that comes from emotional whiplash and hypothermia and spending a small eternity in the rain searching for someone who was hiding in a fucking cemetery and didn't want to be found.
My whole body feels heavy, like gravity has decided to work overtime specifically on me.
"Can we lie down?" The question comes out before I can second-guess it. "I'm exhausted. And you're exhausted. And this bed is right here."
Rex goes rigid. "What? No."
"Why not?"
"Because—" He gestures vaguely at everything. At us. At the handcuffs. At the entire situation. "This is already insane. I'm not going to—"
"Going to what? Sleep? In a bed? With someone who's literally chained to you anyway?" I'm too tired to be diplomatic about this. "Rex, I can barely keep my eyes open. You've been through hell. Neither of us is going anywhere tonight. Just... lie down. Please."
The please seems to catch him off guard.
He stares at me, that single blue eye searching my face like he's looking for the trap, the angle, the reason this is all going to blow up in both our faces.
He won't find one. I'm too fucking tired to have ulterior motives anyway, even if I wanted them.
"Fine," he says finally, and the word comes out like it's being dragged from him with fishhooks. "But if you—"
"I'm not going to try anything. I'm not going to look at you weird. I'm not going to… whatever you're afraid of." I'm already scooting toward the pillows, tugging him along by the chain. "Come on. Before I get too tired to even get under the blankets."
He makes a soft growl-adjacent sound that might be agreement.
Or it might be his soul leaving his body.
Hard to tell with Rex.
I settle against the pillows, arranging myself so the chain isn't pulling awkwardly on either of our wrists. Rex lies down beside me, stiff as a board, clearly hating every second of this.
But he's here.
That's something.
The bed is bigger than I expected. We're not touching except where the chain connects us. There's a solid foot of space between our bodies, which feels both like too much and not enough.
I turn my head. Rex's eye is closed. His breathing has evened out. He isn't asleep, but he's close. The tension has drained from his shoulders slightly. His hand rests on his chest, the chain stretched between us catching the faint light.
I feel myself drifting.
The bed is warm. The rain is white noise. Rex's presence beside me is solid and real and…
My body moves without permission.
I roll toward him. Curl slightly, unconsciously seeking heat. My hand, the one attached to the cuffed wrist, lands on his chest. My fingers close around a fistful of his shirt, right over his heart.
I feel him stop breathing.
Everything goes very still.
Part of me—the part that's still barely conscious—registers what I've done. Registers that I should probably let go, roll back to my side of the bed, pretend this never happened before I make everything fucking weird.
But I'm too tired. Too far gone. And his heartbeat under my palm is steady and strong and real, proof that he's alive, that he walked out of that cemetery instead of staying in the mud until the rain finally won.
His breath comes back in a slow, careful exhale. His body stays rigid beneath my hand. But he doesn't move. Doesn't break the contact.
I wait for him to push me away.
He doesn't.