Chapter 27
Rayne
Something becomes so obvious when you’re faced with death.
And it isn’t complicated or confusing at all.
When I thought it might be over…
The only thing that remained was love.
“We were walking back onto Red Row when we heard a gunshot,” Ollie explains, his eyes wide. “We didn’t feel safe going toward it, but we called the police immediately.”
“You saved our lives,” I tell him.
I’m bone-tired and weary, and everything feels like a morbid dream.
We’ve just spent the last four hours with the police, explaining everything.
And it turns out that the FBI had been looking for Briar and Kai already. But right at the end of our questioning, before the police let us go, they let us know another thing that had happened, just an hour after we were kidnapped.
Howard Zhang, Briar’s father, had found Barrett Knox.
He’d gotten to him as he was in the back of a black car, being driven to Crimson College.
There had been a gun fight.
Howard Zhang and Barrett Knox had both been killed.
I feel like I’ve been through hell and back today, but I can’t begin to imagine how Wes and Hunter feel.
Learning their father was using them as a bargaining chip for his business deals.
That he didn’t even value Hunter’s fucking life.
And now he’s dead.
It’s like we’ve all just woken up from a nightmare.
One that none of us are going to be able to recover from quickly.
But Briar and Kai are in prison, and the warring families aren’t going to be able to threaten us anymore. We were informed that the Zhang family had been imploding for years now, and the few remaining loyal members were apprehended along with Howard Zhang.
For the first time all semester, we are safe.
I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
Three weeks later, all the leaves have fallen from the trees.
I sit with Hunter in the front living room of Onyx House, in a comfortable silence as we both study for exams.
The fireplace crackling fills the air, and some of the other guys are over in the back room, playing poker, and more are in the kitchen cooking up a big pot of pasta.
Things feel more normal than they have all semester.
If normal is even something that can exist.
With each passing day, I’ve been there for Wes and Hunter. Every time they have a fit of white-hot rage. Every time they shed tears for the father who failed them.
And for the first time in their lives, Hunter and Wes are bonded together as brothers in a way that they’ve never been before.
If there’s any silver lining to this storm, it’s that.
“Hey,” I say softly to Hunter now, closing my history textbook and scooting over on the couch to be closer to him. “How are you doing?”
“I think my eyes are going to fall out if I read one more word about Henry the Fifth, but otherwise, I’m okay.”
I rest my arms on his shoulders, bringing him close and leaning in to kiss him.
At first it felt strange, being able to kiss him anywhere I wanted, not worrying who was going to see us.
But now it would feel impossible not to do it.
“I keep thinking about Lune, lately,” he says as he pulls back a little.
I let my arms stay around his shoulders as he looks off at the fire, crackling away.
I watch the reflection of the flames dance in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Hunter.”
He shakes his head. “It’s okay. I think of Lune all the time, to be fair. But now… now there’s something a little sweeter about it. It might sound crazy, but I’m glad she didn’t have to be here to see all of this.”
I rub his shoulder. “I understand.”
“She’s free from all of this. From who our father really turned out to be. I miss her more than anything, but I’m so glad she’s free.”
“You’re the strongest person I know, Hunter.”
He puffs out a little breath of air. “Is that right?”
“Of course. I don’t know how you do it. How do you manage? When it feels like the whole world is going to swallow you whole? When nothing feels hopeful anymore?”
He turns and rests his forehead on mine.
His hand finds its way to my hair, and he strokes it gently.
“There have been so many times I thought I couldn’t keep going.”
I pull in a breath. “What did you do?”
“I kept going out of spite.”
The fireplace pops, and I rest against Hunter’s warmth, the enormity of the past few months floating around me.
It feels like the whole world we knew went up in flames.
But now, in the ashes, I see something new.
Something so hopeful.
Out of spite, Hunter told me.
Maybe that’s how it always goes. The new green grass, sprouting from the ashes after an inferno.
Seeds deep under the soil, planted long ago, using the ash to grow.
He’s right.
After everything, we have to keep going.
Out of spite.
Out of sheer determination, because nothing is going to force us to give up.
I pull in a breath of his clean, warmly spiced scent, suddenly feeling that glimmer of new beginnings, of hope.
“Hunter,” I say softly, reaching down to hold one of his hands in mine.
My heart beats in my chest.
Steady, but quickening.
“What’s up, king?” he says.
“I love you.”
I feel him exhale. Feel his hand tighten against mine.
It’s simple, and it’s the exact truth. Honesty over everything. He doesn’t have to respond, and I know there’s a world where he won’t.
But instead he grips my hand harder, pulling me tight.
“Damn it, Rayne,” he says in a whisper near my ear.
“You don’t have to say it back, Hunter—”
“I love you,” he says, urgently, like it’s something that’s been weighing on his soul for longer than this moment. “I love you so much it hurts. And when I saw you like that, tied up, by someone else’s hand—”
He clutches me close, like he’s afraid to let go.
So I don’t let go.
I stay close with him there on our little corner of the big sofa, holding him. Pouring every ounce of love I have into one embrace.
“And then you saved me,” I tell him, burying my nose in the white-blond of his hair.
He puffs out a little breath. “You saved yourself. You saved us, and you know it.”
I grip him tight.
Making sure he feels how real it is.
He’s loved.
And he’s never going to have to live another day thinking he’s unlovable, and believing that he’ll always be alone.
Because Hunter Knox may be fucked up, or lost, or broken.
But if he is, then I’m the same thing.
Together, it feels like two wrongs come together and make something right. Something I needed long before I was aware of it. And that’s the most honest love I’ve ever had.
We fall asleep together in my bed that night, laced in each other’s arms just like we were on the sofa.
We shift in bed in the middle of the night.
I blink my eyes open, half-asleep.
And I feel him press up against the side of my body, his cock hard on my thigh.
We’re wordless as our lips come together.
And the wet heat of his tongue slides out onto mine.
In a fumbling rush, he pushes me onto my side, sliding his cock between my thighs.
It’s fast. Desperate. He bucks his hips as his cock pushes between my thighs. I squeeze them tight together, flexing around him, making it tight for him, but his breathing becomes heavy and I know he wants more.
I want more, too. I want everything.
“Need you,” he utters.
I run my lips along his neck. “You know I’m yours.”
He fumbles for the condom and lube in the drawer nearby, and it’s only minutes before he’s pushing into me. My fingers grip the sheets as he fucks me hard, his lips coming down onto my neck from behind.
“Why do you feel so good?” he utters, his breath broken up by each thrust.
“You know why.”
“Because you’re mine.”
I push back against him, eliciting a moan. “Because I love you. And even if it’s hard to fathom, you know it. In your bones.”
He pushes hard and fast into me and calls out a string of curses as he comes, going in all the way to the hilt.
And a moment later he’s already reaching around, his hand feeling for my cock, wrapping his fist around me and stroking.
Behind me, he’s still inside.
And the sensation is enough to take me to the edge, too. I’m filled by him, I belong to him.
I’ll be his forever, now.
Marked, and cherished.
As long as he’ll have me.