Chapter 38 Victor
VICTOR
Usually, I have an alarm that wakes me up promptly at the designated time. Sometimes I even wake up before my alarm, my brain churning through a to do list or solving a problem that’s been eating at me.
This morning, it’s not an alarm that wakes me, but the sound of a familiar voice scoffing.
When I open my eyes, Ransom is standing on my side of the bed, his hands crossed over his chest. He stares down at me, and judging from the warm weight at my back, at Willow as well.
“Huh. I see how it is,” he drawls, shaking his head. “Malice and I left you and Willow alone last night, and now I find all three of you in bed together? And no one thought to invite me to this little slumber party? I can’t believe it. Betrayed by my own flesh and blood.”
“For fuck’s sake, Ransom,” I mutter, stretching under the covers.
“Shut the fuck up,” Malice grumbles, and a pillow goes sailing over the bed to hit Ransom right in the face.
He laughs, unbothered. “I don’t blame Willow, of course. She just got swept along in all of this. I bet she would have woken me up and invited me.”
“Mm-hm,” Willow murmurs, still sounding half asleep. “I definitely would have. Malice carried me in here, and I didn’t have a choice. Blame him.”
“Oh, I always do,” Ransom replies. “That’s my motto for life, actually. When in doubt, blame Malice.”
As my twin grunts something obscene about Ransom and rolls out of bed, I turn over so that I can see Willow’s face.
She’s very close, and she looks so fucking beautiful with her hair messy from sleep and her eyes half closed.
I search her face, trying to see if there’s any regret there.
If she has any doubts about what happened yesterday.
I remember her seeming happy before we fell asleep, but sometimes things change. Maybe she slept on it and realized it wasn’t what she wants. That I’m not what she wants.
But when she meets my gaze, her brown eyes are soft and clear. A smile spreads across her face, slow and tender, and it’s like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, warming me as I watch.
“Morning,” she whispers, and she sounds unbelievably pleased to be waking up with me like this. It soothes the worst of my worries, and I swallow hard.
“Good morning, butterfly,” I manage to rasp back.
Willow leans in like she’s going to kiss me, but then she hesitates. She still seems unsure of the boundaries between us, so I take the lead for once, closing the distance and pressing my lips to hers.
My body reacts immediately, my cock stiffening. But even though it feels like an electric current is passing through me, it’s not overloading my system the same way it used to. It still feels good, but pleasure isn’t trying to strangle me anymore.
“I like this,” she says softly as our lips part. “Being close to you. Touching you like this. I like it so much.”
I nod, my throat dry. “Me too.”
It feels inadequate, like there should be more to say somehow, but I don’t even know where to start.
“Okay, enough lying around,” Malice says, cutting into the moment. “We need to get moving.”
Willow sighs softly but pulls away from me. As soon as she turns, Ransom slides into the place where Malice was and takes his own good morning kiss, threading his fingers through her hair as he pulls her close.
“Jesus fucking Christ. I said get out of bed, not get into it,” Malice grunts as he heads for the bedroom door. “We’re leaving in half an hour.”
“Letting him think he’s in charge was our biggest mistake,” Ransom mutters with a sigh.
Willow chuckles softly, and we all climb off of the too-small bed. I grab some clothes, my toothbrush, and my personal tube of toothpaste from the bag I packed and then head into the bathroom to wash up and get dressed.
Part of me expects my obsession with Willow to be more of a distraction now, making it hard for me to focus on anything else now that I know what it feels like to kiss her and touch her and fuck her.
But it’s almost the opposite.
It’s as if now that I know those things, now that I’m not holding myself back anymore, it’s easier to focus past the inner struggle that used to tear me up inside. My awareness of her has changed, the desire I always feel when I’m around her shifting to a constant steady drip instead of a torrent.
Once I’ve grabbed a quick breakfast, I check my computer for any messages from X, but the inbox is empty.
That doesn’t necessarily mean anything one way or the other.
She definitely hasn’t given up, not that easily.
She’ll still be searching for us, and that means we have to get away from this area quickly.
We’re pretty far from the small town where we robbed the convenience store, but it will be good to get even farther.
Thinking about the robbery leads me to thinking about the diner. That shouldn’t have happened, not if we were going to try to avoid being noticed. I’m usually much more rational and levelheaded, able to think past my feelings and act strategically.
But then again, this isn’t the first time I’ve acted before thinking when Willow was threatened. I killed Carl all those weeks ago in her old apartment, and I still remember the flash of rage I felt when I saw him trying to blackmail her.
He put his hands on her, so I killed him.
And I’m not sorry about it, just like I can’t bring myself to be sorry for stabbing that trucker. I’m finally starting to accept that I’ll never be rational and logical where Willow is concerned, and letting go of the need to try to be unclenches something in my chest.
She’s my beautiful chaos. My butterfly.
And if she brings out a bit of chaos in me too, maybe that’s okay.
Shaking my head to clear it, I close my laptop and gather the rest of the equipment I’ve got set up. Then I head out to where Malice and Ransom are loading up the car, pushing them both out of the way so that I can take over.
“Why do we even bother?” Ransom mutters.
“I have no idea,” I deadpan.
Willow comes out with the food box, and Malice ducks back into the house to do one last check. The three of us get in the car while Malice handles spreading the accelerant and lighting it up, and we stay just long enough to make sure the place catches and starts to burn before we head out.
We keep driving, and I handle the navigation, back in my usual role. We’re heading for a major city this time, rather than the out of the way spots we’ve been stopping at so far.
“Is that dangerous?” Willow asks when I mention our destination.
“We need to find someone who can make us fake IDs,” Malice tells her.
“And good ones,” I add. “We won’t find that in a small town.”
“Hopefully it’ll be a big enough city for us to slip in unnoticed,” Ransom says. “But we gotta take the risk if we’re going to make this work.”
Despite the tinge of worry in Willow’s voice, the atmosphere in the car is much lighter than it has been before, and I focus on my computer, plotting our route and digging up information about who we can meet with when we reach our destination.
Even as I work, the awareness of Willow is always there, in the back of my mind. She jokes and laughs with Ransom in the back, the two of them playing some car game that seems to involve trying to think up the name of an animal that starts with the first letter of the first sign they see.
“Exits don’t count,” Willow complains at one point. “How many E animals are there, even?”
“Elephant, eagle, eel,” Ransom says. “Uh… okay, that’s all I got.”
“Echidna,” I throw in, not looking away from my screen.
“What?” My brother scoffs. “That’s not a real thing.”
“It is, actually,” Willow responds before I can. I turn in my seat to smile at her, and she grins back.
“Just because you don’t know what it is, doesn’t mean it’s not a real thing,” I tell Ransom. “And if we were to get started on that list, we might be here for a while.”
He flips me off as Willow and even Malice burst out laughing at my comment, and my lips twitch into a grin as I get back to work.
When we reach Oklahoma City, the first thing we do is stop for some real food, at Ransom’s insistence. We’ve been mostly living out of our food box, supplementing it with whatever we could get easily while on the road, so it’s been a while since any of us had an actual cooked meal.
We find a food truck parked on a street corner, and Ransom takes Willow with him, returning with two plastic bags loaded full of tacos and chips.
“Finally. A real fucking dinner,” he groans as we eat.
Willow moans in agreement as she takes a bite of one of the tacos, and the sound goes right to my cock.
Memories of touching her and tasting her—of fucking her—fill my head for a moment, and I drag in a breath, tapping out a ten-count on my thigh as I ride out the sudden surge of emotions.
It’s easier to handle them than it used to be, but it’s still a bit overwhelming sometimes.
Once we finish the food and throw away the empty bags, Malice starts the car again.
“You know where we’re going?” he asks me.
“Not exactly,” I tell him. “But I can get us to an area where we should be able to find what we need. We’ll just have to ask around a bit.”
I spent a good portion of the drive doing research on the city, and there’s an area where criminal activity is definitely higher, so I guide Malice there.
There’s a grungy looking dive bar on one block, and I point to it, recognizing the name. “Let’s try that one.”
The sky is a dusky blue as we park and get out of the car, the streetlamps that haven’t burned out or been shot out flickering to life above us.
Malice and I flank Willow, Ransom sticking close by as he brings up the rear.
There are a few neon signs in the window, and the music is loud enough that I can hear it as we approach the bar.