Chapter Nine
I was drowning.
The numbers, drawings, and calculations on the page beckoned me to dive in, but I was being swallowed up by something else entirely.
Staring down at the design for my next engine, my hands in my hair, I heard the sound of Dominique shifting on the couch. My jaw tightened as I struggled to focus.
I was in my own version of hell.
It was my second day trapped in this loft with her, and I was beginning to think Sullie wanted this to happen. It was getting harder and harder to think straight around her. I assumed it would be easy, like settling back into an old routine, one we’d established a long time ago.
I looked up from my place at the small breakfast table, my papers and notes spread out everywhere, to see her hunched over slightly on the couch, her good leg propped up against the coffee table, her other ankle resting on a pillow I’d shoved underneath it beside her bent leg. A notebook was resting against her legging-clad thigh, and I could hear her pen scribbling. Her hair fell over her shoulder in a thick curtain of the richest chocolate, and my hand curled into a fist the longer I stared.
We’d barely spoken a word to each other after yesterday’s breakfast, but a part of me expected it to be this way.
Who we were before was from a different life.
She and I were completely different people now, and according to Jer, she was staying at Oasis. I wanted to be here and so did she. That meant I had to learn to live with it, along with everything else in my life. The pain between us would eventually fade and scar. People functioned with scars all the time, and I could function with her.
But not right now.
Not after what I did the night before last.
Shame covered me as a sour taste formed on my tongue. Memories of her breathy cries and her moaning my name filled my head, ringing in my ears like a fucking broken record, over and over. I was certain I’d lose my shit soon enough. Looking back down at my design, I dropped my hands from my hair and picked up the pen again.
From in the living area, I heard her shift again, clearing her throat as she turned the page of her notebook. Unable to help it, I looked up once more, my eyes landing on that curtain of hair. The sour taste on my tongue began to fade the longer I stared, wishing I could see her face from this angle. Were her brows pinched in concentration? Was the corner of her bottom lip sucked in between her teeth as her eyes read over her writing? Or was her tongue pressed into her cheek as she reviewed?
The mere thought of her tongue had my cock twitching inside my jeans.
Fucking damn.
I looked back down to my design, trying to focus on the customer’s requests.
No, I couldn’t function with her.
Not while we were trapped in a 600 square foot loft apartment with no power. I always managed to carry around battery packs, so both of our phones were currently charging on the kitchen island, Sullie’s gas stove was on low, heating the place for now, and the faucets were dripping constantly. We were doing okay.
This was doable.
This was doable.
This was—
The silence from her was driving me insane. When we were kids, all she did was talk my damn ears off.
An annoying ache formed in my chest as I realized how much I missed her crazy yammering. Silent Dominique was a unique, agonizing form of torture.
Get over it, Cain. You’re here to make sure she is alright and nothing more.
Tightening my jaw, I did my best to block her out and focus on work. I reached for my ruler and drew out the measurements, making notes as needed. I’d been doing this for years, and it was the only time I could get my brain to be quiet for a few hours. With Dominique near, the quiet seemed to bother me in a way I couldn’t explain.
It was late morning, and I’d been up since before dawn, needing to get some sort of workout in before she awoke. I’d rolled off that shitty—not to mention short—couch and stretched for thirty minutes, followed by some body weight exercises just to get my blood pumping.
By the time I was done, the sun had been rising, and I called my brother to check in. He was on Stevens” island in the middle of the lake. Apparently, he and two other men had small apartments in the Mafia King’s mansion. As usual, his sentences were short and vague. He had nothing to report and said Collin’s men in Chicago hadn’t seen or heard of any Bratva since before Christmas. Kavi was underground again. None of our contacts in Denver had seen him either. After his sighting, we put eyes on the hotel he’d been staying at. He never came out and after a few days, he seemed to disappear.
After my phone call with my brother, I went outside and put salt on the stairs, thankful I didn’t bust my own ass. Then, around nine, Dominique finally emerged with her crutches, with bags under her eyes and wild hair. She greeted me, void of emotion while she made herself some coffee. After her cup was drowned, she disappeared to the bathroom for an hour.
Now, we were here, and I wanted to shoot myself in the damn foot.
My phone ringing jolted her, and suddenly, I could see her face. The pain in her green eyes made me jerk.
“You going to get that?” she asked, her voice tired as she looked away from me, going back to writing.
I didn’t give her an answer, only rising from my seat. I snatched the phone and saw Leon’s name on the screen.
“Yeah?” I answered, grabbing my hoodie and pulling it over my head.
“Need you to step outside,” Lee ordered.
“Right,” I muttered, already heading towards the door. With my hand on the doorknob, I looked over my shoulder, my heart stilling. She was already looking up at me, and in the sunlight, I could see evidence that she’d been crying.
Fuck, had she been crying this whole time?
The ache in my chest intensified.
“I’ll be right outside,” I told her, my voice gentle.
Her brows pinched like I’d been picturing them at my soft tone. “Who is it?”
“Lee,” I told her, hearing a banging noise on the other end of the line.
She nodded, her shoulders slumping slightly.
“Were you hoping for someone else?” I found myself asking, not able to look away from her. Her neck was red, splotchy. The last time I’d seen it like that was the night at The Pit. The sight felt like a kick to the gut.
She looked away from me, her eyes going to the city outside. “No. Can you—uh—can you ask for Amara’s number?”
“Cain, you there?” Lee asked.
I turned my head away from her, pulling the door open. “I need Amara’s number.” Once I was outside, the freezing temps slapped me in the face as the salt cracked underneath my shoes. “Fuck,” I hissed. “Too fucking cold for this shit.”
“Why do you need Amara’s number?” he asked, suspicion lacing his question.
Moving to the railing, I looked down to my snow-covered car, the craving for a cigarette heavier than before. “Dominique was asking for it.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, the girls had a little bonding session the day Nikki got out of the hospital.”
I ignored the nickname for her, running my finger over the layer of ice covering the railing of the small deck. I didn’t have anything to say to that, other than I didn’t like the jealousy lighting inside of me. It was a small green flame, but eventually, if it continued, it would grow into an ugly beast. I needed to meditate. My emotions were all over the fucking place, and it was slowly killing me from the inside out.
“Heard anything about that car I told Sullie about?” I asked, moving on.
“That’s why I called you,” he began. “The car belongs to a big Chicago investment banker, Thad Bunker. Three days ago, he went missing, his house trashed. The Chicago PD have an investigation open.”
“Did Casey send over the information?” I turned and leaned my ass against the railing, no longer giving a fuck about the frigid temps or the ice.
“Yeah. Right now, the STL PD can’t handle that. It’d be better if the Bureau stepped in.”
I nodded to myself, understanding the shit show that the detective must be dealing with. “How are the streets?”
“I don’t know. We’ve been camped out at Amara’s place for the last two days.”
“You guys have power?” Worry filled me.
“Yeah, I took one of D’s generators,” he told me, chuckling a bit.
“D and the girls good?” I pressed.
“Yeah, yeah. Everyone is good.”
Relief filled me, and I looked out towards the arch. The sun was shining, and I was grateful for it. I needed the fucking ice to melt so I could get the hell out of here. Silence lingered between us for a moment.
“How are you holding up?” Lee finally asked me. There was something in his voice that had my defenses rising.
“What do you mean? I’m fine. In case you forgot, Dominique is the one who’s injured.”
“Yeah, and you two have a complicated past and you’re stuck in a tiny ass loft above a bar in a damn frozen tundra,” he quipped.
I bit down until pain radiated through my jaw up to my temple.
“Look,” he sighed. “I don’t know why you decided to stay with her, and that’s your business…” He trailed off, and I braced for his next words. “You just—you never talked about her before, and now she’s here.”
“She wasn’t important before Jer decided to bring her on,” I clipped, anger creeping over my shoulders with a wicked smile on its face.
“You said that you two grew up together, Cain,” he said, as if reminding me of the biggest and brightest part of my shitty upbringing.
“Know that,” I pushed out through my teeth.
One mention about our past from another person, and I was already fuming. I bent my head back to the sky, inhaling through my nose. As I exhaled, looking straight ahead once more, I hit him with the truth. “She was something to me in the past, but that was it. She fucked up, and I moved on,” I told him, ignoring the pain in my chest.
“She fucked up,” he parroted.
“Yeah,” I bit off. “Now, we’re here, and Jer told me last night that she decided to stay. She’s a grown fucking woman, and as much as I would like to, I can’t make her leave. She’s found a place here, just like I have, and we’re going to have to learn to deal with it.”
“What did she do?” he asked.
“I thought it was none of your business,” I snapped.
I was greeted with more silence.
A sigh left me, my breath like vapor in the air. “I’m here to look out for her and nothing more. Once the roads are clear, I’m out of here, yeah? Then you and everyone else can take care of her.”
“You don’t want to be the one to do that, then?” he asked incredulously.
I shouldn’t be here in the first place—not after what happened the other night. Guilt flooded my insides like a toxin, seeping into my bloodstream. “No. I don’t.”
“Right,” he muttered before moving on. “Any word from Xander?”
I gave him the minimal info my brother had recently given me, and he pulled Jer and Dontell onto the line. For the next few minutes, the four of us plotted our next move against Kavi, all of us ready for this shit to be over. During the conversation, images of Dominique lying unconscious in that burning car flooded my mind, torturing me with each lick of the flames.
Dominique’s voice was muffled on the other side of the bedroom door as she pushed out, “Whatever it takes.”
She’d gotten up from her spot on the couch, shoving her notebooks in her bag before she walked back to the bedroom with her crutches over an hour ago. Something in her voice had my hand halting in mid-air as I went to knock on the door.
“I don’t know. I just—I can’t be near him anymore,” she sighed.
My jaw tightened.
So the feeling was mutual.
“Are the streets clear?” she asked as I bent my head, closing my eyes. “Dominique,” I called, raising my voice.
I heard her mumble something, and then movement. A second later, I saw her shadow from underneath the door as I opened my eyes again. “Yes?” she called through the door.
“Dinner is on the stove,” I told her, keeping my voice level now.
“Oh—um—thank you.”
I ignored her forced gratitude, getting to the point of why I came into the hall. “I’m heading down to the bar. Sullie wants me to check the gas levels.”
A second later, the door was yanked open, and my head snapped up. Our eyes collided as her phone fell away from her face, which was wet from her tears. My brows furrowed as my heart thundered inside my chest, an unfamiliar fury sparking inside of me. This was the second time I’d caught her crying.
“Why are you crying?” I demanded.
Quickly, she shook her head, scoffing at my question like it was ridiculous. “It’s nothing.” She pushed out a fake laugh again. It was like nails on a damn chalkboard. Hideous. “Just hormonal stuff. Nothing important.”
My eyes narrowed as I stepped over the threshold, forcing her chin to tilt up a bit. “Nothing important,” I repeated, slower than she had, needing to taste the lie on my own tongue.
Dominique looked away from me then, clearing her throat. “So why are you going down to the bar?”
I cocked my head to the side, leaning down to get into her space. Her green eyes widened, only providing me with more evidence of her emotional state. “Why were you crying?” I asked again, trying to find the patience to not pin her to the wall.
“I told you. Nothing—”
“You told me a lie, Dominique.”
Something flashed within her sage eyes. “I didn’t lie.”
My eyes scanned her face, lingering on her pink lips for longer than I should have. “That mouth was good at many things, but lying wasn’t one of them.”
“Stop talking to me like that,” she whispered.
“No.”
Blinking, she sucked in a breath as I met her eyes again, bringing my other foot inside the room. She moved, stepping back—on the wrong foot. She winced in pain. With a low growl, my arm shot out, banding around her waist. Her body slammed into mine as her hands landed on my chest.
“Cain,” she whispered.
Fuck, if that didn’t make me want to drop to my knees.
“You can’t put weight on that foot yet,” I reminded her, keeping my voice neutral.
Her breasts brushed against me with every short breath she took. Her mouth opened and closed a few times as she continued to gawk at me. “P-please let me go,” she finally managed.
Slowly, I brought my hand up to her face, cupping it as my thumb swiped the remains of a tear from under her eye. The touch seared through me like a hot poker, going straight for the piece of shit inside my chest. This was a bad idea.
When has that ever stopped you?
My voice softened, lowing a bit as I repeated myself one more time. “Why were you crying, clover?”
She flinched.
I mentally kicked myself.
The promise I made myself had been broken twice since she arrived: once when I was pulling her from the burning car, and now, when I was wiped her tears away—while she was in my arms, against my body. I could feel her heart pounding against me as her breath caught.
“Don’t,” she snapped, her eyes hardening.
She jerked her head from my hand, twisting her neck to look out the window.
“Answer me,” I commanded, murmuring still.
She gave me another laugh, this once uglier than the last. “You want to know why I have tears in my eyes? Is that right?” She looked at me as the darkness inside of me swirled. Her upper lip curled as she pushed against my chest. “You, Cain. You’re the fucking reason why I’m crying.”
My hold on her began to loosen, and she gave me one final shove.
Then she was free of me, putting her weight on her good foot as she continued to hit me with it. “Every single tear I’ve shed has been because of you,” she sneered, jabbing her pointer finger into my chest. Her bottom lip quivered as more tears formed.
A lump formed in my throat as I took in the sight.
I knew I’d hurt her.
I knew I’d ruined a small part of her, but this…
This didn’t make any sense.
“That’s a lot of tears for one conversation, Dominique,” I told her softly, keeping my hands at my sides now. She flinched again, this time, as if I’d struck her. My brows came together as confusion settled over me. When she didn’t speak, I reached out. She jerked back, pulling away from me violently.
“Get out.” It was a broken whisper, and yet, it was the loudest thing I’d ever heard.
“I’ll be back,” I muttered, turning away from her. Once I was in the hall, the door slammed behind me, followed by the sound of the lock. I looked over my shoulder at the door as a new fear collided into me.
What the fuck had I done to her?