13. Lilah
13
LILAH
I woke up from a dream, water all around me, my body sinking into the depths, the bottom of a boat floating on the surface, barely visible in the moonlight. I reached for the boat on the surface, my arms flailing, legs kicking as I tried to swim, but it was like one of those dreams where you’re trying to run down a hall but the hall just keeps getting longer.
Except this time I was in the ocean, fathomless below me, and I was powerless to stop myself from sinking into the darkness.
I gasped and shot up in bed. Putting a hand over my heart was a reflex, a habit I’d gotten into as a kid, like doing it could reassure me that my heart was still beating.
That I was still alive.
I took a few deep breaths, tried to slow my pulse. The room was dark, a faint wash of moonlight leaking into the room from the sheer curtains on either side of the window. I’d slept with the door to the terrace closed even though in another situation I would have loved to sleep with the sound of the surf below the cliff. After being held captive on the boat, the sea wasn’t comforting.
I checked my phone, glad to have it back after two incommunicado days on the boat, and saw that it was after 2 a.m.
I heard voices from somewhere in the house and got out of bed, but when I cracked the door to my room I knew immediately that the Bastards were talking about me.
I halted, hesitated, then trained my ears on their conversation.
“I can’t fucking believe those fuckers branded her,” Nolan said.
“I’m going to fucking kill them.” I flinched at the fury in Rafe’s voice. “Every last one of them.”
“A hundred percent,” Jude said. “They’re dead men.”
“We have to send her away,” Rafe said. “Somewhere she’ll be safe.”
I blinked in surprise, then realized he probably just wanted me out of the way, especially after I’d put them all in danger by accepting the Imperium Fratrum invitation without telling them.
“She won’t go,” Jude said. “You know she won’t go.”
“So we make her go.” Rafe’s voice was practically a growl.
Heat blossomed in my chest, then traveled to the center of my stomach. I told myself it was because he was such a Neanderthal (what made him think he could make me do anything?) but deep down I wondered if it was because some sick part of me had started to be turned on by his “fuck everyone” attitude.
“That wouldn’t be fair,” Nolan said.
“Who the fuck said anything about fair?” Rafe asked.
Nolan sighed, and I could almost see him rubbing at the corner of his mouth with his thumb, the way he did when he was frustrated. “I did. Lilah’s feelings matter here.”
Now my heart felt all squishy. Dammit.
“You’re thinking with your dick,” Rafe said. “This is why we don’t fuck clients.”
My cheeks burned.
“First of all,” Nolan said, “Lilah isn’t a client. She’s way more than that, to all of us, and I think you know that. Second of all, there’s a lot more than my dick involved with Lilah, and I think you know that too.”
“Speak for yourself,” Rafe grumbled.
I was surprised to hear the bark of Jude’s laughter. “Yeah, okay.”
“Lilah wants to find out what happened to these girls,” Rafe said. “We don’t need her for that, and she’d be safer out of the line of fire.”
“She doesn’t want us to go away and solve this without her. It’s not abstract for her,” Jude said.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Rafe asked.
“Lilah identifies with these girls,” Jude said.
I took an instinctive step back from the door, feeling exposed and embarrassed, like Jude had walked in on me while I was trimming my pubic hair.
I didn’t have time to figure out how Jude knew something so personal about me, something I’d never said aloud.
“I think you hit your head on the way off the boat,” Rafe said. “These girls are nothing like Lilah.”
“You’re wrong,” Nolan said. “Didn’t you hear what she said earlier? She’s always been alone. She’s been out there since high school, working her ass off, barely getting by, trying to give her little brother a chance if he needs an escape. You don’t see a parallel between Lilah and the girls who’ve gone missing? The ones the news barely reported on?”
Rafe was quiet, and I wondered if Nolan’s words had hit home.
Then, Jude’s voice. “How many news stories did they do about Ruth Hammond after that shit show with the Beasts?”
I thought about all the times I’d seen Ruth’s picture on the news, her perfect teeth and glossy hair staring back from the TV. I hadn’t even thought about it at the time. Of course the news would report about Ruth’s near miss with Piers and Gray Cantwell. Ruth was the daughter of a rich local man, the great-granddaughter of one of Blackwell Falls’ founders. She was beautiful and popular, someone with a bright future ahead of her (left unsaid: unlike all those runaways and strippers who went missing ).
“You think Lilah believes no one would care if something happened to her?” I was surprised by how quiet Rafe’s voice was, how absent it was of its usual bite.
“You think someone would have looked for her before she came to us?” I knew Nolan didn’t mean anything by it, that he was trying to make a point to Rafe, but it stung to hear him say out loud what I’d been thinking for the past two months. Then he spoke again. “It’s a fucking tragedy that no one knows how amazing she is, that she doesn’t know, but we know. And I think we also know that if something had happened to Lilah before she found the house, her disappearance probably wouldn’t have made the news.”
“Lilah wants to find out what happened to them because she thinks she’s like them,” Rafe said quietly.
“And because she’s a good person,” Jude said.
There was a long silence. I felt like it meant something, but I wasn’t sure what that something might be.
“Fuck,” Rafe finally said.
“We have to,” Nolan said.
I didn’t know what he was talking about until Rafe spoke again. “Fine. We help look for these girls until we find answers. Until Lilah is satisfied.”
“And we don’t shut her out while we do it,” Jude added. “But we do keep her safe.”
“That’s a fucking given.”
Rafe’s voice was so fierce, so raw, that I backed away from the door, feeling like I’d heard something I shouldn’t — not the conversation itself but the undercurrent in Rafe’s voice that said he might not hate me after all.