Chapter 27
“Look, I can leave if you want,” Jason said, moving to stand up as he grabbed the remaining bag of food, but Trevor barely heard him as he paced the living room, never taking his eyes off the stairs where Zoe fled only minutes before.
After she’d destroyed his entire world.
“Can you fucking believe her?” Trevor demanded, but he didn’t give Jason a chance to respond, or if he did, he didn’t hear him.
He couldn’t believe she just did that. “After everything I did for her?” Trevor said, shaking his head in disgust. While he’d been ready to move forward with her, she’d been looking to get out. Well, fuck her because he didn’t need her.
This wasn’t going to last anyway. He’d have ended things in another fifty or sixty years. He’d never wanted anything permanent with her, so this really didn’t bother him. This was fine. This was more than fine, Trevor thought as he drove his fist through the wall.
“Whoa! Calm the hell down!” Jason said, getting to his feet.
“You calm the hell down!” Trevor snapped, feeling ready to blow. “This is my fucking house!” he yelled, hoping she heard him. Never in his life had he been this angry before.
“I don’t fucking need her!” he shouted, resuming his pacing as he shook off the pain in his hand.
“I gave her a fucking place to live, a part-time job, I helped her find a job and I took care of her and she didn’t do a goddamn thing for me,” Trevor said, getting more riled up as he paced the room.
“Not one fucking thing!” he yelled, half hoping she’d hear him and come running back down the stairs so he could yell at her and make her see that she’d made a mistake.
“Maybe we should take this to your apartment,” Jason suggested with a helpless shrug.
Trevor shook his head. “I’m not leaving! You hear me? If you want me to leave, then you get your ass down here and tell me to my face because I’m telling you right now that it’s not over until I say it is!”
“Okay, time to go,” Jason sighed as he grabbed Trevor and started pulling him towards the door.
“Get your fucking hands off me!” Trevor snapped, shoving his cousin away. “I’m not leaving until she talks to me.”
“Well, she’s not going to talk to you if you keep yelling like some lunatic!
” Jason snapped. “Calm the fuck down before you really mess this up. Right now, she’s just pissed and you can probably save this fucked-up relationship, but if you keep acting like this and yelling, she’s going to call the cops and have your ass hauled out of here. ”
“My relationship is not fucked up,” Trevor bit out harshly, but in a more restrained tone. The last thing he needed was to get sent to jail and give Zoe a chance to leave.
This wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
She was his and she damn well knew it and she would remain his until he decided that he was done with her.
“There’s nothing wrong with our relationship,” Trevor bit out distractedly as he paced the room, never taking his eyes away from the stairs.
“Oh, you don’t think so? How about the fact that for the last two months, the two of you have been trying to hide your relationship?” Jason asked, grabbing his attention in a big way.
“How did you-”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Puhlease, with the way that you were watching her, smiling whenever she was around or scaring every guy off that looked her way, it wasn’t hard to miss.”
Trevor shot his cousin a glare.
Jason simply shrugged. “Of course, there were also the matching hickeys the two of you wore about a month back that kind of gave it away.”
He didn’t remember that, mostly because they’d gotten carried away several times.
“I was actually hoping that you wouldn’t fuck this up. Zoe’s good for you,” Jason said, sitting back down and allowing the dogs to settle on his lap.
Trevor had to snort at that. “She’s not good for me. She doesn’t even come close to what I’m looking for,” he pointed out.
“No, she’s a thousand times better,” Jason said quietly.
“How the hell can you say that?” Trevor demanded, throwing another wistful look towards the stairs.
“Because you love her,” Jason simply said, picking up a carton of beef and broccoli and offering some to the dogs.
Trevor opened his mouth to tell his cousin that he was full of shit, but he couldn’t.
On paper, Zoe didn’t meet any of his requirements for a wife.
She didn’t come from a big family, but that didn’t really matter to him anymore because he knew that his family adored her.
His uncle wouldn’t have yelled at her if he didn’t.
She didn’t have a lot of money, but that was okay because he did and he’d happily support her.
He actually loved spoiling her and found himself looking for ways to please her.
Other than Haley, she didn’t have a lot of close friends that she confided in, but that was also okay because she could always confide in him and bitch about anything she wanted and he’d happily listen.
She also wasn’t the type of woman who made men drool, besides him, and got the attention of every guy in the room, but that was okay because none of those bastards should be fucking looking at her anyway.
She also couldn’t cook worth a damn, she sang off-key, was a bit of a neat freak, bossy, demanding, and perfect.
He didn’t need her to tell him that she loved him, because he knew by the way that she looked at him and treated him that she loved him.
He’d been a fucking idiot over the past two months.
Instead of keeping the best thing in his life a secret, he should have been dragging her out and enjoying being with her instead of punishing them both for his stupidity.
“What the fuck did I just do?” Trevor whispered harshly, wondering how he’d fucked this up so quickly. He’d treated her like shit and assumed she’d appreciate any attention he gave her. His father had been right all those years ago.
He was a fucking idiot.
“Besides put a hole in the wall and send the woman you love crying hysterically out of the room?” Jason asked in an annoyingly calm tone. “You fucked up, but don’t worry, you’ll do that a lot.”
“Gee, thanks,” Trevor said dryly.
“Not a problem,” Jason said cheerfully as he started searching through the empty bags and containers. “Damn, it’s all empty,” Jason grumbled. “Could you go up there and grovel now so that we can get our asses back to my mother’s house? I’m starving.”
“Yeah, cause it’s all about you,” Trevor said wryly, turning to head up the stairs.
“It really is, though,” Jason readily agreed.
“I really don’t know how Haley puts up with you.”
Jason sighed heavily as he patted his own chest, “Adores. Me.”
“Uh-huh,” Trevor agreed absently as he tried to figure out the best way to grovel to a woman. He’d never done it before. Usually within the first thirty seconds of a fight with a woman, he simply walked away, but there was no walking away from Zoe.
She was everything to him.
“I’d bring one of the puppies with you to butter her up if I were you,” Jason said, standing with Max in his arms. “Here, take this one.”
Trevor took the puppy and started up the stairs only to pause. “Where are you going?”
“To give you some privacy,” Jason said, heading towards the hallway door.
“And to rummage through your kitchen to find something to eat before I pass out. You people aren’t taking very good care of me,” he bitched as he left with Toby hot on his heels.
By now, the dog knew the signs of a Bradford on the prowl for food and was making damn sure that he was there to take care of any crumbs left behind.
Petting Max, Trevor slowly climbed the stairs, wondering what the best way to go about groveling was. Begging? On his knees? Promises to buy her the world? Because he’d do all that and more. He loved her and wanted to take care of her and show her how good it could be between them.
He paused at her closed door, wondering if he should knock or state his case behind the protection of the closed door where his balls would remain safe.
After a slight pause and a silent apology to his balls in advance, Trevor opened the door, more than ready to take his punishment like a man and frowned when he didn’t encounter any flying books or yelling.
“Go find mommy,” Trevor said, putting the puppy down.
As he followed the puppy as it ran full speed towards the bathroom, Trevor wondered if maybe he should hit the pound and get another dog for her since she really loved dogs and he loved the look on her face when she was getting puppy kisses. Maybe he should...
All thoughts of what he should do evaporated when he spotted Zoe crumpled on the floor, lying near a small pool of blood.
His heart dropped in his chest as he raced to her side, somehow remembering to be gentle with Max as he picked the dog up and moved him aside.
With a shaky hand, Trevor reached out and checked her pulse, praying and promising everything that he had for her to be okay.
She had to be okay.
He sighed with relief when he felt her pulse. “Baby?” Trevor said, resisting the urge to shake her, but just barely. From what he could see, she’d fallen and he didn’t want to hurt her any further.
“It’s okay, Zoe,” Trevor said, wishing that he’d been a fucking man and come after her and begged her to give him a chance when she ran out of the room instead of acting like an asshole.
This was his fault, Trevor realized as he went to grab his phone out of his pocket only to remember that he’d taken it out of his pocket and placed it on his aunt’s kitchen table so that he wouldn’t get it wet while he was doing the dishes.
He needed to get help, but he didn’t want to leave her, he couldn’t. For the second time since Zoe became a part of his life, he was happy that he hadn’t had the walls insulated.
“Jason!”
“Sir, you need to calm down,” the triage nurse said, probably for the hundredth time that hour.