44. Bay
FORTY-FOUR
bay
Olivia Rodrigo plays on the Bluetooth speaker in my family room with Ellie and Mae dancing around to their favorite song of “Good For You” with our created girls’ night.
I’ve ordered pizza, and have a bunch of junk food knock offs that I got from the dollar store, but I’m hardly in the mood for games.
In fact, I also didn’t order Torin Wildes standing on my front porch like I didn’t just tell him and his buddy to fuck off yesterday.
“I know it’s not something you’re used to,” I greet the moment I see him standing there in a dark gray shirt and ripped black jeans looking like a whole damn snack. “But when I tell you I need space, I need it.”
He just stares at me like I’m speaking another language or something.
I am.
Torin doesn’t understand the word no or anything else that doesn’t resonate with what he wants to do.
A small body barrels between the small space of me and the doorway and Mae begins bouncing up and down.
“Hi!” she greets cheerily. “Did you bring me candy?”
“Always.”
Ah, he found his voice.
He hands over a plastic bag, and Mae instantly dips the moment she plucks it from his fingers.
“Move from the door, Wildfire,” Torin orders placidly, as if he has any right. “You had your twenty-four hours.”
I perk a brow. “I wasn’t on a time limit.”
“It’s a rule.”
“I don’t abide by those either.”
He reaches for the edge of the wooden doorframe and leans against it. “Baby…I know you’re not used to this, but I’m here to make sure you’re mentally alright. And that whatever you need, you have.”
“And I want more time.”
“Who’s looking out for you? Because I know Wallace hasn’t been at the house. And you aren’t returning Reeve’s calls, sooo…”
That’s because Levi has been staying at the hospital and ordered me here.
For now.
“I’m capable of handling my sisters alone, thanks.” I grip the door, ready to slam it into his face. “Now, if you’ll fuck off now—” Torin’s palm hits the surface of the door to stop it.
My two hands shove into his chest, getting him to let go of the door frame, but he doesn’t fly off the porch like I imagined he would.
No, he just stands there, ready to take on any wrath that I’m ready to give out.
“I don’t want you here,” I snarl, low enough so that my sisters don’t hear. “If you think I’m gonna let you by my dad?—”
“Stop right there, Wildfire,” Torin warns me with a flat tone. “No one is going after you dad.”
“But you did.”
“That’s old news.”
My palm cracks across his face so hard that I don’t realize what I have done until I feel the stinging pain.
Regret instantly fills my chest because I’m not that girl. I don’t hit guys because they hurt my feelings.
Because you don’t allow anyone to get that close.
“Better?” Torin asks me, shoving his tongue into his cheek that I just slapped.
No.
I opened up, and Reeve, of all people, was going to murder my dad. I wouldn’t have bet on him. I didn’t even think he’d have it in him, but I judged him all wrong. So, who’s to say that I have any judgment at all.
“Please, leave,” I mutter, feeling the sting of tears behind my eyes. I can’t stand to look at him. I’ve had feelings for Torin—long and extensive ones when I was with Matteo. I thought after so much time had passed that Torin had forgotten all about me.
I would see him in passing once in a while, but I never got too close to him. I knew exactly what he was capable of doing to me.
And he did it.
“Bay, I’m sorry,” he issues out, making goosebumps pebble along my skin. “It’s not an excuse…but no one knew who was in this house. Just what the job was.”
I hear what he’s saying, but what if it was someone else’s father? What if that son or daughter didn’t wake up and they just took him away?
“I can’t,” I tremble, crossing my arms over my chest for some sort of stability. “It’s too much.”
“Trust me when I say, I know. That I’m fully aware of what we’re doing. That we don’t fully have the freedom of suspicion from each other. But I want you to know that we would never hurt you. Even if this ends badly.”
I hold his tawny eyes and look for a lie. A glimmer of deceit that tells me to continue with what my head has been telling me to do.
Stay away from them.
However, Torin and I have a spark that is undeniably electric and grounding. He exerts a confidence in me that I can withstand anyone or anything. He pushes my buttons, grinds my gears, but there is nothing in this world that compares to what Torin and I are—the same.
He knows that I didn’t want him here, but he knew I needed him. That I would fight and stomp my feet because my pride refuses to fuck off and go away.
That I am on the brink of losing all self-control.
“You know how much I care about you,” he utters ever-so softly that it’s hard to not just melt against his words. “I might not say it. I might not be as open as Reeve, but you have to know. I wouldn’t chase you if I didn’t want you. I definitely wouldn’t be right here wasting my time over making you forgive me if I didn’t need it. Don’t shut me out when you need me and I need you.”
“You don’t need me,” I blurt out. “There’s nothing that I have?—”
“You do. Open your eyes, Bay. It’s not your being South Shore or the fact that you were something I wanted. It’s because you’re my fucking soul in female form. No one gets me like you do.”
I shiver against his admission and understand what he means. That I may never hear it again because admitting weaknesses isn’t our forte.
However, it means everything just the same.
“Was it you?”
He surprises me when he shakes his head before his eyes brazenly fall down to my chest. “No, but I wish it were. Remember what I said, baby…once I had you, you were never going anywhere.”
Cairo.
And I’ll get to him the next time I see him.
“Do you need me to remind you how it was?” Torin erases some of the distance already, his palm resting right above the top of my ass, causing my nibbles to pebble needily against his touch. “I just need a wall.”
“Torin…”
“Yeah?”
“It’s girls’ night.” He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t give two shits. “And unless you’ve grown a pussy overnight, you’re not invited.”
Torin purposely grinds his hard cock into my upper thigh, and my lips part on their own. “Not recently, no.”
“You’re not gonna use your dick to get in here.”
“Fair enough.” He then lifts me in the air, forcing my thighs to wrap around his waist before he slams my spine into the brick wall. Then his lips follow, clashing into mine with a ferocity that takes my breath away and demands my being.
My soul.
Pretty Boy spoke pretty words, and my body is in another civil war amongst my heart and mind.
When do you stop fighting and allow them to prove otherwise?
It’ll hurt.
Nothing will be more painful than knowing that I loved and lost them.
Loved?
I gasp slightly in sheer panic before Torin’s tongue slides leisurely between my lips and calms me.
Holds me.
Literally and figuratively.
How? How did you do this, Bay?
“I’m scared, too,” Torin says, and I almost miss it because of the blood beating loudly in my ears. “But I’m not going to allow that to keep me away from you. I’ve said it before…and I’ll say it again…you fuck me over, that’ll be it.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
I feel his lips hoist into a pompous smirk. “I know you’re not.” He reaches for my face and runs the pad of his thumb beneath my chin. “And that’s what scares me. You’re not afraid of anyone. You fucking shot me and I let that go. I’d never permit that shit to fly if you were anyone else.”
“You deserved it,” I mutter, to which he leans in and puts his ear next to my lips.
“What did you say?”
“I said you deserved it,” I reiterate in his good ear. “Asshole.”
Torin steals another quick kiss before moving us toward the door, settling me down on my feet before I can bitch at him some more.
Inside, the girls dig through the plastic bag of candy, the TV on some random channel as the music on my Bluetooth speaker still blares. This feels somewhat normal.
“You girls hungry?” Torin asks them, squeezing me closer to him, as if silently telling me everything is going to be fine and he’s going to take care of everything.
“Bay bought pizza,” Ellie says with a full-size Snickers bar in her hand. “Are you going to stay?”
I want to say no, that he’s not, I do. But I need the human comfort. I’m sick with worry about Dad. I’m terrified at how I’m going to pay for another set of hospital bills this go around. Levi has a major drug run coming up just for this issue alone.
We’re gonna move a truck full of meth—shit we never dabble in— into one of the ships on South Shore’s docks.
It’s dangerous.
It’s stupid.
I’m fucked if I can’t pay Dad’s bills that the insurance won’t pay for. I’m screwed if I can’t put food on the table.
I need to quit school. My scholarship is up this year, and after that, I’m on my own. I have a few papers coming in the next few weeks to help me gain more funds, but it’s not guaranteed. And I can’t waste my time on loans.
“What do you got cookin’ up in that pretty head, Wildfire?” Torin’s question sounds closer to my ear, and it’s then that I notice I’ve zoned out.
“Nothing,” I say too quickly, and Torin guides us to the couch, plops down, and brings me with him.
I’m not getting out of this, but I’m not going to tell him what’s up either.
“What does this nothing include, because it looks pretty complicated?. You zoned off for two whole minutes and I was starting to think you were frozen or something.”
“Just thinking about Dad.”
“And how you’re going to pay for the bills?” he deadpans, all too knowingly, like the leader in arms that he is.
Know your enemy.
Learn how to destroy your adversaries.
Examine their weaknesses.
“You know I can do this for you. I can fix—” I shake my head, but Torin’s fingers wrap around the edge of my jaw, and he turns me to face him head on. “I get the prideful rock you’ve built yourself on, but I’m full of means that I’m never going to spend on anything as useful as this. Let me help you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Please, don’t.”
Torin bites down on his lower lip and growls low in his chest before muttering, “Fuck, I never knew how sexy that would sound off your lips. Please …damn.”
I ignore him, staring deep into dark ebbs of browns and colorless shadows of mystery. “I’m not your girlfriend.”
The pad of his thumb brushes along my cheek. “Aren’t you, though? I want you to be. I guess I never officially asked, and we’ve never spoken about it.”
“Reeve.”
I don’t need to say anything else; it’s obvious. How in the world would we ever explain it to anyone, let alone my sisters, Dad, Levi .
“Will definitely fall in line. He’s obsessed with you.”
“And you’re okay with letting me fuck another dude while you’re not around?”
“As long as it’s only him,” he says back, still keeping his voice down. “You screw someone else behind my back…” He allows his threat to carry out its own weight, permitting my brain to go to the lengths of how far Torin would punish me and if that includes a death sentence.
“I don’t want you to pay for Dad’s bills,” I convey as softly as I can, even though my rationality is begging me to give in to it. “I can handle it.”
“But at what cost, Bay? You can’t run drugs when your dad isn’t well. Muncy is on the lookout, and it’s not in The Landings, but here. I bet you already knew that, didn’t you?”
I breathe out an exhale and nod. “Yeah…I knew that.”
“And you’d only know that to keep your head up, or if you were about to go run something illegal.” He stares at me and drops his hand from my face. “I’m not stupid and I know how we met. I’m aware of why you do what you do, and it makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the reckless danger behind it. I run Muncy in The Landings, but Emilio has him on a tight leash everywhere else. He hates Levi.”
“Muncy or daddy dearest?”
“Emilio only hates Levi because he can’t manipulate him, and Muncy loathes Levi because your boy toy is too smart to get caught.”
“I have my own inside stuff to keep us out of trouble.”
Torin lifts a sulky brow. “His name wouldn’t happen to be Travis, would it?” I sigh because he just fucking knows everything, doesn’t he? “You ever fuck that kid?”
“You want me to punch you in the fucking balls right here, right now?”
“Are you going to suck them after—” I elbow him in the gut, not hard, but to keep his mouth shut when my sisters are only a few feet away, trading candy and singing along to “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles.
“You can’t even keep your conversations appropriate around my sisters to be my boyfriend, Baby Wildes. How do you expect me to take you seriously?”
“Because I just offered to pay your dad’s hospital bills either way. You say no, I’ll continue to work at it, and if you say yes, I’ll take care of all your problems because I want to.”
“Because you want to,” I repeat slowly, as if those are the stupidest words he’s ever spoken. “Out of the kindness of your little ol’ heart.”
He shakes his head. “No…because I care about you.” I stare at him, at a loss for words. “I know it’s hard to believe,” he whispers back at me through my silence. “But I like your mouth. I like your shitty comments. You drive me absolutely fucking crazy, and I look forward to it every time. Despite how we started…I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t alter a goddamn thing because that’d mean something would change everything we are and have. That knife to my throat the night we met again…I knew you were gonna be trouble. I just didn’t realize that I was going to stand by your side and make sure no one hurt you.”
My face burns with gratification and slight denial, but that’s my paranoia working itself into a fester. He doesn’t have to do all this. He wouldn’t need to cake it on so hard. He wouldn’t need to spend thousands of dollars either to make me like him because I already do.
“You don’t have to lay it on so thick,” I half tease, half mean it.
“It’s the only equipment I have to work with. And I’ll keep saying it until you believe me, Wildfire. I’ll take care of his bills. I just want you to spend time with me.”
“Does that include you telling me things about you?” He bobs his head. “Do I get a trial subscription to this? I might not like you afterwards and want to cancel.”
He rolls his eyes, but smiles. “I hate peas and chocolate ice cream.”
My brows rise to the sky. “You hate chocolate?—”
“Loathe it. Won’t eat it. Vanilla, I can do but, no, fuck chocolate. It’s not my deal.”
“Huh.”
“Deal breaker?”
“Not quite.”
“Good. I’ll divulge more as I go.” He leans in and presses a chaste kiss to my lips, to which Mae notices and ewws outloud .
Ellie blushes, but smiles, comfortable with the boy from the opposite side of the war who just wants me to give him a chance.
He gets one.
He fucks me over, I will cause significate damage to everything he’s ever given a fuck about.
“You stayin’ for pizza, Pretty Boy?”
“I’m stayin’ forever, Wildfire.”