Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Freedom Mansion
Eden
Robyn shoves one of the rose-flavored chocolates that I made her into her mouth, chewing with a blissed-out expression. “You seriously both hid under Silas’ desk…?”
I stretch on the circular nook at the back of the library, amongst piles of golden velvet cushions and soft blankets.
It’s Robyn’s omega nest.
The library is my favorite room in the mansion.
I’m still not sure how I feel about D’Angelo looking through my Kindle history, however, to choose the books that stock the vast alcoves, which run the length of the room and reach all the way to the high ceiling.
He may as well know my browser history, and I’d kill rather than let anyone see that.
Yet being surrounded by so many of my favorite books, which I never dreamed I would be able to own, makes up for it.
Sometimes, I truly believe that I am living in a dream and one day, I will wake up.
“He didn’t catch us,” I clarify.
“But he could have done.” Robyn licks the smeared chocolate off her lips. “It’s like something out of a thriller novel.”
“Don’t say Dan Brown.”
Robyn looks like an outraged squirrel. “I wasn’t going to.”
“Or any of those hockey romance thrillers.”
“Two dangerous twins in a small town, high-stakes hockey suspense that will change everything,” she declares dramatically, as if the voice actor on a book trailer.
“Do you want to become a writer now too?”
“I’ll leave that to D’Angelo.”
I study Robyn, happy that she’s more relaxed than she has been since Cody broke our peaceful Sunday together.
Do women find recklessness attractive?
Romantic?
No wonder my brother has always been popular with women. Along with his love of leather and motorcycles, he has perfected the bad boy image.
Nobody would have guessed at university that the quiet twin who nobody spoke to was the real bad boy.
I have studied romance novels, trying to analyze how to be the best boyfriend.
What love is.
I have an entire spreadsheet.
So far, however, most of it is bullshit.
Well, apart from the advice on gifting chocolates. Also, offering wild sex. Both of which are popular with Robyn.
Moonlight streams through the floor to ceiling arched windows over the library’s floors, which are painted like tumbling pages. The windows themselves frame the view out into the forest garden like illustrated pictures from a fairy tale.
The ceiling is high and vaulted. A spiral staircase leads up to the second floor of books.
I sprawl further over the velvet cushions, stretching to expose my bare thighs.
For our Book Club date, which is just before bed, I am only wearing a gray t-shirt over my black boxers. On the front of the t-shirt is a picture of three black cats curled together in a fluffy cuddle pile beneath the writing:
ONE CAT WON’T FIX ALL YOUR PROBLEMS…BUT THREE MAY.
I’m hoping D’Angelo will take the hint and buy us three cats.
To start with.
Robyn laughed when she saw it, before muttering, “Don’t you mean men?”
She’s proudly wearing the matching t-shirt to me, which I gifted her.
She cast me a challenging look, when she first strolled in, as if daring me to say anything about the fact that she’d labeled each of the cats with marker pen and an arrow: JUDE, PHOENIX, and SHAY.
I didn’t, however, because she called the cat Phoenix, rather than Eden.
Also, because she chose the cutest cat to be me.
It awakens something possessive in me every time I see her wearing my shit.
These emotions, which I don’t understand, make me feel more alive than I have before. I never want to go back to feeling numb.
Now, Robyn’s gaze slides to my bare legs.
She flushes.
Satisfying.
I may have been the only virgin in this group last year, when we met, but I am a quick learner.
Plus, D’Angelo is a good mentor.
Robyn swallows, forcing herself to look away from the pale stretch all the way to my hip. “You both did amazing stealing what D’Angelo needed.”
I glow. “It was easy.”
I don’t mention Shay’s panic attack and how terrible it had been to hide underneath that desk, while my brother had fallen apart with flashbacks.
She doesn’t need to worry about our shit.
To my surprise, however, it was Shay who begged me not to tell Robyn.
“She’ll think that I’m still broken.” Shay wiped furiously at his tears as he clung to me. “I’ve worked too hard to prove that I’m not.”
“She won’t.”
“But what if I am?” Shay whispered, his voice rough from crying. “You didn’t freak out; I did. Everything is going so well, Dee. We have a home and people who have proved that they love us. I don’t want to risk them abandoning us because I’m a mess.”
I tightened my hold on him. “D’Angelo would punish you for talking like that about yourself. He would never abandon you. He’d never let you go.”
Shay brightened at the thought.
Yet sometimes, it worries me how much that’s true. D’Angelo is more possessive than I am.
I still called D’Angelo after the panic attack.
Shay can let himself be a mess in front of him in a way that he’s terrified to show in front of Robyn.
Is it because his abusive ex was a woman? Or because D’Angelo often tears him down in order to put him back together again?
Shay still grumbled, “Twin Code, bro…”
D’Angelo pulled my brother into a closet in the arena for privacy, wrapping extra jerseys around Shay and helping him take sips from his water bottle.
He was holding Shay’s back against his chest, stroking his hair with a gentleness that he normally reserves for Robyn but is using more often with my brother.
D’Angelo’s eyes glinted. “But there is also this thing called the Dom Code. So, you had better watch out, cucciolo.”
Shay shivered.
D’Angelo squeezed Shay’s neck.
Shay calmed, appearing to come back to himself more at the touch. He relaxed further against D’Angelo’s chest. His breathing slowed.
He glanced up at D’Angelo like he was a god.
I stood in the entrance, watching them with an aching in my chest.
Would Robyn look at me like that?
“You’re a dangerous boyfriend, darlin’.” But I knew Shay. He was delighted. “Corrupting my brother.”
D’Angelo smirked. “How do you know that he’s not the one who is corrupting me?”
I almost smirked back.
Around D’Angelo, I forget how freaky my smile is.
He makes me feel that I could be as human as everybody else.
Robyn wanders to the bookshelves, running her finger along their spines.
“It was a massive risk. Shay and you have saved Noah, along with all our asses from Silas. The jerk would have kept holding that photo over us. Someone like that blackmails you for one thing and then something else. It wouldn’t have ended. ”
“It ends now.”
Robyn’s smile is dangerous. “I wish that I could be there to see his fucking face when he realizes that he’s been outplayed.
I always hated Silas. He only called me the coach’s daughter like I didn’t exist as my own person, you know?
He does the same to Code, calling him the coach’s son.
It was a smart idea for D’Angelo to invite Silas to meet him tonight in Merchant’s Inn on neutral ground.
” She laughs. “It truly is neutral, since Neve spends as long sending me pictures of creative uses of hockey sticks on D’Angelo’s ass, as she does watching his games. ”
I toss the cushion across the nook, trying to arrange it as invitingly as I can. “How do you think it’s going?”
“Shay and D’Angelo will be back any time. Considering Shay gave up what were meant to be earth-shattering plans with D’Angelo tonight from the string of excited emojis that he kept sending me, there is no way that he’s not going to crush Silas for spoiling them.”
“It better not spoil our date too then.”
Robyn’s expression softens.
She pads across the library to me. “How’s your headache?”
I try to hide the fact that I’m squinting against the light.
Genuine answer?
Splitting my head open like I’m being beaten with a hockey stick.
I don’t tell Robyn that. She has enough shit to worry about.
Instead, I shrug. “Level two.”
She arches her eyebrow like she doesn’t believe me, before crawling into the luxurious nook and then into my open arms.
I drape a velvet blanket around her shoulders to keep her warm. She nestles against my side.
“It’s been a busy day,” Robyn admits, sleepily. “But I got hold of this awesome journalist who is prepared to run an unbiased story about our relationship.”
I frown, pushing a strand of hair out of her face. “You trust her?”
“As much as I trust any journalist. Can I choose some of your best Bay Rebels photographs, which you have taken for the website, to go with the article? You’ll be credited. They really are amazing.”
Surprised, I give a sharp nod.
“You could train professionally as a photographer,” Robyn muses.
“I’m D’Angelo’s PA.”
“You could do that too.”
A spark of happiness flashes through me.
It’s unusual.
Unexpected.
Is this how Shay feels most of the time?
I try to catch hold of the feeling.
I grab the thin, brightly colored book, which I left earlier at the back of the nook, when I was preparing for my date with Robyn.
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.” I handle the book carefully.
I bought it with my portion of this week’s salary, which I hadn’t already set aside to send back to my parents, from Alice’s Book Café bookstore.
The book is a vintage 1950’s hardback with illustrations. Cassian excitedly called me in when he found it for me.
I am discovering that there is an advantage to knowing someone with a bookstore.
Is that friendship?
I pass the book to Robyn. “This is for you.”
She glances at me, surprised. “Are you sure? This looks valuable.”
I set my mouth, stubbornly. “I can give you presents too.”
It’s on my spreadsheet.
I know that it’s an important part of dating, right?
I may not have the same money as D’Angelo, or even as my brother now that I am a PA and not a hockey star, but I can still treat my lover as well as they do.