Chapter Thirty-Three - Julius
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Julius
IT TOOK TWO hours for the dumb asses in charge to do a proper headcount and verify that everyone in the building was accounted for. I had tried to put Rhiannon down on a couch nearby a few times when her eyes closed and breathing slowed, but was unsuccessful. Each time she shot awake, clung to me fiercely and refused to leave my arms. Eventually, I just sat down myself and cradled her so she’d continue to sleep peacefully.
Cat sat down on the other side of me, reached out and held one of her younger sister’s tiny little hands. She looked at her with so much love and I vowed to myself to never let anything happen to the child in front of me. Not only because she meant so much to the woman I loved, but because she was starting to carve out a little spot for herself in my heart, too.
“Your daughter is absolutely precious, such a beautiful child. She looks just like you, Cat. Are you the father?” Julia asked me.
“Oh, uh actually,” Cat’s eyes got wide as she became flustered. “She’s actually my younger sister. Our parents are, uh, you know, no longer with us. We found her with them, rescued her and now I’m taking care of her. Thank you for the compliment, but uh, yeah, she’s not my daughter.”
“Oh my goodness, I am so sorry,” Julia gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. “My condolences for both of your losses. I’m gonna go check if we can return to our rooms before I go and put my other foot in my mouth.”
Cat gave her a small nod, then looked down and zoned out, staring at where her hand was joined with Rhiannon’s. She was mindlessly tracing her thumb across the small surface with vacant eyes. Our arms were pressed together. She was sitting so close to me, but she felt somewhere far away. Her brows then pinched together, and she had shadows of pain plaguing her face.
She looked like she was grieving, but I doubted it had anything to do with the death of her parents being brought up. She hadn’t shed a single tear for the two people who had raised her. Nor had she shown a speck of interest in reading the letter we’d found next to her mom’s body. I don’t know if she’d been able to assume how we’d found her, but she didn’t even ask what had happened.
Even the trek there. Not once did she ever express any concern for her parents’ safety other than if they were dead, then most likely Rhiannon was as well. Her one and only goal was to get to this little girl. Even before all this happened, her goals were centered around the kid’s safety rather than her own.
I wondered if her parents had been alive when we got there, if she would have fought them on taking her then and there. There’s no way I could envision her going back and what, living with that monster through this? I just couldn’t see how this new version of Cat could ever again allow herself to be treated in the only way William Bailey knew how to treat women.
No, this show of intense emotion was Rhiannon related. Something about the way she was reacting to what Julia said was setting off alarm bells in my head. I looked at the small face that was angled up at me, softly snoring away. She was only a few years younger than the age Cat was when we met, despite that, they could have been identical twins because she was her spitting image. There was another small hint of resemblance there that I struggled to digest as I reeled in waves of realization.
My eyes flicked back and forth from Rhi to Cat, cataloging all the similarities. A chilling suspicion continued to creep in and settle in my brain. She must have been able to feel my eyes on her because she was looking at me when my eyes returned to her from Rhi. Before I could open my mouth to say anything, she cut me off.
“Please don’t,” she said so softly I almost didn’t make out her words. “Not right now, Jules.”
She avoided my eyes entirely and her shoulders shrank in on themselves. It was as if her entire being deflated. I couldn’t bring myself to pry, not with her looking as emotionally raw as she did right now. I could wait. I knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She promised no more running and as long as she stuck to her word, I wasn’t going to force any secrets out of her. We were still building back our trust bit by bit. I didn’t want to do anything to cause her to retreat.
Julia came back and a few minutes later it was announced that the threat was eliminated, so we were being allowed to return to our rooms. Cat had gone in front to walk with Sadie while Dom fell into step beside me.
“What’d you do to upset our girl now?” He teased.
“Hey, I didn’t do anything. You know it is possible for someone other than the two of us to do something to upset her,” I snapped back. “Besides, I’m not the one who came down here without a shirt on like an idiot and paraded around the scratches down my back to the entire building. I’d be worried about the hot water you’re about to be sitting in, my friend.”
“I didn’t mean to!” He whined defensively. “We fell asleep after and I had no idea they were even there until that dick-head pointed them out. Besides, judging by how hard I made her come earlier, I should have enough brownie points to sweet talk my way out of it. The fire alarm was going off and in my defense, there was an actual emergency, even if we weren’t in immediate danger.”
“Save it for Cat, dude,” I chuckled. “You don’t have to plead your case with me. It’s not my business that keeps getting constantly put on blast. When we get back to the room, I need to talk to you privately about what happened just now with her and Julia, though. They didn’t get into it or anything, just something she said made Cat act super strange, and I didn’t like it at all. I have a theory and I need to bounce it off you because if I don’t get it out, I’m going to drive myself crazy thinking about it.”
“Of course, you can talk to me about anything,” he responded. All of his joking demeanor drained from his body and was replaced with a seriousness I rarely saw from him. “Especially if something’s up with Cat.”
When we finally got back to our room, it was a little after two in the morning. Once we were through the door, Cat took Rhi from me without saying anything and disappeared into their room. I waited a few minutes for her to come back out in case she wanted to talk about what happened tonight, but as I expected, she didn’t return. Dom was pacing around behind me anxiously when I finally motioned for him to follow me into my room. I sat down on my bed while he continued his back-and-forth pattern in front of me.
“What happened?” He drilled. “You’re right, she is acting weird as fuck. She didn’t even say goodnight or anything. Just grabbed Rhiannon, didn’t say a word to anyone and went in her room.”
I didn’t like talking about this behind her back, but there was no way I could keep this to myself. Besides, I had to at least express my suspicions before I opened my big mouth to her about it. Dom would be honest with me and tell me if I was reaching. I could always rely on him to ground me when my thoughts got away from me.
“When we were downstairs, I was sitting on the couch holding Rhi and Cat was next to us. Julia assumed Cat was her mother, told her how much she looked like her and asked if I was the dad. She fumbled through telling her she was her sister, acting so shifty it was clear to even Julia the comments had thrown her off. After she just got super quiet until the most heartbroken look came across her face. I started to really look at the two of them, you know, side by side up that close. Then that got me thinking and spiraling. Dom, I don’t think they’re sisters.”
“What are you trying to say?” He asked numbly, but I could see his mind working, already putting pieces together for himself.
“Think about it, man,” I turned to him as he plopped down on the bed beside me. “Rhiannon is four years old. It’s been four, shit almost coming up on five years now since the night that piece of shit raped Cat. The time frame lines up perfectly. Her parents were old as shit even when we were kids. They were in their early sixties. I’m pretty sure that’s past the age of child-bearing years. Everything she does is for Rhi. Her entire world revolves around her. I’m honestly feeling like a complete idiot for taking this long to put it all together.”
“Holy fuck,” he rasped out. “Rhiannon is her daughter.”
I knew I wasn’t crazy. I mean, perhaps I shouldn’t continuously use Dom as my gauge, but I wasn’t alone in my beliefs, and that was good enough for me. I wasn’t going to go jumping down her throat with the new information I’d garnered, but I also wasn’t going to continue to play dumb forever. Not because I was upset with her. Quite the opposite, in fact.
From the look on her face alone, I could tell whatever happened that led to her parents raising her daughter instead of her tore her apart. I wanted her to feel safe confiding in me. To trust me enough to let me in and show me all the broken, twisted parts of herself. To give me a chance to try and chase away every demon that weighed her down.
“As many questions as I have about it, I don’t think we should bring it up to her,” I breathed out a frustrated sigh. “I think she could tell I figured it out, and she shut the whole conversation down. I don’t think she’s ready to talk about it.”
“I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t really change much, so whenever she’s ready, she’ll talk to us about it,” he shrugged. “Her parents are dead, so she’s going to be the one raising her now anyway, so if you think about it, that kind of worked out in her favor.”
For the most part he was so easygoing about shit, I couldn’t help but envy him. We’d just unraveled a huge secret, and it was rolling right off his back. I always found myself wanting to micromanage situations. I wanted to address the problem and find a solution to it. I couldn’t stand the thought of her struggling with something all alone, even if it was what she wanted to do. He had no problem waiting for her to come to us this time, trusted her to come to us when she needed us. A voice in the back of my mind was screaming at me that I knew better, that she tended to internalize and suffer in silence.
“I think a part of me was hoping you’d want to storm in there with me and demand she talk to us. I know it’s not the right thing to do, but I can’t stand the thought of her in there even a fraction of as upset as she looked earlier. It kills me to think about all the things she’s already gone through completely alone. She has us now. She’s not alone anymore.”
“Yeah, but she’s also not the same defenseless little girl that needs us coming to her rescue all the time anymore,” he answered. “That’s not to say she doesn’t need us, but you just said it yourself. All the shit she’s been through, she survived it without us. She’s strong as hell, but she’s also stubborn as hell. She’ll let us in completely, eventually. I’m in no rush cause it’s not like we’re going anywhere. She just has to get used to the fact that the three of us are endgame and she’s stuck with us.”
“Since when do you give such good relationship advice?” I shook my head, and we both chuckled. “Who knew that all along you really did know how to have one you just didn’t care to.”
He shot me a knowing smirk.
“Hey, can you blame me?” He chided. “It’s not like you tried to date anyone, either. At least I didn’t take a vow of celibacy. How long exactly has it been since you’ve gotten laid?”
My cheeks heated and I rolled my eyes, trying to play it cool. Really, I just wanted to avoid his gaze so he couldn’t see right through the bold face lie I was about to feed him.
“Just cause I didn’t have a constant train of women coming through the apartment doesn’t mean I wasn’t getting any.”
“Could have fooled me,” he teased and raised an eyebrow at me. “Just saying, maybe you wouldn’t be wound so tight if you got some of that pent up tension out of your system.”
I shuddered at the thought of how much his taunting would ramp up if he ever found out that I had, in fact, never gotten laid once. I couldn’t say I disagreed with his appraisal of being pent up, though. With everything going on, it definitely wasn’t doing me any favors in terms of being less on edge.
“Okay, if we’re going to switch from prying into Cat’s business to mine, I’d much rather try to get back to sleep before the sun comes up and we have to start the day.”
“All I’m saying is I’m feeling pretty relaxed right now despite tonight’s events,” he stood up and stretched, letting out a long exaggerated yawn. “Maybe you should give it a try.”
“Goodnight, Dom,” I said flatly as I stripped out of my clothes and climbed into the bed.
“Nighty night, Julesy Poo,” he sang as he strode out the door, then closed it behind him.
Leaving me alone with my thoughts as sleep fought its way to me through the jumbled mess.