Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
RACHEL
ALWAYS - GAVIN JAMES
I tried Rex’s phone three times a day. Before I started work, at lunch, and before I went to bed.
He’d ignored each of my calls since he left… until tonight.
When I hadn’t expected him to answer.
While I was in Rory’s guest bedroom as she snored away three bottles of Zinfandel on her sofa and I was in a semi-sugar-induced coma.
So, of course, he answered.
“Rex?” I blurted out when the call connected.
He didn’t utter a word.
“Rex?”
Silence.
“King?”
“What do you want, Rachel?”
I shivered at his cold tone which was more frigid than all the ice cream I’d consumed.
I wished I’d had a Zinfandel to make things easier on me, but I didn’t. Just a sugar rush and that really didn’t pack the same punch.
I knew I’d hurt him, and that gutted me.
“To apologize.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
I ground my teeth together at the bitter retort. “I don’t know why you would be.”
“Because you’re always sorry, Rachel. Always. It never changes anything though, does it?”
Feeling like I was choking, I stared blankly at the ceiling above the bed. I didn’t have an answer because what else was there to say?
Okay, that was wrong.
There was so much to say. So many things that I’d never mentioned before that were burning a hole in my tongue.
At this moment in time, the only man I had ever loved knew less about me than his MC brothers did.
He didn’t know that he was going to be a father again, didn’t understand that I’d been assaulted twice in my life, and didn’t realize how deeply those attacks had impacted me.
All of those things added to the choking sensation that gripped me, but for all that, the soft susurration of his breath in my ear had me closing my eyes.
I’d been on the brink of tears throughout his absence, but now, they burned as I finally let them fall.
“Why did you answer the phone tonight?”
“Because I met Wynter today, Rachel, and I knew the only person in the world who’d get what I was feeling would be you.”
I jerked upright at that, only I didn’t realize I was too close to the edge of the bed, because when my hand went down to support my new upright position, it encountered only blank space.
The second I registered that, I tumbled over the side with a yelp and narrowly avoided face-planting on the carpet.
It made a hell of a clatter when my ass collided with the floor, though, especially as it jolted the bed, and I heard Rex’s bellowed, “RACHEL?” from the other end of the phone.
Snatching up my cell, I panted, “Sorry. I just fell off the bed.”
“Are you being serious?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”
“Are you drunk?”
I wished.
I hissed under my breath a muttered, “Ouch.” Twisting, I rubbed my side and asked, “You met Wynter? Does that mean you’re in California?”
He paused. “You know where she lives?”
“I didn’t. Until Maverick told me that was where he thought you were going.”
“He told you that, did he?”
Confused by his tone, I murmured, “Yeah, a couple days after you left. He said he could be wrong, and that you might have headed to New Mexico. Either way, he was right, wasn’t he?”
Rex just grunted.
Silence fell between us.
I didn’t know what to say.
What to ask.
My side ached like a bitch, and where my hip had collided with the floor smarted like hell. But that was nothing to the twisted, gnawing pain in my heart. One that felt as though it had corrupted me soul-deep.
"It took you a while to get to California," I pointed out softly.
"I took it slow."
Slow was an understatement. It was the second week of January!
“Aren’t you going to ask how she is?”
“I don’t know what to ask,” I admitted honestly.
“Do you even care?”
My mouth tightened at that. “Of course I care,” I snapped.
“Just because I don’t process things like you, Rex, doesn’t mean I don’t feel.
If anything, I feel too damn much. That’s always been my problem.
” I sucked in a breath. “Instead of making me feel badly about not knowing what to ask, why don’t you tell me why you answered the phone?
You clearly wanted to share something with me. ”
His hesitation didn’t make me feel any better.
“Rex?” I sighed. “King!”
Although, why he wanted me to call him that, I had no idea.
Nyx had been the first to earn his road name, I knew that much. But King had gained his shortly after. Him separating the two, making a differential between them, was unnerving.
I didn’t know why, exactly, it just was.
“Today, I only spoke with her. Tomorrow, we’re going for coffee before school.”
I had to think that the sugar and the lack of sleep and the exhaustion from work was turning my mind into mush because I couldn’t compute any of what he'd just said.
“Rachel?”
He had to know I was still there from my breathing alone; he had to know. I probably sounded like I was having an asthma attack which was a feat seeing as I didn’t have asthma.
Reaching up, I pinched the bridge of my nose and let the first words that came to mind drip from my tongue:
“What does she look like?”
I surprised myself with the question.
I hadn’t known what I was about to say until I said it.
Perhaps he was surprised, too, because he was quiet until he murmured, “Her situation’s unusual.”
That had me straightening up. “It is? Why?”
He heaved a sigh. “I’m not sure what’s going on with her.
She’s only seventeen but she’s moved out of her parents’ place and into a building that’s less than ideal.
She was smart enough to keep the chain on when she opened the door, and she wasn’t entirely inclined to speak with me so she never took it off. ”
My slow brain wasn’t that slow. “No one would let her rent an apartment. She’d never be able to sign the lease.”
He hummed, but the sound was distinctly disapproving. “I know.”
“She could have had someone co-sign on it, I guess? There are sublets or she might even have used a fake ID.”
“I’ll try to find out tomorrow when we meet before school. But, long answer short, I couldn’t tell you what she looks like because I didn’t see her.”
I bit my lip. “One of my charities is for single moms—”
He snorted. “You think I didn’t know that already?”
My head bowed. “Yeah, of course, you know about FAST.”
“Where there’s a paper trail, I know everything about you, Rachel Laker. I just don’t know the shit you’ve kept from me.”
“I’m shocked you don’t,” I choked out.
Although, maybe it’d be easier if he already knew and I wouldn’t have to say a word.
“I could have learned the truth. Where there's a will, you know? But I realized a long time ago that if I did, if whatever happened to you wasn’t something you shared with me, it’d break a link between us.”
My brow furrowed. “I don’t think anything could break the ties that bind us, Rex.”
“No?”
“No,” I said softly. “I’m sorry about Christmas Day.”
“Which part?” he demanded grimly. “The hospital or after?”
“Both, but this apology is for after. I shouldn’t have told you to get out. I just thought you’d…” I sucked in a breath. “I just thought you’d go upstairs or something. I didn’t think you’d—”
“Go to California?”
“Yeah.”
A short laugh escaped him. “It wasn’t intentional.”
“No?” A small kernel of hope unfurled inside me.
“No. I needed to ride, needed to clear my head, and then I just took off.”
Staring at the fancy lamp on the nightstand, I reached for the glass of water I’d placed there when I’d headed into the guest room and gulped down a couple of sips.
Wishing it were Zinfandel again, I murmured, “You want to get to know Wynter?”
“I do.”
“Why now? Because of Bear?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that fair to her?” I asked carefully. “Letting your grief push you into a relationship with her? One that didn’t exist before?”
“It probably isn’t fair, but now that I’m down here, I’m glad that I came. Her building’s a dump, Rachel. She can’t stay there. I can’t imagine what her family’s fucking thinking letting her live in a place like that.”
“Maybe they don’t know. Maybe she ran away.” Which, now that I thought about it, didn’t make this conversation any more palatable. Grimacing, I mumbled, “Scratch that. I’m glad you’re down there too.”
“Do you have feelings for her?”
The pain that question triggered stunned me. “Of course I do,” I snapped. “Jesus, Rex. I know I come across a certain way, but I’m not made of stone, dammit.”
“You never talk about her. Notwithstanding that argument with Scott.”
“Neither do you,” I hissed, aggravated by the disapproval in his voice.
“Because I can tell it upsets you.”
“Why wouldn’t it? I gave my daughter away for strangers to raise, Rex. Do you think that was easy for me to do?”
“I don’t know. We weren’t talking much back then.”
I gritted my teeth. “Bullshit.”
“Why is it bullshit? We weren’t talking, and all I knew was that you looked like you were dying. Not just physically, but whenever you held her.”
My fingers tightened to the point of pain around my glass as I thought back to that horrible, horrible time. “I felt like I was.”
“If you’d been able to, would you have had an abortion?”
“I’m going to hang up the phone now,” I whispered, unable to believe he’d asked me that.
“Don’t you dare, Rachel,” Rex boomed down the line. “I want answers. If we’re three thousand miles apart, maybe you’ll give them to me.”
“Are you just trying to hurt me? I know I hurt you on Christmas Day, but it wasn’t intentional.”
“It took me a round trip from one coast to the other to clear my head, Rachel. To know that we don’t work.
” A choked gasp gusted from my lips, but before I could say a word, he continued, “But I want us to. You’re the only woman I can imagine loving.
You’re the only woman I want to be with, and yet, if something doesn’t change, the next ten years are going to look exactly the same as the last, and I can’t handle that anymore.
“Something’s gotta give, or we have to step back and away from each other. Make the incision now and try to move on because I can’t do this anymore. I just fucking can’t, Rachel.”