Chapter 21 Rome #2
Are you watching this? Our men are so hot.
Like there’s a reason I’m pregnant, and it’s that cocky smile on Killian’s face right now. I can’t even.
How is Rome staying so calm? Killian texted that Rome was ready to kill someone before this even started. He’s worried about him, but I’m worried about you.
Why are you ignoring me?
OMG.
Dillan
Answer your damn phone.
Mom
Oh, honey. Are you okay?
Oh shit. This can’t be good.
I scroll back to the earlier text thread.
Shit.
Lexie
Hey, are you going to the press conference today? Lucky’s there. I think his mom and dad are too.
Helloooo . . . Dillan.
Okay got it. Guess you don’t want to talk about it.
OMG. Are you watching this?
OH SHIT.
Dillan. Are you okay? Want me to bring ice cream?
I leave four other text threads beneath Lexie’s unread because my fingers are on my keyboard so damn fast I can’t be bothered to waste the time reading them. I open my browser and search for news from the press conference. And —oh fuck—an entire page of news clips pop up.
Clips I don’t even have to click on to see Rome jumping over a table.
Guilt prickles at the base of my head as pressure mounts. I should have gone with him. I’m supposed to be his girlfriend. Even if it’s in name only. I shouldn’t have left him to deal with this alone.
Wait—screw that.
He blackmailed me into this. Guilt has no business being anywhere near me.
Or does it . . . ?
Damn it.
My emotions are all over the place. It’s why I’ve written so well today. Hurt and regret are both big bitches, and I’m wallowing in the twins today.
Hurt by his actions.
Regret over my own.
Where would we be if we’d just talked instead of both of us being so self-protective that we wasted two years?
My phone rings, this time with a call, and my sister’s name flashes. I slide my finger across the screen but continue to stare at the computer screen.
“Jesus, Dillan. I was worried something happened to you. What the hell are you doing that you couldn’t answer my texts or my calls? Even Mom was texting me, asking if I’d heard from you.”
“I was writing,” I tell her without thinking it through.
“Writing?” she questions, and I glance at the phone and accept the Facetime she’s sending me.
Lilah’s bouncy blonde curls are a mess around her face when it appears on-screen. “What are you writing?”
“Story for another time, Tink.” I look back at my computer, trying to pick which thumbnail to click and hoping she drops the subject. “Are you going to tell me what I missed at the press conference or should I just watch it myself?”
“Why the hell weren’t you there?” she asks, but there’s definitely a shocking level of pissed-off in her voice.
“What?” I snap, confused for the anger. “Why are you yelling at me?”
“Somebody has to. Listen.” She throws her hair up in a bun on top of her head and fiddles with the hair tie before looking back at me.
“I don’t know why you and Rome have kept yourselves such a secret, or how long you’ve been together, or what he did to piss you off so badly that you’re not there supporting him.
I can’t know any of it because you haven’t told me, or anyone else for that matter, anything about this relationship.
And I’ve got to tell you, I seriously wish you would trust me enough to share.
But that’s a problem for another day. Today, I’m going to give you some advice about loving a fighter.
Because,”—she smiles and straightens—“been there and done that for most of my life. Even when I hated him.”
Sounds familiar . . . Even if I can’t tell her that.
“Lilah—” I start, and she glares.
“Stop. Just listen to me,” she snaps. “I know you think I’m just some dumb singer, but the one thing I’ve done right in my life was let myself love Killian, and loving that man means loving the fighter.
It’s a part of them. They’ve trained their entire lives for this.
They’ve basically turned themselves into vicious machines.
At least that’s how the outside world sees them.
But you . . . you can’t see him that way.
” She chews the inside of her cheek, Lilah’s classic tell that she’s nervous .
. . or maybe just pissed. I can’t really tell right now.
“I don’t think you’re a dumb singer,” I interrupt her, and she glares again.
“Like you said, that can be a discussion for another day.” Lilah shakes her head, and my heart sinks, hating that she thinks I feel that way.
“People think fighters are the ultimate alphas.” She sighs and leans back on the couch, dropping her hand a little so I can see more of her and her perfect little baby bump.
“You and I both know it’s true. These men.
My God. There’s no more perfect alpha. They’re everything.
But don’t ever let yourself forget, alpha or not, he still needs you.
He needs to be able to show you the good, the bad, the hard, and the soft.
And you need to be there for all those sides of him.
You’re supposed to support it all. Even when he doesn’t know how to ask for that support. ”
“Seriously, Tink, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” It’s the truth. She just went down such a huge detour I’m struggling to follow, and yet, I somehow know exactly what she’s saying, and I feel like a gigantic asshole. Both for how she thinks I view her and how I may have treated Rome.
“You should have been there, supporting him. My husband was. His parents were. Ryker. Lucky. Fuck. I talked to Maddox last night, and I think he was trying to fly in, in time, but one of the kids was sick. Why weren’t you there?”
I want to scream at her that it’s because we’re not real . . .
But suddenly, those words feel like a lie, and yet they don’t.
Leaving me more confused than when this conversation started.
So I go with as much of the truth as I can give her.
“We had a fight.” My heart sinks with the admission, and I look away from my sister and bring my focus back to my computer. Rome looks like he’s about to murder someone in the first thumbnail, and I desperately want to know what put that look in his eyes. “Lilah . . . Is he okay?”
My phone alerts me to another incoming text.
“I just sent you a link,” Lilah tells me. “Watch that one and tell me if you think he’s okay.”
“Lilah . . .” I let the rest hang between us. Everything I can’t say. Everything I feel. The fear. The doubt. The mess. Pressure builds between us like water pressing against a dam searching for the loose brick to bust through as I let fear win out and admit, “I’m scared.”
“Of what?” she asks with so much sympathy in her voice, the guilt threatens to eat me alive.
“Everything,” I confess, giving life to the one emotion that has been crushing me for half my life.
Needing to let it out and tell the truth, even if just for this once.
“Of never being enough. Not pretty enough, or talented enough, or kind enough, or smart enough. I’m petrified of being compared to you for the rest of my life and always being found lacking,” I finally tell my sister after years of living in her shadow.
“I swear I don’t think you’re some dumb singer. I think you’re pretty amazing.”
“Dillan,” she gasps, tears welling in her eyes. “I don’t understand . . .”
“You don’t have to,” I tell her, not needing her to understand, just to hear me out. “It was never you making me feel that way. It was me. My shitty self-confidence. My self-doubt. Social media didn’t help. Keyboard warriors and basement-dwelling trolls made it worse.”
“Dillan . . . I’m so sorry.”
“No,” I stop her. “You can’t take any of this on.
I’ve had years of therapy, some good, some bad, some helpful, some not.
But one of the things I learned early on was this isn’t your fault.
I control how I feel. At least, some days I do.
But how I feel is my choice.” I swallow down the fear building within me.
“It’s why I stopped working with you. I had too.
It wasn’t good for me, Tink. The constant scrutiny.
The debilitating self-doubt . . . I don’t know how you handle it, but I couldn’t. ”
Her blue eyes shine full of tears. “I didn’t know. How didn’t I know?”
“I didn’t want you to.” And those simple words are the most honest ones I could possibly give her. “It wasn’t your job to know or to fix it. It was mine. Nobody knew.”
“But you’re my baby sister,” she cries, and maybe I’m an asshole for finally laying this out there for my ridiculously pregnant, hormonal sister now, when she’s been known to cry at tissue commercials.
“I am, and I always will be. But I’m also a grown woman who had to learn to deal with her own demons. I wish I’d been strong enough to tell you then,” I whisper.
“And you are now?” she asks with hope in her pretty voice. “Strong enough?”
Am I?
I think about those words.
About what they mean.
About my life.
Where I am.
Where I’m going.
Where Rome fits into it . . . if he does. And I do think he does. I think he was the first fissure in the dam. He’s the reason the pressure dropped a tiny bit. Opening up to him first. Starting to let him in . . .
“I think so,” I whisper weakly. “At least I did.” My shaking finger hovers over the link Lilah sent as I wait to press play. “But I don’t know what’s on this video.”
“Just watch the clip, sissy.”
Watch the clip . . . Why does that feel like such a loaded statement?
Like this clip is going to matter on a visceral level.
Like it’s going to change things again.
My life.
My heart.
Five minutes later, once I’ve played the same clip three times, I have my answer.
But that might be the only thing I have as words fail me.
The door opens, and I swing my head around and watch Rome walk through it.
Oh shit.
“Lilah, I’ve gotta go,” I whisper and end the call.
I rise on shaky legs and force one foot in front of the other until I’m standing in front of Rome.