Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
LOURDES
After Clove hung up, Martin sent me videos of the fight. I had never seen Neo so angry. You could tell they were yelling at each other, but with all the commotion, you couldn’t make out their words.
Why was he fighting with him after all these years?
I forgot that my dad was in the room with me for a second. I only snapped out of it when he began to call our attorney.
“That stupid boy, what the fuck was he thinking?” he muttered mostly to himself. “I have to go, honey.”
Even though it was a stupid question, I still asked it.
“Where are you going?”
His face softened.
“To bail Neo out of jail.”
His statement took me aback.
“You—you’re not mad?”
I could imagine how ridiculous it must sound to ask my father if he was pissed that I was involved in an inappropriate relationship with my stepbrother.
“Of course I’m mad,” he replied immediately. “But I also know that not everything is so black and white.”
My dad was almost out the door when his shoulders sagged, and he turned back around.
His next question was soft-spoken, and I knew my answer was important to him. “Do you love him, Lou?”
It caught me off guard.
Did I love him? I never let myself think those words. I couldn’t, not when there had never been a future for either of us—at least not together.
“He betrayed me, and I could never forgive that.”
My dad didn’t say anything else. He just gave me a nod and walked out the door.
As I sat back on my couch, I couldn’t help but wonder why Neo beat Tatum up. I didn’t want to believe it was for me…I mean, it didn’t make sense.
At some point, I had fallen asleep on my couch when persistent knocking woke me up. I picked up my phone, and the time said it was close to three in the morning. There were a bunch of texts from my friends, but no missed calls from Dad.
Was he back?
I was so confident in the building’s security that I didn’t check the camera. The last thing I expected to see was Neo leaning against the wall, not after my father had bailed him out of jail.
I wish I could say having him near me didn’t affect me, but the swarm of violent butterflies in my stomach said otherwise.
“What are you doing here?”
“I missed you,” he replied, ignoring my question.
Those butterflies I wish I didn’t have went crazy at his admission.
“Why are you here?” I repeated.
Neo stood straight and took a step closer to the threshold. Even though he was calm, his gaze was still unhinged. Maybe it was because his shirt was a bit wrinkled, with blood splatters on it, or the red mark that marred his cheek, but it made me want to take a step back.
“Because if I went one more day without seeing you, I would go fucking crazy.”
And see me, he did.
His eyes traveled from the messy bun atop my head down to my toes. Even though I looked like shit, I could tell there was a hungry glint in his eyes. I wish I could say that didn’t affect me either, but it did.
“How did you get here?”
This made him smile.
“Richard dropped me off after he tore me a new one.”
I figured as much, but I wanted to hear it from him.
Nothing was making sense.
“You saw me. Now you may leave,” I told him as I tried to close the door on him, but he put his hand out to stop me.
“I’m not going anywhere, Lou, not until you let me explain…please… Just listen to what I have to say.”
I shouldn’t do it.
“I’ll stay here all night if I have to. I’m going to keep coming back until you hear me out.”
I let him inside because I knew his words rang true and because this was a side of him I had never seen before.
He walked in and looked around the place, taking in everything.
“I see the inheritance my father gave me went to good use,” he told me causally.
“What?”
He gave me a soft smile before he kept going.
“I never felt right wasting what he gave me. The card you grabbed was linked to that trust fund. I felt guilty for taking so much from you that I wanted to give you something in return… Truth be told, it made me feel good that I was the one taking care of you.”
A shiver went down my spine at that last part.
When we got to my living room, he didn’t sit on the couch. He used the back of the love seat to lean on, and he turned toward me.
“Did Tatum press charges against you?”
Neo scoffed. “Of course he did.”
“Well, that sucks. There goes your friendship,” I mocked him.
He didn’t take the bait.
“Our friendship ended the moment he laid a hand on you.”
“Bull—”
“The deal with his company was a venture meant to ruin him,” he told me, and my eyes widened. “I knew the moment I punched him, he would retaliate with the law. A beating wasn’t enough for me…not when he dared to lay a hand on you. God, baby, the way you looked at me when I found you that day…it fucked with me for a long time. What if I hadn’t gotten to you on time? What would I have done then? That consumed me with a vengeance.”
My stomach was in knots at his revelation that I couldn't move away from his piercing gaze, even if I wanted to.
“Once Wes took you home, and I knew you were safe, I forced myself to let it go. Beating up Tatum would make me feel good for a moment, but destroying everything he had would be close to calling it even. So, I went to see your father the next day and told him what happened. He was just as angry as I was that he needed no convincing to help me with my plan.”
I bit my lip, waiting for him to continue.
“Ask me what I did, baby.” His voice was soft, and the use of that stupid word did funny things to my insides.
“What did you do?”
“For the last three years, we have bought stocks through a shell company in Park Technologies. If you call your dad’s stockbroker, he can verify that it all leads to your name. Tatum is a dipshit who could care less what his dad’s doing as long as it keeps his lifestyle funded, and I used that to my advantage to give every little piece of insider information to their competitors. When the time comes, you will have enough power to help destroy them.”
“You did that for me?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer my question. Instead, he kept going.
“The deal I was working on, the one you felt betrayed by, was so that Tatum could invest his trust fund, and when we fucked him over, he would lose that too…” Neo stopped talking, and he took a step toward me, and for the first time, I didn’t step back. “I didn’t know if I wanted to fuck you or spank you when you threw all my hard work down the drain.”
Mierda.
“The morality clause,” I mumbled.
Neo nodded as he stood right in front of me.
“So, since that part of my plan fell through, I figured there was no reason for me to keep holding back.”
“Neo,” I whispered his name, something akin to forgiveness.
He brought his hand up and cupped my cheek. Now that he was closer to me, I could see that the red cheek had scratches on it, the kind that was made by longer nails.
“Did Tatum scratch you?” I asked as I reached to touch his cheek with my fingertips. Neo closed his eyes and leaned his face toward my touch.
“No, that was Pricilla.”
I noticed he didn’t call her his mother.
“She didn’t take kindly to me calling her a whore.”
My eyes widened in surprise. Neo wrapped his free arm around my waist and pulled me flush against him.
“You asked me that if I could have you, would I pick you,” he breathed as he pressed his forehead against mine.
My heart thumped loudly as I waited for his response.
“Lou, you’re all I ever wanted,” he admitted in a broken whisper. “I’d throw it all away for a chance to be with you.”
For me, it was always him. He was the one my eyes followed in high school. He was the one I wanted when I knew I couldn’t have him. And now, I could choose to let him go because I was scared and hurt, or I could continue to revel in the chaos I had created.
“What did you tell my dad?”
This made him smile.
“The truth,” he replied before he kissed me.
The sunrays woke me up. My back ached, and I had a kink on my neck. I tried to roll down from the couch and drag my ass to the bathroom so I could pee.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Neo mumbled.
This made me smile.
After he kissed me, he carried me to the couch, where we spent the next hour making out, and then we talked until we passed out.
“l have to pee,” I told him as I tried to wiggle free.
“Careful, Lou, remember what happened last time,” he said playfully.
The ache between my legs intensified, but I had other needs to take care of first. Reluctantly he let me go, but not before giving my ass a playful spank.
After last night, I felt closer to him. That foolish feeling I had when I thought about him left after he explained things. We talked a bit about me running away after seeing that text and the fact that he could have just spoken to me and been honest about his plans, but ultimately, we came to the conclusion that we both wanted this.
Life was all about picking what kind of hardship you wanted, and I’d rather work through hardships with Neo by my side.
Neo wasn't on the couch when I came out of the bathroom.
“Neo?” I called out hesitantly.
“In the room,” he shot back.
He was going through my drawers when I walked in.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Trying to find all the sexy shit I bought you.” He grinned at me.
“You can’t let that go, can you?”
“Baby, when that statement first came, it was all I could think about for weeks.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Everything around us was falling apart, but we were finally coming together.
My loud sigh had him looking up.
“What’s going to happen next?” I asked him, mostly to seek reassurance.
“You know Richard is going to divorce Pricilla,” he stated.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Not because I cared about her but because, at the end of the day, she was his mother.
“I’m not,” he added. “Come here, Lou.” He extended his arms, and I walked straight into his embrace. “We’re going to be okay. Growing up, we had people talking about our lives, and we survived. I could care less if they keep doing it as long as I have you by my side.”
My answer was to burrow deeper into his arms.
Now that I knew I could have Neo Caldwell, there was no reason not to love him.