66. Caspian
Caspian
I knew Jake was in the office, knew his dad was in there as well. Daren and I had run into his father on the way out, which resulted in Daren getting a black eye and his father getting pistol-whipped until he lost consciousness. Not ideal by any stretch of the imagination.
“Is that the Glock I got you for your birthday?” Phillip Moore asked.
“When I turned thirteen.”
“I knew it was only a matter of time before you showed up.”
“Is that so?” Jake asked.
We’d heard the whole conversation. There’d been so many things said…
my father had planned to marry me off? To Vince?
The irony was almost too much for me to handle, his machinations having got me closer to the thing I wanted most than my own actions had.
Unfortunately, no thing he ever did came from a place of good will or good intent. It was better this way.
A chair skittered back across the floor and I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.
Daren had given me a gun since I hadn’t left the house with mine.
I was supposed to be holed up at Thorn Hill like a damsel in distress, but no thank you.
Just because I hadn’t arrived prepared didn’t mean I wasn’t ready to fight for the man I loved and the life we deserved.
“What are you going to do about it?” Jake asked next, and Daren winced, knowing the question was a taunt.
“What I should have done in the first place. Presley and I were stupid to think you or your cousin deserved to inherit anything we’d built for you.”
The door to the office was cracked open, and I stepped away from the wall in time to see Phillip raise a gun, to slide his finger off the barrel and onto the trigger.
I didn’t think. I didn’t wait. I mirrored the action and fired.
His shoulder jerked forward and he crumpled into a heap on the floor.
Daren swore and shoved me out of the way, racing into the office before I could even regain my footing.
“What are you doing here?” Jake asked.
I scrambled to my feet and stepped into the office, hand shaking so badly the gun rattled against my thigh.
“Caspian?” Jake’s voice was beyond shocked and he looked down at his weapon, then mine. “Did you…?
“He did,” Daren answered, turning and plucking the gun out of my hands like it was a flower.
He tucked it into his pocket and gave a soft kick to Phillip’s ribcage.
He groaned, rolling onto his back. His face was ghostly pale, the pool of blood spreading beneath him like wildfire.
Far more than Vince had bled when I’d shot him, I thought, which felt odd, but…
“He was going to shoot you,” I said, and Jake closed the space between us in a flash, wrapping me up into his arms with so much force, my toes left the ground.
“What are you doing here?” He set me down and took my face into his hands, checking me over for injuries not knowing he’d find none. Daren had kept his word and kept me safe.
“I couldn’t just leave you on your own,” I said. “You and Orion and Vince all on your own while I just waited it out in a comfortable bed in a comfortable house.”
“You were safe there.”
“I’m safe here,” I murmured. He pulled me back into his arms. “Safe with you.”
“You’re ridiculous. You could have been killed.”
“ You could have been killed,” Daren interjected, offering one last glance to the dying man on the floor.
“Is he alive?” Jake asked.
“Barely.”
Conflict warred across Jake’s face, and I’d never seen a man pulled in as many directions as he was in that moment.
“Can you…” He looked between me and Daren, helplessly. “Can you give me a minute?”
“Yeah.” Daren took me out of Jake’s arms and led me back out of the office. “We have to deal with my dad anyway.”
I didn’t know what Jake wanted with his father, but I was able to watch him sink to his knees in the puddle of blood before Daren closed the door between us.
“He’s fine,” Daren promised. “You’re fine.”
“Orion,” I said next, not sure why it mattered so much because I didn’t think the man cared if I lived or died. His name caught like barbs in my throat.
“I’m here,” he answered me, as if I’d magicked him out of thin air and Vince was right beside him, and they were together, the two of them, and they were in one piece, and I didn’t know which of them I wanted to run to first.
Orion, I realized, had a gun in his hand, so I went to Vince instead, realizing their hands were joined and the force of my body against Vince’s brought Orion around my back, making me into an awkward kind of sandwich between them.
“What happened?” Vince asked, kissing the side of my head and pulling away so he could check me for any signs of damage.
Daren let out a weak laugh and scrubbed a hand down his face. “What happened is, I need to go see if my dad is alive. Jacob is in the office with his, and the two of you are here. All is…well, or something.”
He stepped around us, and Vince’s expression immediately went tight around the edges.
“Tell me everything,” he said .
“Maybe it can wait,” Orion suggested, and Vince shot him a glare that quickly softened. “Do you want to go check on the priest or…”
“Can you be trusted with Caspian if I do?”
“I explained myself to you already,” Orion said.
Vince crashed his mouth against Orion’s, then against mine, then he left us in the hallway and went after Jake.
“Where did you find him?” I asked before there was time for any awkwardness to settle over us.
“The church,” Orion answered. “He’s fine, you know. He put himself there.”
The confession hit me like a ton of bricks, and I braced my hand against the wall so I didn’t fall over on the spot.
“What do you mean? We had a plan.”
Orion exhaled through his mouth, his lower lip puffing out and displacing a mess of hair from his forehead.
“Vince rarely plays by rules or plans,” he said.
“But we had a plan ,” I pressed.
“Not everyone is cut out for this life.”
“Enough about this life! ”
Orion’s eyes widened, and he tucked his gun back into the holster beneath his arm.
“Tell me how you really feel, Caspian,” he said, clearly amused by my outburst.
“All day, all it’s been is people telling me this about this life and that about this life.
It’s not any fucking life. My father was planning to marry me off and when that didn’t work, he decided I could just die.
It’s just mine. It’s mine!” I smacked my hand against my chest, eyes filling with so many tears it was hard to focus on the man standing in front of me, real as anything I’d ever known.
“It’s yours,” he agreed. “But if it’s his...”
Orion left the other part unspoken, that if my life was in Vince’s hands, he would do this again.
He would ignore the plans, forget the rules.
He would act out and act for himself. He would put himself in danger, and we would put ourselves in danger for him in return.
There might be a peace in it someday, but it would never be normal.
And I had to decide before we walked out the door if that would be enough.