Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
ANDIE
The yelling starts immediately as soon as we enter the house. I ignore it and go to the kitchen sink, turn the faucet on, and begin scrubbing the blood off my hands.
“You are out of control.”
I focus on the tiny soap bubbles that turn pink as they swirl down the drain and not my sudden desire to throat punch my soon-to-be husband.
Liam jabs an angry finger at Jax. “You should be saying that to your knife-happy pet psycho. She never did shit like that until he got his hands on her.”
“Why the hell was Mika still working here?” Rafe demands to know.
I send him a silent, mental thank you for asking the same question I thought in the courtyard. I add more soap to my hands.
Keane’s shoulders hike up and his hands fly wide. Kids make that gesture to say, “I don’t know.” Adults, however, do it to say, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
I attack the blood under my fingernails, scrubbing the cuticles with the same thoroughness as my hands.
Rafe slams his palms flat on the counter and leans in. My attention shifts from what I’m doing to how the muscles in his arms stretch the fabric of his shirt. So much arm porn on display. I hold my fingers under the spray to rinse them clean.
“That’s the guard who felt her up. Guess he didn’t learn his lesson the first time because he called her a whore and me a piece of Mexican shit.”
I sigh, turning off the water. I’d hoped he hadn’t heard that, but clearly, he did.
Liam’s temper explodes. “I knew she shouldn’t have come back here. Bella , come on. I’m taking you home.”
“The hell you are!” Keane shouts, getting in his way. They shove one another.
I rip a paper towel off the holder and pat my hands dry, then toss it into the small trash bin under the sink. Leaning back against the counter, I find Jax. He’s standing near the entryway and hasn’t spoken a word. When our eyes meet, he quickly looks away, but not before I see the guilt. Does he believe what Liam said? I walk around the counter island and briefly stop next to him, kissing his shoulder since he’s too tall for me to easily place one on his cheek.
“It’s not your fault.”
Just as I’m halfway out of the kitchen, Keane yells out, “Get your ass back here. We aren’t finished.”
Trying to avoid the fight Keane seems to want to have, I count to five before turning around. Keane is hot-tempered like me, and as alpha as they come. He’s used to being in control and doesn’t know how to handle it when he isn’t.
“I disagree,” I say.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’re out of control.”
My voice is low but steady. “I heard you the first time.”
His jaw locks, and he seethes, “I don’t need your smartass comments, Andie.”
“And I don’t need to stand here and listen to you chastise and berate me like a child, Keane .”
“Then stop acting like one! You have no impulse control. Do you understand what you did and how fucked up it is? Just because Declan left you in charge doesn’t give you the right to do whatever the hell you feel like here, in my fucking house?—”
“Actually, it’s my house,” I mumble, but he rants right over me.
“—in front of my fucking men. You can’t just kill someone because they pissed you off.”
I want to clap back with, “If that were the case, you’d already be dead.” But I hold my tongue.
Liam opens his mouth to say something, but I don’t let him. “You’re wrong,” I tell him. “Jax didn’t make me this way. I’ve always been like this. If you want to blame someone, blame Max.”
Maximillian Rossi made me who I am. All the years he tormented me made me like this. I look at each man, one after another, before stopping on Keane. He’s shaking his head in denial.
“It’s unbelievable how hypocritical you’re being. All of you ,” I emphasize. “You dirty your hands every day. You kill and torture, justifying doing so because it’s your job. A job you could’ve walked away from at any time. But none of you did. You chose to stay. I never had that choice. I didn’t choose to be stolen from my real father and lied to all my life. I didn’t choose to be whipped and violated almost daily. I didn’t choose to be locked in a cage for days on end without food or water.”
“Jesus Christ,” Liam says brokenly.
Rafe and I, unfortunately, share the latter experience. I glance over at him. His blue eyes are full of regret because he still blames himself for what happened to me the night Max found us together.
Keane’s hostile posture relents, and he takes a step back. “Andie, enough. You made your point.”
“I’ll decide when I’ve made my point. Not you. Mika got what he deserved. Don’t expect me to regret what I did.” I open my arms wide. “Take a good, long look because this is who I am, Keane. It’s who I choose to be. And I’ll never bow to any-fucking-one ever again. I see all your broken, ugly pieces, and I accept them. I love each of you even more because of them. Because that’s who you are . If you can’t accept me in the same way, that’s your choice. I won’t like it, but I’ll understand.”
I don’t wait around for a reply. I walk away. Thankfully, no one follows me. Needing to be alone, I go to Keane’s room, where my luggage should be, to change tops because I’d gotten a little bit of Mika’s blood on the shirt I’m wearing. Instead of getting something of my own out of the suitcase, I open Keane’s chest of drawers and pull out one of his soft cotton T-shirts. Holding it to my nose, I breathe in his unique scent of sandalwood, spice, and natural musk, then slip it over my head.
Sitting down on the bed, I pull off my shoes and socks, wanting the freedom of bare feet. Wiggling my toes, I collapse back onto the black satin bedspread, suddenly exhausted, my heart heavy as I think about what I said. I meant every word. But my resolve isn’t strong enough to stop those niggly self-doubts from creeping in. Will I ever be good enough, strong enough, smart enough, sexy enough? Am I too damaged and fucked in the head for someone to really love me? The guys have told me they do, but are they just more lies I’m stupid enough to believe because I want it to be true?
Sitting up, I rake my fingers through my hair and shake it out. It’s grown an inch in the last month and falls in haphazard waves to mid-back. The digital clock on Keane’s nightstand tells me that I missed my appointment at Bastard Ink by over an hour. Hopefully, he won’t hold it against me and will let me reschedule. I pull my phone from my back pocket to call Tessa, needing my best girl to talk to.
Things were kind of intense between us last night. She wanted to come with me, but I told her no. I asked her to do something for me, and she made it clear she wasn’t happy about it.
Tessa reaches around and pulls me to her. Her hair smells like the strawberry and honey shampoo she uses. “Alex, you’d be the best damn mom ever. Any kid would be fucking lucky to have you.”
Needing to change the subject before I do something stupid like get teary-eyed over the prospect of one of the guys knocking me up, I grab Tessa’s arm and stand up.
“I need you to do something for me, and you’re not going to like it.”
When I pull Tessa into her room and close the door, I see her packed duffel on the bed.
“The answer is still no,” I tell her before she can start in on me again about coming to the Rossi estate.
“Dammit, Alex.” She makes sure to give me the biggest glower as possible.
“If I’ve never said it before, I like that you call me Alex.” I give her fabric headband a tug and let go, messing up her perfectly smooth hairdo.
She slides down the headband over her eyes and pulls it back up into place. “Makes more sense than Andie.”
“Andie comes from the ‘ andria’ part of my name. It’s what Kellan always called me.”
“Like I said, Alex makes more sense,” she replies, digging through her things and pulling out a hard case. She shifts over so I can sit beside her on the bed.
“Is that it?” I ask, pointing to what looks like a plastic first aid kit in her hands.
“Yep.”
She opens the box and pulls out a weird-looking syringe with a huge-ass hollow needle. She holds up a tiny, clear canister, unscrews the top, and carefully deposits a miniature oblong pill-shaped capsule into her hand. She picks it up with her index finger and thumb, so I can get a closer look at the epidermal GPS tracking microchip. Amazing how I had one of these in me for years without my knowledge.
In one of our late-night girl gabs, Tessa mentioned she made some for Declan, and I told her to procure one, just in case.
“Where do you want it?” she asks.
I take my shirt off and drop it in my lap. “Under the arm.”
Tessa sucks in air through her teeth when I lift my right arm above my head. “That’s a sensitive area. It’s going to hurt when I put it in.”
“You know I can handle pain. And please don’t tell the guys about this unless the situation calls for it.”
Her eyes snap to mine and hold for a long minute before she rips open a couple of rubbing alcohol packets and starts to clean a small area of skin.
The guys saw how devastated I was when I found out that Max had—somehow, at some point in my life without me knowing—inserted a tracker in my arm. After Jax told me about it, I cut my arm open and dug it out with my fingers, then hurled it at Max with a “fuck you.” So getting another one implanted is a big deal.
Tessa inserts the capsule into the syringe, and I give her a small nod to proceed. I can’t look at her as she does it, so I turn my head and focus on the wall.
I hiss when Tessa slowly pierces my skin. Holy shit, that hurts worse than having my finger broken. As much as I hate the idea of having another tracking chip inside me, I need the assurance that if Alejandro ever gets his hands on me again, Tessa and the guys will be able to find me.
Thinking about it now makes the injection site itch, so I type out a text to Tessa to help distract me.
GirlUpHigh: You busy? Need to rant.
Before I hit send, something familiar catches my attention on the nightstand. Kellan’s journal. In all the craziness of the past week, it slipped my mind that Keane still had it. What doesn’t slip my mind is remembering how Keane wouldn’t give it back, nor would he or Jax tell me what the coded messages meant.
Sliding my phone back inside my pocket, I swipe the journal, take a left out of Keane’s room, and head to the storage closet at the end of the hallway. There’s an access panel in the back of the closet that opens to a metal ladder railing that leads to the roof. I take a quick glance behind me to make sure the coast is clear, before opening the door and stepping inside. My movements are automatic now. I flick on the light switch, push the maid’s cart with cleaning supplies to the side, and get down on my knees. The access panel is easy to jimmy open; something I’ve done a hundred times before. Propping the metal grate to the side, I reach through the opening.
There are no lights to rely on, so it takes me a few seconds to find the ladder by touch. My heart beats a little faster as I shove Kellan’s journal in my waistband and pull myself through. I’m not a wispish teenager anymore, but at least I’m still as flexible. Grasping on to the ladder, I feel with my foot until it lands securely on another rung below. Then I climb.
When I get to the top, I push up with my shoulder to dislodge the hatch for the roof, years of unuse and rust making it stick and not easy to get open. This section of the roof is flat, not angled, and is gray concrete, not interlocking terracotta tiles. It was another one of my secret quiet spots I found when I was little. I’d come up here to look at the stars when the night sky was clear. When I was older, it became one of the places I would meet Rafe.
Climbing the last rung, I heft myself out, wincing only slightly when my broken finger protests. It’s become easier to ignore the pain to the point where I don’t notice anymore. The concrete surface is overly warm under my hands and bare feet, even though clouds are obscuring the sun’s radiant energy. Finding a spot with the best view of the forests surrounding the property, I remove Kellan’s journal from my waistband, sit down, and cross my legs into a comfortable position.
The fingertips of my right hand caress over the worn leather encasing the paper pages. How many more secrets are written inside that I don’t know about? I open to the first page and am met with the same cryptic letters, numbers, and symbols as before.
“Kellan, what were you hiding?” I mumble, flipping the pages.
I stop on a detailed pencil sketch… of me. It’s the same picture Keane had a photograph of in his room at Kellan’s cabin—well, a drawing of it anyway. I keep flipping pages and find more drawings of me interspersed between the odd words and numbers. It’s like looking through a family photo album a parent would make chronicling their child’s development. The later sketches are of me in Switzerland. I recognize the mountains in the background. My dorm room. The school campus.
The last dozen pages or so in the journal are blank. Are they intentional because he no longer had anything he wanted to write down? Or because he died? A familiar melancholy hits me as I remember the last time I spoke with Kellan and listened to him gasp his final breaths.
I about jump out of my skin when the roof access clanks open, and a raven-haired Rafe pops up.
“Jesus. You scared the shit out of me.” I put Kellan’s journal down and help him climb the rest of the way out.
Standing, he bends over and vigorously brushes his hair. “You don’t see a spider on me, do you? I went through a fucking cobweb.” He briskly frisks his arms and legs.
I can’t help but smile as I check him over. “The badass criminal who’s not afraid to take on anyone, but the thought of a tiny spider crawling on him freaks him out. I don’t see anything.”
“Good.” He mock shivers in relief.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“I didn’t. This is the sixth place I checked.” His arms come around me, holding me loosely, giving me the choice to either stay or step away. I choose to stay.
Choices . It’s one of the points I made to Keane in the kitchen.
Rafe rotates his shoulder a few times, his hand covering the area of his chest where he was shot.
I throw my hands on my hips and say, “Please don’t tell me that you popped your stitches again.”
“I didn’t. Just sore. I swear,” he promises when he sees my you’re-full-of-shit face. He looks down and points to the journal. “What are you reading?”
My hands move from my hips to cross at my chest in exasperation. “Rafe, you didn’t come find me so we could start a book club. Just spit it out already.”
“They’re worried about you.”
“Are you?” I deflect. It’s a common interrogation technique. Avoid answering a question by asking one of your own.
“I’ll always worry about you, rosa . But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?”
I don’t respond.
“If I asked you to come back inside with me so we can sit down and talk, would you?”
“Not yet.”
“Figured as much.” He scuffs the sole of his work boot against the gritty, leaf-littered concrete. “You were right, you know.” He waits a beat to see if I’ll reply, but when I remain silent, he continues. “We are being hypocritical. Kind of like the old ‘do as I say and not as I do’ thing kids hear all the time from adults.”
A very unladylike snort of agreement comes out just as the wind picks up, blowing my hair in front of my face. Rafe steps in front of me and wraps the strands back behind my ears.
“You are so beautiful, Andie.”
I wasn’t ready for his abrupt change of subject, and a blush spreads up my cheeks at the compliment at the same time as I deny it. “Purple and green bruises and split lips are not beautiful.”
“Every part of you is beautiful.”
I decide to poke that statement with a metaphorical stick. “Even the ugly, dark parts?”
He gathers me close and tucks my head under his chin. “Especially those.”
Another eddy of wind swirls around us just as a spear of sunlight breaks through the clouds. If I was overly religious or superstitious, I’d think it was a sign.
Our bodies gently rock from side to side in a lazy sway. Just one of many slow dances we’ve shared on this small section of roof.
“Being up here brings back a lot of good memories.”
“A lot of sex memories, you mean.”
His light laughter vibrates his chest under my cheek. “That reminds me, I still owe you a date night.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “Sweaty quickies on the roof remind you that you owe me a date?”
My laughter increases when he dips me low in a dancer’s pose. “What do you think will happen at the end of the date? Except it won’t be quick.”
He nips my bottom lip and pulls me back up, then turns me a quarter way around. Our bodies press together again in our silly, impromptu dance.
The solid thump of his heart lulls me into a serenity I rarely get to experience. I bury my face in his chest, enjoying the fleeting moment I’m about to ruin with my next question.
“Did you love her?”
I promised myself I wouldn’t ask him about Rita. About her or about any of the other women he, Jax, and Keane have fucked since I’ve been gone. Jax said they didn’t matter. Liam said he didn’t love Sophia. But the argument with Keane in the kitchen has ripped the scab off old wounds. Wounds that never seem to fully heal and continuously ooze my insecurities no matter how many Band-Aids I slap over them.
Rafe stops our slow dance and leans back to look me in the eye. “The only woman I have or will ever love, Andie, is you. It’s the same for Keane and Jax. We’ve all been in love with you since we were kids. Just proves how much smarter I am that I made the first move.”
God, that dimpled, cocky grin does deliciously wicked things to me.
“You did the first everything to me,” I say, voice husky as I reach down and pop the button on his low-hanging jeans.
Being up here with him brings to mind so many nights together, necking and laughing. Being in love. Being foolish. His crystal blue irises disappear when his pupils expand, and a low rumble builds in the back of his throat when I painstakingly pull his zipper down.
My hand stills when he says, “I wish it was my ring on your finger. That’s a first I won’t be able to give you. I won’t be the man waiting for you at the end of the aisle.”