5. Juliet
JULIET
B ile sits on the back of my throat. Lex’s attention bores into the side of my face, stinging like a sunburn, but I don’t look back. I can’t.
The nightmare might be real to me now, but I don’t have to share it with the others. I might remember what really happened, but that doesn’t mean I have to tell him. I can keep the secret and no one ever has to know what I did… what I failed to do.
“Juliet?”
I blink and turn my head, realizing Nolan’s calling my name. “Huh?”
“Did you hear what I said?” He frowns after me.
Just hours before, he’d stood before me like a god of death, holding out the tool of my own revenge.
I glance over his form, but there’s no bulge on his lower back where he rests against the couch that would tell me he still has the gun on him.
Does he not carry it all the time? No, he can’t.
They don’t allow weapons in school, and the metal detectors would definitely pick up on a handgun.
“Sorry, spacing out,” I mutter with a shake of my head. “What’d you say?”
“I just got a text from Vikson.” He holds up his phone. “He’s in town and sent me a location for a meetup. I don’t know if you should go.”
I should want to go. A part of me does. Another part of me, however, is exhausted. My eyelids feel heavier than they ever have. My back hurts and my head still has the low throb of pain likely from whatever drugs my kidnappers had shot into my system.
I’m tired and… it’s been the longest night of my fucking life, it feels. I just want to shut my eyes and drift into one of those rare dreamless sleeps. Where there are no nightmares, no good dreams, just the light floaty feeling that comes with true deep sleep.
Would it be so wrong of me to not want to deal with the rest of this shit tonight? Do we have to meet this Vikson man so soon? Would I be weak for asking them to deal with it and leave me behind?
Minutes have ticked past and the quiet has stretched in the room by the time I finally have an answer. All eyes are on me.
“I don’t think anything more is going to happen tonight,” I say. “I know it’s important that we figure this out, and I will, I swear, but?—”
“You’ve been through enough.” Nolan’s features soften as he finishes my sentence with words of his own. My shoulders slump.
Exhaustion clings to my every nerve ending.
The game. The kidnapping. The killing. Lex’s secret reveal.
From where I sit on the couch, I can see the time on the microwave sitting in Lex’s kitchen.
It displays a number of early morning. I’m thankful we don’t have school again until Monday because if I tried to get up in the next three hours, I’m pretty sure my body would revolt.
The cushions of the couch at my back and under my butt cup me, and the softness was a mistake. I didn’t even realize how tired I was until I sat down, but now that I have, I don’t think I can get up.
“Do you trust me to handle him, Princess?” Nolan’s question is soft.
Trust. It’s such a simple word for such a big concept. If someone had asked me three months ago if I trusted the Scorpion Kings, my answer would have been a fist to the face of the asker. Now, though… I can’t imagine trusting three people more than I do them.
This time, trust isn’t an assumption. It’s not a given. It’s a choice and I give it freely to them.
“Yes.”
Nolan stares at me for a moment more before nodding and getting up. “All right then.” Lex shuffles to the side but continues to watch as Nolan moves towards me.
He bends down. I inhale sharply as he cups the side of my jaw and tips my head back, pressing a kiss to my forehead before he pulls away. The action is so gentle and sweet and at odds with what I’m now used to that it leaves me stunned for a moment longer as he releases me and turns to the others.
“Lex—”
“Yes.” Lex bites out the word, anger in his tone as he gets to his feet. “I know.”
“Should I stay then?” Gio pulls away the wad of paper towel that he has stuffed to his face. There’s a bruise forming in the inner corners of his eyes, but he wrinkles his nose and shakes his head. It’s not broken.
“I can stay by myself,” I say. That only earns frowns from all three of them and I raise my hands. “I’m not going to go anywhere!”
“That’s not what we’re worried about,” Nolan says.
They’re not? Does that mean they trust me too?
“Go on,” G says, motioning to Nolan and Lex as he cracks a yawn. “I need some sleep too.”
“We all do,” Nolan says, “but we should only be a few hours.”
“Don’t care.” Gio stretches onto his tiptoes, groaning.
My eyes lock on to the strip of skin revealed by his t-shirt riding up.
The tan, sun-kissed skin is stretched taut over his stomach and the edge of his abs only shows for a brief second before he drops back down.
“I’m sure Prep Girl and I will be dead to the world before you get back. ”
“Lock up behind us,” Lex barks. “I want the entire security system up and running.”
Though I doubt anything more will happen tonight, I appreciate the sentiment. I can always take care of myself if I need to, but knowing I won’t be alone when I shut my eyes tonight eases a fear inside of me I didn’t even realize I had.
“Will do.” Gio waves them off as he goes to the kitchen and comes back a moment later sans bloody paper towels.
Lex and Nolan file out the door, shutting it firmly behind them.
G goes to a small box anchored to the wall and types in a code.
I hadn’t even noticed it there the last time I’d been here.
Gio looks back as the box beeps. My eyelids are already drooping. The bedroom isn’t far, but with how comfortable I am on the couch, I can’t really imagine what would be the difference at this point between sleeping here versus there.
I lean back as G disappears down the hallway and let my eyes slide shut. All the muscles in my body go lax. Distantly, I listen to the sound of a door opening and the reverberation of rushing water creaking through pipes. Soft footfalls and then— My eyes pop wide open and I release a startled yelp.
My hands latch on to wide, broad shoulders as Gio’s face appears in front of me.
His shirt is gone now, revealing all of that golden skin of his and the full expanse of his ab-lined stomach.
Blinking, confused, and more than a little disoriented, I frown at him as he hefts me into his arms, lifting me up from the couch as easily as if I weigh nothing at all.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you to bed, Prep Girl.”
“I can sleep on the couch,” I tell him as he leaves the living room and passes through the hallway.
The door to Lex’s office hangs slightly ajar and over Gio’s shoulder, I spot the pictures that still line the side of the wall.
Pictures of me. I wonder how often Lex sat in there and looked at my image and thought of me.
When did he start collecting them? Right after we had been separated?
Gio’s snort sounds as he steps into Lex’s bedroom, kicks the door closed, and heads for the massive bed that takes up most of the space inside. “Leave you on the couch when I can fall asleep with my face in your tits?” He dumps me unceremoniously onto the mattress. “Not a chance in hell.”
I scowl. “Who the hell said I’d let you sleep with me?”
Gio doesn’t even flinch at my tone. He merely moves to the other side of the bed and pulls back the covers.
“You’re not being left alone tonight,” he says, patting the space in front of him as he gets comfortable, nestling down onto the bed.
“So don’t even try to fight it. Just come over here and let me cuddle you. ”
Cuddle me? Do I look like a Build-A-Bear or something? “I’m not the cuddling type.”
He curls on his side and grins my way. “I am.”
“I don’t give a fuck.” Yanking at the covers and scooting up towards the headboard so I don’t have to get out of bed to slide beneath them, I flip him the bird and turn away from him. The pillow under my head dips and sinks as I lie down and yank the covers up over my shoulder. Asshole.
I close my eyes and let my mind drift off, wanting to be done with the night and all that’s happened.
It only takes a few minutes for Gio to make his move.
The soft rustling of sheets and covers moving along with the gentle tug on my side has me tensing.
Then, his warm arm slides over my waist, dipping down as he drags me backwards, pulling me across the space in the center of the mattress.
When Gio’s hot, naked chest brushes my back, it threatens to singe me through my clothes.
He adjusts behind me, shifting as he pushes one of his legs between both of mine.
Opening my eyes, I stare into the darkness of the room—he must’ve shut off the light from the nightstand as I’d tried to first sleep.
Now there’s nothing but little dots dancing in front of me as I blink away the blurriness.
“Gio?” My voice is quiet, but still, he responds, cuddling closer.
“Sleep, Prep Girl,” he murmurs against the back of my neck. My hair flutters with his breathing. “I won’t let anyone steal you from me tonight, or ever again.”
The cold organ of my heart thumps to life, another fissure forming through the already cracked and damaged chambers. I bite down on my lower lip to keep it from trembling as the back of my eyes burn with unshed emotion.
They came for me . The words repeat themselves in my head, over and over again, until they’re all I can hear, all I can see. Tonight, I could have died. I could have become a statistic of small-town girls everywhere. Outcast. Unwanted. Lost. Dead.
Even if I’d gotten myself free when Lex and Gio had shown up, knowing that someone had been searching for me, that they had been tracking me, makes the rest of this awful world I’ve been trapped in for too long a little less shitty.
If it happens again, at least I know now—someone will come for me. Someone cares if I live or die. They do.
With that in mind, I close my eyes and I let the darkness take over.