68. Bellamy
Chapter 68
Bellamy
I t was nearly midnight before Fletcher stumbled home and over the threshold, a dark purple bruise casting his right eye into shadow and claw marks down his forearm. Daren was up from the couch before I’d even fully registered the sight of him in the doorway. We’d stayed together in his room until Fletcher and his father had left, and then we’d waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Then we’d heard the sirens and we’d waited some more.
“What happened to you?” Daren asked, reaching for Fletcher like he was a worried lover, a concerned partner.
Fletcher didn’t fight him off.
He went still in the entry of the house, exhaling slowly as Daren checked him over for other wounds.
“Luca,” he muttered, blinking slowly.
“What?”
“So it…so it looked more like self-defense,” he said, gently shaking Daren off and heading for the couch. I hadn’t moved, so I opened my arms and let him sink down into my embrace.
“What happened?” I asked.
Daren settled in beside him, getting closer than I’d ever seen Fletcher allow. I didn’t know if things had well and truly changed, or if he was just tired and didn’t have it in him to fight us off.
“He…he would have thrown me over the ledge if I…”
“It’s okay.” I kissed the top of Fletcher’s head, stroking his hair flat so I could see Daren, whose stare flickered between mine and the door. “What about Gideon? Where’s Luca?”
“No one is answering my messages,” Daren said.
“Luca is at the police station with Gideon,” Fletcher murmured. “He’s being questioned about his father’s drowning.”
Daren sighed heavily, closing his eyes.
“What about you?”
Fletcher moved halfway out of my arms, stretching out his legs and thumping his boots down on top of the table. Instead of being held by us, he pulled Daren and me against him, eyes unfocused on the wall ahead of him.
“My father attacked me,” he whispered, sounding rehearsed. “There’s proof. He just…we were on the balcony, and…”
“Okay.” I pressed my hand against the middle of his chest.
“I didn’t mean for…”
“Fletcher, it’s okay.”
“I asked him about you,” Fletcher said to me directly.
“What did he say?”
“I wish I had more answers for you, Bellamy.”
I grimaced, shaking my head for him to stop. I’d sat for weeks with the possibility my father had offered me up as something disposable, and I’d made my peace with it. Being with Daren and Luca had shown me what real love could do, and it wasn’t an emotion my father had ever held for me. It wasn’t something I could worry about or linger on because I’d never get resolution from it. I was the youngest son. The accident or the afterthought. I was the bartering tool for him to get more for himself. Thankfully, the men I’d fallen in love with would never treat me the way my own blood had.
“It’s okay,” I assured him, meaning it all the way down to the marrow in my bones.
All three of our cellphones vibrated at the same time, breaking the tentative peace of the moment. Fletcher moved so quickly I almost fell onto the floor.
“It’s just Vince,” Daren said before Fletcher could even get his hand into his pocket. “He says Gideon and Luca will be on the way over soon.”
“Was he charged?” I asked.
Daren shook his head and tossed his phone onto the table beside Fletcher’s feet.
“Vince said it was laughable for us to even worry about such a thing.”
“The Angelinis have more power than we realized, don’t they?” Luca asked.
Fletcher barked out a laugh that quickly tapered off into a sigh. “They’re the puppeteers, that’s for sure.”
I bit the side of my thumbnail. “What happens now?”
Fletcher scrubbed a hand down his face and immediately grunted in pain when he pressed his fingers against the dark bruise beneath his eye. Luca had really laid into him to sell the self-defense thing, but I also imagined Luca had been saving up some animosity toward Fletcher for quite a while.
“Literally now or the long term now?” he asked.
“Long term now.”
“Gideon and I need to meet with Vince,” he said. “Establish a new order.”
“This is all so unbelievable,” I murmured, burying myself back into the crook of Fletcher’s side. “Like a story or something.”
“One of those ones you get told as a child so you act right,” Daren said.
“Clearly worked out well for the two of you,” I teased.
“What now, though?” Daren went on, still half-focused on the door. “In the immediate sense?”
“Gideon and Luca come home.” Fletcher closed his eyes. “And we sleep for a week.”
“I like the sound of that.” Daren’s fidgeting turned unmanageable, and he finally pried himself up off the couch to pace the porch while the three of us waited for Gideon and Luca to make it over. The pace of his footfalls was hypnotic in its monotony, so to keep myself awake, I nosed my way up the side of Fletcher’s throat.
“Even now you’re a horny little thing,” he rasped, tightening his arm around me. “Just like Luca. You’re perfect for them.”
“What about for you?”
Fletcher hummed, hauling me onto his lap. The bags under his eyes were heavy and dark, even through the bruising, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. I supposed none of us had.
“You’re unexpected,” he said softly, closing his eyes as I traced my fingertips across his cheekbones. The stubble on his jaw prickled against my fingers. “But far from unwelcome.”
“Just unconventional.”
Fletcher straightened up and softly pressed our mouths together. “I’d say your fetishes around adrenaline and fear are quite unconventional, Bellamy, but Daren and I are most certainly happy to oblige you.”
The words were like a drug against my mouth, and I leaned into him with a whimper.
“Daren too?” I whispered.
“All of us, somehow,” he promised. “I’m tired of letting people take away the things I want most in life. If they want to paint me as a villain for being selfish and holding onto what’s mine, then I’ll gladly play that part for them.”
“Is that what you did for Gideon?” I asked, kissing the corner of his mouth.
“For years,” he said, licking across the seam of my lips.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Nothing I wouldn’t do for any of you.”
A shiver raced up my spine, followed by the slow chase of Fletcher’s hands.
There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do…
Including cover up a murder.