38. Saint
Saint
“ I ’m done with the secrets…Hendrix needs to know what’s going on.” I pace my father’s office.
He shakes his head from behind the laptop screen, looking through some new footage we got from inside the club. “Not yet, son.”
“This could’ve ended a lot fucking worse than the Italian putting two bullets into that piece of shit.”
Dad flinches with the mention of what he believes to be only Carlo’s doing…because, yeah, he might be caught up in this fucked up world by default, but the ideologies he swears by don’t exactly stand alongside murder.
“You’re absolutely right.”
“We could’ve lost her.” My fist slams his desk. “I could’ve fucking lost her! Do you get that?”
A drawn out sigh pushes past my father’s lips as he leans back in the chair. “Of course I do, Saint, but we spoke about this and agreed it was safer to keep Hendrix in the dark.”
“That shit changed the second I caught that motherfucker in the alleyway with her. And if that bouncer didn’t end up throwing Carlo and me out from the front of the club, he would’ve succeeded. Then what? Huh?”
He tightens his jaw but doesn’t get the chance at a rebuttal because I’m not done.
“Me, you, the Salvinis. We fucked up and you know it.”
“I agree, we may have underestimated Nikolai Ivanov.”
“May have, my ass! I’m telling her.”
Dad shoots out of his seat, holding up a hand.
“I think you’re letting your feelings for Hendrix cloud your judgment here, Saint.”
Feelings he only found out about days ago.
A growl rumbles in the back of my throat as I circle the desk, not stopping until I’m inches away from him. “You know nothing about my feelings for Hendrix, or how far I’m willing to go to make sure I don’t lose her.”
My father’s deep gulp tells me he’s got some sort of idea now.
“I know you love her,” he states with apprehension. “Probably before you even knew you did.”
“What the fuck is your point?”
“My point is, son,” he squeezes my tense shoulder, “as men, it’s our sole duty to protect the women we love, and sometimes protecting them includes making logical decisions over emotional ones. Even if you know it will hurt their feelings.”
“I’ve tried it your way. Look how that shit turned out.”
“Another thing about loving a woman,” he presses on, “is that we have the honor to be able to change their hearts pretty quickly.” Looking me dead in the eyes, my father adds, “But it takes a lot longer for us to change a woman’s instincts.”
This time it’s me who swallows hard.
“Hendrix is already changing, Saint, even her mother can see it. But her instincts…they remain too explosive. Unpredictable.”
“That’s because you’re forcing me to keep lying to her.”
His shoulders rise and fall with uncertainty.
“You may be right about this too. But is it a risk worth taking when the stakes are so high?”
“Yes…because there’s been only a few times I’ve watched Hendrix fight her instincts, each of them being after I chose to be honest. About my feelings, my mistakes, even the monster inside me.”
With eyes wide, my father removes his hold from me. “You told her about Vicious?”
“I did…”
“Wow…uh.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t know what to say, son. That’s big.”
“It is big, and also why I need you to trust me when I say it’s safer for everyone if Hendrix knows what’s going on.”
I’ve spent the past week doing nothing but stressing the fuck out, helping my father get answers, and kicking myself about how Hendrix’s attack may have been avoided if she didn’t become so used to depending on Carlo and me to have her back.
Hendrix deserves to have her own too—and I was too blinded by my control to see it until now.
“Okay, Saint. Fine.” My father relaxes onto the chair. “I’ll trust you on this one.”
“Thank you.”
“Under one condition.”
Everyone and their fucking conditions.
“What is it?”
“We do this the right way. I know you and Hendrix are in a relationship, and I’m accepting of that. But, with shared blood or not, June and I are your parents, and we’re a family.”
“Fine. Whatever. Then let’s do it right now.”
It’d be a lot easier for me, anyway, since I’m pretty sure Hendrix is marching the floors of her bedroom waiting to hear about the update I left her an hour ago to get.
“Not tonight.”
“Why the fuck not? We’re all here…even the aunt and the Italian.”
“Because one, it’s past midnight, and two, Hendrix has her interview with Mike at Bromwell soon. Not to mention you have your championship game coming up. I want you both focused before shit hits the fan.”
“We’ll be fine—”
He holds up a decisive hand. “The day after you win, and Hendrix secures her spot at the university.”
I don’t even bother shooting him a rebuttal before pushing open the door and hauling my ass down the hall to get to Hendrix.
In a few days, she’ll know everything, and I can finally breathe without guilt eating away at me every time she looks at me.
Not patient enough to wait for the elevator, I pass it to the foyer stairs, skipping steps until I reach the floor where our bedrooms are.
I’m almost out of breath by the time I open her door, and choke on whatever’s left when I take in the sight before me.
Hendrix, asleep, head whipping side to side as her legs and arms thrash on the bed.
Fuck. Not again.
“Wake up,” I say, nudging her shoulder, then slide onto the bed. “C’mon, Jimi.”
This is the fourth time I’m finding Hendrix like this, drenched in sweat and murmuring cries in her sleep.
Another reason I need to tell this girl everything.
I’m not an idiot, I knew the incident at the club would have some lasting effects, because although Hendrix and I share a darkness inside us, the one around us growing up was nowhere near the same.
A few more nudges and Hendrix shoots up off the pillow, eyes flying open, still half asleep in a craze as her head whips to me. “Saint?” she cries, pulling the blanket over her chest. “Is that you?”
She asks me this same question every time I wake her from a nightmare, and every time I end up fucking hating it even more.
Swallowing my anger, I swipe the damp hairs from her face. “It’s me, Jimi, I’m here.”
It takes a few seconds of massaging Hendrix’s shoulder before she’s lucid enough to speak in a hoarse voice.
“Did I wake you again?”
“Nah, I just got back from talkin’ to Pops.” I motion for her to scoot over, and when she does, I settle at her side and wrap her up in my arms.
“Sorry.”
“You have no reason to be.”
“My tank top is drenched. I’m getting sweat all over you.”
I attempt to relax her the only way I know how.
With sex jokes.
“I drink your orgasms every night, Jimi. I ain’t scared of a little perspiration.”
She chuckles. “True. But still. I may stink a bit too.”
“B.O.?” I moan. “Now that’s sexy as fuck.”
A thick silence drifts between us before Hendrix’s lungs deflate into nothing. Just like whatever she was about to say.
“Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“There’s nothing for me to tell you.”
“Then ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“What we both know you’ve been wondering since I helped Carlo kill your attacker.”
Hendrix swallows. Loud. But sticks with silence. Proving her worry is most likely whether “help” has ever not been in front of “kill.”
I answer regardless, on the off chance her knowing the truth will keep the nightmares at bay.
“Never by my own hand.”
Hendrix cranes her neck to look at me, using a sigh of relief to carry away the heaviness in her eyes. “Really?”
“Don’t sound too proud, baby, I’ve blurred the lines many times.”
Especially with that piece of shit Luke.
To my relief, her light expression doesn’t falter much.
“With who?”
I pin her with a “nice try” grin, then reply, “Why don’t you tell me about these nightmares? Hm?”
And just like that…she’s withdrawing again.
“You need to talk to me. It’s not good to hold shit in like this.”
“They’re just dreams, Saint, they mean nothing.”
“Then why do you keep asking if I’m me when you wake up?”
Hendrix stills, all the way down to her breaths.
“Point proven. Dreams can’t mean nothing if they have you questioning who I am.”
Panic grips her face when she looks at me. “That’s not how it is at all.”
“Then how the fuck is it?”
Pulling at the strings on the bottom of her T-Shirt, Hendrix mutters, “They’re a repeat of that night…except I’m the one with the gun ready to shoot.”
“You need to know I’d never let that happen. That I’d never let you carry the burden of taking someone’s life.”
“I do.”
“No…you don’t.” I laugh, but there’s not a drop of humor in it. “I would take a bullet to the skull fifty times over before allowing you to sacrifice the good in you.”
“Please don’t talk this way, it hurts to even imagine you gone.” She looks down. “Especially not now.”
Every atom inside me is screaming for me to drive my point home, but the logical decisions my father mentioned, they stuck with me enough to spare Hendrix anymore grief.
“Alright, change of plans.” I swing my legs over the bed, then jump to my feet and skip toward the mini fridge I had put in her room. “Therapy is about to be. In. Sesh.”
Hendrix laughs. “What are you doing you psycho? And for the love of God, please stop skipping like Theory.”
Whipping open the freezer, I pull out the big guns, in the form of my little Jimi Hendrix’s favorite snacky snack. “Then how’re you gonna get this?” I wiggle the pint of chocolate ice cream. “Hm?”
“Chocolate Therapy.” She shoots out her hand. “Fuck yes, give it to me.”
“Careful now, Jimi,” I warn. “There’s more than one way for me to interpret that.”