Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Around noon, after my second therapy session with Dr. Bolton, there was a knock on my door. I winced as I got up from the couch. Colt hadn’t joked about me being a little sore. My whole pelvis felt like it had gone to the gym for the first time after being a couch potato its whole life.
I peeked through the peephole and opened the door to Keelan standing on my porch.
The emotion in his eyes told me that whatever he was here for was serious, but he still gave me a small smile. “Can we talk?”
I opened my door wider for him to come in. “No work today?”
He walked inside and stood in the center of my living room. “That’s the thing about being the owner and boss. I sometimes work every day of the week and I sometimes take a random day off if I want.”
I shut the door and leaned against it. “What made you take today off?”
“You.”
My brows rose. “Me?”
“I want to apologize,” he said and the seriousness in his eyes radiated through the rest of him. “I was the one who suggested no sex until you were better. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I based the decision on my own past and the shitty choices I made. I saw you hurting and struggling and I saw myself.”
I’d known that already, but I was glad that he’d realized what he had done. “Do you know the main reason I kissed you the other day?”
He shook his head. “No, but I’d like to know.”
“I kissed you because I wanted to take your worry away,” I said. “At the time, I couldn’t verbally reassure you because I knew everything wasn’t alright. So I kissed you, and when I did, I discovered I could escape with you. But you stopped me and you explained that I could lose the four of you. That scared me.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “I know this is going to sound bad, but I was alright with hurting myself. I wasn’t alright hurting any of you.” I held my hand out before he could say anything. “Like I said, I know that it’s terrible. I’m working on it.”
He nodded. “Colt told us you started therapy.”
“Yeah, I had my second session today. She wants to see me twice a week moving forward.”
“I’m sorry for not talking to you about what I feel for you and to see if you were comfortable pursuing a relationship with me as well. I meant to talk to you one-on-one…” He trailed off. It was clear that he was mulling over his words. “I should have tried harder and I’m truly sorry for that.” He sounded so guilt-ridden.
“You can talk to me now,” I said.
He didn’t hesitate to take the second chance I was offering him. He took my hand in his. “Shiloh, I think you’re the most amazing person I have ever met and I have feelings for you.”
I kept my cool. “What kind of feelings?” I had to make him work for it a little.
His mouth stretched into a smile. “The romantic kind.”
“Oh, wow.” I pretended to sound surprised. “What happens now?”
His smile didn’t waver as he shook his head at me. He pulled me closer until our bodies were touching and hooked an arm around my lower back. “You could let me take you to lunch and, if you’re up for it, we’ll go see the new Marvel movie after?”
I couldn’t have kept myself from smiling if I’d wanted to. “Are you asking me on a date?”
“I am.”
I felt a little nervous. “I’ve never been on a date before.”
“Yes, you have,” he said, staring down at me with what looked like devotion in his eyes, as if I were the most precious thing he had ever held in his arms. “We’ve gone out on many of them. The only difference with this date is that there are only two of us when all the other times there were five.”
Just like that, my nervousness evaporated. “Okay.”
Keelan took me to a French bistro called Zoe’s for lunch.
“Keelan, this place looks closed,” I said as we parked in front. The parking lot was empty and I didn’t see a soul sitting inside through the restaurant’s windows.
“It is,” he said, turning off the car. “The owner is one of my students and she?—”
“She?” I blurted and snapped my mouth shut, blushing.
Keelan grinned. “You have nothing to worry about, baby girl. Zoe is happily married to a woman.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be. I find almost everything about you adorable and that gave me a good ego boost.”
“I’m glad to help your already-big ego. Mine doesn’t know how to take being called adorable.”
“I’ll happily tell you how sexy I think you are and all the dirty thoughts that enter my head when I look at you,” he said as his eyes dropped to my mouth. “But I figured I’d keep this date respectable or else we might not make it inside.”
My toes curled in my flats. I wish I’d had more time to get ready. All I had done was throw on a white summer dress and put my hair in a braid to the side. I cleared my throat. “Maybe you can tell me later.”
He chuckled. “I can do that.”
I was now more excited for that than lunch.
“Back to what I was saying…Zoe is the chef and owner. She was taught at that cooking school in Paris.”
“Le Cordon Bleu?”
“Yup, that one.” He pointed at the restaurant. “This place is only open for dinner, but she’s making an exception today. I’ve talked to her about how you love to cook and she offered to cook us a private lunch, or if you want to, you’re welcome back in her kitchen to cook with her.”
He talked to her about me? “Wow, Keelan” were the only words I could form.
“Shall we go inside?”
“That’s a silly question,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt and climbing out of the car.
Zoe was an amazing woman and chef to meet. She was a short lady with a confident personality and a head full of orange, wild curls. Keelan and I never sat at a table for lunch. We followed Zoe into the kitchen and stayed there. Zoe showed us how to cook a few of the dishes she served, which I got to help make while Keelan stood by watching me with a smile. After the food was made, the three of us ate it right there in the kitchen. Zoe’s passion and the way she talked about food reminded me of my mom and it made me nostalgic.
After that, we went to the movies and I overstuffed myself with popcorn. For the entire drive home and as he walked me to my door, Keelan held my hand. Once we were standing on my porch, Keelan surprised me by yanking on my hand. I fell into his arms and he kissed me. The way he kissed was smooth and confident. His tongue caressed mine in a way that made my knees go weak.
This should have been our first kiss, I thought. There wasn’t any guilt behind it.
He pulled away and stroked my cheek with his fingers. “I should go. I’m sure Colt and Creed are wanting to see you.”
I fisted his shirt in my hands. “Stay.” His brows rose and I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “I mean, we haven’t had a Game of Thrones date in a while. Maybe just you and I could watch it at my place?”
He tilted his head toward his house. “Let me run home really quick to change and I’ll be right back.”
I nodded and we went our separate ways. He ran back home and I went inside. I changed into my Wonder Woman PJs and removed my makeup. As I dried my face, I looked at my stitches. I couldn’t get them out until Monday. Scrunching my nose, I covered the ugly sight with my hair.
Keelan returned about twenty minutes later, dressed down to a white muscle shirt that showed off his arm tats and the Superman pajama bottoms I’d gotten him for his birthday. I smiled down at them and said, “Nice pajamas.”
“A beautiful girl gave them to me for my birthday,” he said and held up the box set of Game of Thrones . “And she gave me this.”
“She sounds pretty amazing,” I said, taking the box set from him and heading over to the TV to put the show on.
“She is,” he said, sitting on the couch.
After getting the show started, I sat next to him. He rested his hand on my bare thigh.
Colt and Creed texted me a few times, saying that they missed me and that Keelan had to return me tomorrow. That made me laugh and Keelan rolled his eyes.
A spicy scene came on in the show and his pointer finger began to stroke a tiny spot on my inner thigh. It was such a little touch, yet it was enough to set my blood on fire. I bit my lip and looked at him. Sensing me staring, he looked at me, too. No cues or words were needed. He put his hand to my cheek and he slammed his lips on mine. The way we kissed was hot, addictive, and intense. Like we needed each other but couldn’t get enough. I crawled into his lap and straddled him without breaking our kiss. He grabbed my butt and squeezed. I ran my fingers into his hair and tugged a little, making him groan. His hand slid up my shirt, up my side and over my bare breast.
He cursed as he ran his thumb over my nipple. “You’re not wearing a bra.”
“Would you rather be touching my bra right now?”
He huffed a laugh and rolled my nipple between his fingers. “We should slow down or else?—”
Keelan was cut off by the sound of my car’s alarm going off outside. As we looked at the front door, the window in my living room shattered and a brick tumbled across the floor.
I screamed and Keelan threw me on the couch and covered me with his body. The alarm in the house started blaring.
When nothing else came through the window, Keelan got off of me and we jumped to our feet. We looked at the brick, then the window, which was covered by curtains. Keelan pulled the curtains away, revealing broken glass on the ground and the shattered window. Careful not to step on the glass, he looked outside.
“Get away from the window!” I shouted over the alarm.
The panic in my voice made him come to me. “It’s alright! I didn’t see anyone!” he shouted and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m going to go out there, but I want you to stay here!”
I pushed away to look up at him, shaking my head. “No! Wait for the police!”
Suddenly, there was pounding on the front door and I let out a scream.
“Shiloh! Keelan!”
It was Creed. Keelan went to the door and unlocked it. Creed and Colt rushed in, eyes only on me. Creed made it to me first, hands grasping my face. “Are you alright?” I barely heard him say.
I nodded.
“Can I turn that off?!” Colt shouted next to me while pointing at the alarm.
I nodded again, but the alarm went silent. I looked past Creed and saw Knox standing in front of it. His eyes met mine. I hadn’t seen him for two days and during that time, I’d tried my best not to think about how he hadn’t come to me. Not that I was playing a game, but Knox always chased me. If I was upset, he came after me. If I said or did something he didn’t understand, he’d hunt me down and demand clarity. He was a pushy and stubborn man, but for once, he wasn’t chasing me.
“Your car is completely trashed,” Knox said.
I moved past Colt and Creed and headed for the door. The moment I stepped onto my porch and saw my car, my shoulders slumped.
Written all over my car in red paint was the word WHORE. The front windshield and a few of the side windows were busted in. The tires were slashed, again.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who did this,” Creed said as he came to stand next to me.
“Instead of guessing, can’t you just look at your camera footage?” Knox asked.
Sirens sounded in the distance as I spun around and ran back inside. I could feel someone following me as I went to my panic room and put in the code, unlocking it. After flipping on the light, I went straight to the computer and shook the mouse to wake the screens. As soon as they were up, showing the different areas of the house, I rewound the feed. Sure enough, Cassy, Amber, and Gabe snuck up to my house from somewhere down the street and began destroying my car.
“What is this room?” Creed asked behind me.
“It’s sort of like a panic room,” I shot over my shoulder as I copied the camera feed of the past hour and sent it to my email.
“Is this a gun safe?” Colt asked.
I got up from the desk and saw Colt and Creed eyeing the huge, black gun safe in the corner of the room. “Yes,” I answered simply.
“Shiloh, the police are here!” Keelan yelled from the front of the house.
The three of us went back out front, but not before I grabbed my phone and wristlet off the coffee table first. A police car was parked by the curb and two officers were talking with Knox and Keelan on my lawn.
“This is her,” Keelan said to the cops as I approached.
They eyed me skeptically. “You’re the owner of this home, miss?” one of the officers said. I could hear the doubt in his voice.
I read their names above their badges. One was named Cortez and the other was Simmons. I pulled out my ID and held it out to them. “Yes, I’m the owner.”
“And this is your car?” Officer Cortez asked, nodding toward my 4Runner as Officer Simmons took my ID.
“It is,” I answered. They asked me what had happened and I told them my perspective from inside my house. Then I said, “I know who did it.” They looked up from their little notepads, expectant, and I continued. “I have cameras all around my house.” I pulled up my email on my phone and clicked on the video before holding it out for them to look at. “You can see their faces clearly.”
The officers watched the footage. “Yes, you can,” Officer Simmons said and held out his card with his info on it. “Can you send a copy of this to me?”
I took the card and my phone back. “I can give you their names.”
“I’ll take them,” Officer Cortez said, putting his pen to his notepad.
“Amber Thorn, Gabe Harris, and Cassy McAllister.”
His pen froze when I said Cassy’s name and looked from his notepad to me. “‘McAllister’ as in Sheriff McAllister’s daughter?”
I looked at Creed and saw him grimacing. He had told me that Cassy’s father was a cop, not the sheriff.
“Yes, that’s her,” Creed said.
The two officers glanced at each other before Cortez cleared his throat and asked, “Are you wanting to press charges?”
“Oh yeah I am. Do you not see my car?” I asked caustically.
They looked at each other again until Simmons finally said with a tone full of dread, “I’ll go fill out the report,” and walked to their squad car.
Officer Cortez finished writing on his little notepad and tucked it into one of his vest’s pockets. “I’m going to need to take pictures of everything,” he said and went to the trunk of their squad car and pulled out a camera. While he took pictures of my car and the front window of my house, Officer Simmons went over the report he’d filled out and had me sign it.
By the time they left and I took my own pictures of all the damage, I was exhausted. I stood in my living room, staring at the broken window, thinking of all the things I’d have to do tomorrow to fix everything. There was no way I’d take the medicine Dr. Bolton had prescribed tonight. Not with my window like this.
“Babe,” Colt said, walking in from the front porch with Creed. The four of them had been talking out there when I had come in. “Keelan and Knox ran to the hardware store to get some plywood to put over your window,” Colt announced.
“The store is still open?” It was a useless question, but it popped into my head.
“It closes in about twenty minutes, but they’ll get there in time,” Creed said. “I think you should stay at our place tonight.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said and took a seat on the couch.
“Why?” Creed asked with a frown.
“It’s because of Knox, isn’t it?” Colt said, being too perceptive for his own good. He glanced at Creed. “They haven’t talked.”
Creed looked at me. “It’s not like you’re going to be sleeping in his room.”
I winced at that and they both caught it.
“You know, he wouldn’t tell us what went down with you two or how this fight with all five of us started,” Colt said. “By that reaction, I feel like something bad happened.”
I got up from the couch. “What Knox and I did together is our business.”
“So you two really did do something?” Creed asked as the two of them followed me down the hall to my room.
I didn’t respond as I grabbed a purse out of my closet. I began stuffing things I’d need to stay at the guys’ inside of it. I knew they weren’t going to take no for an answer. I grabbed my pills and phone chargers.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” Creed grumbled.
“Just let it go, Creed,” Colt said.
It wasn’t long before Knox and Keelan returned with a big piece of plywood and boarded up my window. I avoided looking at Knox as we all walked into their house. Creed grabbed my hand and started to lead me to their side of the house. Before we could get far, my other hand was grabbed, and I was pulled out of Creed’s grasp.
My back bumped into Keelan’s chest and he wrapped his arm around my waist. “Wait a minute,” he said.
Creed turned around and frowned at his brother.
Keelan ignored him and looked down at me. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like you to stay with me tonight.”
“I haven’t slept with my girlfriend in over a week,” Creed grumbled.
“She’s never spent the night with me,” Keelan grumbled right back.
Colt snorted.
Creed glared at him. “Don’t get me started on you. I saw your back in gym today.”
“Creed!” Colt and I snapped at the same time and Creed winced, looking guilty.
“What’s wrong with his back?” Knox asked, who had been watching us silently.
“Nothing,” Colt insisted.
Knox looked from Colt to Creed. “What’s wrong with his back?”
Keelan’s hold on me tightened a little and my gut told me he knew.
When Creed stayed tight-lipped, Knox looked back at Colt. “Take off your shirt.”
Colt’s Hulk side came to the surface and he stared down his older brother. “I’m not doing that.”
Knox walked toward Colt, eyes burning with anger. I jerked away from Keelan and stepped in front of Knox, blocking him from getting any closer to Colt. I locked my gaze with his. “Colt and I had sex. What Creed was referring to on Colt’s back are the scratches I put there when we did.”
I hadn’t thought he could look any angrier, but I was wrong. Without a word, he stormed off, and a few seconds later we all heard his bedroom door slam shut.
“Nice going, asshole,” Colt snapped at his twin.
Creed rubbed his hands down his face. “That was totally my bad.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you like that. I’m only used to sharing with Colt.” He gestured to Keelan. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
I nodded. I understood there would be a lot of trial and error with this type of relationship. I glanced at Keelan, feeling nervous. Questions like Will he still want me? popped into my head.
His expression was schooled. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I wondered . He reached for me and pulled me back into his arms. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
“Yes.”
Someone came up behind me and kissed my head. “Goodnight, babe,” Colt said, and as I looked back at him, he was already heading toward his room.
Creed took that opportunity to grab my face and kiss the heck out of me. “Goodnight,” he said, pulling away and leaving for his room, too.
Keelan led me to his room. It was neat, and he had a connected bathroom. His bed was very big and the linen on his bed was a very dark red. “I thought Knox’s favorite color was red,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
He smiled as he approached me. “It is. It just happens to be my favorite color, too.” He kissed my forehead. “Let’s get ready for bed.”
And that was what we did. Keelan got me a glass of water to take my medicine. Just like Colt had done, he watched me take it. I had barely climbed into his bed when he pulled me to him and snuggled me from behind.
“There we go,” he said and yawned.
I closed my eyes, smiling.