Chapter 2
Wizard
For once, it’s a good thing that my brother is a cheating sack of shit and a coward. He obviously realized he was in deep shit and fled. If he was anywhere within this State, someone would have to chain me up to prevent me from committing fratricide.
Slow, torturous murder, where I take my brother apart limb by limb.
The most inventive pain followed by a very unique death.
That’s a brilliant idea, actually. I could bring him to our private surgeon’s clinic and Archer could harvest James’ organs and sell them until we raise the full amount that he borrowed.
He gets to stay alive, minus a few less vital body parts, and whoever the fuck he owes money to gets to fuck right off.
Esme is quiet. Too quiet. She’s given me a few curt, rehearsed sentences, controlled and emotionless, then passed me her phone so I could read the texts those goons sent her.
The silence between us, for all that’s happened, is happening, and hasn’t happened yet, is natural.
The quiet between two people who know each other too well to be nervous in each other’s presence.
I expected her to be a mess. Always beautiful, but painfully haunted.
Dark eyes red-rimmed, brimming over, cheeks salt stained and pinched.
Rumpled. Barely holding it together, biting down on her lip, curling her fingers into her palm, looking anywhere but at me.
I thought she’d arrive disassembled, the lovely pieces of her nothing more than jagged edges that I was going to have to fit back together.
I didn’t expect her stoic silence.
Her clothes are ruined, damp like she walked waist deep through floodwaters to get here. The sand clinging to her here and there, small grains lingering on her ankle and big toe, a few dusting the hem of her pants, gives away that she went to the beach at some point before she called me.
I watched for her on the security feeds, unable to tear my eyes from the screens since her call came in.
The wait was brutal. Every moment lasted a century.
Esme’s words played on repeat in my mind.
It’s your brother. I’ll explain everything when I get there.
I just… can’t now. I’m sorry. I need to think. It’s all a mess.
After I hung up with Esme, I called Dravin.
I told him that I had a family emergency and that I’d need him to cover the club’s security for a few hours.
I thought he’d be pissed about the extremely early wakeup, but he arrived not looking the least bit annoyed, with two steaming cappuccinos from that coffee shop downtown that he’s addicted to.
Unlike some of the guys, I don’t have a place in Hart outside the clubhouse.
I told Esme to come here, and then I brought her straight to my room as soon as she arrived.
She took in the space for a silent moment, eyes sweeping over my things, a more intimate look under my surface than I’ve ever allowed.
Although, I would have, if she ever asked me to show her.
She silently left her phone in my hands after she unlocked it and walked over to the single bookcase I have in the spacious room.
I’ve been with the club for a while, so I have a big space, complete with a small ensuite.
She brushes her fingers over the spines of the tightly crammed books.
They’re ordered, but I need another bookcase.
I wonder if they’re as nerdy as she expected they’d be, given that they’re mine.
She’s probably not thinking about any of that. I desperately want to know the shape of her thoughts. She hasn’t said anything more than those first few sentences. She’s rigid. Closed off. She’s always been good at locking herself down when she needed to be. Too good.
Before I guess at her thoughts, I should get my own under control.
They’re spinning wildly, churning apart my normally well-ordered brain.
I mean to choke back my anger and calmly talk, but a growl explodes from my throat, bursting out between clenched lips.
“He deserves to die for how he treated you.”
Esme whirls, shock etched into a face I’ve dreamed of since I knew what dreaming was. “What the fuck, Wizard! That’s not true!”
I want to tell her that it is, but I dial it back. I force myself to breathe. Scaring her when she’s already rattled by this whole nightmare isn’t the way I wanted to go about this.
I want what I’ve always wanted.
Her.
To be there for her. To save her. To be waiting with open arms. To be the rock she can crash against, solid ground when all she’s known is shifting sands and turmoil.
To be her shelter in the worst storms of her life.
All the bad metaphors. That’s me, because I love her.
I have since we first met when we were fourteen fucking years old.
I try again, choking back the suffocating emotions and channeling some inner touching grass bullshit. “He left. The one person who should have stood by you, left you to deal. He knew and he bugged out. He didn’t even have the decency to warn you that you were in danger.”
Esme’s eyes widen like she hasn’t even considered that. Why would it not have been her first thought?
“He could have taken you with him,” I press.
Of course he didn’t. James doesn’t care about anyone but himself. I’ve spent the past sixteen years trying to get Esme to understand that he wasn’t worth saving, but she still gave her life to him.
Her hand shoots out, reaching for me, but it stops halfway.
She drops it, tucking it back at her side.
I want to surge forward and take it. Unfurl it and brush my fingers over her knuckles.
I want to bring it to my lips and kiss her palm.
I want to memorize every line and detail.
Inhale the scent of her perfume and her beneath it.
I want to draw her in against me and hold her forever.
This could not be a worse time. I’m good at shutting those parts of me down.
“I get that you’re mad,” Esme sighs. “I am too. I might have wanted to murder him myself, but the hour and a half drive kind of helped me calm down.” She swallows painfully, like she’s choking on glass.
“I didn’t want to be the kind of mess that you had to take care of before you even began to fix this. ”
Esme’s eyes are so dark under the harsh fluorescent lighting.
Some of the guys have replaced theirs in their rooms, but I’ve never bothered.
I have ugly floor lamps and a few on the nightstands and on my desk.
I usually just flick one of them on. Or no lights.
The computer monitors spanning across the desk’s large surface opposite the bookshelf are often enough.
It’s a miracle I haven’t burned my retinas out.
The light might be harsh, but it somehow softens Esme’s sharp features. She’s tall and angular. My brother used to complain that she had no boobs and a flat ass. Because he’s the worst human being.
“You should never have been with him.” I don’t mean for that to come out, and certainly not sounding as petulant and incendiary as it does.
Esme’s sharp intake of air bruises my own lungs.
I want to tell her that I’m sorry. That I know she’s in shock and fighting with everything she has to hold it together, and now isn’t the time.
I want to reassure her that I’ll help her.
That I can make all of this go away, no matter how impossible it seems. For her, there’s nothing I can’t and won’t do.
The words clog in my throat, so many, so painful, wrenched from that black void where I’ve shoved a decade and a half worth of things that can never, ever be uttered out loud.
“You know why I did it,” she whispers into the silence. She looks up at me from under her thick lashes. All the years fall away. All the decisions. All the bullshit and the pain and the trying. All the things we said and never said. All the wasted time. She’s so raw. So open.
It guts me and it triples the rage. I already know that if I open my mouth, I’m going to say the wrong thing, but I can’t help it. “I think you wanted to be a martyr.”
“Shut up.” I wish she’d snarl at me, but instead she bows her head, and it comes out without heat. A whisper that trembles all over the room.
I hate myself for all of this. I wish I could stuff those words right back down my stupid throat.
I wish that she was mine to comfort, but even now, broken and needing it so badly, the shock wearing off and her world crumbling, it’s not right.
She’ll never be mine. It guts me. It tears me apart.
I’m going to bleed out here right in front of her and my brother will have succeeded in getting us both killed.
“I came here because I knew it would be safe.” Her voice hitches on the last words.
She swallows thickly. “I hate this place. Hate Hart with a fucking passion. I come back here once a year. Christmas only. You know that.” Her voice wavers, but she holds it together.
“I might hate Hart, but I’ve never hated you.
I’m sorry that we were best friends and I drifted away.
I’m sorry that I went to Seattle for college and stayed.
I’m sorry that I needed to escape and that I never wanted to look back.
I’m sorry that I was young and scared, and then I was just…
scared. James has never told me he loved me. Did you know that?”
I did not know that.
I know everything else. Everything fucking else.
My brain doesn’t have to give me a play by play rundown of the past decade and a half.
Wanting what I could never have. Loving a woman who would never be mine.
Settling for friendship because she needed it so badly and I needed her, and I only ever wanted her to be happy.