35. Ozzy
THIRTY-FIVE
ozzy
Bay nibbles on the sandwich I made her, watching some crime show I randomly put on that was listed on her currently watching.
Cairo has been mindful of her weight and mental health without hovering or pushing knowing she’ll only shove back. He’s enlisted me to help, telling me to feed her whenever I can and ensure she’s as stress free as humanly possible but subtly.
However, I know she’s suffering inside from the loss of Wallace and her father. Sometimes, Bay isn’t even looking at the TV but at the wall, spilling out all her sorrows without crying but by getting lost inside her head instead.
Something we’re able to relate to on so many levels.
She hasn’t spoken to me since she told me she’s pregnant. I’m not entirely sure what it means for everyone, but I do know she can’t be running around South Shore like she has. I understand with her new position as Queen of South Shore, she’ll have to do things. But it won’t include hunting for De Leon and acting like she’s immortal.
It can’t happen.
Not when she has a baby inside her and two sisters who barely leave their rooms anymore because everything has changed.
This house is becoming more depressing by the day.
I watch her without reservation, studying her every move to determine how she’s feeling and taking in the fact she’s pregnant.
Reeve and Torin are a bunch of caveman assholes about it.
I’m not sure why they’d want someone else to care for when we already have enough on our plates, but they’re extremely adamant about her carrying through with the pregnancy.
Probably to have another complicated tie in her life and to fully immerse themselves there forever.
Torin already tried coming to the house to see her, but I threatened him with another bullet hole. Reeve has been on another bender, and he and Cairo got into it last night, resulting in a few holes in the wall and some broken bookshelves.
All three of them aren’t allowed entry here. I’ve made that shit perfectly clear. The last thing Bay needs right now is Torin’s stupid-ass alpha bullshit, Reeve’s obvious hurt and depression, or Cairo’s black eye given by said brother.
Shit went to hell in a handbasket really quick, and I could actually use Wallace to help out right about now. He knew how to get straight to her without having to try very hard. She listened to him. Maybe not all the way, but it didn’t fall on deaf ears.
Maybe that’s why Torin has such a hard time.
“Oz.”
I blink, regaining Bay in my vision as she sits on the couch with her knees to her chest. Her blue eyes are glazed with what looks like tears, and I’m the wrong person for this job.
I can keep danger away.
I just can’t do emotions.
“Can you hand me that blanket?” She points to the La-Z-Boy that used to be her father’s, and it’s the same blanket that was on it when I had all her things moved here. I’m guessing it’s Roger’s.
Ambling toward the chair, I pluck it up and stride over, keeping a safe distance and handing it over.
“Thanks,” she mutters, dropping it in her lap and draping it over her body as she brings some of the gray material to her face and inhales it, closing her eyes while she does.
And she doesn’t open them.
“Come sit with me?”
My eyebrows pinch a little that she’d want me to. However, I understand most people want comfort from someone else.
And that someone else is apparently me right now.
Wrong choice.
Nonetheless, I take the opposite side of the couch and keep myself closest to the front door, in case I’m needed for something.
“Are you upset with me?”
I don’t understand her question, so I shake my head again, even though she hasn’t looked at me or opened her eyes.
“I have too much on my plate, and I can barely do that right. I put a hit out on my ex . Myself. ”
“Good,” I reply, the answer blurting from my mouth before I have a mind to stop it.
Bay’s blue eyes come up to me with a flat stare. “It was a stupid thing to do.”
“Why?”
“You know why. You know everything.”
I wouldn’t say that.
I don’t know the first thing about how to make her feel better. I sure as hell don’t comprehend fully why she even wants me around half the time.
I’m not the person to be asking for life advice or anything to do with a child. This is anyone’s territory but mine.
I’m not built for this shit.
However, on the same note, Torin and Reeve are out of the question and I told Cairo to heal his damn eye first before coming to see her.
“I’m…scared,” she admits, slightly tucking her chin into her chest. “I don’t know if I have it in me to do this.”
She does.
Bay can do anything she puts her mind to.
Matteo De Leon is a poser with many men who blindly follow him. He isn’t and wouldn’t make a good leader and do worse than Emilio did with The Landings and South Shore.
Bay is empathy, kindness, and loyalty. We’d follow her anywhere.
“I think I should go?—”
Panic immediately fills my veins at the beginning of her comment, and I can’t stop it on a dime.
My heart slams into my chest with fervor. The thought of her leaving South Shore or any surrounding city gives me a wave of anxiety that makes my breathing slightly hitch.
Bay notices, and I hate that she does because she scoots her ass closer. “Ozzy, no, I didn’t mean it like that.”
She reaches for me, but I flinch out of her grasp, jumping to my feet to gain some well-needed space.
Words of Torin come fluttering in my brain that she’d hurt me one day. That if I got too attached, I was going to pay heavily.
That it’d be like Vivian.
“I’d never leave you,” she tells me, her sole focus on me, and I feel uncomfortable and ashamed under it.
I never should have allowed myself to feel for her, nor should I have revealed myself out of the shadows.
I fucked up.
I bit off way more than I could chew and with people come emotions and attachments and things I can’t dissolve.
I don’t do those things.
I can’t.
I’ve been around hardened criminals for almost six years. There was no coddling in prison. It was hate, rage, and fucking chaos all the damn time. After Vivian, I understood I couldn’t give out my feelings or form tight attachments. It didn’t end well the first time. Vivian’s love for me was fake. It was given to me so I could please her, no matter the cost, because I would pay it.
I did.
I’m not going to do it again.
I’m not going back to prison.
“Ozzy, look at me.”
I don’t, and she huffs at my blatant defiance.
“I don’t know what just happened…but I’m not leaving South Shore. I’m here. There’s no plan. I’m not running away.”
My eyes flick up to her, listening and trying to comprehend the hidden meaning behind those words.
I can’t.
Is it because she’s Queen of South Shore, and she feels obligated to stay? She was going to leave with Wallace once upon a time, so what changed?
I gape at her and look for any clue that she’s fucking with me.
My first thought is, what does she want? Why does she want me here? Why did she want me on the couch?
Why did she say that?
“You’re freaking out.”
Three words.
And I want to leave.
There’s some sort of superpower Bay Astor has, and it’s top-notch, as if she trained to be a spy her whole life.
Vivian couldn’t tell when I was having a nervous breakdown. Or maybe she didn’t care.
Maybe I’m not as deep as I think I am.
I could be so easily read that everyone knows how completely fucked up I am.
“Sit,” Bay orders, pointing at the coffee table in front of her. “We end this shit right now.”
I have no fucking idea what she believes she’s going to do, but I stand, frozen to my spot.
“Show me what I need to do. I need you to guide me through this. How can I express that I care without you thinking I have an ulterior motive, Oz?”
She’ll bleed for me.
It’s my first thought and the only way I’ll know she’s serious.
And when I keep hold of her blue eyes and she doesn’t recoil away from my stare, I reach behind me and pull out a small blade from my pocket.
I watch for fear to cross her features. For her to ask me what the hell I’m doing, but none of that ever comes.
She’s either insane or cunning.
I’m thinking a little of both.
Flicking the switchblade open, Bay watches me with ease as I press the sharp tip into my index finger, feeling my skin slice open and releasing a soft sigh from my lips. It’s like extricating all the pent-up disgrace and anxiety coursing through my veins since she said she wasn’t leaving. The way she can sense me as I can feel her.
A connection equally as terrifying as it is intriguing.
Slowly, I hold out the knife to Bay, fully expecting her to glower or knock the thing out of my palm, but she slips it from between my digits and takes it into her possession.
Nothing is more like an aphrodisiac than blood to me.
It’s pure and bright. The substance oozes out freely and without reservation.
But it’s not my favorite color.
It’s blue.
The same blue that holds its color in Bay’s icy eyes.
The exact ones that contain mine when she slowly slides the metal against the soft flesh of her own finger. Her nostrils flare only a twitch before she silently waits for further instruction. I gaze down at the red slowly pooling from her flesh, and I don’t believe I’d normally like the sight of her gushing in pain, but she’s bleeding for me .
I raise my hand, watching Bay mock my actions before pressing her palm daintily into mine. My cock stirs slightly in my jeans as I bring our joined hands to my lips. Her blue eyes are keen with curiosity as she patiently waits for my next move.
My mouth gently wraps around her index finger, immediately tasting metal against my tongue as her cushion-like lips part.
Her hand slightly flinches against mine, but she doesn’t pull away as I suck, my balls tightening from the taste of her soft skin against my taste buds as I bid myself to let her go.
Every nerve ending in my body screams at me to drop her hand.
That this is dangerous.
This is everything I shouldn’t want but everything I need.
I don’t fit in the realm of what my brothers do with her. She’s not mine like that. I’ll never be able to form a physical relationship with Bay because I can barely handle this without fear and unease eating away at me.
After a few waning seconds, I release her, drawing her finger down my bottom lip for one last brush before gently dropping it altogether.
Bay stares at me in a way she’s never looked at me before. Her eyes are slightly wider than normal, and she hasn’t pried them away, as if she’s in a trance of some sort.
It’s not until she lifts her hand that I chase after hers again. The familiarity of us doing this several times already is beginning to become second nature to me at this point.
And when she brings my bleeding finger to her lips, all bodily functions in me freeze.
Her lips are so velvety when she makes the tip of my digit disappear. Her wet tongue darts across the cut, and a whole shiver racks through my body, making it buzz in response while my blood pumps ferociously in my veins toward her .
Vivian would never do this.
She would never take me with an open wound and suck me into her body. I don’t believe she’d even help me dress it, not that it’s huge or anything, but a Band-Aid would be the most common sense thing to do.
Bay keeps her focus locked on mine as she gives my finger one last swallow, and my cock jerks needily in my jeans again.
I can’t remember the last time that happened besides the woman who had me murder the guy she cheated on Cairo with.
I never would’ve fucked Vivian behind Cairo’s back.
However, it didn’t mean my body didn’t react to hers.
But now, my senses long for Bay in ways I can’t fully form into reasons I can understand. When she mocks my actions and draws my finger down her lower lip, I almost fall to my knees.
My whole body tingles with the sensation of desiring more, but the rationality in my brain kicks on in warning that this is a dangerous game I’m playing. I may turn into my lust-filled brothers in one way or another.
“What else?” she asks me, her voice gentle and quiet while she permits my hand to fall to my side.
I don’t know how to explain to her I’m apprehensive about what’s to come. That I’m not able to give her what she wants because I’m too closed off and happy there.
I shake my head. Anything else is too much right now.
“Then listen to me, Ozzy,” she says, her tone hardening, as though now she’s displeased with me. “Get it through your thick head that there’ll never be a day when I’ll choose someone outside of this group over you. You are not disposable to me. You married me. You saved me from Ramsey, and it’s not something I’ve quickly forgotten, nor will I ever. You’re mine …and I’ll never allow you freedom unless you fight me for it. Got it?”
Fight her for it.
I nod through my rampant thoughts, dissecting everything she said as she leans back and curls herself right back into a ball underneath her blanket.
She sends me one last withering look, as if I’m fucking stupid, but I don’t feel like it.
I feel like she just took ownership of me.
Like she just stamped her damn claim on me.
She did. She just said it.
I remember Reeve saying women are fleeting things. One moment, they want something, and the next, they change their minds. There is a reason for everything—each action, word, or idea.
Pondering the present, I feel slow that I’m not fully picking up what she’s laying down, but I do understand one word.
Mine.