Chapter 26 Bellamy
TWENTY-SIX
BELLAMY
Rafe swipes underneath his nose, spitting blood onto the pavement. His eyes don’t move from Crowe.
The wrench drags along my jaw in a deliberate taunt. Rafe’s gaze drops to it for exactly one second.
Fear is an interesting emotion, one I’ve become well-acquainted with over the years. It has different flavors though, based on the situation and the level of terror.
Elias Crowe doesn’t even crack my top twenty.
And with Rafe standing in front of me, looking like some kind of dark avenger? Shit, Crowe’s little stunt is a blip on the map.
“Get your fucking hands off her,” Rafe warns, “or I’ll make sure you never use them again.”
A shiver skates down my spine at the promise. My heart thunders in my ears, and my mouth suddenly feels dry.
Crowe laughs, but his grip on me tightens, which tells me everything the laugh is trying to hide. “I don’t think you’re in a position to tell me what to do, Calloway.”
Rafe rolls his neck once, slow, like he’s working out a kink. Then he takes one step forward. Crowe’s arm goes rigid against my collarbone.
“Last time,” Rafe says.
His voice hasn’t changed. That’s the part that makes the hair on my arms stand up. No escalation or warning register. Just the same even tone, like he’s already decided how this ends and is giving Crowe the courtesy of a countdown.
Crowe shifts his weight behind me. I feel it in the way his balance redistributes, heel to toe, and I know before it happens that he’s about to make a move.
So I do the only thing I can do: I drop like a stone.
I go dead weight, bracing myself for impact. It’s the only way it’s effective—the only way to give Rafe an opening.
“You bitch,” Crowe growls, hands swiping at me.
But he doesn’t get purchase, and I hit the pavement on one knee.
“Fuck,” I breathe out through the shock.
Rafe is already moving—not toward Crowe, toward me, one hand closing around my arm and yanking me up and behind him in a single motion.
“Okay, baby?” he murmurs over his shoulder, never pulling his attention from Crowe.
“Fine,” I pant, pressing my forehead to the middle of his back, to ground myself. Blood trickles down my shin, but I ignore it.
“Wait here, yeah?”
I nod against his back, and a second later, he steps forward.
“Right or left?” Rafe asks.
“Don’t come any closer.” Crowe points the wrench at Rafe like it’s a sword.
His eyes dart around, and I chance a look over my shoulder to make sure the other two guys are still on the ground. They’re not unconscious, but they’re fucked up. They’re not getting up any time soon.
“C’mon, Crowe. You know how this goes, right?” Rafe circles him. “You touched something that belonged to me. I warned you, but you didn’t listen. So now, you have to pay the consequences.” Rafe stops in front of him once more. “So once more: right or left? If you don’t pick, she will.”
Crowe’s hard eyes find mine before they slide back to Rafe. He tips his chin up, jaw clenched. “You won’t get away with this.”
Rafe shrugs and calls over his shoulder, “Which one, baby?”
I look at him, noting how he held the wrench in his right hand. I let that inner monster peek out, that quiet voice that urges me to be reckless, to steal shit, to lay claim to things. I so rarely get to unleash it, even for a moment.
“Right.”
Rafe flashes me a grin and nods, like he approves. Crowe, however, blanches. The color leaks out of his face.
“Don’t just fucking sit there. This crazy asshole is going to chop off my fucking hand,” Crowe yells to his friends.
Rafe only chuckles. “No one’s chopping off hands today—”
“Though I think the utility knife could probably do it. It’s pretty sharp,” I interrupt, spotting the knife I dropped in all the commotion.
I scoop it up and stand next to Rafe. I don’t actually know if that’s true, but I want him to feel as afraid as he was trying to make me feel when he so casually discussed forcing himself and his friends on me.
Crowe looks at me, disgust painting his features long and drawn out. “What the fuck?”
I lift a shoulder and flash him the blade. “I’m just saying.”
Crowe backs up a few steps. “You’re both fucked up, you know that, right?” Crowe trips over his own feet and falls down on the pavement hard.
Crowe tries to scramble up, but Rafe is on him before he gets both feet planted. There’s no warning—no barking, no threat—just a blur of movement and a sickening, wet snap.
His mouth opens in a yell so raw, even his cowardly backup flinches.
But not Rafe. He looks almost bored by the spectacle.
“Relax. It’s just your wrist. I spared your hand, so you can still ride with a cast,” Rafe says, the words razor-blade smooth. He steps in, towering, and looks down at what’s left of Crowe’s bravado. “You’re fucking welcome.”
The whole time, I’m frozen—partly by the violence, partly by the quiet satisfaction on Rafe’s face. Crowe had it coming.
“Go ahead,” Rafe says, gesturing dismissively toward Crowe’s boys. “Pick him up and get the fuck out of here.” His voice is calm, but there’s a pulse of something wild behind it. Something that makes the men on the ground scramble to obey, dragging Crowe away with limp desperation.
Rafe’s attention swings to me. All the ice in his expression thaws in an instant; he’s scanning me for damage, not even pretending to hide the panic behind his eyes.
He closes the distance in two strides. His hand, the one he just used to break that guy’s wrist, palms the front of my throat so gently, it makes my knees a little weak. He drops his forehead to mine, kissing me hard once.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Me? Are you?”
He rolls his forehead along mine, dropping another kiss to my lips. “Baby, I’m fine. This is nothing.” There’s the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
“Just a Tuesday, huh?” I exhale a chuckle.
“Come on,” he says, nodding toward his bike like we didn’t just go from zero to violence and back again in ten minutes. “We’ve got more straps to cut.”
“Okay.”
We get on his bike. The engine turns over and we pull out onto the road, and I wait for the wind to do what it’s supposed to do—clear my head, cool me down, put some distance between me and the last ten minutes.
It doesn’t.
I’m still seeing his face when he turned to check on me. Still feeling the particular weight of his hand closing around my throat.
I shift behind him without meaning to. My arms tighten around his middle.
His hand drops from the handlebar and covers mine where it’s pressed against his stomach. “You good?” he calls back.
“Yeah.” I nod against his back.
The road curves and I move with him, my body already knowing to lean before I think to. The ocean flashes between breaks in the bluffs—white and flat and far away. I watch it and try to focus on the cold coming off the water, the way the wind is pulling my hair back, anything external and real.
It doesn’t reach whatever is still running hot underneath my skin.
And isn’t that the problem?
My thumb moves once against his stomach before I can stop it. Then I tap his thigh twice.
He slows immediately, scanning the road ahead before easing us off onto a small overlook carved into the side of the coastal highway. Gravel crunches under the tires as he brings the bike to a stop, cutting the engine a second later.
“You okay?” His voice cuts through the quiet.
“Yes—no.” I shake my head, stepping off his bike and standing next to him.
“What do you need, baby?” His gaze roams over my face, but he doesn’t touch me.
I wish he would. I wish he could just read my mind and know that I have this coursing need inside of me right now. One I don’t know how to extinguish.
“Fuck it,” I mutter, reaching for him. My hand catches at the front of his shirt, pulling him down just enough to close the space between us, and then my mouth is on his before he can ask another question.
He responds instantly. His hand sweeps to the nape of my neck, fingers digging into the tangle of my hair, gripping tight as he pulls me closer. The kiss is fierce and unyielding—a raw, hungry collision.
I lean into him, palms pressed flat against the hard plane of his chest, feeling the thunder of his heartbeat against my fingertips.
“Baby,” he says against my mouth.
I pull him back in. His hand slides from my hair to my jaw, then lower—his thumb tracing the line of my throat, the same throat he held so gently twenty minutes ago with the same hand he used to break Crowe’s wrist—and my breath catches on the contradiction of it.
“You’re not hurt,” he says, like he’s confirming it one last time.
“No.”
“Then what—”
I shift my weight and let my hands drop, fingers curling at his waistband. I look up at him. “I need you.”