Chapter 36
ASHLEY
Carly: OMFG I just had a dorm inspection and totally forgot to tidy my room. Bro. brO!! I had left a butt plug and a giant bottle of lube on my bedside table!!!! RIP me, please say nice things at my funeral. Fuck my life.
Ashley: Sweet, does that mean I get your new LV handbag?
Carly: Fuck you! But yes, it’s in my will. Treat her well.
L uckily, we hadn’t taken our sledgehammers to the bathroom, so we could shower and rinse off the wine and blood. Once we were clean and I’d dressed, I forced Nate to sit his ass on the toilet lid while I tried to patch up the dozen or more slices in his back from the broken glass.
“Two of these might need stitches,” I told him with a frustrated sigh, “and I can’t work out if you have any glass inside this one.” I gently prodded one of the deeper cuts, and it oozed blood while Nate grunted.
“Are there any butterfly bandages in there?” he asked, gesturing to the little first-aid kit I’d found below the vanity. “If there is, just use those and I can get it checked out later.”
Biting my lip, I tossed the bloody cotton swab I’d been using into the trash and started pulling the contents of the first-aid bag out onto the counter.
“Yup, there’s four. And some normal Band-Aids too.
” I laid them out and grabbed another alcohol-soaked swab to clean the two deep cuts again before applying the sticky “stitches” to hold the wound closed.
Nate barely made a sound as I worked, but the tension in his shoulders told me how much it must be hurting. When I finished on the deep cuts, I moved onto the smaller ones, and my patience snapped.
“Are we going to talk about this?” I murmured as I turned his broad back into a patchwork of beige fabric.
His shoulders lifted slightly, then sagged as he let out a long breath. “I thought you didn’t like talking about things like this.”
“I don’t,” I agreed. “But this feels like it needs to be discussed before you get hurt worse than a couple of stitches. Even that feels like way too far, but I’m excusing it because I had no idea you were lying on broken glass.
So…what’s the deal? Is this…” I choked on my question a little, but forced my way forward. “Is this how it was with Paige?”
She was a bitch, but I had a hard time seeing her as sexually dominant. She struck me as much more of a pleaser .
Nate snort-laughed at that, his whole body shaking as he turned his head slightly to look up at me. “No. Definitely not. This is just you, Duckling. Only you.”
Why did that make me go a little weak at the knees?
“Okay…” I murmured after a moment. It felt like there was more to it than that, but I was struggling to find the words to ask.
He sighed again, his head hanging. “It’s complicated.”
“If you don’t want to tell me…” I offered weakly, because if he didn’t want to tell me, I’d actually be kind of upset about it.
“I do. I just…I think I know what you’re going to say.” He went silent long enough that I went back to patching up his back, moving slower to give him a chance to think. “It’s what I need to balance my guilt,” he finally murmured.
That confused me, though. “Your guilt? Over what?”
“Over how I’ve treated you, Ash. I don’t…
I don’t deserve to have you the same way the guys do.
I don’t fucking deserve to even exist in your orbit, and yet no matter how many times I tell myself to simply leave…
I can’t do it. So I need you to hurt me, Duckling, as penance for how I’ve behaved.
Without that…” His voice cracked, and he trailed off, his shoulders set so tight, it was like he was physically bracing for rejection or judgment.
“I need it. I deserve it. And if I’m totally honest, that night when you tried to smother me with a pillow shook something loose inside me.
Love and hate are separated by such a thin line, aren’t they? ”
I needed to take a few deep breaths as I attempted to digest what he’d just confessed.
“Yeah,” I whispered, my voice rough with the gravity of all he’d just revealed. “Yeah, I guess they are. I hope you’re clear now which side of the line we’re standing on?”
He huffed a short laugh. “I’m clear. But the weight of past behavior is still weighing heavily on my mind, and the only way I can…” He broke off again with a frustrated sound.
I smiled, understanding him without the need for the rest of the sentence. “The only way you can come is if I hurt you?” I whispered the words in his ear, and his flesh rippled with a shiver beneath my hands, making me smile.
“Yes,” he admitted with a small groan. “And to be fair, some of it just feels good without the emotional baggage. Like when you pull my hair?” I obliged, threading my fingers into his hair and gripping the strands right at the scalp.
He responded with a whimper that made my pussy clench, and I needed to bite my lip to remind myself we’d just fucked. Now wasn’t the time for round two.
Reluctantly, I released his hair and put the last couple of Band-Aids on his bleeding back, then dabbed away the drips left on his smooth skin.
“You’re all done,” I murmured, dropping a quick kiss to his shoulder.
“We should probably get out of here. I’ve just realized we fucked in your mom’s home and that has me all creeped out, seeing as she is actively trying to murder us both. ”
“You’ve got a point,” he agreed, scooping up his shirt and pulling it on with a wince. “Also, I didn’t tell the guys we were coming here, so if they check our tracking app, they’ll shit bricks.”
“Seems like not the smartest idea,” I muttered, tossing the remainder of the packaging in the trash and rinsing my hands.
I’d kicked off my high heels not long after we had arrived—swinging a sledgehammer in stilettos was too advanced for me—and it took a minute to find the left one under a destroyed painting of some poppy flowers.
I hesitated as Nate locked up the apartment behind us, frowning nervously at the totally normal hallway. “Should we be worried about leaving all that mess?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I’m the only one with a key, aside from my m—uh, Jocelyn. If she ever comes back here—which would be stupid—I’d quite like her to see what we’ve done to her shit.”
“Fair enough,” I muttered, leaning into him as he draped his arm over my shoulders. Almost subconsciously, I found myself reaching up to hold that hand as we made our way down to the lobby and out to the truck.
As Nate drove, I found myself playing with my ring. His ring. The ring. I was stupidly pleased to have it back, but at some stage, we probably needed to discuss it. We weren’t actually engaged, and there was no reason to pretend anymore. So why had he given it back?
“You don’t have to keep that on if you don’t want to,” Nate murmured, seeming to read my thoughts. “I just wanted you to have it.”
I frowned, looking down at the beautiful ring. “Do…do you want me to take it off?” Why did that thought hurt so much?
“No,” he replied. That was it, nothing more, but that was enough. It stayed.
We were home in only a few minutes, parking the truck beside my new baby in their assigned spaces, then headed for the elevator.
The boys’ apartment was the only one on their floor, and I was pretty confident I’d never seen anyone else in the hallway, so I was shocked to see someone pacing the floor just outside the front door.
He didn’t seem to notice us, lost in thought as he scowled down at the carpet and gave himself a little pep talk. “Come on, Mike, you can do it. Knock on the door, deliver the news, leave. They’re just a bunch of kids, how mean can they be?”
A snort of laughter escaped me, and Colonel Mike’s head snapped up like a fucking bowstring being released. “Nathaniel, I didn’t see you there.”
“Clearly,” I muttered, and Nate gave me a little elbow in the ribs, like he wanted me to chill on being such a bitch to Royce’s dad.
“We weren’t expecting you, Mike,” Nate said instead, moving over to the front door and unlocking it, gesturing for us to enter.
It occurred to me that Nate was the only one who called him by his name instead of Colonel , but maybe that was due to Max’s friendship with him.
But shit, even Royce called him Colonel, which screamed all I needed to know about their father-son bond.
“Where have you been?” Carter demanded, standing from his seat on the sofa and sweeping me up in his arms. “Heath said the tracker had you pinned at Jocelyn’s apartment, but I insisted there must be a mistake because Nate wouldn’t do something that stupid , right?
” The hard tone combined with the tension in his arms implied there was only one correct answer.
Well…shit.
“Uh, hi,” Royce said with some level of shock, coming out of his bedroom wearing just a towel. “Colonel, what are you doing here? Were we expecting you?”
Poor thing was pale and startled, thinking he’d somehow forgotten a prior arrangement with his father. What kind of parent put that look on their child’s face? It made me want to text my mom and tell her how much I loved her.
“No, I apologize for the intrusion,” Colonel Mike said with a forced smile. “I have news and thought you all would want to hear it in person. May I?” He gestured to the living room, and Carter released me to offer the tightly strung man a seat.
Royce looked at me in confusion, and I pointed to his bedroom. “Clothes,” I said softly. “He can wait.”
And whatever the Colonel had come to tell us, Heath probably needed to hear it too, so I knocked lightly on his door to let him know we had a guest.
“Has something happened with regards to Jocelyn?” Carter asked once everyone was gathered in the living room. No one had offered to get the Colonel a sparkling water this time, which made me weirdly pleased.
Colonel Mike gave a short nod. “Yes. Earlier this evening, some informants made me aware of a break in at Swansong Memorial Home which was under surveillance by some of my department. The funeral director, Mr. Mortimer Graves, triggered his silent alarm before he was killed, and due to the attention on Jocelyn’s case, our teams were on site in under two minutes.
” He paused, his lips tight as he drew a breath.
“There was a lot of gunfire and casualties on both sides, but the bottom line is that Jocelyn has been apprehended. She is right now being transported to maximum security at Clearview Correctional Facility under military guard.”
Holy fuck. That was not what I’d thought he was going to say.
“You’ve got her?” Nate asked, his voice hoarse. “Alive?”
Colonel Mike nodded. “Yes, son, we have her. There will obviously need to be formal charges and legal proceedings, but I wanted you all to know firsthand that the danger is over.”
A short laugh escaped my chest, and I wrinkled my nose. “That feels very famous last words doesn’t it? How do we know that Jocelyn hasn’t hypnotized you to tell us this so our guard is down?”
Colonel Mike’s eyes widened slightly as he met my skeptical gaze.
“I thought you all had more understanding of Jocelyn’s experiments than you apparently do.
Part of her research centered around why certain people have more natural immunity to hypnosis than others and how she could use medication to weaken that mental block.
Your mother and Max are prime examples of this. As am I.”
Well, fuck. That would explain why she hadn’t just manipulated Max from day one.
“Anyway, if you don’t believe me—which is a very understandable concern—then I will arrange for you to visit the prison on Monday to see her with your own eyes. Is that suitable?” He directed the question at me, since I was the one still smelling a rat.
I bit my cheek, thinking it through. What else could he even offer as evidence, if not that? Nothing. Short of witnessing her behind bars ourselves, how could we be sure?
“Okay,” I murmured grudgingly. “That would be appreciated.”
“There is one other matter of concern that I wanted to make you aware of,” Colonel Mike continued, looking somewhat reluctant, “Your parents’ bodies…we didn’t find them. Jocelyn is refusing to speak, and there is no sign of what she might have done with them…but they’re missing.”
Nate and I exchanged a long look, and the corners of his mouth tipped ever so slightly.
“That’s very concerning,” Heath said, absolute straight-faced while Royce reeled me into his chest, pretending to console me before I could start laughing and give it all away.
As far as Colonel Mike was concerned, maybe our parents were zombies now and walked their own asses out of the funeral home.
When Nate cleared his throat and politely but firmly suggested it was time for Colonel Mike to leave, I relaxed into Royce’s embrace. His pulse was racing far too fast for my liking, and I mentally threw another dart at his sperm donor’s face. Royce deserved better.