20. Chapter 17
Eli
It’s official. I’m a fucking mess.
I can’t take my eyes off the woman lying next to me. After last night and what happened yesterday, she should be exhausted.
But that doesn’t stop me from staring at her.
Her closed eyelids hide my favorite color. Long lashes contrast with pale skin. Her cheeks are a little pink. Messy black hair rests on a white pillow.
My Raven.
Zoe is gorgeous, though she has no idea. Quite the opposite. She lives in the shadow of Ash, who’s been put on a pedestal. And yet, she has something Ash never had.
Her swollen lips are parted; she breathes peacefully and in silence. After all the time I’ve spent kissing those soft pillows, it doesn’t surprise me at all.
She’s completely naked beneath the sheets. The mere thought of it keeps me half hard and ready.
Zoe is lying on her side, facing me. One leg rests on the covers. A bandage is taped to her knee.
After we made love for the first time, I insisted on taking care of her wound. Wincing, she let me disinfect it and put a Band-Aid on it. That was only after I’d washed every inch of her body under that damn shower, which was definitely too small for two people.
I remember that look in her eyes when I announced my intention to join in. You would think I was an alien. Once again, I know I’m blurring the boundaries I set for our arrangement, but it was stronger than me. Zoe is the first person, aside from Ryker and Theo, whom I feel the need to take care of.
So, ignoring her protests, I joined her in the shower. I personally made sure she washed off everything that, in my mind, could link her to Damien Estrada. If he touched her, kissed her…
I can’t bring myself to think about it without wanting to kill him. Not only because he’s a two-faced son of a bitch and is playing the role of his life in front of Zoe. He’s too close to her; he wants to claim her. It’s unbearable.
Before she fell asleep again, I begged her to turn back, cut off contact with him, and not put herself in danger. Obviously, that stubborn woman refused.
Her determination is commendable, but she won’t hear that from me in this case. That’s for sure.
I’m torn apart by all this. It seems like no one but me understands it. Do I fully understand it myself?
Zoe’s phone, lying on the nightstand, vibrates. A text message. The suspicion that it’s him comes to my mind. The temptation to glance at the screen is strong, but I hold back, clenching my jaw instead. I’m a jealous jerk. Not to mention that it’s an invasion of privacy.
To keep from grabbing the phone and making sure it’s not him, I get out of bed. I go to the bathroom to pull myself together and catch my breath. Splashing my face with ice-cold water cools me down a bit.
When I return to the small bedroom, I stand in front of the window. Dawn is breaking, and I haven’t slept a wink. I couldn’t. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot papers scattered across her desk. Right in front of the monitors she works on.
A piece of a printed photo is sticking out from under one sheet of paper. Curiosity burns within me.
Don’t do it. These are her things. Don’t be a hypocrite.
Fuck it. I’ve been called worse.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I take that one step. I slide the document aside, and my gaze falls on a picture of a man in a suit. He resembles so many others working long hours in a corporate office. He’s glancing over his shoulder, expecting to find someone behind him.
I’m unfamiliar with this guy. His face doesn’t ring a bell. But why does Zoe have his photo? Who is he?
There’s something else there. Underneath is another picture. Or rather, a printout from some newspaper. In the small black-and-white photo, a man is standing in a courtroom, guards flank him on both sides. He has his hands cuffed in front, and he’s looking into the camera, smiling like a madman.
I scan the brief article. Jeremiah Wilcox was convicted of a series of crimes. He ended up in state prison.
“What the fuck?” A whisper escapes me.
What does all this mean?
I push the photo aside again. My eyes widen as I see another guy.
The third photo shows a man in a boxing ring.
He’s huge, with a furious glint in his eyes, clenched fists wrapped in bandages.
No gloves. If he took any punches, you can’t tell from the pic.
His opponent, conversely, appears to have suffered the worst beating imaginable. Barely standing. Covered in blood.
“What the hell are you doing?” Zoe’s weak voice interrupts me. My head snaps her way.
She’s sitting on the bed with the comforter pulled up to her neck, trying to hide from me. Or maybe she’s embarrassed. Her eyes are wide with surprise, still hazy from her broken sleep.
Something else flashes across her face. It crosses her features in a split second. Fear? Terror?
“Answer my question,” she presses, angry.
“What the hell is this, Zoe? What are these photos?”
“It’s none of your business. Have you been going through my things?”
“I didn’t plan to,” I say, taking a step toward her. It’s not well received, I gather, as she squeezes her fists tighter. It doesn’t escape me that she’s hiding from me while I stand here naked. “The photo caught my eye, and that’s why I took a peek. I swear to you I didn’t mean to snoop.”
Zoe’s rapid breathing slows. She lowers her gaze and, after a moment, her tense shoulders relax.
Something inside me tells me this is something big and important.
It’s just a hunch. So I approach her slowly, like a wounded animal.
Lying down where I was before, I pull the blanket up to my waist and wait.
I don’t say a word, only watch her. She takes almost five minutes to gather herself and lie down next to me. We’re facing each other, staring. In her eyes, I see a mixture of everything in small doses. Pain, shame, hatred, terror, anger…
Still, I wait for her to make the first move. No questions.
“Those are pictures of the people I grew up with in the foster home,” she murmurs.
“Those three men?”
She nods before answering. “Yes. That’s Nathaniel, Jeremiah, and Owen.”
I have some knowledge about Ash’s and Zoe’s childhoods. I’ve heard they didn’t have an easy start in life, but I’ve never pried into it. In the same way that I wouldn’t want anyone to meddle in my childhood.
“Are you in touch with them?” I ask.
“No… we didn’t have a good relationship.”
The throbbing in her neck quickens again, just like her breathing. But I don’t comment on it.
What does that mean?
I’m not immune to the ugliest face of this world. I know what great dangers lurk for small children, how cruel the times we live in are.
My head fills with many scenarios. I pray—even though I don’t even believe. But I have to be sure.
“What does that mean, Zoe?”
She speaks in a choked voice only after a moment, “Promise me, Eli, that you won’t tell anyone. You won’t reveal to anyone what I’m about to tell you.”
“Nothing will leave this room. I promise.” And I do it without ever having to wonder if I can keep my promise.
I don’t know by whose grace, but this woman trusts me. And that makes my heart race.
And I’m fucking terrified of what I’m about to hear. Almost as much as I feared for her life the day before.
“When our mom died, we ended up in the system’s care. I was too young to remember many details from that time, but what I remember most is the daily fear. Real and suffocating fear. That we’d be separated. That I’d never see my sister again. We had to stay together at all costs.”
Instinctively, I grab her hand and intertwine our fingers to let her be aware that she’s not alone. I hope to give her even a little comfort.
“I don’t want to bore you with the ups and downs we went through, but eventually we ended up at one home that would take us both in.
Rick and Ingrid had made it their life’s work.
When we came under their roof, they were already caring for four boys.
And for a while, things were pretty good there.
Enough that I became a happy child again.
I was safe, even if they didn’t love us like their own children.
But I had Ash. And my foster brothers. Hope that everything in our lives would still work out took root in me. But one day, everything changed—”
Zoe closes her eyes momentarily, and I don’t press her. I wait until she’s ready to continue.
I’m worried about what she sees behind her eyelids. I know she’s back there now, in that house.
Finally, Zoe takes a breath and continues.
“When Ingrid died, it was just us. I mean, nothing changed except that one day she was just gone. But no one batted an eye at the fact that Rick, a widower and a man, was left alone with six kids to care for. It was convenient for the system not to see, so everything else remained the same. Ash was growing up and had seen a lot of shit in life by then. She didn’t trust anyone.
She saw danger everywhere. One evening, she told me the day would come when we’d have to get out of there, and she had to find money so we could survive.
The next day after school, she disappeared for hours.
No one asked where she’d been or if something had happened.
No one reacted to her absence, though my panic wouldn’t let me settle down.
But she came back. The next day she disappeared again, and the next, and so on.
Later, I found out she’d started pick-pocketing.
Thanks to her charm and quickness, it was a piece of cake for her.
Then she got into the underground scene and started fighting in the ring. ”
“But what was happening to you during that time?”
“Exactly. I—it started innocently enough. A little teasing here, a shove there. I had foster brothers a few years older than me, so there was a natural gap between us. My hope of having older, caring siblings turned to dust. It wasn’t the fairy tale that had lived in my head before. It was—”