Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
He carried her into the bathroom and set her down on one of the benches in the shower.
He got the water to her preferred temperature and the steam billowing, then spent a good bit of time inspecting Romily’s lovely body the way he always did, to make sure the games they played left only the marks he wished her to wear.
She sat back and watched him, her gaze still soft and warm. “I love you,” she told him, as he knelt there before her. “I had no idea it was possible to love this much without it being dangerous.”
He smiled, and nipped the inside of her wrist as he held her hand. “Little bird, it’s always dangerous. What it’s never going to be is damaging . Never.”
And the gold in her eyes was so bright it made the sunshine pouring in the windows seem pale in comparison.
This was what he’d wanted, Zachary thought. This was what he’d been certain they could have. What he hadn’t expected was how it felt like peace inside him.
Like after all this time, from his earliest memories through prison to the life he’d led since, he was finally home.
As safe with this woman as she was with him.
It felt like a fucking sacrament.
Zachary was tempted to get distracted as he pulled her to her feet—Romily standing there so lush and beautiful, made of lean muscle and aware of her own power now, not to mention all his in every possible way now — but there was going to be time for that later.
A long, long time, if he had anything to say about it.
While she was getting ready, he made a quick call to Frederick. Just to get a few details straight in his head, and to discuss an action plan moving forward.
“Claiming that prize, are we?” his friend asked with a laugh. His voice was dry. “Who could possibly have foreseen this shocking turn of events.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Zachary suggested.
His old friend was still laughing as Zachary ended the call.
Then he and Romily got back in the car and headed out of the marina.
This time they headed away from the Bay and deeper into the suburbs.
They passed the gleaming white Claremont Hotel, sitting pretty on its hill.
They went through Caldecott Tunnel, out of the East Bay and into the broader Bay Area, and on until Walnut Creek.
It was quiet in the car. Peaceful. Romily had her hand on his leg. He returned the favor when he could take his hand off the wheel in all of the typically aggressive traffic. But as they drove toward Romily’s past, he found himself thinking about his.
Not in specifics this time. But there was a part of Zachary that would always miss the redwoods that had surrounded him in his youth.
All that eucalyptus and moss. But that wasn’t something that he could return to.
Because what he really missed were those snatches of his childhood where he’d been, if not precisely innocent, still young enough to imagine that things could get better on their own.
He knew better now. He knew that any kind of change took work. Sometimes a whole lot of suffering, but he understood that the only way out of pain was through. He was more than happy to put the work in to make that happen.
Today included. He followed Romily’s directions as she led him deep into one of those Contra Costa County towns that he’d never paid much attention to. This far out of San Francisco proper, to his way of thinking, a person might as well commit and move into the Central Valley.
But then, he supposed he couldn’t help but judge the kind of person who would buy a house in a development where everything looked beige and boring and the same. Zachary thought that was the kind of life choice that made statements about the sort of life a person expected to have.
Then again, life on the waterfront wasn’t for everyone. Oakland was a troubled city, but it was his now. He wouldn’t trade a single bit of spray paint on his gym doors for what looked to him like anesthesia delivered in the form of houses.
Or even the nostalgic deep green of Larkspur.
“Are you okay?” he asked Romily as they navigated their way through a neighborhood that felt like a maze to him.
She’d been gazing out the window, but when she turned to look at him, she didn’t look frightened at all. If anything, she looked resolved.
“I am more than okay.” Her voice had that same resolve.
“If anything, I just… can’t believe that this is finally happening.
That I’m in any kind of situation to come back here or try to reclaim anything.
Part of me thought that I would be running and hiding for the rest of my life.
” She smiled at him. “And to be clear, I was perfectly okay with that. Didn’t really want to lay eyes on him ever again. ”
“You don’t have to now,” Zachary told her. He didn’t know what expression was on his face, only that her eyes went wide. “I’m more than happy to have a little talk with your man myself.”
“He’s not my man. Thank God.”
When Romily reached over to put her hand on his leg, Zachary covered it with his.
They made it to the house in question and it was indistinguishable from all the other houses on the same street.
He figured that was on purpose. What a perfect way to hide in plain sight.
An asshole like Romily’s ex could look like everyone else on the outside so no one would question what he was doing indoors.
He wondered how many other houses on the street were storing the same kind of secrets behind their matching interiors.
It hadn’t been any different where he’d grown up.
The houses might not have matched and they’d been tucked away prettily in all the redwoods, but the misery people lived with in private while pretending they were happy in public was no doubt the same.
Zachary couldn’t do it. He liked the brash honesty of a place where shit was always on blast and usually in the streets. He liked the clarity of knowing exactly where he stood.
He couldn’t go back.
This was the last stop on the nostalgia tour, and then he and Romily were never looking back again. It was going to be their bright fucking future all the way.
They parked in the driveway and walked up to the front door.
Romily had explained that her douchebag ex was one of those cyclists— meaning of course, the kind of man who pranced around in Lycra and tap shoes.
Zachary didn’t feel he really needed to express his sentiments on that in words when the single look he’d sent her way made his feelings on that shit clear.
He already knew that there was a high probability that Joseph wouldn’t be home when they get here. But he could admit that there was a not-insignificant part of him that really, really wished that the man who’d treated Romily so badly was around. Zachary would have loved to teach him a few lessons.
After Romily rang the doorbell a few times, she looked up at him and shrugged. “He’s not the kind of guy who ignores a doorbell. There’s no way he’s here.”
“Let’s do it,” Zachary said. And stood at the door as she reached down behind one of the shrubs flanking the front step and dug around until she came back up with the key.
“He likes his routines,” she told him. “He doesn’t like change.”
The only time Zachary saw her pause was when she opened up the door and took what sounded like a steadying sort of breath before she stepped over the threshold. He settled his hand at the nape of her neck and that seemed to help. She smiled up at him. Then she led the way inside.
Romily walked through the house, looking around as she went.
Her frown grew more and more pronounced as she led him up the narrow stairs to the second floor and then into the bedroom.
Once there, she turned in a circle. She was shaking her head as she walked to the closet—and actually slammed it shut again when she opened it.
“This is so creepy,” she managed to say, looking… not panicked, exactly. Just a little freaked. “I left over a year ago. And he hasn’t changed a thing. Not one thing, Zachary.”
So the dude was a psycho as well as a creep and a coward, who liked to beat up women. Noted.
“We can psychoanalyze him later,” Zachary told her gruffly. “Let’s get what you need to get out of here.”
The next hour, that was what they did. They loaded everything up, everything and anything that she thought was worth keeping, and they packed it away in his car.
And Zachary was kind of enjoying the idea of the loser coming back home from his day or performatively blocking traffic in spandex and discovering that Romily had come and gone. Seemed kind of fitting.
But they weren’t that lucky.
They had just locked up the house and returned the key to its place when Romily stiffened, then nodded over her shoulder.
Zachary turned, immediately on high alert. He watched the guy who came cycling in hot, and then threw himself off his obviously fancy bike. He let the bike itself fall into the grass, which, given the small sound that Romily made, was unusual.
But Zachary was assessing the other man, looking for hidden weapons—because otherwise, the dude was stringy and laughable. Zachary could break him in half without even exerting himself.
The conversation would change if Joseph was carrying, but as far as Zachary could tell—and this particular skill was one he took seriously and was good at because he had to be—he wasn’t. There was too much spandex.
Zachary doubted very much that the man had lifted anything heavier than his ego in his life.
“I knew you’d come crawling back,” Joseph said, his gaze fixed on Romily like Zachary wasn’t even there.
That was fine with Zachary. He had time to notice the important things. Like the fact that Joseph was not only scrawny, but short. Or short compared to him, anyway.
And even more important, Romily did not cower. She looked confused for a moment, and then she stared at Joseph as if she barely recognized him.