Chapter 20
Clara
As the weeks go by, there’s a hole growing in my chest. It’s getting bigger, and it’s all I can do to keep myself from breaking apart into tiny, angry piles of longing.
I’ve seen Walker and RJ every time I’m on campus, but when they approach, I have to call them off, the guards suspicious of their proximity. If it weren’t for Trips beside me on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’d have already crumbled.
A week after Trips was let out, Falk lets Trips receive a drop, and the jolt of jealousy eats at me like a maggot on a rotting steak.
I want that drop. I want to feel the electric touch of one of my loves, even if it’s just for a moment. One minute that I can hold on to as I dive deeper into the dungeon of Trips’ childhood home.
It’s hell. I might be free to wander, but in exchange, Trips’ dad has been calling me more often to eat with him, or to have coffee, or to tour the art gallery.
That one burned as he set up a little table across from the Rubens and insisted we drink tea—neither one of us touched the cups—while he continued his effort to ‘get to know my new daughter-in-law.’
It’s a joke. He’s digging for dirt on me.
On the guys. And every time, I let drop the tiniest morsels about our weaknesses.
Like how Jansen needs to live life on the edge to feel alive.
Or how Walker has to feel superior to feel secure.
Or the way RJ can get so lost in his work that he loses track of everything else.
Breadcrumbs.
I hate it.
But it’s necessary.
I’m never going to get this monster to like me. That ship has sailed. Instead, I’ve got to play the part of a girl who thinks she knows what she’s doing but is in over her head.
As I am, well and truly, over my head, I think I’m doing a pretty good job of sticking to my role.
Trips, meanwhile, gets dropped in for short, sporadic visits with me, and every time, he can’t stand to have his skin not touching mine.
Something changed while he was locked away, but I don’t know what.
Besides his apology, he hasn’t said much.
It’s like his voice is still caged in the room down the hall.
When he’s brought back to it, a little piece of me weeps.
But a bigger part of me roars in fury.
Trips is a person. A full-grown man. And his father controls his every move. He can’t shit without being watched, can’t speak without his words being turned against him, fuck without it being dictated by his father.
No one should live like that.
I’ve been dealing with this for a few months.
This has been his entire goddamn life.
Fuck that shit.
I stew in the unfairness of it all, and I plan. I analyze and calculate odds. When I started this, I simply wanted to get Trips free from his father. But I’m going to finish this knowing that Trips is free from his father.
It’s pitch black, a chill wind tearing through the trees outside when the door to my room clicks open. The broad shape of Trips is so familiar at this point that I slump back into my pillows, flipping the blanket up for him. He slides in beside me, flopping face first into the pillow with a groan.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
“I miss pillows,” he answers, his voice muffled by the fluff he’s burrowed into.
I chuckle, because the alternative is to scream. And screaming wouldn’t get us the hell out of here.
He rolls onto his side, opening his arm for me to tuck against his chest, and after a moment of hesitation, I do.
“You know, I’m not used to cuddling. I’ve never really done it before,” he says, his palm warm against the small of my back, the silk there twisting and folding under his fingers.
“You’re not too bad for a beginner,” I say, nuzzling into him.
I never thought I’d reach out to this man for physical comfort. But he’s surprised me. At every turn, he’s proven to me, and to himself, that he has it in him to be a man I need by my side.
Remembering the first time I came back from Maria’s with a book for him, I marvel at the change between us.
I was shaking, terrified of what his reaction would be to me dropping the collection of pages about anger management in his lap.
I’d gotten used to the explosive fury he’d shown until then, but after I almost died, it was like he was afraid to feel much of anything, wary that any emotion at all might lead to another anger-fueled break from reality.
Would he be mad? Sad? Fold even farther into himself?
I didn’t have a plan then. Not yet. But I knew we were going to have to come back. While we’d lost that round of the game, there were more rounds in the bout. Unfortunately, the mess around me wasn’t a team.
It was a collection of broken people, all of us trying to rediscover ourselves after our worlds turned upside down.
Walker struggled with light and moving too fast for longer than any of us thought he would. And his hand shook every time he tried to draw for weeks. We were ready to find another underground doctor for him when he finally started to get better.
RJ was angry. Furious really. But he wouldn’t talk about it. I still don’t know if it was because he hadn’t been the one to take down Smith, or if it was something else. He wouldn’t tell me.
Jansen’s hand was a mess, but it was nothing compared to his mind.
Through trial and error—and a hell of a lot of research on that shitty laptop—I took control of him.
I became the only person he’d listen to, the only person who could keep him from taking the most extreme risks.
The games that had been so fun in the bedroom were less fun in day-to-day life, but I had no idea what else to do for him, besides getting him real help.
And according to Maria, his type of drugs were almost impossible to get even with a steady doctor and a legal, local identity.
An impossible solution while we were on the run.
And then, there was Trips. Hollowed out with his hand wrapped up like a foam present, the surgeon we found all too happy to take cash under the table.
Nearly all our cash. The whole reason we’d ended up in La Pieta was that we’d run out of money for gas. We were just lucky that there was a place for us to park the RV.
But Trips. Everything about him scared me in a way I hadn’t seen before. Silent. Morose. Afraid to look me or any of the guys in the eyes. So when I came back with that first self-help book, I didn’t know what to expect. I couldn’t, with him behaving so differently from what he’d been before.
This was before we’d gotten the hammock, but he was always outside the RV, right from the beginning, sprawled in one of the lawn chairs we’d found stashed under the dinette. I’d pulled a chair next to him, and he’d watched me warily, like I might bite, or scream, or cry.
Like I was poison, waiting to suck the last bit of life from him.
“Hi,” I’d said, nervous to start the conversation.
“Hey,” he’d answered, more of a question than a greeting.
“I got this for you,” I’d said, handing him the book, chickening out of the speech I’d planned on the walk back about learning and healing, and accepting help from others.
He’d taken the book with his good hand, setting it in his lap, and I’d realized that he probably wouldn’t be able to turn the pages with his bad hand still bandaged the way it was.
“I didn’t think about your hand,” I’d whispered, staring at the dirt between my feet.
“I’m not your problem to worry about,” he’d answered.
Something about his easy dismissal of himself had fury bubbling over in me for the first time in weeks. “Where are you, Trips?” I’d demanded.
“What the hell do you mean? I’m right here.”
I’d pushed up from the chair, not wanting to pussyfoot around him anymore. “Great. Me too. So let’s act like it.”
He’d glared at me, silent.
“Trips, you fucked up. It happened. There’s no going backwards. But we’re still here. You and me, we’re alive. And we’re here. Together. So we’ve got to figure out a way to make this work.”
“So you gave me a book.”
I’d huffed out some angry grumble, annoyed that he was being so willingly obtuse. “I got you a book about dealing with anger.”
“I’m not angry right now.”
“Not outwardly. But I’d bet every cent I have that all that anger is currently pointed right back at yourself. Which isn’t any better.”
“Who are you to judge what the fuck is going on in my head?”
I’d sighed. “I’m not judging, Trips. Not at all. I found help. And I’m trying to find you help too. That’s all. Take it or leave it.”
Stomping up the stairs to the RV felt like defeat, even as RJ had pulled me into the bedroom, holding me close as I cried angry tears against his chest.
But three days later, I found the book open, pages down on the kitchen table.
It had been a start.
And all these months later, that dusty, dog-eared book had led us here.
“Seven weeks until the wedding,” I whisper.
“Yup. Then you’ve got me to boss around permanently.”
I smile against his chest. “What’s new about that?”
He chuckles, and a bit of the weight over us seems to lift, even as he tugs me closer against his chest, the building pressure of his erection against my stomach impossible to ignore. “You think that’s a permanent state? Because I doubt it.”
“You know I’ll fight for the right to boss you around.”
“And you know I’ll always win.” The smile stays in his voice, and it’s at that point that I realize how often it’s been missing lately.
“Only when I want you to win.”
Suddenly, his hand braces my cheek, tilting my face to his, his lips hard against my own, his tongue forcing its way between my lips before I’m ready for him.
And it’s exactly what I’ve needed.
This house is nothing but a facsimile of death—silent, heavy, doomed. I need to feel alive. I grip his shirt, pulling him closer, kicking one leg over his hip, pressing my heel against his ass, trying to force him even closer.
Hot hands slide up under my slip, and I nip at his tongue. He groans and rolls us, so he’s braced over me, but pulls back, even as I chase his lips. “Shit, Crash,” he whispers, blinking down at me.
“What?” If it sounds more like a whine than a question, well, he shouldn’t have stopped.
He shakes his head in the dark as if he’s knocking thoughts out with the motion, his gaze fierce. “I, fuck.”
“What?” I demand.
“I want,” he closes his eyes, his jaw tight in the pale light from the moon through the windows. “I want this to mean something.”
Blinking up at him, I’m not sure where he’s heading with this confession.
Slowly, carefully, he lowers most of his weight on top of me, his forearms braced on either side of my head.
This kiss isn’t an attack, a competition, or a war we’re waging with each other.
This kiss is a gentle promise, and my heart clenches in my chest. “I think I love you,” he whispers against my parted lips.
“I think I’ve been falling for you for so long that it snuck up on me.
You snuck up on me, Clara. And now, I can’t imagine life without you in it.
Even if everything goes to shit, even if this fool’s plan fails, even if I end up the meathead second son to my brother’s golden boy and I fail you and Mattie and fucking everybody, I’d still be okay, I think.
I’d still have something to fight for. I’d still have you. ”
“Trips,” I say, but he presses his lips against mine, silencing me.
“I’d be honored to be your husband. Fuck, you could divorce me and marry any of the guys, and I’d still be thrilled. Just to be in your sphere. And I don’t get it. It makes no sense. As much as I want to fight you, I want to fight with you even more. I want to be on your team. Forever.”
A year. Maybe longer. We’ve been dancing around each other.
Fighting with grades, with words and plans.
“Trips, you never fought me, not really. You always fought for me, even when I didn’t want you to.
But I want you on my team. No question. And as you once said to me, once you’re in, you’re in forever. ”
He huffs out a laugh. “My accidental proposal? You’re throwing that back in my face?”
“No, just reminding you of the terms we set out at the beginning. Forever. All of us, tied up in all the ways a group of people legally can be. I’m marrying you, Trips. No matter what happens afterwards, that isn’t changing. I’m yours.”
“You’re not just mine, Clara. And I’m good with that. But you should know, I’m one hundred percent yours. Forever.”
I can’t speak. Trips was the last of the guys I thought would give me his forever. Especially without a fight. But when our lips touch again, the fight isn’t there. Oh, it could be, in a moment if that was what we wanted.
It’s not what we want.
This moment is more than another mock-battle between us.
Instead, it’s something beautiful. Soft sighs and delicate kisses, fingers trailed over slowly revealed skin, his strong arms pulling me against his chest as he kneels in the middle of the bed, bracing me against him.
When I sink onto him, he holds my face in his palms, like watching my reactions feeds him in a way that nothing else can.
Like I’m a delicate, precious thing to him.
Like he loves me.
And as we move together, chest to chest, eyes locked on each other, there aren’t words to describe what the revelation means to me.
I think Trips loves me.
I think I love Trips.
And the future we’re fighting for is more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.