Chapter 5 Confession 5 #5
He was still holding his face, and Rafe was looking confused, his eyes darting between the two brothers.
I realized Kane was hiding what he was saying to keep Rafe in the dark.
I couldn’t exactly blame him. Rafe had a gun, and he’d just killed dozens of soldiers without blinking because he’d been pressured to hurt me.
“Thorne,” Kane said unevenly into his palms, “They are going to pin us against each other. At some point, Halden will make us choose—do what he says, or one of us dies. Rafe got lucky getting his hands on the gun. They’re not going to make that mistake again, and I won’t let you die.”
Thorne hung his head, his fingers lacing behind his neck. He tilted his face slightly toward his brother, toward Rafe. “We need to tell her, to at least make it clear to her that we’re not doing it of our own free will.”
Kane finally lifted his face, and his eyes found mine.
He was the only one that noticed I was awake and listening; his shoulders stiffening a fraction.
He was…crying. I thought he was just hiding from Rafe, but his eyes were red rimmed, his cheeks wet.
“Arden is the strongest person in this fucking cell,” he said, so sure of it that my heart hammered.
He didn't look away, making sure I understood that he didn't plan to lay a finger on me unless he absolutely had to. “We’re going to get through this.”
I shifted then, alerting Rafe and Thorne. Thorne was kneeling beside my bunk in an instant, his hand cradling my face. His smile wobbled, his green eyes dark. “Don’t move too much, baby.”
I parted chapped lips, my throat raw. “If we’re doing this,” I said, my voice cracking, “we’re doing this my way.”
The two of them froze, but Kane nodded slowly, casting his eyes to the floor with a grim expression.
He held an understanding of me, like in some ways we were kindred spirits.
I could so easily read him, and he seemed to be able to do the same with me.
Our energies overlapped, let us into each others heads.
It was more than the shared trauma. He knew what I would say before I said it, knew how I felt with only a tiny quirk of my brow or twitch of my lip.
But maybe that was just Kane in general.
He was the loudest of the four of us, but he paid the most attention to detail.
Maybe that was why he could understand Rafe, too.
“Tell us what you need,” he said and knelt next to Thorne, whose hand was shaking against mine.
I set my jaw. “Maybe in another life, I’d gotten to make the choice of who I slept with, but that’s a luxury I’ve rarely had in this one.
” I looked at Thorne, and we shared a sad, understanding smile.
“There are very few times it gets to be my choice. Before it’s taken away from each of us, I’m just going to ask.
Do either of you want to be with me in that way?
Even a little bit? Because this is it. This is the only time we’ll likely get to choose it for ourselves, and if we do, then that takes some of the power away from Halden. ”
Kane’s eyes widened a little. “You want Rafe and I to fuck you?”
“Not unless that’s something you actually want,” I explained.
“But we can be together. Hold each other. Do whatever feels right. Then it’s ours and it will…
help me through the next parts.” I swallowed thickly, my cheeks burning with shame.
“Leah taught me when I was a kid how to pull myself out of it, just be a shell while it was happening. She showed me how I could go somewhere else in my head, live through something happy while the truth was too awful. I’ll do that.
Whatever situation Halden puts you in with me, it won’t be me.
I’ll be gone, and instead I’ll be focused on this. ”
I gripped Thorne’s hand tighter. “I’ll focus on what’s real, not forced.
” I looked up at Kane, his expression of absolute defeat.
Then I looked at Rafe and I saw his rage.
“Please don’t die for me,” I begged them, my eyes darting across all their faces.
“If the choice is to use me or lose a Creed, fucking use me. Promise it. Just do what Halden wants and we’ll get the fuck out of here. ”
Rafe shook. His entire body trembled as I spoke, his knuckles white against the gun.
But there was only one way through—strategy against Halden.
We couldn’t just be bystanders or he’d strip us raw, take everything we had and mutilate it.
This way, we were claiming each other, making space inside each of our chests where another of us could crawl into when the going got too rough.
Life was what we planned to make of it. We’d been dealt shit cards, but they were still our cards.
We were bought, we would be used, but we had a choice of who we were to each other in the in between moments.
“Sleep with me,” I told Thorne. “For a little while.”
He nodded and carefully crawled over me. He laid on his side, head on his arm as he draped his other over me, avoiding my bandaging. The weight of him instantly comforted me.
I glanced up at Kane and Rafe. “There’s room,” I offered. "It doesn't need to be sexual."
Kane sucked in a breath and yanked his pillow down from his bunk. “You do have a way of making the floor look mighty comfortable, Miss Creed.”
Creed. It was the second time he’d referred to me as a Creed that night, but it was the first time it truly sunk in that he had.
My stomach flipped, my heart feeling incredibly sore, like it’d beat for as long as it had just to hear myself be recognized as power.
Because that’s what Creed was. Or at least, that’s what I believed that it was up until that point.
Kane settled into what had often become his nightly position, his head on my mattress and his body on the floor. He closed his eyes, didn’t ask for more or try for more. He knew as well as I did that just the act of him being there was enough.
I lifted my gaze to where Rafe still stood.
The rifle hung a bit loosely now, but he hadn’t changed.
He still looked furious, his eyes flicking between the three of us.
He probably saw it as us giving up. Rafe wasn’t accustomed to the softer things in life, and he definitely didn’t understand that those things were often what you needed to hold onto most.
I outstretched my hand, Thorne already snoring at my back. It was almost like that first night in the cell. Then, Rafe had turned his back on me. Now…I hoped he’d stay.
“Stay,” I mouthed. “Please.”
His hard expression eased. His throat bobbed.
He was still covered in blood, most of it from Halden’s soldiers.
He glanced down at himself like he was coming out of some kind of fever dream, only just then noticing he still held the gun.
His grip flexed once, twice, before he crouched low and set it against the wall beside the cell door, barrel angled away.
The sound of it leaving his fingers—just that small click of metal on concrete—rippled through me harder than any shot he’d fired.
I don’t think, besides that brief moment in the deprivation chamber where he had the pitch black to hide behind, Rafe Creed had ever chosen to be soft.
He hesitated, his eyes darting over the three of us like he was trying to convince himself he wasn’t walking into a trap.
Then he moved with caution. One knee bent, then the other, until he was crouched beside the bed.
As soon as he was on the ground, the cell door whipped open, all of us jerking toward it and Rafe jumping to his feet.
Guards strode inside, grabbed the gun and quickly bolted us back in.
"Fucking assholes," Kane mumbled, lying back down. "Can't even give us the illusion of peace."
Thorne barely stirred, making me envious of his ability to actually rest. He snored beside my ear, and I snorted, Kane flashing me a small wink before he glanced over at Rafe and back at me, his look pointed.
"If anyone can diffuse that bomb," Kane said softly, "it's you. If you want him, he's yours, Arden. All you need to do is show him that you feel the same."
My pulse kicked up. "Why would you say that?"
Kane yawned and shrugged. "I'm just confirming what I know you were trying to eavesdrop on earlier."
My cheeks flushed.
"Do with it whatever you want," he said and closed his eyes. "The choice is yours."
I swallowed, my focus drifting up to the six-five menace still glaring at the door.
There wasn't anything besides the glow from the recording lights of the cameras, but I found myself seeing Rafe for the first time.
In my head, I'd treated him like a reflection for so long, seeing pieces of myself residing inside him, that I forgot to actually introduce myself to the man he was.
My stomach knotted with the thought and my fear, because the want that grew with every passing second was brand new.
Thorne had been right. We didn't know if we were in love because we had nothing to compare it to.
Any act of kindness felt like some grand, shining thing, and we never took any of it for granted.
But watching Rafe that night, I can't quite explain it but something in me shifted—or, well, it was more like something finally clicked into place.
It was him. It had always been him.