Chapter Twenty-three
Rowan
Tears come freely as I pull my clothes back on. He left me, just left me naked in here.
“Fuck,” I groan out to the empty breakroom. Luca is the best thing that ever happened to me, and here I am, fucking it all up. Fucking him up.
I’m ready to go back home. I need to be out of this town; it’s fucking with me more than I thought was possible. That and David combined are a disaster for my mind.
I’ve never told Luca why I like to make myself feel pain. It’s a coping mechanism, a new one because of that night. I know I can open up to Luca, but I’m scared he’ll see something he won’t like…me. He didn’t get to know Rowan before; only Rowan now.
Deeply breathing in, I throw my hair into a messy bun and exit the breakroom, looking for Luca. I find him in his office, lights off, head on his desk. I don’t knock, just enter.
“Luca,” I mumble his name.
He doesn’t answer me.
“Luca, baby.” I’m fucking with this man’s head, and I’m not meaning to. I’m laying all this shit on him, and I hate myself for it.
He finally lifts his head when I stand next to him, and I’m taken aback. His cheeks are wet. He’s been crying. And that breaks me more than I ever thought possible. He looks defeated.
I want to hold him, tell him I’m sorry, that I won’t do something stupid, but I’d be lying. So, I say the only thing that needs to be said. “Can we go home?” I’m hoping he says yes.
He pushes his body up and wipes his face. “Yeah.” It’s curt, and he gives me nothing else, just leaving me once again standing alone.
I run to grab my tote, following him outside.
We both get into the car, neither of us saying a word.
It’s a long, three-hour drive. The tension is thick and palpable.
It’s uncomfortable, but neither one of us breaks.
I don’t know what to say, what to do, so I just stay quiet, as the radio is the only sound in the car, trying its hardest to cover the discomfort that emanates around us.
Riffling through my tote, my hand feels for my glasses, placing them on like I can hide behind them. Hide away from Luca. I watch him from the corner of my eye. He truly is beautiful, everything a woman would and could want in a man, and he’s in love with me… Me.
Finally pulling onto the long driveway, my breathing became easier. My body automatically knows we’re home.
We drive slowly up the gravel, passing by the tree, as I silently ask Lauren to please help me.
Because I need all the damn help. If I’m honest, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
Why am I still doing all of this? But there is this minuscule, little voice that won’t shut up inside me.
I have to do this. And I know it won’t quiet down until they’re all gone.
Roxy meets us outside before we even park in front of the house, her tail wagging happily.
I drop to my knees, letting her jump on me, giving me sloppy kisses. “You better of been good.” She gets free rein now that the new doggie door, Luca, is installed. Who the hell knew they sold doggie doors that open only with the collar device around her neck… I didn’t.
My hand roams down her head, to her collar, and immediately my eyebrows rise. The metal clasp locked haphazardly, twisting her collar.
“What the fuck?” I ask her as if she’s going to answer me while I untangle her collar, placing it the right way. Roxy doesn’t even let the mailman come up the drive, so my mind is spinning on how her collar would have been removed from her. It isn’t possible. Right? She’d eat someone up.
Luca doesn’t speak to me when he walks by. I’m still bent down, loving Roxy, mind spiraling. Panning up to watch him unlock the house, then disappear inside. One by one, the house lights up with each switch he touches. Illuminating the muted evening, a torch coming to life.
Still bent over Roxy, the hairs on the back of my neck stand. I let my eyes move around the parts of the property I can see, but they come up empty.
“Come,” I call to Roxy as I bolt to the front door, locking it once she’s secured inside with us.
Throwing my tote onto the island, I feel on display through the enormous windows, a fish in a fish tank, being gawked at. I can’t shake the feeling of being watched.
I wrap my arms around myself like I can make myself disappear as I walk to the window. I never told Luca about the night Roxy went crazy. I honestly believed it was an animal outside, but now I’m not so sure.
Stepping back from the window, I make my way to the guest room, where I put the glove a while back.
Looking out the bedroom door, trying to hear Luca, I lift the mattress, panning underneath it.
But I see nothing. I let it drop back down and stood up straight.
My stomach drops before I lift it once again, like it’s a magic trick and it’ll appear.
My free hand feels around the box spring, but comes up empty.
It’s gone. The glove is gone. Letting the mattress back down softly, I sit on the perfectly made-up bed, thoughts racing. Fear coursing through me.
I don’t know who brought it here in the first place, but now someone has been in my house. It couldn’t have been Luca; he would have made it known. This wouldn’t have been something he kept quiet about. Finding a random dirt-covered glove under a mattress… Yeah, he’d be asking questions.
I want to tell Luca, but I know he won’t let anything go until he figures out where it came from, and I still have something to complete. David. I couldn’t promise Luca I’d stop, because I can’t break a promise to him.
I need to go to the funeral home. My head falls back.
Just thinking of her name makes me sick.
But to speak to her, to… Catherine. “Fuck.” I speak to the empty room.
That’s the last thing I want to do; I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a fucking dull spoon than go to her.
But she knew everything. Cat was her father’s daughter, his dark angel.
And I know she has shit that she hasn’t told us.
How I’m going to make this happen, I don’t know. But it has to be soon.
It's like I’m writing a grocery list with the shit I need to get done.
Talk to Catherine, find out who’s been around our house and David.
Dropping my head, I feel a headache coming on.
Forcing myself out of the guest room, I make my way upstairs to the bathroom, where I hear the shower going.
Pursing my lips, I open the bathroom door, steam billowing out.
I don’t announce myself, just walk in and straight to the medicine drawer, where I pull out two Advil, toss them in my mouth, and turn on the sink faucet, barely getting them down my throat.
“I will not live like this.” It comes from the shower before I even get the door closed all the way, stopping me in my tracks.
“I didn’t ask you to, did I?” I bitchily call back to him, looking around the door to the steamed-up shower.
His laugh bellows, and there isn’t anything comical about it, as he steps from the shower, wet. I can see the steam rolling off his naked body as I swallow… the pills feeling like they're stuck in my throat.
My eyes follow him as he stalks toward me, not saying a word.
With each of his steps, I also step backward, away from him.
His blue eyes look gray rather than his normal baby blue in this light. Nothing friendly about them.
Luca’s strides become larger, and he’s at me before I can take another step back, grabbing me by the waist, staring down at me.
I watch his mouth part, as if he’s going to say something, but stops.
“Say it,” I tell him.
His smile is vicious, but it does something to me. I’ve never seen him give me this face before. And I know in that moment, I’m meeting Luca the killer, and I welcome him.
“From the moment I met you, everything I did was for you. You were my sole focus.” He pauses, and my stomach drops.
‘Were mine.’ Not are. He sees the look on my face.
“You still are my sole focus, Rowan, but fuck do you make this shit hard. It doesn’t have to be.
I thought we were a team, but apparently, only when you need me, then are we a team.
” His voice doesn’t match his face. His face is mean, but his voice is more tinged with sadness.
I don’t speak; I want him to.
“I can’t be with someone who will easily put their life in danger and not care about the person they supposedly love.”
My mouth falls open, eyebrows raised. “Then don’t.” I grit the words out, even though I don’t mean them.
"And see, this is where I know your self-sabotage enters the fucking room." His hands around my waist tightened, and in seconds, I’m picked off my feet, thrown onto the bed, landing with a yelp. My eyes widen as Luca stands above me, menacing. He won’t hurt me. I keep telling myself.
“When I couldn’t find you, my body literally ached. My heart felt like it would beat out of my damn chest.” He rubs the inside of my thigh slowly, never losing eye contact with me.
“I won’t let you treat me like shit.” I watch his other hand rub on his dick, easily bringing it to life.
I start to shake my head no, but he slaps the inside of my thigh; my words cut off and are replaced with a shocked gasp.
“I’d never hurt you. I’ve treated you with the most respect I have, but now, seeing how you treat me, not giving a shit, it’s my turn.
” His pace becomes faster, jacking himself off, as my breathing becomes ragged with arousal.
Luca never speaks to me the way he does now.
He’s always soft and easy with me, like I’ll break. Maybe I broke something inside him?
I watch as his eyelids close slightly.
“Sit up and open your mouth.”
I do without a word, letting my jaw drop open, tongue out, welcoming his dick inside.
Stepping up to me, he rubs his tip up and down my tongue. Without warning, he takes his other hand, placing it on the back of my head and shoving it, his cock invading my mouth, stretching it wider.
With a moan, he says, “Suck it.”
And I do, happily.