Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Weston
“You scared her,” I accuse, glaring at Jude. He doesn’t care, not even a little bit.
“She’s not scared,” he argues. “She’s being cautious because she’s a good girl.”
I couldn’t disagree more. She was definitely freaked out this morning.
I saw her hands trembling as she looked at the toy Jude insisted on leaving her.
She didn’t like the idea someone was watching her while she was in her house.
Her breath hitched when she told that friend of hers and only calmed when her friend talked her down about being watched.
I like watching our girl, but I don’t like her being scared. I hate it actually. A lot.
Didn’t like the way those cops spoke to her either. Maybe enough to take care of them for her. Though they did eventually offer her help and that seemed to make her calmer. I’d prefer her not be scared at all.
“Fix it,” I demand, keeping my eyes locked on Jude. He broke it so he has to fix it.
Ezra runs a hand soothingly down my spine. Usually that would be enough to help me relax, but nothing is typical when it comes to Berlyn. “A little fear is okay,” he says encouragingly, and I lean into his touch, needing the comfort. “A little fear is even good. It makes the fantasy real.”
But she doesn’t know it’s a fantasy. She doesn’t know she’s safe. Doesn’t know we aren’t going to hurt her. Ever.
“She was scared,” I repeat, locking eyes with Ezra over my shoulder. I recognized that look in her eyes. Her fear was real and I don’t like it. His hand squeezes my hip and I wait.
The two of them trade silent looks but I don’t let it bother me. They have to understand. Have to see it. If they need to communicate without me, so be it. For once, they are the ones that need to catch up.
“Her gifts were confiscated,” Ezra points out, his hand slipping under my shirt as he rubs soothing circles across my back. I have no idea why he’s bringing the gifts up or what it has to do with anything.
“What if we left a note this time?” Jude offers.
Oh, they want to replace the presents. Would a note not scare her?
“We’ll tell her we’re not going to hurt her,” Ezra explains and I snort.
As if she would just take our word for it.
“A little fear is good,” Ezra reminds me, reading my mind and pinching my hip in reprimand before starting his patterns once more.
“We explain what we want. Tell her it’s her fantasy.
She’s still going to have some fear but we stroke her desire too.
Bring her into the fantasy, make her think about us. Want us. Want more.”
Hmm. I’m still not sure. It might not be a bad idea. Definitely better than not doing anything, but is it enough? Ezra’s touch is starting to make it hard to think.
“Remember the conversation she had with her friend,” Jude prompts. “They talked about us, even joked about it. The seed is already there, we just gotta give her a reason to let it grow. Give herself to it. Let herself dream like her friend said.”
Lose herself in the fantasy we’re creating for her. I like the sound of that. I like the idea of her using the gift we bought her as she thinks about what we’re going to surprise her with next.
“Okay,” I answer and they both grin. But if she’s only scared again, my brothers are going to pay the price and I’m going to do things my way.
“Buying the replacement now,” Ezra says, slipping away from me, phone already in hand.
“We go back tonight?” I ask, excitement creeping into my voice even as I worry about her.
At their nod, I smile. At least I get to see my girl again. Never going to not like that.
We watch her the rest of the day and can’t help but laugh as her and that friend of hers attempt to come up with different plans to dissuade us from coming into her house and other plans for if that fails to catch us.
It’s cute she thinks any of the suggestions the cops made will stop us.
Nothing she and her friend come up with is any better either.
Though leaving her laptop camera running is clever, it even may have worked if we weren’t listening to her.
It will be easy to avoid though. We’ve had to navigate much more difficult circumstances with much more advanced technology.
We haven’t met any security measures that Ezra and Jude can’t figure out.
The question now is do we leave her clues to figure out who her stalkers are?
Or is that Phase Two? Are we still in Phase One?
I couldn’t really make sense of Ezra’s plans or his whiteboard.
It felt like a lot of extra unnecessary notes.
I still think we should have just taken her and told her Jude couldn’t fix her AC.
She could have come home with us and just stayed. Forever.
“What should we do about the camera tonight?” Jude asks, looking at Ezra.
Ezra checks in with me, but I only shrug. This part of the game is more them. They like the chase, like playing with her before we make her ours. I only want her. All of her. This is fun, but I don’t need it the same way I need her.
“I want to get closer to Halloween before we leave any big clues about who we are,” he explains, pointing to the timeline he has written out on his whiteboard.
Jude is nodding his head like it all makes perfect sense to him, but I haven’t even read everything on that stupid board.
I didn’t even realize he added a timeline until now.
“Maybe a small reveal tonight,” Jude offers. “Something to taunt her a little bit.” He looks my way as my brows dip in concern and puts his hands up. “Not to scare her, just tease her a bit,” he clarifies.
That doesn’t sound so bad. “Like what?”
Ezra walks back into the room from wherever he went and holds up one of those ghost masks. “Let her camera catch one of us in these,” he says. “She likes masks, she gets an idea of the person in her house, but we don’t let her know there are three of us. Yet.”
Jude is still nodding his head. “What if you’re the one to write the note this time?” he suggests. “See if she picks up on the fact that it’s from someone else.”
“I like that,” Ezra agrees, but I start to tune them out, pulling out my phone to check on Berlyn and see what she’s doing. She and her friend had migrated to her couch with drinks the last time I checked.
That’s one way to spend the night planning ways to thwart your stalker. Drinks probably make the daunting topic more entertaining. I like the way her and her friend joke about serious things. It makes me laugh even if I’d rather her not have a reason to lighten the mood at all.
Hours later, the girls have placed several orders and called a security company with a familiar name.
Watching her alone brings me so much satisfaction, it isn’t until Ezra brings me a plate of food that I realize just how much time has passed.
I’ve been completely consumed in their conversations and jokes, I almost forgot where I really was.
At least she’s finally feeling better from her scare this morning.
“Thanks,” I mutter, taking the plate from Ezra who gives me one of his dreaded long looks of concern. As hard as it is to ignore him, I refuse to make eye contact and risk him launching into a lecture. Or worse, asking how I’m feeling.
“We have another job tomorrow,” he reminds me, taking a seat at my side and his shoulder presses into mine.
“I remember,” I respond. We still have to finish the job Cole referred to us while he’s across the country.
“Have you checked your emails?” I change the topic, remembering the way Berlyn hesitated to reach out to her landlord.
At least she didn’t try to call them and decided on email.
Makes our little secret easier to keep for that much longer.
He nods, pulling out his phone to show me the response he sent her. “I told her we’d cover the cost of the system that covers every entry point and has cameras.”
I nod my approval and start digging into the food he brought me.
Ezra eyes me as I eat, making it hard to focus on Berlyn.
They haven’t really come up with any other plans other than what the cops already suggested.
The rest of the night has mostly been the two of them joking.
Though our names have been brought up a few times.
Her friend is growing on me. A little more every time she pushes Berlyn into thinking about making us her harem.
They don’t realize they’ve already figured out exactly what is going on, even if Berlyn thinks it’s too farfetched to be real. How long will it take for her to realize they’ve been right from the very start?
Will she be mad?
Will she hate us?
I couldn’t live with it if she decided she hated us after everything we’ve done to win her over.
But I don’t think she will. I have to make sure she doesn’t.
My brothers have their plans, and I have mine.
They can have their fun tonight, but I won’t hesitate to take matters into my own hands if it seems like it’s pushing her away.
“You’re not going rogue on us, are you?” Ezra asks. So that’s why he’s been studying me so closely, trying to read my mind because he knows I’m upset. Sometimes it sucks to have someone who knows you so well.
Pushing my food away, I sit up a little straighter and cross my arms over my chest. “Only if I have to.”
He sighs, taking off his glasses and rubbing his temples.
It’s one of those sounds where I know he got the answer he was expecting but he was hoping he was wrong.
Ezra is rarely ever wrong. Maybe that means I should trust him more with his whiteboard and his plans and his phases, but it’s not that I don’t. I just see things differently.
Maybe Berlyn will too. Maybe she will like the way I see things. Maybe she needs to be won over in more than one way. Isn’t that why she likes her books with all the men? Because each one fulfills a different need for their girl. At least in her favorite books anyways.