Chapter 29
Despite having both Dacre and Presley in bed on either side of me, I struggled to fall asleep.
The events of the night played on a loop in my head—the pleasure with Boston and Presley. The horror with Trent. The fear that it had been Boston attacking me, which had then morphed into fear that Boston was about to sell another small piece of his soul to avenge me.
Me stopping him from murdering Trent had never been about protecting that entitled asshole.
It had only ever been about Boston. Trent could book a one-way ticket to hell and drop dead on the way there for all I cared.
He was a danger to women everywhere. Given his father was known to be a close personal friend of the police chief in Cape Canyon, reporting him would be useless.
I must have dozed off at some point, visions of different castration scenarios on Trent playing like a lullaby in my mind. I woke hours later to someone standing at the end of my bed in the dark.
Jolting upright, fear flooded me at the idea that it could be Trent. Then my senses rushed back as my sleepiness faded and I squinted at the dark figure.
“Boston?” I whispered. He’d come back.
He gave a small grunt in response.
I slid out of the covers, carefully maneuvering myself around Presley and Dacre so I wouldn’t wake them. I stood in front of Boston, trying to make out his expression in the dark.
“What are you…” I started, then glanced at the bed.
Reaching for him, I grasped his hand, towing him from my room to the vacant bedroom at the other end of the hall.
Presley used to make his threesome buddies sleep in here after he was done with them but didn’t have to heart to kick them out until the morning. At least that’s what Sinclair had told me so many months ago when he’d been trying to piss me off with Pres’s prior conquests.
I hated this room because of it, but Boston and I needed somewhere private to finally speak about all the things we’d been avoiding for weeks.
Closing the door behind us, I flicked on the lamp, flooding the room with light.
He was dressed in all black—black cargo pants, black boots, black bomber jacket over a black t-shirt. He looked like some kind of sexy special ops guy.
“How did you get in here?” I asked, ignoring the way my heart tripped in my chest at the sight of him. Byron’s compound had some of the best security in the country, and yet… he was standing in front of me; and he definitely hadn’t used the front door.
“It wasn’t hard. This is what I do. This is who I am.”
I dropped down on the side of the bed, pulling one leg up beneath me. “Someone who breaks into people’s houses to speak to them?”
Boston levelled me with a flat stare. “No. To murder them.”
I grimaced. “Well, I hope that’s not what you’re here to do now.”
Boston tilted his head back to the ceiling and let out a sigh. “I wouldn’t be able to do it, even if I was ordered to.” He dropped his head, eyes locking with mine. “I could never hurt you, Dempsey.”
His voice was laced with such sincerity that there was no denying his truth.
“Even if you’ve killed, Boston, it’s not who you are.”
He ran his hands through his hair and left them there, pacing the room for a minute.
“It is who I am. I know you don’t want that to be true, but it is.”
I got to my feet, stilling him when I reached for him, taking his hand. When he didn’t pull away, I pushed up onto my toes and pressed my mouth to his.
Our bodies reacted the second our lips touched. His arms wrapped around me in a desperate rush, his mouth closing over mine to claim me with a ferocity that took my breath away. Breathing was for the weak. I didn’t need air, and I didn’t want it if it meant I had to stop kissing Boston to get it.
When we broke apart, we stared at each other, and I took a beat to search for the right words.
“If you don’t want to be a killer, then don’t be. You’re not in Seattle anymore. You’re here, with me. In my world, you can be whoever you want to be.”
He dropped his forehead to mine, shaking his head. “You don’t get it. It’s not just about my past…”
I pulled my head back to look at him, ensuring I kept my body pressed to his so he didn’t think I was pulling away. “Then what is it about?”
His eyes searched mine, that tortured expression back on his face.
I was desperate for him to open up to me. “Talk to me. Please.”
His resolve splintered. “I’m not good enough for you. I never have been, and I never will be.” He let go of me, stepping away. “But I’m too fucking selfish to give you up.”
I dropped to the bed and gripped the edge with both hands. “You’re more than good enough.”
He sat down beside me, his elbows pressed to his thighs and his head in his hands. He blew out a long breath.
And I waited.
Waited for him to be honest with me. Whatever this was between us would never move beyond a crazy intense attraction if he never trusted me.
He lifted his head, eyes locking with mine. “I knew you. Back in Seattle.”
I frowned. “I don’t remember us meeting…”
“You didn’t know me, but I knew you. I remember the day so clearly when my father hauled me into his office and told me that you and I were getting married.” He hesitated. “I lost it. Badly. I trashed his office, crashed my car, and spent two days getting wasted.”
“Well, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of marrying you either.”
He made a sound that was almost, maybe, a laugh if you squinted really hard and blocked one ear. It was more of a grunt though.
“I didn’t know you at all at that point, so it had nothing to do with you.
” His eyes grew distant as he disappeared into his head.
“I’d already started to hate my father when he told me about our forced marriage.
I already resented him for what he’d forced me to become.
I wanted out of playing the role of his enforcer, and had told him as much, but he wouldn’t allow it.
Instead, he told me I was all-in and always would be, and that I was going to marry Antonio Falconer’s daughter to prove my loyalty or he’d take us both out to avoid the shame on our family’s name. ”
My eyes widened at the idea that the most well-known crime lord in Seattle had threatened to have me murdered. Though there were so many more crushing ways to torture someone than death. Ways that would get you exactly what you wanted. My father had taught me that from a young age.
“When I’d finished my two-day bender,” Boston went on.
“I sobered up and went looking for you.” Another sideways glance, assessing my reaction.
“I figured…” He paused, like the words were sour in his mouth.
“I figured if I got rid of you myself, there would be nothing my father could do. Nothing your father could do either, besides kill me. But I knew he wouldn’t have the balls to go against my father like that. ”
Something dark and wounded twisted in my chest at the notion that I’d been right. Or at least a part of me had. Boston had been a danger to me at one point, which meant I’d been right to be afraid of him when he’d turned up in Cape Canyon.
I bit the inside of my cheek, my voice quiet. “I don’t remember seeing you in Seattle…”
He sighed, staring off at nothing. “Because I couldn’t fucking do it.
I watched you for weeks but never approached you, never even spoke to you.
I followed you to school, swim practice, even the fucking grocery store, hoping like hell I’d discover something about you that I could take back to my father, and use as proof that tying himself to the Falconers was a bad idea and we should get rid of you instead. ”
Seattle’s most brutal enforcer had followed me for weeks with the intention of killing me, and I’d never known it.
“I went on like that for months and I found nothing.” Boston glanced at me.
“But it didn’t matter, because by then it had become a kind of masochistic routine for me.
You were so fucking pure. A light in the dark world where our fathers hunted.
And I knew there was no fucking way I was ever going to harm you, not even if it meant my ticket to freedom was gone. ”
His tone was a mix of shame and… something else I couldn’t put my finger on.
“Eventually, watching you became an obsession for me. If I wasn’t with you, I’d find myself wondering what you were doing.
And when I was watching you, I found myself desperate to reach out to you.
To have you look at me. And somewhere, somehow, that urge to get rid of you to solve all my problems morphed into something protective.
Like I had to watch over you, to make sure you weren’t corrupted by the shitty version of the world you’d been dragged into.
At least until we were married, then you’d be under my roof where I could keep you safe from all of it.
Even your asshole of a father who was willing to sell you off to get himself higher up the crime ladder. ”
I stayed silent while he relayed a story I’d never expected to hear. His shoulders tightened, his body going rigid at whatever he was about to recall next.
“One night my father sent me on a particularly brutal job. Someone had borrowed money from him and was not only refusing to pay, but flouting his debt and running his mouth about how he’d escaped the wrath of Nico Ivers.”
Boston lifted his head, staring me dead in the eye while his words landed.
“He ordered me to kill the whole family.”
The sentence hung in the room for several beats, my heart pounding in my chest like a caged bat trying to escape. “Did you… did you do it?”
I begged him silently in my head to deny it, but his expression pinched with pain.
“I broke into their house in the middle of the night. I stood over this guy’s bed with his wife sleeping next to him...”