TWENTY-NINE
FEET ON THE FLOOR, she tried to balance and slowly lifted her fingertips from the mattress. She wobbled and grabbed for it again.
“Hey!” Zane came rushing in. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a little weird. I can’t work out if it’s the boot making me unsteady or the alcohol.” Catching his arm, she surrendered the bed to use him as her stabilizing force. “How is everyone?”
“I don’t know why they…” With a slight head shake, he exhaled. “I’m sorry, Wanderer.”
“For what?” she asked, again testing her balance.
Apologies were becoming the theme of their relationship.
“All the bullshit.”
“It’s not your fault.” Another chorus they’d sung before. “This is your family. You can’t change them. Do you need to stay here?”
“Stay? No, I’m wherever you need to be.”
“Is Sway okay?” Hop, shimmy, she bounced back to sit on the edge of the bed. No need to keep squeezing the guy if they weren’t going anywhere. “Roxie said she had a black eye.”
One by one people had left her room. Struan first, no shock there. Tripp went after, to keep him in check, then Logan jumped to when shouting from the other end of the hall alerted them to Deacon’s presence.
Zairn trooped out to back him up, while Roxie followed to “keep the pin in the Zairn grenade” as her friend put it. At her urging, when the nurse came in, Zane went to check what was going on. Roxie had returned to hear the spiel and only just managed to tell her about Sway before more shouting stole her away.
“There was some pushing and shoving, she got knocked over in the fray.”
Or that was the story. Whether it was true? It was anyone’s guess.
“That won’t look good. The press will know both Roman and Deacon were here. Sway’s hospital visit… It doesn’t take a genius to make the connections.” True or not, that wouldn’t get in the way of a good story. “What does it mean for his show?”
“Alessia’s back at the hotel.” He swept her hair from her shoulder, ignoring the question, which would be no accident. “She and her friends, all the contest winners were brought back to the hotel.”
“For their safety or to keep them quiet?”
“As long as they’re safe,” he said and then there was that frown again. “You don’t think I care about covering up—”
“You do that too much here.” She laced their fingers together. “The frowning thing. You haven’t had enough sex today.”
That tweaked the corner of his lips. God, she loved to see him relax. “That your sound medical judgment?”
“Definitely.” Guiding his arm around her, she sank against him, closing her eyes. “I’m so glad you were here tonight.”
“Ready to go back to the hotel?”
“If Roman’s here with Deacon and Sway, the danger isn’t over yet.”
“I’m here for what you want, not for them.”
“What I want is to fall asleep in your bed, in your arms, just us. Can’t the whole world be just us for a little while?”
“A long while. As long as you want.”
“Were you planning to spend the night with me?”
“I didn’t plan on crashing your fun, but if Roxie told me you’d gone to bed alone…”
She looked up. “You thought I’d go to bed with someone else?”
On a snicker, he touched her brow. “Wouldn’t be the first time Roxie’s woken up with one of her girls, with or without clothes.
She settled against him again. “She and Zairn are good people.”
“Yeah, but we don’t tell the media that.”
“Your cousin is an asshole and you don’t tell the media that either.”
“Jet’s waiting for us.” Oh, the temptation. “We can be in the air in twenty minutes.”
“Back to the island?”
“To wherever you want. It’s lady’s choice.”
And of the million opportunities that afforded her, none of them measured up to the first.
“I want to go back to the island,” she murmured, holding him tighter. “But Alessia’s having a good time and I don’t want to ruin—”
“Security will stay with her.”
“It’s not just security. There’s her emotional state, her well-being. For some reason, she and her friends idolize your cousin. If they haven’t seen what happened tonight already, they will, and they’ll make excuses for him.”
“And I thought my family was exhausting.” Again, Roxie’s voice. Her head stayed on Zane, but she rolled it to take in more of her friend. “You two ready to hit the road?”
“Magnus going crazy?” Zane asked.
Roxie lingered over licking her lips. “He makes his own messes.”
“Roman? I know. Never cleans them up himself.”
“We’re having a summit at the hotel. Upstairs. Cars are on their way.”
“The press outside?”
“Oh, you know it.”
“We can jam their signals.”
“Yeah, but we’d have to give them back access eventually,” Roxie said. “It’ll be getting light soon.”
“Won’t be the first all-nighter you’ve pulled, Kyst.”
“Yeah, but Roxie’s nocturnal. She’ll need to get to bed soon.”
“And that seems unlikely if your cousin has any say. Are you ready?”
“Rox, you go along, we’ll make our own way.”
“We’ll join you in a minute,” she said, contradicting her guy.
Without hesitation, Roxie slipped out, leaving them alone.
“Wanderer—”
“Did you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
Their eyes met. “When you said you want to see where this goes.”
“Yes.”
“You said it didn’t end with the island.”
“It doesn’t—”
“So your family shit is going to be my family shit. You deal with Alessia and my obsessive preoccupation with her safety. If you meet my mom, you’ll learn she worries about everything. If I asked you to meet my mom, would you meet her?”
“Yes.”
And she smiled. “Thank you, that’s my point. If we want to make a go of this, we’re not making a go of getting what we want all the time. Unlimited possibilities, remember? Yes, maybe it’s exhausting, but look what the chaos has brought us already.” Catching his other hand, she brought both to her face. “Us.”
“I can give you everything,” he said. “I want you to be happy.”
“Your acceptance makes me happy. You understanding that I’m more than just a good-time gal makes me happy. If we’re together, we accept each other. We welcome each other into the family dramas and dramatic events. We trust each other to stick, even when we’re exhausted. Do you want me like that? In every part of your life? Do you trust me to be with you, to help you, through it all?”
Taking over the caress of her face, his fingertips roused her flesh. “You don’t give up easy, do you, Wanderer?”
“I don’t want you to hide anything from me. I don’t want us to hide anything from each other. Roxie says Zairn accepts her one hundred percent, and that there’s nothing that could come between them. They’re a team.”
“Never thought there would come a day I’d be modeling my relationship on Zairn’s.”
“It’s healthy, from all I’ve seen… They play with each other, sure, but they are solid. Roxie brings him all kinds of support, and that has nothing to do with money. She told me she almost wrecked it once.”
“Nothing almost about it, Zairn made everyone erase and block her cellphone number.”
That was hilarious. “What difference did that make? She never charges the thing.”
“Whatever difference it made, it worked. I’ve known him a long time. A long time… I’ve never seen him happier, healthier, more secure. And this is a guy who has always been extremely secure.”
“And they don’t have to show each other happy faces all the time. They don’t put up fronts or lie to each other. They don’t shield each other when things get ugly.”
“They protect each other,” he said. “But you’re right, they always share the truth. He’d tell her anything and has always told us to open ourselves to her completely.”
“No bros before hoes?”
As his hands relaxed around the back of her neck, his eyes grew heavy. “If I called Roxie a ho right now, you’d probably kick my ass.”
“Yeah, and I have a weapon.” She bumped the boot against his leg. “Can we go back to the hotel? Support your family with—”
“Our family. You’re as much a part of this as I am.”
He helped her up, hooking an arm around her to keep her steady. The stoop couldn’t be comfortable for him, but he did it anyway. Support came in many forms, and it wasn’t always so literal. Whatever she’d let herself in for in joining his life, this was going full throttle.