Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREE
VANESSA
I can’t decide what’s worse: waking up feeling dog-tired from yet another night of interrupted sleep or sleeping so damn well that when I do eventually rouse, I ache to stay in the suspended state of bliss. At least with it being a Sunday, there’s no rush to get out of bed. No rush to get through my routines, and nowhere to be.
Just me, my cozy bed, and… the fuck? My right arm pushes up against something solid and way too big to be Murphy. Eyes snapping open, I carefully draw a breath and inch my hand toward the lump. It breathes.
Oh, fuck no. I whip my head to the right so damn fast that pain shoots along the tendons of my neck, breath hissed between my teeth at the burn. That’s going to last. I refocus and, as suspected, come face-to-face with a mess of two-tone hair inches from my face.
How long has he been there?
I daren’t move. Dare not disturb him. Not when I get such an honest view of the man in a fully vulnerable state. And that’s exactly it, isn’t it? He’s vulnerable right now, yet he trusted me enough to put himself in that position. I could do anything to him, and he’d be entirely at my mercy.
Anything…
I blow a breath between parted lips, calming my racing thoughts. My traitorous vagina twitches at the imagery flicking through my mind. No. Not now. I know I’m starved down there, but sheesh, just because a man is in my bed, it does not make him the right man.
You’re genuinely damaged in the head if that’s your first thought, Ness.
I drag my gaze lower—as far as my eyes will let me without having to move—and suck a sharp breath. He’s shirtless. Shirtless and covered in a detailed network of images inked into his tanned skin. Skin that molds to perfectly sculpted muscles, the swells and valleys of his back an intoxicating landscape.
Chaos is fucking half naked and laid out face-down on my goddamn bed.
I slowly bring my left arm beneath me and brace my elbow to the bed, inching myself higher. He continues to sleep, the arm closest to me tucked high beneath his head, making each and every muscle in his patchwork arm pop, the other shoved straight off the side. To my utter disappointment and relief, he still has his jeans on, bare feet hanging off the foot of my mattress. But that ass. Why do men’s butts look so good in denim?
And why the fuck do my fingers ache to slide beneath the restriction of his belt to trace the divots above said biteable ass?
One leg following the other, I gently ease out my side of the bed and stand before I get myself in trouble, my lips parted as I take in the scene before me. Yeah. No hallucinations here. Just more than six feet of pure masculine energy spread across my comforter. I pad softly around the foot of the bed, never once breaking eye contact from his form, and trace where his hand lies off the side of the mattress.
His fingers curl, the backs resting atop the fucking pages I tore from my journal last night. No. My heart clenches, chest stupidly tight. I mean, he read the whole book last week, but those pages? That was stuff I’d never put into inked words before. I planned to burn and release those secrets tonight beneath the new moon. Shit. If he thought I was unhinged before, he’ll think I’m dead-set insane now.
I creep closer, lowering myself to a crouch as I move and reach for the pages. He draws a deep, shuddering breath, and I freeze, lungs in an iron grip, while I wait to see if he opens his eyes. Chaos groans in his sleep—a sound that goes straight to my fucking clit—and turns his head to face the other way, his arm shifting onto the mattress beside him.
I snatch up the entries and clutch the paper to my chest, fucking soul sinking when I see what lay beneath: the goddamn new phone. He wouldn’t. This is the guy who broke into your house, Ness. He so would.
I snag the device off the floor and backtrack toward the safety of the doorway to check what he’s done—if anything. Of course, he’s done something. My thumb swipes frantically at the phone, yet the colored ink on the pages behind catches my eye. The hell? There are notes all over the confessions, the same as he put throughout my journal. Inked in what appears to be the purple marker I keep for when I’m feeling fancy with my headers.
With my back to the wall, I buckle my legs and slide to the floor to ingest his commentary.
The sun rises as I read, its long, warm fingers inching across the floor toward my toes. By the time I’ve scoured all of Chaos’s notes, birds sing in the front garden, and silent tears track my cheeks. I stare at the man across from me, still sleeping soundly on my bed, my head against the wall and hands resting in my lap. I was so wrong.
I’ll never be able to look at him the same way again.
My gaze snags on his cut, hanging carefully from the corner of my headboard, the thick, stitched patches twisting the soft leather. He presents a lie to the world. This tough exterior. The facade of a man who couldn’t care less for his fellow man unless it benefited him. And yet, that’s nothing of what he is.
He’s incredible. An intellectual. The man quoted goddamn Poe on my pages, for fuck’s sake. He reframed the misbeliefs I’ve held about myself my entire goddamn life and not only wove them into a new perspective, but he explained it. Eloquently. Empathetically.
What did the world do to him? Is he happy in his life? Being viewed as such a menace to society? Or, like me, did he hope for something more? Wish for a future that was never his to have, thanks to the guidance and influence of the caretakers in his life.
I slowly rise to my feet, inching closer. The club’s insignia is the main artwork across his back, yet it’s as though he’s given the middle finger to that convention by framing the skull with images of his choosing. Neoclassical statues and architecture, graves, lilies, crows, and holy fuck —more quoted lines from the classics. Short verses that give a glimpse into his way of thinking.
The smartphone digs into my palm, reminding me I haven’t checked to see what he did with the device. I back towards the window and rest my ass on the sill, jerking my head around when movement in my periphery captures my attention.
Murphy enters the room.
I lift my finger to my lips as though the damn animal understands human gestures and urge the little menace to be quiet. He hesitates, moves a paw forward, twitches his goddamn tail high in the air, and then launches onto the bed. Oh, you little…
Chaos stirs, rolling to his side with a groan, back to me as he mindlessly gropes for what disturbed him.
The two-timing stray fucker weaves beneath Chaos’s forearm and pushes against his chest, little legs sliding out until his fat gray body molds to my midnight intruder.
I tilt my head a fraction, mouth open, and a slight frown mars my brow.
I feel like a goddamn tourist in my own home.
“Whatever,” I whisper under my breath, dropping my focus to the phone again.
Come to think of it, how the hell will I even know if he has fucked with anything? I open Google first and check the search history. Nothing. Only what I looked for last night. Although… Swear I searched for that first. Is the order wrong? I can’t be sure.
I open the social apps next, rotating through the three I felt comfortable creating accounts for. The first seems as though nothing is amiss. The second… Eh, can’t be sure. I open the last and stop breathing for a second. Oh. Yeah. That’s how I’d know.
I scroll, thumb flicking faster and faster as the feed refreshes, throwing up more and more of the blatant signs that Chaos has been in my phone: his posts. Pictures of motorcycles, landscapes, people, and, most addictingly, glimpses into his life. He connected us. Wow.
I lift my head and squeak out a choked scream, the fucking phone falling from my fumbling hand. “The fuck is wrong with you?”
He lies facing me, head laid on his propped arm while he goddamn watches me stalk his profile like a fucking creep. Well—he did do it first.
“Ain’t anything wrong with me, babe.” His sleep-husked voice has no right to evoke those reactions in me. “Not now, anyway.”
“When did you get here? How long…?” I duck to retrieve the phone and realize what a goddamn mistake that was when my T-shirt gapes at the neck hole.
He lifts an eyebrow, lips curling at the corners.
I slam a hand to my chest, pinning the cotton to me, and back slowly toward the window again. “Hope you enjoyed that because it’s not happening again.”
“Dream killer,” he mumbles, rolling to his back. “Didn’t look at the time when I got in, but I’d say you’d been asleep for a few hours considering the drool line you had going on.”
Oh my God… “You’re an asshole.”
He chuckles, pearly-white teeth showing with his smile. Damn it, I want to make him do that again. His joy is such a beautiful sound.
I dart across to the doorway and snatch the pages off the floor. “I read what you said.” My thumb traces the edge of one of his words, my focus glued to the purple text. And I know why.
I can’t stomach the look on his face right now—whatever it is.
“What did you think?” My bedding rustles as he moves, denim scraping over the comforter.
“You mean, did I agree with what you thought?”
“If that’s how you want to see it.”
I sigh, rumpling the pages in my fist. “It’s too late, Chaos.” I peek from beneath my brow. “I can’t change.”
He sits propped against my headboard, the wide expanse of his inked chest on glorious display, his hands resting beside his thighs. Chaos tilts his head a little and sighs. “You can, Vanessa. You’ve got to let go of the past to be able to, though.”
And haven’t I heard that before? Just move on. Let go of what they did. Stop giving them the power. Forgive and move past it all. As though it’s that fucking easy. As though years of abuse can be undone with the snap of my fingers.
“Did you even read everything I wrote?” I unclench my fist and shuffle the wrinkled pages to the one I need, reciting, “If I let the past lie, it means they won, and I can’t get past the anger that invokes. Accepting the hurt and the pain means they were right to do it. And if I don’t hold them accountable, who will? Worst of all, I can’t shake the belief that people ask me to move on to stop drawing their eyes to the injustice. To stop making them feel guilt for their inactivity regarding his sins. That by doing nothing, they gave him everything—they enabled his abuse. By burying the pain inside me to fester and rot, I’m giving them the easy way out. I’m admitting that I don’t matter—not enough, anyway, to warrant them fighting for my justice.”
I swipe away my tears with the back of my hand. Fuck this shit. What would it take for me to get closure? What do I want from the world?
The silence stretches between us, painful seconds passing where the weight of his judgment multiplies, forcing me to the floor. I drop to my ass, pages crinkling between my fingers; I resist the urge to shred them. To destroy the shameful evidence.
I may as well destroy myself.
“Ness,” he finally whispers.
I ignore him. The pressure in my chest is too much. The burn behind my eyes too hot.
“Ness,” he repeats more forcefully. “What did I tell you when I was last here?”
“Not to save you any dinner,” I sass.
He sighs, his legs dropping off the side of my bed in my periphery. “I said to make me your arm of justice.”
He did. “So?”
“Does that tell you I think you’re not worth it?”
“It tells me you have psychotic urges that my issues help you to fulfill.”
He drops before me, crouched on bent legs.
I peek at his face and find the fucker grinning.
“There’s so much fight in you, yet you continually try to quit. Why?”
“Because it hurts to keep going,” I confess. “Because sometimes I wonder how much more I can take, and sometimes I think I’ve already reached that point.”
He reaches for me slowly, as though wary he could spook me if he moved too fast. His hand cups my jaw, and a rough yet tender thumb wipes the tears from my cheek. “You don’t need to cry.”
“Yes, I do.”
He frowns. “It insinuates you’re ashamed of your wounds, Vanessa. Your scars are proof you survived. It shows they couldn’t destroy you. Be proud of that.”
“I am,” I whisper. “But I still need to shed some tears, Chaos.”
“Why?” He pulls his hand away, hanging both between his knees as he studies me.
I chuckle, swiping at my face with the back of my hand. “I’m guessing you’ve never let yourself cry, then.”
“No.” His brow furrows, lips curled in slight amusement. “What makes you say that?”
“Otherwise, you’d know it’s cathartic.”