19. Raegan
Chapter nineteen
Raegan
“Ethan!” I shout to one of the bartenders at Hype who Portia has given her seal of approval on. The nightclub is filled to the brim tonight. The dance floor is a mass of bodies writhing to the beat, and it’s exactly where I want to be tonight. Lost in a sea of people and consumed by the music.
But first, alcohol.
Ethan’s blond head pops up from his conversation with a customer and he gives me a wave. He says something else to them and then jogs down the counter. “Rae, right? Weren’t you supposed to be avoiding this place?”
I shrug and offer him a smirk while perching an arm on the bar. “I’m sure they think I’ve abandoned this place as a hangout by now. Sticking around isn’t my usual MO.”
“Oh?” His eyebrows raise, and he looks me up and down. “And what is?”
“Dancing and drinking until my feet give out. And then falling into whoever’s arms and bed is available that morning,” I purr, leaning closer and letting charged silence fall between us.
Ethan swallows so hard his Adam’s apple bobs. His eyes shift down my dress before scrambling back to my face. I grin at him, and he starts brushing his fingers through his hair.
“It’s another one of those nights, so can I start it off with a couple shots? I’ve got a bit of dancing and drinking to get in so I can catch up to the other guests here.”
He expels a breath and smiles. “Of course.”
Ethan slides two large shots over to me. I don’t miss his fingers brushing against mine before he pulls away and then takes hold of his shots. I raise an eyebrow and half a smile at that.
“You think I was going to let you take those alone? What kind of bartender do you take me for?” he teases with a grin.
Mine mirrors his when I raise the first shot between us, which he obligingly clinks his with.
“To dancing and drinking.”
“And fucking,” I add, then down each shot. “Thanks. Time to dance!”
He waves me off, and I immediately begin prying my way through the throng of dancers to the head of the dance floor.
My body picks up the beat like second nature, and I close my eyes, giving in completely until I’m nothing but the music.
The stress from the last couple of weeks, the demons in my head torturing me over that birth certificate, the anger and confusion with Aiden, Kellan, Jackson, and Dane; I let it all go as I move, like sweating out a fever but releasing my pain through physical exertion and surrender .
I don’t even notice who I’m dancing around or against as I move.
Musk and motor oil break through the nothingness I’d wrapped myself in before fingers firmly grip my hips and tug me back against a hard body.
“Sexy as you look up here, beautiful, you’re coming with me,” Kellan growls into my neck.
I open my eyes and look around me. I’ve moved onto one of the stages to dance, apparently, but there’s an odd bubble of space around the platform that I heavily suspect Kellan had something to do with.
Stay away from Kellan.
You were born on the island.
Aiden’s voice still echoes in my head. If dancing doesn’t fix my woes, then more drinking will. Followed by sex that’s hopefully good enough to keep me distracted and feeling good until I fall asleep.
“Let me go,” I snarl and throw my elbow back at him. He doesn’t bother blocking it and grunts but keeps his hold of me. I wiggle and try to pull away from him, but none of it does any good.
“You promised me a night of fun, and I’m here to collect. Or did you forget your promise so easily?”
I pause my struggle with an internal oh shit and turn my head. Kellan’s scruffy beard and messy hair are gone. His beard is trimmed and neat. His deep brown hair is tied up in a knot at the back of his head and out of his face.
He looks… fucking good.
No sign of the Yeti.
His blue-green eyes twinkle dangerously at me, and my lips part, but I’m too afraid to speak in case I say something stupid that gives away what his new look has done to me.
Kellan flashes me a cocky smirk when I still haven’t answered him, and I realize I’ve been not-so-casually checking him out this entire time. So much for hiding it.
“I know. I look good. The others are thrilled too, though I have to say I like your reaction the best,” he murmurs. One of his hands slides down my hip to the hem of my skirt and then he strokes his thumb in a lazy circle against my thigh.
My core pulses at the contact, and I shiver involuntarily against him, which only widens the arrogant look on his face. It’s enough to snap me out of the thrall I’d been trapped in.
I grab his hand and throw it off of my leg. “Shut up, Kell. You just look like an actual human being now, and I’m shocked by what was still under that bush you had.”
He laughs and turns me around to face him. “Now, now. There’s no need to be embarrassed. And as much as I’d love to keep your ass grinding against my dick for the rest of the evening, I did promise to join in on some racing, and you promised to be my partner in crime for the night.”
One moment, I’m dancing; and the next, I’m dangling over him with my face crashing into his lower back. “What are you doing?!” I scream and beat my fists into his back. “I can walk, you son of a bitch!”
His arm wraps around the back of my knees while another clamps around the bottom of my skirt .
“Let’s keep our promises tonight, yeah?” He hops off the platform and my face smacks into his back again.
"Argh!" I cry out and grab my nose. Downside of him being nothing but pure muscle. Hitting him actually hurts me more than him. Especially with my face.
He makes quick work of getting us to the exit. Then we stop abruptly, and I curse again while protecting my face.
“Put her down.” I hear Ethan’s voice and shove against Kellan’s body so I can try to see around him and what’s going on.
Ethan and one of the club bouncers block the exit.
“Sorry, fellas, but no can do. She and I have a date tonight. Right, beautiful?”
“She didn’t say anything to me about that earlier,” Ethan argues.
Kellan’s body stiffens.
Great.
“Oh?” he asks almost casually, but I recognize the dark undertone of a threat in his voice. “And just who the fuck are you?”
“I’m her friend,” Ethan replies, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Then he continues, and I smack my forehead against Kellan. “And you aren’t leaving Hype with her.”
“Ethan—” I try to cut in, but Kellan pinches my thigh, and I jump and cry out in his grip.
Asshole.
“Show me what you’ve got, then. I can spare a few minutes. I’ll even give you a break and only fight with one hand.” He releases the hand behind my knees.
“Kellan, stop.” I punch his back as hard as I can .
He laughs again. “Keep doing that, beautiful. I could really use the back massage to warm me up.”
Oh yeah? I shove my hand down the back of his pants and pinch his ass, nails included.
He moans obscenely and then bites my thigh. “Fuck, do you really want to be doing this here in front of them? I’m all for sex in public, but I didn’t think you’d be into having people watch.”
“Does nothing bother you?” I grumble. I push myself around to look at Ethan upside down. “Sorry about him. I’m fine, I promise. I can handle him.”
Ethan frowns. “You know each other?”
“Unfortunately,” I answer, and Kellan’s grip tightens. I’m going to be paying for that later. “I’m okay. I’ll see you later.”
Kellan’s chest rumbles through his back against me in what I’m sure is him growling, but Ethan finally nods and steps aside with the bouncer. We don’t move right away and a trickle of worry slides down my back. What is he doing? I wish I could see his expression.
“Kell?” I prompt after at least a minute of silence.
He moves finally, and we’re through the door to his car. He opens the passenger door and then sets me down on my feet. I’m thankful he keeps his hands on me as all the blood takes its time draining from my head, and I struggle to balance myself.
“Get in,” he barks, then moves around the car to his seat.
There’s a second of temptation to run.
Just a second, but I remember that I did promise to have fun with him tonight. They may be fine breaking promises, but I’ve never broken any of mine. And I won’t start now .
I take my seat and check around me for a seatbelt. “Of course not,” I mutter under my breath.
The door is barely closed before I fall back into my seat when Kellan takes off.
“That guy wants to fuck you,” he bites out like I’ve pissed in his cereal.
I shift myself more comfortably in the seat and cling to the door handle. “So? Maybe I want to fuck him.”
He rips his gaze from the road to look at me in a mixture of pain and anger. “Do you?”
My first instinct is to snap back ‘yes,’ whether I mean it or not just to piss him off. I’m still furious over Aiden’s accusations and him still not believing me after I’ve been honest with him every time he’s asked. But Kellan isn’t Aiden. That and the pain in his eyes stops me.
“Maybe. I don’t know. What does it matter?”
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”
“I mean, if I’m looking to have sex one night to feel good and forget about life for a while, then he’s on the table,” I snap, annoyed with him pushing this. What I’ve done, and still do, to cope with my past is none of their business anymore.
He turns back to the road before we rear-end a line of cars. He swiftly turns us down a side road and takes a winding path that quickly has me lost.
“I thought this was supposed to be a night of fun. If you can’t hold up your end of the deal, I’m out.”
His knuckles loosen on the wheel, and he tosses a quick glance my way, then sighs. “You’re right. Let’s go break some rules, like old times.” He cracks a smile, which is like a quarter of his usual grin, but it’s a start.
My eyes roll at the mention of our old shenanigans on the island. “I’d hardly compare something like this to the little pranks we did when we were younger.”
Kellan’s smile widens. “You’ve gotta up the stakes the older you get, or else it’s too easy and not fun anymore.”
“For you, maybe.” I look over at him. “Why not bring one of the others with you? Why me?”
“Aside from the obvious that you had always been my partner in crime before?” He shifts gears and we speed on to the highway. Weren’t we going to the airport for street racing?
“Aiden hates that I do any of this at all. He says we have enough people after us to then have to worry about cops and law enforcement up our asses if I ever get caught. Jackson isn’t into this sort of fun and though he might go along with it for me, he’d probably use his gift to cheat and make it end faster. And Dane, well, he can’t come down from his tower in case GE finds out where we’ve been hiding him from them.”
“Hiding him?”
Kellan raises an eyebrow and glances over at me. “You don’t know?”
I cross my arms and glare at him. “Why would I know anything? I haven’t seen or heard from you since you all left me on that island. Not until I came to this city, at least.”
“About that…I didn’t know you were still on the island. Aiden couldn’t find you and assumed you’d left when another boat was gone. For years after we got away, I thought that was exactly what you’d done.”
“Why would you think I’d actually leave all of you?”
He gives me an are you kidding me look and, yeah, okay. Good point.
“I hated you then. I thought you’d lied to us the entire time. You killing Vera and then leaving the island without us? It was all the proof I needed to see that everything we’d had together was a lie.”
I open my mouth to protest. “Let me finish,” he cuts in. “I was angry with everyone back then. I got into fights all the time, drank and smoked, and did a whole host of bad shit until Aiden finally reined me in. Even then, I didn’t slow down. I just got smarter with how I did it. Then, sometime after Jackson came back, he said something to me. He told me that he didn’t think you’d gotten off the island. You hadn’t left us behind. Because he’d searched the country for you, and he couldn’t find any sign you existed. None.
“Then I thought about what that might mean. That we may have left you behind and you might still be under their control. Or worse, dead. I was a miserable fuck after that. So, when you came back here…when I saw you again and knew you were alive, I was so fucking relieved. And angry. With myself for not trying to find you sooner. And also with you. Because you still owe us all an explanation for Vera. I was too emotional to listen to you then, but I’m ready now. I want—no, I need —to know why. Was any of it real?”
My heart is hammering in my chest as he confesses his side of the story, just like Jackson had. He hadn’t known either. I suspected as much after Jackson’s story, and now this merely corroborates it.
Aiden is the one who actually left me behind.
“Yes.” My voice is choked from the damn emotions congesting my throat.
“How much of it?”
“All of it.”
“Did you hate Vera?”
“No.”
“Will you tell me what happened?”
“No.”
His jaw ticks. “Fine. Did someone force you to do it?”
“Kellan, I don’t—”
“I’m almost done and then I’ll drop it. Just answer the question,” he pushes.
“No.” My voice strains at the confession. “No one forced me to do it.”
“Did you plan it?”
“No.”
“So, it was an accident?”
“Yes…and no.”
“What the hell does that mean?” he growls in frustration.
“I really don’t want to talk about it. Please stop asking questions. Fun time, remember?”
He gives me a sideways glance. “You’re going to have to tell us all what happened eventually, you know that, right, beautiful? There’s no way we can all just hang out like old times again with that hanging between us.”
I draw a slow breath and exhale, then say in a calm voice, “I don’t expect things to go back to normal between us ever again either. I’ll leave you all alone once GE is destroyed.”
Kellan smirks and shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything.
The car pulls up next to another on the highway and Kellan leans over me to the handle on the door to crank the window down. My heart jumps at the contact as he nearly lays himself across my lap.
“You ready?” he shouts through the open window to the driver in the other car.
The driver gives him a thumbs up. Kellan shoots me a devilish grin. “Are you ready?”
I grip the bar under my seat and the handle to my door and try to press back into my seat. None of it will save me if we crash or flip, but I still feel better for it. I can at least pretend I tried not to die, all for seeing the wildness in Kellan’s gaze that echoes and beats in my chest in response. I feel alive and reckless. My life is literally in his hands now, and it sends a shot of adrenaline pumping through my veins and pulling at my face until I have a grin as crazed as his on.
“Smoke him.”
His grin sharpens. “As you wish. Give us a countdown, beautiful.”
I hold my hand out the window and count down from three, then throw my hand forward to signal the start of the race.
We speed forward at the same time. A car appears in front of us and Kellan slams on the brakes while our opponent passes us. He swerves into the other lane, zipping us by other cars and then flying into another lane when a stretch of road opens up.
The two cars zigzag between traffic in a dangerous but mesmerizing dance. This is nothing like the clear drag of the last race, where Kellan easily swept passed his opponent in seconds and it was over. This is part skill and part luck.
The wind whips through the car from our two open windows and my hair blows wild around me. My cheeks are flushed, and I hold my breath as we make lane change after lane change at breakneck speeds on a highway that’s running over the city.
The lanes narrow from four to two, and Kellan downshifts when we get stuck behind a tractor-trailer. The other car is somewhere in front, but our line of sight is gone and there’s a steady line of cars in the lane to our right.
Kellan curses and checks all the mirrors, then dives us into the breakdown lane and drops gears to send us flying forward. The other car must see us coming and cuts into the breakdown lane before we can sneak past. But the fast lane is open and we graze by the car in front, so there’s only pavement stretched before us.
I gasp when I’m thrown back in the seat from the sudden acceleration. We drive neck and neck with the other car as it tries to find an opening to push in front of us, but Kell keeps us nosing ahead.
A mile marker flashes at us and Kellan whoops into the night air. He slows us down to a more normal speed and lets the other car merge in front of him.
He flashes a grin at me once we glide down an off-ramp and stop at a red light at the bottom. The light darkens his already-tanned skin in an ominous, reddish glow .
He looks like the devil right now, seated by my side and grinning at me like he’s just won my soul in this race.
With the way my heart is beating out of my chest and I’m panting for oxygen, maybe he did. Because I am not in control of my body at this moment. My fingers shake as I retract them from the stranglehold I’d had them in on their designated spots. “Wow,” is all I manage with a breathless laugh.
“You liked that?” Kellan chuckles and turns us onto the street when the light switches to green.
“That was insane.” I grin back. “How did you know where the end of the race was?”
“It’s the next five-mile marker from wherever we start. Why? Do you want to give it a go next?” He pops his eyebrows at me, and I roll my eyes.
“Definitely not. I can barely drive. I learned enough to get a car from point A to point B without crashing, but it’s not good, and they were all automatic. They weren’t my cars, so if they got scratched up a bit, it didn’t matter.”
He stops the car in the middle of the road. The person behind us honks and shouts out the window at us, but Kellan’s focus is solely trained on me.
“How about a driving lesson, then?”