Chapter Twenty-Four
Nixon
It was an excruciating fucking night.
Generally speaking, most people would never call me an irrational or violent person.
But then I'd gotten the call telling me that Reagan had been drugged, that they hadn't realized until things had progressed further than they planned.
In that moment, rage and fear combined into a lethal cocktail in my system, the combustible kind.
And I fucking exploded.
Thank God the guard closest to me when Lo told me the news was a man, because I don’t think I would have forgiven myself if I had attacked a woman in my attempt to get away, to get to her.
I ended up with a black eye for my efforts, overestimating my training, and woefully underestimating Lo's guard's.
Reinforcements had been called in.
Then Kingston had been called in.
I guess they thought he would be able to rationalize with me.
But he sat with me, waiting, knowing there was nothing that could have calmed him down if it was Savvy he was being kept away from.
Minutes stretched to an hour.
Lo's guards were getting filled in, but they were keeping it from me.
Finally, a phone was passed to me, and I was given details about her condition.
She was safe.
Stable.
But alone.
Her brother wasn't around.
Her parents weren't around.
I wasn't allowed to go.
She'd been through an ordeal, and she was alone when I knew she would need me the most.
It was after fucking noon the following day when they finally told me I could go.
I wasn't really even conscious of the drive.
One minute, I was in my house with guards. The next, I was standing at her door, flanked by more guards.
Luckily, though, they let me in, likely having orders from Lo to leave us be for the time being.
In I walked.
And there she was.
No bruises.
No physical damage.
But it was there in her eyes.
A crack that hadn't been there before.
I was across the apartment in five strides, catching her as she crumbled against me, clung to me.
Sobbing.
Like she had done several times since that incident at the Mallick's house that felt like a lifetime ago already.
I had a feeling this was different, though.
This was a mix of her grief, yes, and the fear she'd felt the night before, the anxiety of feeling so out of control. But it was more than that. I sensed there was relief underneath it all too.
That it was finally going to be over.
That she could put this one part of her life to rest.
That she had gotten her justice.
That she exposed a rapist to the public eye.
That she had proven herself to her family.
That she could take new steps toward a life of more complete healing.
The weight she'd been carrying around on her shoulders was falling away. Finally. Giving her the freedom she so desperately deserved.
"Talk to me," I demanded into her hair when she went silent, when she kept clinging to me.
"I don't know what to say."
"Whatever you want to say. How you're feeling. Something."
"He drugged me," she told me, voice small.
"I know, babe. I know he did."
"He drugged Sammy."
“It seems likely."
'She felt like I felt last night. Worse."
"Yeah."
"He's done it to other girls."
"I saw that." Three women and counting so far. A serial rapist. Our criminal justice system didn't have a fitting punishment for the damage he had done.
"If we hadn't done this, they might never have come forward. He might have kept on doing this."
"You," I corrected. "You did this. You got justice for them and for your sister."
"I have big chunks of time missing from last night," she told me, and I had suspected as much as soon as Lo told me she'd been drugged.
Somehow, I thought that might have been worse. The not knowing. Even if Reagan did know how far it had gone because of the people who had been there.
"Lo and her team can fill them in," I assured her. At least most of them.
"I'm going to have to call my parents."
I had a feeling that was the hardest sentence so far for her to utter. "Luis is filling them in..."
"But they are going to need to hear from you," I finished for her. "It will be good, I think, for you all to be able to talk, to get it on the table. To start healing. I think you've all started that process individually, but haven't tried as a family yet."
"I want a couple days," she admitted, voice small.
"I will make sure you get it. Even if I have to explain it to them myself."
"I'm glad you're finally here," she told me, squeezing me tighter.
"Me too."
"I'm so tired," she admitted, taking a deep breath.
"Then let's get you in bed."
That was exactly what I did.
I got her in bed. I held her as she drifted off.
While she slept, I checked in with Lo. Kingston came to the apartment to drop off the official paperwork that was meant to hire us.
Which would give my presence an explanation I really didn't think was necessary.
But Lo was the sort to prepare for every possible angle.
"Is she alright?" Kingston asked, hesitating at the door.
"She will be," I assured him, nodding.
I would make sure of that.
And over the next week, it was my sole purpose in life. Well, that and being Mal's personal massage-giver.
Reagan didn't do much. She slept a lot. She answered emails from the office, which Krissy tried to send very sparingly. She had video calls with her therapist. She stared off into space.
It was on the sixth day that I did anything other than support her.
It was the day I pushed her.
I dropped her phone down on the table in front of her. The phone that had rung three times a day without fail while she refused to pick it up.
"You need to call your parents."
She stared at the phone for a long time, head shaking a bit as she admitted, "I don't know what to say to them."
"They just want to hear that you're okay."
"Luis told—“
"It's not the same," I cut her off, giving her a little tough love because I knew she needed it, knew she could take it. "Call your parents, babe."
"They're going to want to fly out here."
"You're going to need to see them again. They're family. Maybe you can fly out there. We," I clarified. "We can fly out there."
"You'd go meet my parents with me?" she asked.
I felt like there was an added “so soon” at the end of that question.
Objectively, that was fair. It had only been a few weeks.
But the fact of the matter was, we hadn't wasted weeks dipping our toes in.
We jumped right in. We got fully immersed in it.
We'd pretty much been living together since we finally sealed the deal.
I dropped into her office for lunch. I knew where more of her cooking utensils were than she did.
I fixed the leak in the bathroom sink. She gave me a drawer.
She did not, however, make room in her closet.
This was likely because there was no room to be made.
I'd never seen someone with so many clothes.
As a compromise, she sat and helped me Kondo-fy my drawer, rolling everything to make more room.
She came with me to spend time with my family.
It was time to spend time with hers.
"Yeah. I get to see your ridiculous childhood home with my own two eyes. If you want," I added, feeling a somewhat uncharacteristic surge of uncertainty flood my system. "I understand if you want to go see them on your own."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "No. I want you to come. I think that is the only way I could get through it, honestly."
"Good. Then call them. Set it up."
"What about your work schedule? I can't go until after I get back to the office. Krissy and Harvey are butting heads from the sound of things. And I need to go over the marketing campaign with the team in California so everyone is on the same page. And then I can go. A week should work."
"I can do a week."
"You didn't even talk to King."
"I don't need to talk to King. It's fine."
"Atlas is back in town, isn't he?"
"He spent a week in bed with someone in the royal family. You know... until they found out."
"It's funny that we both have brothers who can't stay in one place for any length of time. They've probably even crossed paths before without realizing it."
"Do you think Luis will show up if you are going to visit your parents?"
"Depends on if he has work or not. But probably. I haven’t seen him in a while. He usually gets a bit of familial guilt, drops in for a day, then jets off again. He will see this as an opportunity to hit two birds with one stone. He will also lighten the mood a bit."
"The mood will be fine, babe. Stop stressing about it so much."
To that, she gave me a grateful smile, tapping a nail on her phone, trying to find the courage to make the call.
"Are you going to judge my parents' taste in art like you do mine?"
"That depends. Do they like creepy-ass fucking devil paintings like you do?"
She laughed at that, the tension leaving her shoulders.
With that, she picked up the phone, she assured her parents that she was okay, and she told them we would be heading out the following week to catch up.
"Yes, we," she said, giving me what I could only call a shy smile. "Nixon. Yes. It's his real name. Nixon Rivers. Yes. He does private security. Yeah. Okay. I will tell him. Love you too. Bye."
"Tell me what?" I asked.
"To bring your bathing suit."
"You look excited."
"I am. I think that is the first time I've spoken to them that I didn't feel like there were ghosts between us," she told me, moving into the kitchen to grab a peach out of the bowl. "They’re excited to meet you."
"Better brush up on my manners then, huh?" I mused, knowing it would never be my strong suit.
"I think my father will like you just as you are.
His grandfather started what would eventually turn into the family's empire.
He had a fifth-grade education, and insisted until the day he died that cheap wine and the expensive kind were all the same.
He was blunt and opinionated and my father looked up to him so much. "
"And your mother?" I prompted.
"Bring her a dying plant."