9. Kade
Kade
The goddamn heavy bass house nightmare music from downstairs is giving me a fucking migraine.
I've been gripping the same glass of whiskey for two hours, watching the bartender work the bar through the one-way pane that separates the upper level from the main floor of the club.
He's good at his job, I'll give him that. Moves through the crowd like he belongs, laughing with all the right people. You'd never look at him and think, "Now there's a man with something to hide."
But someone's been blowing up his phone every fifteen minutes or so. It's too regular to be a girlfriend and too frequent to be spam bullshit. And he's fucked off twice into the back hallway for exactly three minutes before returning to his post at the bar.
Could be nothing.
Could be a coke habit or a nervous bladder.
Or it could be that my bartender's feeding intel to whatever's left of Carson's crew.
I flip my lighter open and shut. It keeps my hands from doing something worse. Like going around that bar, grabbing the bartender by the neck, and threatening his ass when he might not be doing anything wrong.
The bartender comes back from the hallway yet again, slipping his phone into his back pocket, and resumes pouring poison like nothing happened.
Another twenty minutes pass.
He checks his phone again, typing something fast with one thumb, and doesn't leave this time. He just smiles a little at whatever's on the screen and tucks it away.
Not enough evidence of anything except him using his phone on the clock.
I need more before I do anything about it, and I'm too tired to think straight tonight, let alone make some kind of move.
The wound in my arm is a sick throb that's graduated to a worse and more fucking irritating ache in the last hour, and the damn stitches keep pulling every time I shift in this chair.
Fuck it. I'm probably just being paranoid.
I drain the whiskey, smack the glass down on the table, and haul myself to my feet to head for the back exit. Tony's on the door and gives me a nod as I pass, but I don't return it this time.
The house is all lit up when I finally pull into the driveway. Every window is glowing like someone's hosting a fucking dinner party, even though it's almost midnight.
I sit in the car for a minute, engine off, my hands locked on the wheel. The lighter's in my pocket, pressing against my thigh, beckoning me to fuck with it.
I grip the leather of the steering wheel instead.
I still haven't spoken to anyone really since that night I found out Tank had fucked my girl.
Not my girl, I correct myself immediately. Whatever. I know that. She was never mine. She was ours, or nobody's, or maybe she was always her own and I was just too fucking stupid to see it.
I get out of the car and Tank is there, leaning against the porch railing like he's waiting for me, and has been for a while. Big arms crossed, dark eyes fixed on me above the mask.
I stop at the bottom of the steps. "Move."
He doesn't move, because he's a fucking asshole who manages to set me off without ever uttering a single damn word.
Where have you been? His signs are slow like he's choosing his words carefully.
"Working. You know. The thing we do that pays for this house?"
He ignores my sarcasm. You haven't been home.
"Didn't realize I had a curfew." I take a step up. He shifts his weight, not exactly blocking me, but making it clear that passing him without engaging isn't an option unless I want to physically move almost seven fucking feet of solid muscle out of my way.
Which I could try. But my arm's still fucked and we both know how that fight ended last time.
"What do you want, Tank?"
I'm worried about you.
That makes me bark out a hollow laugh. "Worried? That's fucking rich, brother. Were you worried about me when you had your cock inside her?"
He flinches. Good.
How long are you going to be angry that I made love to Ellie?
I stare at him in silence.
"Made love," I repeat, barking out a laugh. "You sound like a fucking Hallmark card, jackass."
His jaw tightens behind the mask and he flips me off.
I lean against the opposite railing, putting the full width of the porch between us because I don't trust myself. Or him. "Just say you fucked her. It's less embarrassing."
It wasn't just fucking.
Holy shit, my brother's a sap.
"Okay. Congratufuckinglations. You made love." I drag the words out, coating them in as much acid as they'll take. "You're not a virgin anymore. Want me to throw you a parade? Get you a trophy? 'World's Most Romantic First Time,' gold plaque, little engraved hearts and all?"
Stop.
"Why? Am I tainting the precious memory?" I taunt.
He doesn't respond, just stands there watching me like he's waiting for me to feel like an ass.
It wasn't planned, he finally signs. She came to me. I didn't—
"Yeah, I bet you didn't plan it." I push off the railing, shoving my hands in my pockets. "These things just happen when you're alone with her and she looks at you the way she does and suddenly your dick makes all the decisions."
He has the decency to look guilty. At least, I think that's guilt. Even I have a hard time telling what's behind the mask sometimes.
I'm not sorry it happened. He pauses. But I should have told you first.
"Yeah." I swallow the rest of what I want to say because he's not the one I want to say it to. But "Why not me?" is a question too pathetic to utter out loud, let alone in front of Ellie fucking Riggs. "Whatever."
I walk past him and he lets me this time.
I hear them way before I see them. Happy laughter coming from the gym. It's Ellie's laugh. That musical laugh used to be the best sound in my world and now it feels like a gut punch.
I should go upstairs, walk past the gym door and pretend I don't hear it, don't feel a damn thing.
My feet carry me to the doorway instead.
Jinx is spotting her on the bench press. The bar is light, maybe ten pounds on each side, but his hands hover beneath it anyway. His fingers keep brushing the undersides of her arms on each rep, and when she racks the weight, his palms slide down to her shoulders and linger there.
"Five more, Princess," he says, grinning down at her.
"You said that five reps ago."
"Did I? Weird. I must be losing count." His thumb traces her collar above the neckline of her tank top. "Just one more set."
She rolls her eyes but she's smiling.
"You're just using this as an excuse to feel me up," she accuses, but she doesn't move away from his hands.
"Princess, I don't need an excuse." His tattooed fingers drift to the curve of her neck, adjusting a strand of pink hair that's escaped her ponytail. "I have a contract."
She snorts and smacks his chest. He catches her hand and holds it there, and they're looking at each other like this is normal.
Like any of this could ever be simple.
I'm stuck in my fucking head again.
I walk away before either of them can see me, because if they do, and I have to stop to chat, it's not gonna go good. Take the stairs two at a time, my jaw clenched so tight it's giving me a headache on top of the one I already have.
This isn't working.
None of it is working out the way I planned.
I wanted her broken. Wanted her to feel a fraction of what she did to us. I wanted Ellie, in all her spoiled rich girl glory humbled and on her knees, begging, finally understanding what it cost to be left behind.
But the pet thing was supposed to be punishment. It was supposed to make me feel powerful instead of… this.
Whatever the fuck this is.
This sick, gnawing ache in my stomach that gets worse every time she laughs with someone who isn't me.
I planned this, drew up the contract myself, imagining how good it would feel to finally have her under my thumb.
And it's fucking misery.
Because it's Ellie. It was always going to be Ellie, and I can't just use her like some stranger who wronged me. I can't treat her like a body with no history when she's every part of my history I want to remember.
Every time I look at her, I see the girl who bandaged my hands when I burned them. The girl who cried when they took Tank away and waited for us when we got back.
I see the girl who believed in me before I believed in myself, which made every word in that letter cut even deeper.
I hate her for leaving.
I fucking hate her for every year of silence and every night I spent wondering if she was laughing somewhere without us, living a life we'd never be part of.
And I hated myself for hoping she was, that she was happy without us, because I could never bring myself to hate her more than I loved her.
And now, it's still her.
My feet take me to her room without my brain's permission. I'm just fucking wandering now, apparently.
The door is open and she's downstairs with Jinx. Won't be back for a while, probably.
The room still smells like her. Cotton candy perfume and strawberry shampoo. The bed is made, corners tucked prissily, and the pillows arranged in a specific pattern I know isn't random because she's a pastel pink psychopath. Five pillows.
Pink, white, pink, white, pink.
Her vanity is lined with products I don't recognize but Jinx could probably name on sight. Expensive shit, everything arranged by size, labels facing forward, caps all turned in the same direction like a fucking store display.
I pick up a sweater draped over the chair. It's soft pink cashmere, and I bring it to my face before I can stop myself, inhaling deep enough to fill my lungs with her because that's the closest I'm letting myself get.
Pathetic. I'm fucking pathetic. Standing in her room like a ghost, smelling her clothes like some lovesick stalker.
The sweater shifts in my hands and something falls from the fold. It's small and light, wrapped in tissue paper and wadded into a tight bundle. It hits the floor near my boot and I bend down to pick it up.
The tissue unfolds in my palm.
Five pills sit inside. Small, oval, and a vaguely familiar pale blue. I think the guys ran these back when our operation was small time.
I stare at them.
What the fuck?