26. Nyah
NYAH
Dear Diary,
That Scottish accent is really starting to grate on my nerves.
Istared into Lynx’s eyes; my heart wide open. I tried to recall the words. It was too soon. We’d only just started sleeping together, and there was the complicated mess of what was going on with Dax and Luca and this baby to add into the equation.
Heat burned my cheeks, the silence stretching out between us.
I tried really hard to force new words out of my mouth, ones that laughed and told him I was just joking.
That of course I didn’t love him, and yes, maybe I now knew what it felt like to have him inside me but that didn’t mean we had to be anything more than friends.
Except my heart screamed we were. It shouted I did love him, because he’d been my friend first. That I didn’t need to have been sleeping with him for months to know what sort of man he was, and to love him so wholeheartedly because of it.
Had I really just said, “I think I love you?”
There was no “think” about it. When the cards had been laid down at my parents’ feet, the truth had come out.
I did love Lynx. For everything he was, and especially for the way he’d always treated me, from the very first moment we’d met.
My phone rang, and I scrambled to answer it, grateful for the fact I had a reason to turn away. Because him not saying it back had left an awkward feeling in the air I really wanted to erase.
I didn’t even look at the caller ID before I hit answer, which probably showed how desperate I was for a reprieve from Lynx’s steady gaze. I pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around my naked body. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
I closed my eyes, and Dax’s warm, familiar voice came down the line. He was always a beacon of strength. He always knew exactly what I needed and showed up at the right moment, even when he couldn’t possibly have known what I needed right now was to be engulfed in his steadying presence.
“Are you on your way here?” I so desperately hoped he was calling from the Slayers’ gates. Or even better, from right outside my bedroom door.
“No. I…” He swallowed so thickly it was audible. “I’m not coming.”
My heart sank. “Oh. Okay. Did that back piece take longer than you thought? It’s okay, just come over whenever you’re done.”
“No, Nyah. I need you to listen to me. I can’t do this. Any of it.”
I frowned, the space between my eyebrows crinkling. “Any of what? I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You and me. This relationship. I don’t want it.”
I let out a little laugh, because apparently that’s what my body did when the man I loved and whose baby I was carrying made a super not-funny joke. “Ha-ha. Very funny.”
He sighed heavily. “Nyah, I’m serious. I’m leaving. I’m at the airport. I’m going back to Scotland and fighting for MacGregor.”
My entire body locked up. “What?”
Lynx sat up and reached for me, but I edged away, out of his grasp.
I pressed the phone tighter against my ear, like maybe I hadn’t heard Dax properly the first time. Like it might help him say something entirely different than the words that had just come out of his mouth.
“I’m really sorry. But I just can’t be in Saint View right now. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
I shook my head, even though I knew he wouldn’t see it. “No. Dax, this isn’t funny. If you’re trying to get back at me for the way I left you…”
Except I knew in my heart he wouldn’t. That he wasn’t the sort of man to play games like that. To try to hurt me because of the way I’d hurt him.
That just wasn’t Dax at all.
Which left me stone-cold. Because the only other option was he was telling me the truth. He was leaving again.
And from the sounds of his voice, he wasn’t coming back.
“Dax…” His name was barely a whisper on my lips. “What are you doing?”
“Let me go, Nyah. Please.” Something hitched in his voice, and then he added in a rush. “I fucking love you.”
I opened my mouth to beg him not to leave then, but no sound came out. And I was left with a dead phone line, staring at it dumbly because none of this made any sense.
“What the fuck was that?”
I jumped at Luca’s voice. I hadn’t even realized he’d finished his shower and had heard my end of the conversation. I just stared down at the phone. “I don’t know. Dax said he’s going back to Scotland to fight for MacGregor. I think he’s done with me.”
Luca snorted. “Yeah, okay. Dax would rather cut of his own nutsack than be done with you.”
Until a few seconds ago, I would have believed that.
Yet I’d just heard the words from his own lips. And I didn’t know how to argue with a man who’d laid it out so clearly.
Lynx pulled me onto his lap, and this time, I let him.
Luca’s dark-eyed gaze flickered over my face, and something in his expression changed. Hardened. He swore under his breath and then strode across the room in nothing but a towel wrapped tightly around his narrow hips. He picked up his phone and stabbed at the screen a few times.
“I don’t think he’s going to answer,” I said softly. “He seemed pretty adamant.”
“I’m not calling him,” Luca said through gritted teeth. “I’m calling MacGregor.”
Lynx stroked his hand down my back reassuringly, but his words were for Luca. “Put it on speaker.”
Luca dropped the phone away from his ear, and then the dial tone sounded through the small room.
MacGregor’s Scottish accent curled down the line almost instantly. “Do my eyes deceive me? Could it really be the Luca Guerra calling little ole me?”
A muscle ticked in Luca’s jaw. “Did you call Dax over there to work for you?”
“Hello to you too, Luca. I’m so well. Thanks for asking.” He paused and chuckled. “How’s your father?”
Luca’s mood darkened so obviously it was like a storm cloud rolling right on into the room from the sky outside. “I’m not interested in your niceties. Is it true? Is Dax King working for you again?”
“I have so many fighters. It’s really very hard for me to remember them all.”
“Just tell us,” I begged desperately.
Luca shot me a look, like he really wished I hadn’t said anything.
“Nyah Matish? Is that your sweet voice I hear? How are ye, lass? Do you still have that underwear I bought ye? I can’t wait to see ye in it again.”
I bit down on my lip.
Luca took over the conversation once more. “Dax, MacGregor. Why the fuck did he just call us to say he was fighting for you?”
“I honestly have no idea. Because he’s not.”
I stared at the phone in Luca’s hand. “I can’t tell if you’re lying.”
“While I have no moral objections to such, this time, I’m not. Your boy isn’t working for me. If he told you otherwise, then I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe it’s not me who’s the liar, but him.”
I didn’t know what to feel about that. I believed MacGregor. I didn’t know why, but I did. Maybe because I knew in my heart Dax wouldn’t just run off to Scotland to fight for a man who’d tried to have him killed.
“Maybe,” MacGregor continued, “maybe your man got sick of sharing ye? You’re clearly still running around with the Mafia prince and the bodyguard, aren’t ye, Miss Matish?
Maybe he got sick of playing second fiddle.
” He chuckled. “Or third, as the case may be. Perhaps he’s just had enough of seeing ye take other men into your sweet little pussy and he couldn’t take the jealousy another second. ”
I shook my head, desperately wanting that to not be true. “No.”
Except a niggling kernel of worry whispered maybe it was. I’d thought he was okay with me and Luca and Lynx. But in hindsight…
He’d had a woman, who was pregnant with his child. A woman he’d had all to himself, who he’d woken up next to every morning and fallen asleep next to every night.
We’d gone from that to a string of events that had pushed us farther and farther apart. So far apart I’d found myself in Luca’s bed. Then Lynx’s.
Somewhere along the line, because Violet had what I so desperately wanted, and it worked for her, I’d convinced myself I could have it too.
I’d convinced myself I could have all three of them and nobody would get hurt.
And in the process, I’d hurt the one I’d loved first. The one who’d given me the most precious gift I could have ever hoped for, in the form of our child growing inside me.
Now I’d lost him.
My heart cracked open, and pain engulfed me like nothing I’d ever felt before.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
Luca ended the call. “He’s full of shit. Something isn’t right here. I’m going down to the shop to talk to Dax. Get dressed.”
Lynx and I threw on clothes, and within minutes, we were all in Luca’s car, heading back into Saint View.
We parked in the same spot we had earlier that morning, even though by now, that felt like a lifetime ago.
I led the charge across the street and through the doors of the tattoo shop, Luca and Lynx on my heels.
Behind the reception desk, Roarke’s face fell when he saw it was me. “If you’re here to see my brother, I hope it’s only King you’re after.” He picked up a piece of paper and waved it at me. “Because apparently Dax has fucked off and left everything in our laps again.”
I stopped on the other side of the desk and eyed the piece of paper. “Is that a letter from him?”
Roarke handed it over. “Read it if you want. And if you talk to him, tell him I hate him.”
I looked up at Dax’s brother sharply. “You don’t mean that.”
He sighed heavily. “No, I don’t. But I am fucking mad at him. This isn’t the first time he’s just fucked off because it suited him and left me and King to pick up everything.”
I knew he was referring to the time I’d gone missing and Dax had dropped everything to find me. Guilt swirled around in my stomach over that, even though it hadn’t been my choice.
And again now. Because it felt like my fault once more.
The note just read: Taken some fights in Scotland. Don’t know when I’ll be back.
I stared down at the messy scrawl of letters across the page and frowned at it. “Is this his writing?”
I wished I knew myself, but even with all the time we’d spent together, I wasn’t sure I’d ever really paid attention to his handwriting.
Roarke studied the note again and shrugged. “Could be. But we’re artists. And Dax does a lot of hand lettering. His handwriting is different every time he writes something new.”
A little bit of hope lit up inside me. “So maybe it’s not?”
Roarke looked at it again. “Maybe.”
I clutched the piece of paper in my fingers and turned to Luca and Lynx. “He didn’t leave voluntarily. This note…”
I registered their expressions, and my heart sank. “You don’t think it matters, do you?”
Lynx’s mouth twisted into a grim line. “He called you himself and said he was going…”
I shook my head. “But MacGregor said he’s not there!”
“And MacGregor is a fucking liar.” Luca’s gaze was full of empathy for me. “He’d lie right to your face just to mess with your head.”
Which only pissed me off more. “No! I don’t believe that.”
And yet, when the facts were laid out in front of me, it was hard not to at least consider they might be right.
Lynx circled an arm around me. “He’s had a lot going on. With his mom and you and the baby, and me and Luca…it’d be a lot for anyone to handle. Maybe he just needs a minute.”
But I didn’t want him to have a minute. I wanted him to have all the minutes. With me.
And I was desperately scared I wasn’t going to get another.
“What if this is your father?” I asked Luca. “Maybe he’s forcing Dax’s hand because he wants to hurt me? After the way I embarrassed him…”
Luca nodded. “Could be. I’ll ask him.”
I stared at Luca. “You haven’t spoken to him since everything that happened in Scotland.”
“And I’m not exactly looking forward to trying it again. But we need to know.”
“You think he’s going to take your calls?”
Luca snorted. “Unlikely. But I’ll find a way to speak to him. We need to rule it out as a possibility.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “We could crash that party my parents told us about…”
Luca mirrored the expression. “You want to crash a Mafia party, where my father, yours, and MacGregor will probably all be in the same room at the same time, all of them hating our guts?”
Lynx screwed up his face, sarcasm dripping from his words. “Geez. That sounds like a good time. Pass.”
But I wasn’t letting this one go. Because the only other alternative was I accepted Dax was gone, of his own free will, because he didn’t want me or the baby.
And if that were true, I wasn’t sure what the point of anything was anymore.