by Sadie Moss
But when I looked up into Noah’s warm gray eyes to find him smiling down at me, I realized it might already be too late for that.
After leaving Carl’s pawn shop, we took another cab to a hotel off the strip.
There was a small, beat-up slot machine in the lobby, the only nod to the luxurious hotel casinos in the touristy part of Vegas. But the thing looked like it hadn’t been played in years. While West and I settled into our room—which basically consisted of me sitting on one of the beds watching TV while West took inventory of the supplies and weapons in the two packs we had left—the other three went in search of food, clothes, and a few other necessities.
When they returned an hour later and dumped everything out on the other bed, I squinted at a small box curiously.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, that’s for you.” Jackson picked it up and tossed it to me. “We didn’t know what color to pick, so I hope you don’t hate it.”
I gaped at him. “Are you serious?”
“Very.” Rhys shot me a challenging look.
Despite a strong temptation to argue, I clamped my mouth shut. Rhys’s mood had soured again after we left the pawn shop, and as annoying as his cold fronts were, this wasn’t the hill I wanted to die on.
“Okay,” I said simply, hopping off the bed and heading toward the bathroom with the box of hair dye clutched in my hand. “I’ll be back.”
It took a lot longer than I expected. I’d never dyed my hair before, and I had no idea what I was doing. Twice, Noah knocked on the door to ask if I needed help. And twice, I informed him in a slightly panicked voice that I had everything under control.
After waiting the allotted amount of time with the strange plastic cap jammed on top of my head, I hopped into the shower to rinse it all out.
A knock came as I was scrubbing my skin with the floral scented hotel body wash. I jumped about a foot in the air as the door opened a crack.
“Everything’s fine! I’ve got it under control!” I yelped.
There was a low chuckle from the other side of the door. “Yeah, I figured, Scrubs. I just brought you a change of clothes. I’ll leave ’em right here.”
Noah’s large hand reached through the crack, depositing a fresh set of clothes on the floor. He closed the door with a soft click, and my racing heart began to slow.
I finished up quickly, then toweled off and stepped out. When I wiped the condensation off the mirror, I hardly recognized myself. The waves of tangled wet hair falling down around my shoulders were now a pale blonde, making the golden color of my eyes stand out even more against my pale complexion.
I lingered in the bathroom for a while longer, taking my time getting dressed in the jeans and t-shirt Noah had delivered. Honestly, I was a little nervous about showing the guys my new hair, for some reason. What if they hated it?
And why should it matter to me if they did?
Not wanting to think too hard about the answer to that, I forced myself to grow a pair and leave the comforting, steamy cocoon of the bathroom. The guys were spread out across the two full beds, munching on burgers and watching, of all things, a cooking show.
They looked up as I entered, and the whole room seemed to freeze. Jackson’s burger hovered halfway to his mouth, which hung slightly open. Noah bit his lower lip in a way that made heat pool in my stomach. West grinned, and an expression I couldn’t read passed over Rhys’s face before he smoothed out his features.
I squirmed uncomfortably. “It’s… I don’t know, it’s not really my color.”
Noah hopped off the bed, his long legs carrying him toward me in a few quick strides. He reached out, catching a lock of my newly-blonde hair and rolling it between his finger and thumb. I held perfectly still, watching him, as my heart slammed inside my rib cage.
“It looks good on you, Scrubs.” He tugged lightly on the strands, and a tingling feeling spread across my scalp. My breath hitched, my mouth going suddenly dry. He was standing less than a foot away from me, so close I could feel the heat coming off his body. Then he bent toward me, his voice a low whisper I knew was meant only for me. “But you’d look beautiful no matter what color your hair was.”
His breath tickled my cheek as his words sent an explosion of butterflies careening around in my stomach.
I swallowed, trying to wrestle down thoughts I shouldn’t be having.
Oh man. I am so totally fucked.
Chapter Sixteen
The next few days were a very strange kind of torture.
I’d never had roommates. At the Strand complex, I’d had my own private room.
Now, I was sharing a single hotel room with four men. And what was worse, except for a trip back to the pawn shop the day after we arrived so Carl could take our pictures for our new IDs, the guys had decided we needed to lay low. Which meant the five of us were boxed into the small space together. All. The. Time.
The room wasn’t crazy small, but it seemed to shrink down to the size of a phone booth when we were all inside it. The men were each physically dominating, but more than that, their energy filled the space, seeming to suck up all the oxygen and making it hard for me to think straight.
To remember I needed to keep my walls up.
To remember it was a good thing they let me have one of the beds all to myself.
But as I lay awake at night, listening to their quiet breathing surround me like a blanket, that wasn’t what I wished for at all.
I wished for Noah to crawl under the covers and wrap his arms around me. I pictured West’s large body hovering over mine, his dark eyes shining down at me. I imagined Jackson’s teasing chuckle in my ear as his lips brushed my hair. And Rhys?
Well, I didn’t daydream about him at all. I wouldn’t let myself. If there was one man out of these four I knew I shouldn’t trust with my heart, it was that moody asshole. I was slowly starting to believe the others actually cared about me. That I’d gotten under their skin at least a fraction as much as they’d gotten under mine. But Rhys had made it abundantly clear on more than one occasion that he didn’t want me here, didn’t trust me, and didn’t like me at all.
Never mind that sometimes I caught him staring at me with a look so hot I could practically feel flames licking along my skin, warming my blood all the way down to my core.
As soon as he noticed me watching him, his gaze would freeze over and his lips would harden into a line. I hated seeing that look. It crushed the part of my heart that hadn’t listened to any of the warnings my brain issued—the part that had fallen for him a little bit already.
On the third night of our stay in Vegas, I lay in the darkness staring up at the ceiling like I always did, waiting for sleep to finally come. Rhys and Noah were in the other bed, and Jackson and West had made little blanket nests on the floor.
I felt anxious and unsettled. Carl hadn’t given us a timeline for when he’d have everything done, and the open-endedness of our stay here was giving me flashbacks of the Strand complex. Of living in a state of perpetual waiting.
Sighing, I rolled over onto my side—and almost jumped out of my skin when I found myself staring into a set of glistening amber eyes. Jackson had sat up on the floor, and his head poked over the side of the mattress.
He chuckled at my muffled yelp and shot a look over my shoulder at the bed behind me. The two figures there were still and quiet under the blankets. Before I could register what he was doing, Jackson slipped under the covers with me, pulling them up over his shoulders.
The guys all slept in nothing but shorts—which made it impossible for me to find a safe place to look after 11 p.m. And now, I could practically feel the smooth warmth of his skin as he scooted closer, his gaze locked on my face.
“What’s up, Alexis?” he whispered. “You haven’t been sleeping.”
I blinked, trying to figure out where to put my hands. They really wanted to press against his chest, and since I wasn’t letting them do that, they twisted together restlessly.
“
“I can hear your breathing. When you sleep, it evens out; but when you’re awake, it’s fast. Like you’re running a marathon in your head.”
That was a pretty apt description, actually.
Settling for pinning my hands beneath the side of my head, I bit my bottom lip.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I murmured. “I’m just excited to get moving again. Not that I think things will be any better or easier once we leave Vegas, but I guess after all those years spent living at Strand, the idea of getting stuck again scares the shit out of me.”
He adjusted his head on his pillow, and his long lashes caught the light of a streetlamp filtering through the curtains. “Yeah. I get that. I’d like to tell you the scars fade eventually, but I don’t know if they ever do.”
As he spoke, the jokester and prankster I’d gotten to know disappeared for a moment, and he seemed older. Sadder. Like he knew way too much about the worst parts of the world.
Against my will, one hand slipped out from under my cheek, pressing against the warm skin of his chest. His chest hair tickled my fingertips, and I could feel his heart thudding beneath my palm. He placed his hand over mine, trapping it before I could yank it back.
I looked away. We were already crossing way too many of the barriers I’d put in place, I couldn’t let myself stare into his eyes too. “I don’t expect the scars to fade. I don’t even know if I want them to. If they stay forever, I won’t ever forget.”
He nodded, his thumb brushing against mine.
“It just makes me sad sometimes,” I admitted, the honesty of my words surprising me. I was too busy trying to keep my body under control to filter my words.
“What does?” His voice was soft.
My fingers curled slightly against his chest, tears pricking my eyes. I felt raw and exposed. I had tried so hard to put up a facade of strength since these men crashed into my life—with varying degrees of success, I’d be the first to admit. But I could feel the mask slipping. As hard as I tried to roll with the punches, I was still grappling with grief and fear that sometimes threatened to wash me away in a tidal wave.
“I spent my whole life locked up. And now that I’m finally out, I don’t feel like I’m really living. There are so many things I never got to do, and now, with everything that’s happened… I don’t know if I’ll ever get to do them.”
Jackson’s thumb stopped moving. He grabbed my hand, and for a second, I thought he was going to bring it to his mouth and press a kiss to it. But he just held it in his, our joined hands resting on the mattress in the small space between us.
“You will, Alexis. I promise. You will.”
“No.” Rhys’s voice was hard. “No fucking way.”
“Come onnnn!” Jackson sounded almost exactly like a puppy whining to go outside and play. “Just for a couple hours!”
“I said no.”
“What about you guys?” He turned to West and Noah, who were watching the exchange with amused expressions. As soon as he dragged them into it, though, their smiles dropped.
“I dunno, Jackson.” Noah rubbed his neck. “We really should be laying low.”
“Going to a dive bar miles off the strip is laying low!”
I held back a smile at that. Apparently, when Jackson had promised me last night that I wouldn’t miss out on life now that I was free, he’d meant it. And now he aimed to do something about it.
“He’s got a point, Rhys,” West admitted grudgingly. “And besides, he’s got that crazy fucking ‘Jackson’ look in his eyes. If we don’t let off a little steam soon, he’s gonna explode. Nobody needs that shit.”
“Exactly!” The brown-haired shifter pointed at West in triumph.
Noah tilted his head to one side. “Yeah, that’s a pretty good argument.”
“Yes!” Jackson extended his other hand to point at Noah, leaping up on one of the beds to do a little dance that involved a lot of hip action and not a lot of rhythm.
I ducked my face to hide my grin. I definitely wasn’t the only one going stir crazy from being cooped up like this.
Rhys shook his head, looking supremely annoyed. But then he surprised me by biting out, “Fine. One drink. Some food. That’s it.”
“That’s all we need!” Jackson crowed, jumping off the bed and nearly bowling me over as he tackled me in a messy, enthusiastic hug. “Hear that, Alexis? We’re going the fuck out.”
Ten minutes later, we piled into a taxi. I was sure a girlier girl would’ve taken longer to get ready, but I had barely any clothes, no makeup, and no idea what to do with it if I’d had any. So all I did was pull my shoulder length, dyed-blonde hair into a ponytail and tug a fresh shirt out of the pile of clothes Rhys had picked up.
Why he was allowed to sneak off and go shopping, I didn’t know. But since it meant I had clean underwear, I wasn’t going to bitch about it.
Jackson gave the driver an address as I settled awkwardly across Rhys’s and West’s laps. I tried to ignore the feel of West’s hand brushing the side of my leg and Rhys’s breath tickling the back of my neck, and the now familiar scent of them both.
We really needed to start hailing bigger cabs.
When the driver pulled up outside a bar with half-broken neon lights in the windows and a heavy, thumping beat spilling out from inside, my pulse quickened with excitement.
I’d turned twenty-one last fall, there had been no rite of passage at a bar, no friends buying me shots. My only celebration had been a little cake my mom—no, the woman pretending to be my mom—and I had shared in my room. I hadn’t been allowed to drink booze; not on the strict regimen Doctor Shepherd had me on. And knowing what I knew now, the sweet memory of that day tasted bitter.
But tonight? Tonight was going to be a whole bunch of firsts.
And I couldn’t fucking wait.
Chapter Seventeen
We climbed out of the car and were halfway to the bar door when a thought struck me. I slapped a hand over Noah’s chest where he walked beside me, stopping him in his tracks.
“Noah! What if they card me? I don’t have—”
He chuckled, prying my fingers from his shirt but keeping hold of my hand. “Don’t worry, Scrubs. This isn’t the kind of place that has someone checking IDs at the entrance.”
Despite his reassurances, my heart hammered in my chest as we pushed through the heavy door into the bar. But no one stopped us. The place was pretty full, and the bartender barely even glanced up as we made our way toward a table in the back.
The bar was old and grungy, the dark wood floor pock-marked and scuffed. Dim light glinted off the cracked leather of the barstools, and our table wobbled badly. In one corner, a small area was cleared of tables, creating a makeshift dance floor. Music blared through speakers on the walls, so loud it was hard to hear myself think.
“I’ll go order us some food and drinks!” Jackson shouted. “What do you want?”
Ugh. This is where a normal twenty-one-year-old would have any idea what to say. I had none. I could name some types of booze I’d seen referenced in various TV shows and movies, but I had no real idea what any of them were.
“Um, surprise me!” I rested a hand on his forearm and leaned up to shout near his ear.
A mischievous grin tilted the corner of his lips, and it occurred to me that I might’ve just made a huge mistake. Asking a guy like Jackson to surprise you was basically like asking for a huge helping of trouble. But before I could retract my request, he darted off through the crowd.
Well, shit.
I sank down into a chair at the table. Noah left to help Jackson get the drinks, and Rhys settled into another seat to glare at me. West shot me a grin, lifting his eyebrows.
It was strange. The music was too loud to carry on a regular conversation, which I would’ve expected to find very annoying. But there was actually something soothing about it. It took away the pressure to make awkward conversation with the man glowering at me from across the table, and my head nodded absently along with the beat.
A few minutes later, a large glass filled with blue liquid, a cherry on top, and a little pink umbrella thunked down onto the wobbly table in front of me. I gaped at it.
West rolled his eyes. “Jesus fucking christ.”
“What?” Jackson shrugged innocently. “It’s her first drink! Isn’t it, Alexis? Her first drink should be memorable.”
“It’ll be memorable, all right,” Rhys growled. “When she’s puking it up along with everything else in her guts at three in the morning. Why didn’t you get her a fucking wine spritzer or something?”
He stood up, leaning over the table to grab the neon blue drink.
But before he could take it away, I wrapped my hands around it. “No! I want it.”
Truthfully, I hadn’t wanted it until that exact moment. But I wasn’t about to let Rhys tell me what I could or couldn’t drink. And I wanted to prove him wrong. I could handle this. My upbringing might have stunted my social development, but I wasn’t a fucking child.
I tightened my grip on the glass, lip curling up into a half snarl.
Where the hell had that come from?
Rhys saw it, and his blue eyes flashed. They were almost as bright a blue as my drink, I realized. Then I yanked my gaze away from his, capturing the straw in my mouth and taking a long pull.
I almost choked. “Sw… eet!”
Jackson grinned, looking happier than I’d ever seen him. “Yeah. It’s good, huh?”
Actually, it was. The syrupy sweetness had taken me by surprise, but once I got used to it, I liked the fruity, tropical flavor. And it completely masked the taste of alcohol. I took another long swig, grinning broadly at Rhys.
“Hell fucking yeah.” Jackson sat on my left side, stretching his long legs in front of him as he leaned back in the chair.
A server brought our food a few minutes later. Burgers again—not that I minded one bit. Maybe it was because we were all part wolf, but burgers seemed to be the go-to meal in this group. These were bigger and juicier than the fast food ones I’d eaten, and I took big bites in between sips of my drink.
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