“Watch it,” Jax warned. “You don’t want Mom to hear you say that.”
“Mom would be on my side, will be on my side, after she hears what you’ve done and how you’re treating this girl,” Erik whispered furiously.
“I’m doing what needs to be done,” Jax said, wiping a speck of saliva from his cheek. “I don’t understand what’s gotten into you.”
Jax didn’t want to know the truth, and he cut off his brother before Erik could even open his mouth. “Just call me when she’s awake.”
“Leave the papers with me. She’s scared of you, and she wants nothing to do with you.”
Like hell he’d trust his brother. “No. I’ll come back. She doesn’t have to be alone with me. I’m sure you’ll be by her side.”
The last was tossed over his shoulder in a splash of acid.
Jax couldn’t control what Raven and Erik did.
And he didn’t care.
Rather, he tried to convince himself of that on the way to his office even though the memory of the way she tasted replaced the bitterness of coffee on his tongue.
Chapter 4
Later that afternoon, Raven woke alone.
Her appetite hadn’t returned, and the pleasant woman who had taken the place of the night nurse just patted her shoulder and took her temperature, unconcerned. “It will take some time for you to feel well.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with me?” Erik said she was very sick, but Raven already knew that by the way her muscles ached, and the way her ears thrummed in pain. By the way she wanted to cry every time she swallowed.
“You have pneumonia, miss, and a double ear infection,” the nurse said, noting her temperature on a chart. “The doctor didn’t say anything about strep, but if you have it, the antibiotics will take care of it. Dr. Monroe prescribed enough to treat an elephant.”
“How long will it take?” Raven rasped.
“You’ve only been here for a couple days, miss,” the nurse replied. “You have to give it time. Your fever’s coming down, though, so that’s good. Dr. Monroe instructed us to decrease your sleep sedative, but perhaps you’re still tired?”
“No!” Raven wanted to be awake as much as possible. While Erik had been kind, Raven couldn’t trust anyone.
The nurse rubbed her back. “Then I’ll ask the doctor about more pain meds, at least. Now let me clean your wounds, and perhaps you’d like a cup of tea?”
“What happened to my legs?” Raven asked as the nurse pulled down the sheets.
“You don’t remember?”
Raven froze; her heart stopped.
Jax stood in the doorway, his hands shoved into the pockets of his suit pants. His jaw was set hard enough to cut through stone, and the glint in his eye could have shot laser beams through her at a hundred paces.
“No. What happened?”
“Apparently rats decided to turn you into a living buffet. That must have been painful, yet you don’t remember?”
Raven flinched. Rats. Rats at Damien’s didn’t surprise her, not the way he lived in that filthy apartment, but no, she didn’t remember. She must have been far too gone to notice. Thank God. Because Damien had handcuffed her to the wall, she did remember that, and she wouldn’t have been able to get away from them.
Rats had been eating her alive.
“I’m going to throw up,” Raven whispered, bile rising in her throat, her stomach churning.
Dressing Raven’s wounds, the nurse paused, her eyes wide.
But the nurse took her seriously.
A second later, Raven heaved painfully into a kidney shaped plastic dish while the nurse held her hair out of the way.
When she finished, tears streamed down her cheeks. Her throat scraped so excruciatingly, she wouldn’t have been surprised if she was told she was bleeding.
The nurse wiped her mouth with a pungent medical wipe and pushed her back against the pillow. “You should rest, miss. I’ll be done with your legs in a moment.”
Raven closed her eyes against Jax’s imposing figure. Mortified she’d thrown up in front of him, she could feel his eyes boring into her with revulsion.
“I’ll just leave you two alone,” the nurse murmured, covering Raven’s legs with the sheet and bedspread.
Fear made Raven’s lips numb. She didn’t want to be alone with Jax, and she envied the nurse’s escape.
Erik promised she wouldn’t have to be alone with Jax, but Erik said he had things he needed to do and would return posthaste. That was the word he used. Posthaste. At the time it made her smile, but nothing could make her smile now.
The quiet loomed between them, and she turned her head, hoping to shut Jax out, make him leave.
Too out of it to appreciate it before, Raven hadn’t noticed the windows were actually doors that opened onto a balcony. The snow glittered in the watery sunlight, and the yard blended into the grayish-white of the winter sky.
The color mimicked Raven’s own life. Cold. Gray. No color to be seen for miles. Empty and bleak.
“Why did you bring me here?” Raven asked when she could no longer tolerate his staring. She clutched the bedspread in her hands. The pressure tugged at her IV, and she loosened her grip.
“Saving you from the rats wasn’t enough?” Jax asked, moving over the carpet without a sound.
“I’m sure it wasn’t for me,” she said, her legs burning from the cream and new bandages. She hurt all over, and she would have been hard-pressed to tell anyone where she hurt more. “Do you need another fake wife?” she asked, taunting him.
In response, Jax threw a sheaf of papers onto her stomach. “You aren’t fake. I told you to sign a false name on the marriage license. You did not. We’ve been married for the past three years. I would like to marry in the spring. For real. Imagine my surprise when I was told I could not do so.”
Raven’s hand trembled as she picked up the first sheet. The words blurred together. “What’s this?”
“Those are divorce papers. I need you to sign them.”
Her heart sank. Jax hadn’t sought her out because he wanted to see what happened to her. He hadn’t had an attack of conscience. He hadn’t been secretly in love with her and finally succumbed to his feelings.
Of course not.
But every woman had fairy tales in her heart. Pixie dust glittering in her soul.
Why could Jaxon Brooks have everything he wanted? Because he had money? Because of his position in society? Because he was simply handsome, and everything fell into his lap the moment he crooked a finger?
No one told him no.
Even three years ago she had given him what he’d demanded.
This time she wouldn’t buckle.
“No.”
Jax knelt beside the bed.
He was so close Raven could smell the coffee on his breath, count the lines forming around his eyes.
Eyes full of hate.
He moved his hand with lightning speed, and he grasped a handful of her hair at the back of her head before she could even draw in a breath.
Pain shot through her scalp into her neck, and it fought with the flame in her throat and ears.
His breath fanned her face when he spoke. “What can I give you to make you sign?”
This was her last chance.
She’d tried, time after time, to do it on her own.
Failed.
Jax would be sure she made it out the other side. He’d have to, if she played her cards right.
Too bad she’d never been good at cards.
“A life. I want my life back.”
Jax leaned against the doorjamb of the his-and-hers bathroom he shared with Lucia. She refused to meet his eyes in the mirror as she applied lipgloss to her plump lips she maintained with injections every six months. Though she was only twenty-nine to his thirty-eight, Lucia DuBois upheld a strict regimen of diet, exercise, and health and beauty treatments at the spa. Lip injections and Botox shots for the lines on her forehead only she could see were just
the beginning. The list was long, and Jax had little patience for knowing exactly what Lucia did to herself. He only had the inkling he did because after Lucia moved in with him, she wasted no time sending him the bills.
“You know how it is to save face, Lucia,” Jax said, willing her to look at him. “That’s the way it is in our families.”
“You can’t make her sign?” she spat, her reflection glaring at him in the mirror over the vanity.
“How do you do that?” Jax sighed. “Force a pen into her hand? What could keep her from gouging a hole through the paper?”
Or my neck?
He tried to appeal to her soft side, though it would be in vain—Lucia didn’t have a soft side. “Think of the help we’ll be giving her. You attend benefits and fundraising functions all the time. You can say you’re doing a good thing.”
“Then just give her some money and tell her to get out.”
He’d tried that once, tossing two thousand dollars out the limo door, making her scramble after the bills as they blew down the sidewalk. His skin crawled with discomfort. While he hadn’t thought much of it, having gotten what he wanted, looking in hindsight at his actions made him grimace in revulsion. He was no better than Lucia.
But he wouldn’t try to change. He was what he was.
“I just need enough time to dry her out, buy her some clothes, maybe help her find a place to live and a job. That’s all. She’ll be out by spring. It’s February now; I just need March, April. Maybe some time in May. I know we were looking at a June wedding, but—”
“If you suggest we put off our wedding, I will never talk to you again, Jax.” Lucia’s green eyes shimmered with tears. “You promised me we’d marry in June. Your mother made us wait, and now you’re saying we might not . . .” She pressed her lips together.
Jax looked away. He didn’t know what was worse, her anger or her tears. He never knew which emotion was true, how honest her intentions were.
And what about him? He was thirty-eight years old and he wanted a family. He wanted children. He had a legacy in which to pass along to his first born.
Unfortunately, as Lucia’s shoulders shook as she delicately wiped tears away as to not muss her makeup, Jax couldn’t picture her as a mother. Not the loving, kind, mother he’d grown up with. Grace Brooks hadn’t baked cookies, or set up blanket forts in the living room, but she hadn’t shoved him into the arms of a full-time nanny the moment he’d popped out, either. She’d made sure he and Erik had typical childhoods, and as small boys, they’d gotten into their fair share of trouble. Grace had helped them with homework and for a few years was president of their private school’s PTA.
Lucia would do none of those things. She acted like a child, expected to be given what she wanted the moment she decided it was to be hers.
“The timeframe may not be in my hands, Lucia,” he tried to explain. “The paperwork needs to be filed, our marriage license needs to be processed. If that happens in time, it happens. But if not, we can always have the ceremony and then marry in the judge’s chambers later. No one would be the wiser,” he said, hoping to appease her.
“It’s not only the ceremony, Jax,” she snapped, shoving the cap onto the tube of lipgloss. The tears were gone, and a hard look, devoid of any emotion, took up residence in her eyes. “I don’t want that girl living in my house.”
Jax resisted the urge to raise his eyebrows. His home wasn’t quite hers yet, but she’d been living there for over a year, made decisions with the staff on his behalf. Had redecorated the moment she set foot inside, claiming the house was too stark for her taste. He’d let her. He’d let her do whatever she wanted if she’d stay.
“Just two months, possibly a bit more. She’s sick now—pneumonia. After she recovers, she’ll rarely be here, and she’s staying in the east wing. Far from our suite. I’ll enroll her in classes. She’s going to need rehab, therapy, probably. You won’t even know she’s here.”
Lucia leaned into the mirror and viciously swiped mascara onto her eyelashes. Jax wondered how she didn’t poke an eye out. “Fine. You do what you need to do, because I am well aware you will do whatever you want whether I agree with it or not.”
“It’s not that I don’t value your input—” Jax started.
Lucia scoffed.
Jax rested his hands on her shoulders. “I value everything you do, Lucy, everything you are,” he said, using his pet name for her. He met her eyes in the pristine mirror. Lucia abided no streaks. The cleaning woman had made that mistake only once. “But she won’t sign the papers if I don’t help her get back on her feet.” He buried his fingers in her hair, and she tipped her head back as she closed her eyes.
He pressed against her, trapping her between his hard-on and the edge of the vanity.
If he could say anything positive about her, it was that the sex between them bordered on explosive—when she deemed to give it to him. She used it, or the lack thereof, as a weapon. A lesson she learned, no doubt, at her mother’s knee.
To punish him for allowing Raven under their roof, he wouldn’t see, smell, or taste her pussy for months. But that wouldn’t stop her from wanting it.
Or going elsewhere.
Lucia moaned and opened her eyelids into slits. “Then fucking do it. Or else I’ll—”
Jax met her eyes and smirked. “Or else what? You’ll leave me?”
She turned in his arms, and he lifted her onto the counter.
Lucia dragged his head to hers and captured his mouth with lips that tasted of watermelon.
Jax ran his fingers up her thighs and under the hem of her dress.
She would let him fuck her one more time to remind him of what he’d be missing defying her wishes.
He knew what she’d be keeping from him in the following weeks.
And he’d take it while he could.
Raven’s legs trembled, and she leaned against the cool glass of the balcony’s French doors. The courtyard was full of snow, and trees dotted the property, evergreens with boughs heavy with fresh snowfall. Snowflakes floated from the white sky, the temperature above zero. If she’d been on the streets, she would have walked today, to get air. To fight the claustrophobia she often experienced in the winter when the dangerous temperatures made her seek shelter in places she didn’t want to be.
Like Damien’s.
She hadn’t felt good prior to him finding her sitting on a bench on Z Avenue, and she’d felt downright horrible the night he had. She’d been hot, then cold, her muscles ached, and at that point she knew she was coming down with something.
Elle would have taken her in, but Raven didn’t want to burden her. Elle had enough going on without worrying about her. And Raven didn’t have any money for room or board. Elle paid her here and there for small chores around her salon, but sick, Raven would have been dead weight.
When Damien propositioned her, she took the opportunity, as dangerous as it was.
She was lucky that after she collapsed with fever on his spare mattress he hadn’t killed her right then and there.
Had Jax not rescued her from him, though, Raven would have been indebted to Damien for a long time to pay him back for his “kindness.” There was no way Damien would have let her go without expecting payback—lots of it.
So that’s where she was. Raven wished she could contact Elle, let her know she was okay. But Raven didn’t have Elle’s burner phone number memorized. Axel would be worried about her too, when she didn’t surface at any of their haunts.
Three weeks had passed since Jax brought her to his home. She hadn’t seen anyone in that time besides the nurses Jax hired to take care of her and Dr. Monroe. He was a kind man, and he reminded her a little of Santa Claus. Her cheeks burned when she remembered her conversation with him. He’d admitted to giving her a pelvic exam, and while he spoke to her of his findings, Raven had hidden her face in her pillow, unwilling to picture the kind old man with his fingers inside her, studying her private area. Dr. Monroe told her she didn’
t have an STD, but Raven knew that. She and Axel were intimate at times, but she always made him wear a condom. She didn’t have any interest in sleeping with anyone else, but she couldn’t speak for Axel and where he crashed at night—and with whom.
Dr. Monroe had questioned her bruises, but those came with the territory, and she shrugged off his questions.
Raven pressed her cheek to the window.
Erik looked in on her, always fidgeting with an unlit cigarette. Sitting with her as a comforting presence while the nurse on duty knitted or crocheted, minding her own business until she would occasionally snort in response to something Erik said.
Once he lay on the bed with her while they watched a movie. Jax had poked his nose into the room and just walked away when he saw the two of them snuggled under her bedspread.
She wondered if Jax knew his brother was gay. That he didn’t have any need to be angry because Erik would never look at her that way.
If he didn’t know, it was just a testament to how little Jax cared about the people in his life.
He only cared about himself and what he could get.
The nurse on duty, Toya, a black woman with curves hidden by baggy pink scrubs, looked up from her book. “Would you like a bath, miss?”
Raven stared outside to the snow below. She felt rather like Beauty to Jax’s Beast, high in the tower with no means of escape. Toya and the other nurses acted more as companions now. Her sore throat had faded away, her ears back to normal, her lungs no longer feeling like she’d inhaled gallons of water.
Even the rat bites were almost gone.
Raven didn’t know how long the nurses would be employed to keep her company, and she feared what she would do after Dr. Monroe deemed her well.
She needed to take her time at Jax’s day to day, hour by hour, like she had on the streets. Though she had a roof over her head and food in her belly, they didn’t make her feel any safer than she did fending for herself on Z Avenue, or lying awake at night in a shelter, waiting for a woman to rifle through her things looking for anything she could fence on the street.
All of Nothing Page 8