I stared down my mom as she walked away from Elle, and was met with a challenging glare offset by her warm smile. But instead of stopping or saying a word, she just gestured to Elle with her eyes and continued to the back.
Palming the scrap of paper, I kept my pace steady as I walked toward the girl I’d been aching to see, and slid the paper onto the table in front of her as I passed by to sit across from her.
The soft inhale that came from where she sat was enough for me. The unknown . . . it was worth it.
God, what was she doing to me?
“Can I read it?” she asked softly, mischievously as she eyed me with a raised brow.
I nodded toward the note, silently urging her to.
She bit her lip, her eyes lighting up as she unfolded the paper, her mouth breaking into an unrestrained smile when she read the words.
“Charmer,” she whispered, her attention fixing on me. “What made you start writing the notes?”
I leaned forward to take the paper from her fingers. Setting it to the side, I gripped her hands in mine. “I had to say something to you. Whenever I saw you, I wondered what could be so bad about your life that even your smiles looked sad. But at that point I still couldn’t bring myself to come near you. And then I noticed there would be days where you would write in a notebook. Just for a minute or two. But your friend would spend the whole hour reading whatever you’d written, and you always had this look like you were in denial and waiting for your life to change. And then I had to know. So I wrote to you.”
“I kept them all,” she admitted shyly.
My eyebrows lift in surprise. “Yeah? Is that what your friend spent hours on?”
“No.” She huffed, but the amusement was suddenly gone from her face. “No, she, uh . . . she has a thing with trying to understand dreams and nightmares. I would write down my nightmares, and she’d try to figure them out.”
“Just your nightmares?” I asked. “Do you have a lot?”
“Only one. It’s recurring.”
I could tell from the tense way she held herself she didn’t want to explain, so I didn’t push her. I wouldn’t want to relive my nightmare over and over again.
Unable to avoid it any longer, I lowered my voice and asked, “Why were you gone?”
Her expression fell, panic and pain so intense flashed across her eyes before she was able to drop her head to stare at her lap. “I’m sorry. I—” A pained sigh ripped from her, her jaw clenching in response.
I slipped out of my side and into hers, wrapping my arm around her tensed shoulders and pulling her close. “Elle, hey . . . what happened?”
“You knew I would have to come and go.”
“Yeah, but I thought you’d say bye.”
Her face pinched and mouth opened to respond, but nothing came out.
Pressing my knuckles under her chin, I lifted her head until she was looking at me again. I pushed the glasses back up her nose, the corners of my mouth tilting up in response to her amused huff. “Elle, what happened?”
“I panicked,” she said with a shrug. “You knew I couldn’t stay as long as I had to. I should’ve been gone as soon as those doors unlocked, but I fell asleep. As soon as I woke up, I panicked.”
My chest rose and fell roughly once when I picked up on the catches on some of her words.
She was telling me the truth.
Kind of.
There was something she was keeping from me.
But she’d warned me this was what she was going to do, and I’d begged her to lie to me just so I could keep her in my life.
And I was a bastard for being frustrated with it, because there were about a dozen things I was keeping from her.
“If I pushed you too fast that night—”
“No. No,” she said adamantly. “I needed to get home. I was already so late. That night . . . God, Dare, I can’t explain—”
A body slammed into me just as a voice cried out, “Oh, oh!” from behind me.
I glared over my shoulder at Diggs as he pushed Elle and me farther into the booth, but quickly forgot about him when I found his brother sliding into the other side. “Hey, hey, newbie.”
“Leave,” I demanded on a low growl just as Libby walked around the corner of the booth and pulled Diggs out from behind me.
“My seat,” she said with a roll of her eyes before looking at us. “The second you left, they decided they were coming too. Clearly we couldn’t let them come alone.”
Before I could ask what she meant by we, Johnny and Einstein came into view. He was leading her with his hands on her shoulders while she tapped relentlessly into her phone, whispering to herself the entire time.
The dark look I sent him when they slid in next to Maverick didn’t faze Johnny. And I knew no matter what I said, he had no plans to leave. Despite the warning to stay away from her, he still didn’t trust Elle.
Johnny had nearly lost his mind the other morning because she’d stayed over. Upending the couch was all he’d gotten away with before I’d put an end to it.
But his rage had only amplified when he’d realized how much she was growing on everyone else. Not that I’d expected anything less.
Anyone who could stand up to an unhinged Johnny would have my family’s respect. Anyone who could make me this happy after Gia would automatically be welcomed by all of them—Johnny not included.
That said, I didn’t want the little time I had with Elle to be shared with my family.
Once Libby was next to me and Diggs had pulled up a chair at the edge of the booth, I took my time to catch all of their gazes—except Einstein’s, who was still working on something. “Is this necessary?”
“Food is always necessary.” Diggs seemed confused that I didn’t know this.
How he didn’t realize he wasn’t wanted here confused me.
“Food,” Maverick agreed, then started slamming his fists on the table. “Food.”
“We’re starving,” Diggs added, leaning across the table and stretching his hands toward me. “You starve us.” The look on my face must have finally registered with him, because he grabbed a sugar packet and sat back. “Actually, I just came for the sugar.”
I turned to Elle and dipped my head closer to hers. “Let’s get out of here.”
“They want to hang out with you.”
When I leaned away, she was looking at everyone with wide eyes, like she was seeing them for the first time. There was a hint of fascination behind the look, but with how close she was to my body, it was impossible to miss the tremors now rolling through her.
“I see them every day. I never know when I’m going to see you.”
She turned to look at me then, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “You’re seeing me now.”
Libby smacked my arm, then pushed against my chest, trying to press me back against the booth. “I’ve dealt with you for the past twenty-nine years. Let me sit next to Elle.”
I never once took my eyes off Elle, silently pleading with her to let me take her from here . . . anywhere where we could be alone.
Yes, she was here. I could see her and touch her, breathe her in and hold her. But that didn’t change anything.
She could disappear at any second. And I would be left wandering around . . . searching and waiting for her to reappear.
If she reappeared.
She didn’t understand the fear that came with being near her and knowing I’d have to let her go.
Before I could remind her of any of those things, she leaned forward, passing her lips along my jaw before she whispered in my ear, “They’re your friends. They’re your family. If a stranger comes in to something that is as close as what all of you have, and pulls you away from them, resentment is going to build. Trust me.”
There was an ache in her words that I felt in my stomach, as if she was talking from experience.
With a reluctant sigh, I lowered my arm to wrap it around her waist and pulled her onto my lap so we could switch positions.
> Before I could slide her to my other side and hand her off to Libby’s twenty questions, she gently grabbed my face in her hands and pressed her forehead to mine. “That night? It meant everything.”
True.
I placed a quick kiss on her lips. “Let Libby talk at you before I decide to take you away from here and keep you to myself.”
Her head tilted back and a soft laugh sounded in her throat, and fuck me if that wasn’t the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.
I wanted to keep her where she was. I wanted to drive my hands into her hair to pull her back to me so I could capture that mouth. I wanted to beg her to laugh again.
I wanted to make her smile . . .
It wasn’t until she was sliding off me to sit next to Libby that I realized I was studying the girl who had somehow become my world. Watching every movement and shift of her body like a man transfixed. Not to look for cues, as I so often did, but because I was mesmerized by everything she did.
“Hey, nerd,” Diggs said as he finished dumping sugar into a pile on the table. “Pay you ten bucks to eat this.”
Libby smacked him on the back of the head. “What are you, five? Don’t be an idiot.”
Elle leaned into my side as she laughed again. That same low, husky sound that was almost too hard to hear.
I wanted to capture the sound so I could play it again and again.
Grabbing for my phone when it vibrated, the smile immediately dropped from my face when I read the text from Johnny.
Pain and hatred burned through me when I looked up at my best friend. But instead of releasing Elle like I knew he’d expected me to, I tightened my arm around her waist as I dropped my phone on the table, and demanded everyone else do the same.
“We haven’t even ordered yet,” Einstein cried out from where she was trying to disappear between Maverick and Johnny.
“I don’t care,” I growled, my voice still rough from the emotions coursing through me.
Elle stilled when Johnny asked, “Still no phone?”
She looked his way when she realized he was talking to her, her head shaking subtly. “No.”
“How convenient.”
“I don’t have a computer either. Or a car.” She lifted a shoulder in a brief shrug. “You should try it sometime. Convenient is the last thing you’d call it.”
“Are you Amish?” Libby suddenly asked. As soon as Elle started to shake her head, Libby was firing off another question. “Technologically challenged? Because Einstein could help you with that.”
“I think I can figure—”
Libby gasped and slapped her hand on the table. “Or maybe you were in a coma for a bunch of years, and when you woke up you didn’t know how to drive or use phones.”
“Jesus Christ, Libby,” I groaned. “This isn’t a soap opera.”
“It could be,” she shot back.
“I just don’t have those things,” Elle interjected.
“Are you poor?”
“Fuck, Libby. Shut up.”
She leaned around Elle to send me a glare that would make lesser men fall to their knees and beg her forgiveness so she wouldn’t murder them.
Unfortunately for my sister, I’d grown up with her so I knew which one of us was more lethal. That look did nothing to scare me. It only proved there would always be a part of her that couldn’t deny what we were.
We both hated the world our family had been involved in for generations, but while I’d been trying to change it from the inside since I’d been forced to take our dad’s place, Libby had pretended to shun it.
Not that that made a difference. If I needed her to have my back, she would. And when it was done, she would hate me for it.
We both would.
She sat back with a huff when I didn’t wither under her stare, then turned her attention on Elle again. “You know, if you’re poor—”
“Libby,” I said in warning.
“Hell, my little trippy hippy is just all about world peace, aren’t you, baby?” Diggs asked. “Don’t hurt the environment. Hug trees and all that. I’ll let you hug my—” His gaze slid my way when a growl sounded in my chest, then he dropped his head to stare at his sugar pile. “I mean, I bet Dare will let you hug his tree.”
“Food,” Maverick suddenly shouted, pointing at a waitress who was walking our way. “For the love of God, we need food at this table before everyone starts killing each other.”
I cut my eyes to Johnny. His were narrowed into slits as he studied the girl in my arms.
Johnny pinning Elle up against the wall, blood dripping down their arms flashed through my mind, quickly followed by the vision of her lifeless in my arms, both of us covered in her blood.
I shook my head trying to force the images away, trying to separate them, then looked down at Elle as she listened to Libby.
We didn’t need food.
I needed to take Elle someplace where nothing in my world could ever find her. Including Johnny.
Breakfast passed without incident.
If you don’t count Diggs throwing a sugar packet in Einstein’s eye when she tried to snatch her phone mid-meal and Johnny trying to stab him with a butter knife in turn as an incident. Which I don’t.
Though I would’ve bet money the girl tucked into my side would have.
But Elle hadn’t so much as flinched as she’d watched the entire thing unfold in front of her before I could force Johnny to sit down and drop the knife. Granted, it had been over in less than five seconds, but there hadn’t been a single reaction before she’d turned back to Libby to continue their conversation.
And it was eating at me still, long after.
Considering Johnny had been attacking her just over a week ago, there should have been some reaction. Some hint of fear, at the very least. But there was nothing.
The guys and Einstein abruptly stopped talking, catching my attention. Their gazes were fixated on the table except Einstein’s. Hers was wide and unyielding as she stared at the girl next to me. I turned my head, slowly following their line of sight until I found what had halted their conversation.
Elle, absentmindedly drawing our symbol in the middle of Diggs’s sugar pile while listening to Libby.
Elle noticed our silence before Libby, her eyes dragging from my sister to meet mine. Her brow pinched and she started to sit up as she looked around the table at where everyone was now staring at her. “What—?”
I gripped her hand gently to lift it from the table, my eyes never leaving hers as she looked down at the sugar.
It took less than a second.
Her breath hitched and pulse quickened beneath my fingertips. Her eyelids fluttered and she swayed toward me, and for a second, I thought she was going to faint.
But just before she hit me, she stopped herself. After another second, she slowly let herself lean against me for support.
“What?” she finally asked, her voice lacking any of the warmth I was used to from her.
“Uh, just watched you trace that without a second thought, newbie,” Maverick said.
“And? It’s some lines and a circle.”
Johnny slapped his hand against the sugar pile, sending most of it flying and the symbol into distorted chaos. “You know what that is?” he asked, his tone all growl and pure challenge.
“I know it’s on Dare’s back.”
I bit back a curse as soon as the words left her mouth.
Of course she knew that. I should’ve known she would see it, but I hadn’t been thinking. If I had been able to think around her, I would’ve been more careful. Gia hadn’t seen it, hadn’t known, for years. One night with Elle and I’d apparently lost my fucking mind.
Johnny’s hardened gaze flicked to me before going back to Elle. “I asked if you knew what it was.”
I didn’t miss the way Elle flinched each time he spoke, but if I hadn’t been wanting to know the answers to his questions too, I would’ve kissed her when she lifted her chin slightly in response. “To be honest,
I think most of Wake Forest does even if they won’t admit it.”
“You wanna see mine?” Diggs asked as he stood, his hands already going to his belt as the tension quickly eased from the table.
“No,” everyone said quickly, shutting him down.
“Dare showed his,” he protested. “It’s only fair.”
Leaning in to Elle’s ear, I whispered, “Don’t ever agree to see theirs. Trust me.”
“Gross,” she mumbled.
“Does it scare you?” Maverick asked. “Knowing about us?”
“I don’t know. You guys have never seemed scary to me.” But even as she spoke, her eyes flashed to Johnny.
“You want us to change that?” Maverick continued, his tone a mixture of a challenge and a tease.
I shoved my foot into his leg before he could taunt Elle anymore, then pressed my lips to her ear again. “That’s what you’re keeping from me. That’s why you panicked and left. You saw my back.”
She turned to look at me, her nose pressed to mine. “I left because I should’ve been home long before the doors unlocked. I panicked because I fell asleep.” Her worried eyes searched mine for a few seconds before she finally admitted, “My panic increased when I saw your tattoo before I decided it didn’t matter.”
“Libby.” Her name was a rumble from deep within my chest, it was also a command.
Without asking or saying a word, she slid out of the booth, and I gently nudged Elle to follow.
“Let’s go.” As soon as we were out, I grabbed my sister’s arm and pulled her close. “Keep Johnny away from me.”
Elle started heading toward the front, but I gripped her hand in mine and hurried her to the back door to the secluded parking lot reserved for family. As soon as I had her outside, I led her to my car then released her.
Raking my hands over my head, I pulled at my hair as I walked away from her, releasing a pent-up breath when I turned to face her again.
She was leaning against the hood of my car, looking more contradicting than I’d ever seen anyone. Her shoulders were hunched and acceptance swam in her eyes, making her seem so vulnerable. But there was a fierceness in the set of her eyebrows and her jaw was locked tight like she was prepared for a fight.
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