All He'll Ever Be

by W Winters

  “Then marry me.” Daniel’s response makes my eyes widen and suddenly I feel like an intruder. Not at all like a friend or family. I’m only an eavesdropper who needs to go away and not stain their memory, even if they don’t realize it.

  Her voice is soft as she tells him yes between quick kisses I can hear even as I push away from the doorway. Turning around, I feel nothing and everything all at once. Jealousy and happiness. Emptiness from knowing I’ll never have what they share, and a sense of completion for accepting it.

  Is this what it feels like to completely break down?

  With a single deep breath, my eyes closed and my muscles tight, I take a step forward only to be hit by the heat of a hard body as I walk forward.

  My pulse quickens when I open my eyes.

  “Lost?” Carter’s voice isn’t muted like my footsteps were, and I can hear Addison and Daniel come out from the kitchen and into the doorway to the hall.

  My body’s stiff, and it takes a moment for me to even gather the courage to look over my shoulder at them.

  I don’t belong here. It’s never been more apparent to me. I shouldn’t be here.

  “Aria,” Addison’s quick to call out for me, but I can’t even stand to look at her knowing we couldn’t be any further apart in what we’re feeling right now. She doesn’t need me dragging her down, ruining this special moment for her, and there’s nothing she can give me in this moment that I would accept.

  “I’m good,” I say and barely turn to look over my shoulder at the only friend I have in here. With my hand raised, she stops where she is. “Please.” The single word is a plea for her to leave me alone, and she listens.

  Stepping around Carter, I leave them as quick as I can. I only glance back once to see Daniel holding Addison’s wrist as she stares at me with tears in her eyes. Carter’s gone; where to? I don’t know, and I don’t care.

  I’ve never felt so torn in my life.

  I knew life would never be easy for me. Not with the man my father is. But I never imagined I’d fall in love with the enemy. So much so that I would be here with him, willingly, while my family mourns deaths committed by his hand. Or that I would be mourning the loss of a love that never should have been.

  So what does that make me?

  Who does that make me?

  Chapter 81

  Carter

  War stops for no one.

  Death never waits.

  “Each wing is secure and the repairs are underway, sir,” Aden tells me with a nod of his head as he stands outside of Jase’s office in his wing. Most of the damage was done to Declan’s wing, but everything is salvageable.

  “What’s the timeline?” I ask Aden. He’s a new guard, one of a dozen. When the death toll came in, we lost more men than I thought originally. Right now we’re keeping everyone close, but it’s only temporary; it’s just until we get eyes on both Romano’s men and Talvery’s. Jett’s taking care of that with a small crew. Everything’s waiting on him. But I fucking hate waiting.

  “Two weeks tops until everything is replaced,” he answers and I give him a nod, effectively dismissing him before walking into Jase’s open door and closing it behind me.

  Jase’s office is nothing like mine. There’s not a single book. There’s no desk either. I only refer to it as an office because he does. The fireplace is almost always lit though, and flames reflect off of the mirrored coffee table in front of it. The mirrored surface has a thick patina that’s developed over time. I guess Jase prefers it that way, or he’d polish it.

  The shelves that line the wall to the right hold the rare antique weapons he collects. Mostly swords and knives. The ancient feel they have and their crude primitive backgrounds are at odds with the clean lines of the rest of the room. Overall, the aesthetic is modern and barren.

  “How is she?” Jase asks me. His gaze stays on the fire until I take the seat next to him on the sleek, black leather sofa. It’s only then that he looks up at me.

  I don’t answer him, the words fighting with my emotions in the back of my throat.

  “That bad?” he asks, and I only nod.

  The fire crackles in front of us while I sit with my brother, remembering how we got here nearly a decade ago. When I was only a kid, left at death’s doorstep and wishing for it to come quickly. Jase is the one who made the first move. He killed each of the men who grabbed me from the street corner. He was fueled by anger alone, but when I recovered and learned what he’d done, I knew there would be far more death before that anger would be allowed to leave him.

  One by one, we killed, we stole, we ruled with a fear we once had for others.

  But fear has a way of changing you. And I would be a liar to say I wasn’t motivated by it now.

  I’m afraid I’m going to lose the only woman worth fighting for. The only woman I’m capable of loving.

  The thick leather groans as Jase leans back, rubbing his thumb over his jaw and tells me, “It’ll be all right when this is over. She’ll be all right in time.”

  “Or she’ll be consumed by anger,” I say and give him a knowing look, but the expression on his face doesn’t waver.

  “She loves you,” is his only response.

  I break his gaze to stare at the fire, wondering how long it’ll take for a flame so high and hot to burn down to nothing but ash and smolder.

  “I didn’t come to talk about her.”

  “It’s all about her, isn’t it?” he questions and my chest tightens. If I could go back to that moment and tell him not to fight for revenge, if I could go back and instead take my brothers and leave that horrid place, I would. I’m not proud of who we’ve become and I know it’s because of me.

  “You know what I mean,” I tell him rather than lying to him and pretending I didn’t get us into this shit because of a sick need to have Aria to myself.

  “What did you come to talk about then?” Jase asks and then lays his head back. He picks up a knife from the table and plays with the blade between his fingers.

  “What do you want to do from here?” I ask him. The fight in me is subdued and he can see it. I’m certain everyone can. I’ve never felt so weak in my life.

  “I say we wait,” he offers, staring into the roaring fire. The flames dance in the darkness of his eyes.

  “We could hit them now… Let the streets run with blood,” I suggest to him, knowing the day is coming soon. That’s how this works. The winner takes the final blow.

  “Two reasons. The first is that Sebastian is coming back.”

  Sebastian. My initial reaction to hearing that he’s coming back is nothing I expected. I feel as if I’ve failed him. I’m ashamed for him to come back and see me like this. Ever since Aria came here, I’ve messaged him to keep him apprised. He’s been my confidant ever since he had the safe house built. He’s anchored me more than once. And he knows about Aria, and how badly we’ve fallen.

  “When?” I ask and have to clear my throat after.

  “He’ll be here tonight, although he’s going to his estate and the safe house first to see the damage.”

  A grunt leaves me before I ask, “He hasn’t seen the extent of the damage yet, has he?”

  I didn’t want to believe it hurt as much as it did when he left. Over time the pain eased. But I can’t deny that the memory of him leaving and then not coming back for so long fucking kills me. He was family. He still is.

  “Not yet,” Jase answers evenly and then adds, “Chloe isn’t coming for a while.”

  “That’s understandable,” I say absently. Deep in the back of my mind, I always knew he stayed away because of three reasons:

  Chloe never wanted to be here.

  Romano would have him killed if he still had the power to do so.

  Marcus.

  When Marcus approaches people, they tend to do his bidding and then move far, far away. My brothers and I are the only ones who seem to have defied that pattern.

  It’s quiet as the wood splits in the roaring fire and sp
ecks of ash fly in the heated air.

  “You said there were two reasons?” I remind Jase, waiting on the other reason we shouldn’t destroy what’s left of Talvery.

  “Her father retreated,” he tells me, still running his fingers along the blade as he leans back in the chair. He’s simply waiting for war. I’m the reason my brothers were pulled into this life, and I fucking hate myself for it.

  I hate that he refers to Talvery as “her father” just as much.

  “He has to leave eventually. He can’t hide forever.”

  “Until he does, we wait?” Jase asks and I can only nod. Every day this war lasts is a day longer that I have Aria so close, yet unreachable.

  “You don’t often come to me for advice,” Jase comments and I don’t respond for a moment.

  “I’m tired,” I tell him honestly, but I don’t tell him everything else. How all I can think about is what I’ll be when she leaves me. I’ll be the shell of a man waiting to die, the way Jase is waiting for this war.

  His gaze burns into me, but he doesn’t press me for more. Maybe he already knows.

  “Talvery called as well.”

  My head whips to his and my brows pinch together in both shock and anger at his admission. “When? Why didn’t-“

  “Just now, before you came in.” I try to interrupt him, pissed off that I wasn’t told, but Jase continues, “He only wanted to know one thing and then he hung up.”

  “And you told him what he wanted to know?” My blunt fingernails dig into the soft leather of the armrest.

  “He wanted to know if Aria was still alive. If she was okay.” He speaks evenly, staring into the fire before looking at me when I ask, “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth.”

  I have to bite my tongue when I nearly ask him what truth he told Talvery. Because I know she’s not okay. There’s nothing about either of us that’s okay.

  Chapter 82

  Aria

  I’ll never forget the first fight I had with Nikolai. As I sit in my hideaway room, staring at the beautiful wallpaper in front of me with a blank canvas at my feet and a stick of unused chalk in my hand, I remember how I screamed at him and how he screamed back at me.

  It was a quarrel of young love. But it was also the beginning of the end and we both knew it.

  He’d taught me to shoot that day, letting me fire his gun. He was only seventeen and I was sixteen. I’d begged him to let me fire it. I wanted to know what it felt like and he told me he shouldn’t, and that I would never need to know anyway.

  I can’t explain how angry it made me, but it didn’t matter, because he moved behind me as we stood in front of the forest behind my home. His chest pressed against my back and his hands held mine as he taught me how to fire it.

  The gun kicked back, but he held it steady in my hands. I remember the heat that spread through me when he asked me how it felt, whispering the question in my ear. We’d been seeing each other late at night, nearly every night for a while.

  I knew he cared for me, but he hadn’t said those three words to me that I’d confessed to him.

  I peeked over my shoulder, and his lips were right there, so close to mine. I stared at them for a moment and thank God I did, because that’s the moment my father stormed out of the house.

  I tore myself away from Nikolai before he even saw my father.

  That night we didn’t fight over the gun, or whether or not I should learn how to fire one. We fought because he wanted to end what we had. He said my father would never allow it.

  We fought because I wanted to run away with him, but Nikolai refused. Deciding it was better to stay where we were and to stop seeing each other, rather than to take the risk to leave and keep what we had.

  He didn’t want to be seen with me again, and that’s why I screamed. He was all I had, and he knew it. It hurt me deeply, although I understood why he didn’t want my father to find out. The second I showed him my pain, he took it away.

  Nikolai kissed it away and said he would make it better. That he was doing it all for me, and one day I’d see. It took time for me to get used to not having him. And every time I cried, every time I needed him, if only for a moment, he came to me.

  He never told me he loved me until after I’d gotten over what we had and only considered him a friend. But I knew he did before he told me. Because when you love someone, you can’t stand to see them in pain.

  Carter’s not like that, though. He’s not a man to soothe or be soothed. He’s the type who puts his thumb inside of a raw gunshot wound and pushes harder. That’s the kind of man Carter is.

  There’s no kissing away my pain with Carter. He wants me to live in it, because he lives in his. To stand by his side means to revel in the agony, and more so, to rule in it.

  The knock at my door startles me. It’s soft and although I wish it were Carter on the other side, I already know it’s not.

  Carter’s not the type to knock so gently, either.

  “Yes?” I call out from behind the closed door.

  “It’s me.” Addison’s voice carries through the door and I have to take a steadying breath before I can answer her.

  My eyes are tired and burn from lack of sleep as she walks in.

  “How did you know I was here?” I ask her and only then do I hear how hoarse my voice is.

  As I sit up on my pile of pillows and look around, I realize how pathetic this looks. How pathetic I look.

  “Daniel told me,” she says softly, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She looks around awkwardly for only a brief second before coming to sit with me on my makeshift bed.

  I want to tell her that I’m happy for her, for what I overheard. I want to hug her and confide in her that I already know the good news, although it was an accident. I want to do many things, but Addison came with a purpose and she doesn’t give me a chance to speak first.

  I’m grateful for that because seeing her makes me anxious and awkward, given the circumstances.

  “When I first moved here… well,” she pauses and clears her throat, then continues, “close to here, when I moved to Crescent Hills, I had no one.”

  I pull my legs into my chest and lean my back against the wall as I watch her sit cross-legged. There’s a small pile of plush throw blankets folded next to me and she takes the palest pink one, a soft chenille, and pulls the blanket up around her.

  “I know what that’s like,” I tell her and she shakes her head no.

  “I was an orphan,” she tells me with her voice cracking and I’m taken aback.

  “I had no idea.”

  “I don’t look like an orphan?” she raises her brow and jokes, but the accompanying small laugh is sad. “I don’t talk much about it, you know?” I nod as she talks, and I try to imagine what that was like.

  “Anyway, I moved between a few different families and the one here was okay; it wasn’t any better than the others in a lot of ways. They didn’t care about me, they just got paid to keep me alive, you know?” Addison chews on her bottom lip for a moment and I can’t help but wonder why she’s telling me all this. She takes in a heavy breath and looks me dead in the eye. “I stayed because of Tyler.”

  “Tyler?” A freezing sensation sweeps across my skin at hearing his name. It feels as if I know the Cross brother who died. I’ve dreamed of him, and the words he gave Addison in her dream haven’t left me.

  “All of us grew up poor, and so he didn’t judge me, not like the other kids at school. His father was an alcoholic, and his brothers were… well, they did what they had to in order to survive. And it scared me sometimes. But he loved me, and I loved him in a lot of ways. I also realized I loved his brother—I loved Daniel more, even if we were nothing back then. I hardly spoke to Daniel at the time.” Tears cloud her vision and she brushes them away. “The Cross boys, they protected me, they looked out for me in a way no one had. Including Carter.” She lets the tears fall and sniffles before telling me, “I swear to you, there’s so
much good in there.”

  She licks her lower lip, gathering the tear that lingers there and it’s then I realize she thinks I’m not okay because I want to leave. Because I don’t love Carter.

  “I know there is,” I tell her and she waits for more. For the “but” that isn’t going to come from me. “I love him and I love this family.” Emotions spill from me, emotions I wish I could bury deep down inside until I can’t feel them anymore. “I want to be a part of this family more than you could ever know.”

  She tilts her head and gives me a look, and I actually crack a smile. “Well, maybe you do know.” I sniff and look at the ceiling to keep from tearing up at the thought of being a part of this family, a family who has protected me and has loved me. Even if they are … the men they are.

  “So you do love him?” she asks and reaches out to me, laying a hand on my knee. “You forgive him?”

  I nod my head, knowing it’s true. Both statements are so true.

  “He doesn’t forgive me.” I tell her the truth that burns a hole in my chest. I have to reach into the pocket of the sleepshirt so I can pull out a few of the loose pearls from the necklace I used to wear. The beads click together softly in my hand as I tell her, “He doesn’t trust me and he’s not going to show any mercy, not to me or to anyone.”

  “I wanted to come in here and tell you something. Something that’s scaring me, Aria.” Addison’s voice drops and her eyes darken with an intensity I haven’t seen from her before.

  “Go ahead,” I tell her in a whisper, feeling the temperature of my blood drop. She rubs her palms on her jeans as she breathes out slowly.

  “I went to Tyler’s grave.” Tears gather in her eyes the same way clouds do as a storm threatens, slowly and with an impending necessity. “There were so many forget-me-nots.” She looks past me, to the window that’s covered in beautiful linens, yet locked and will never open. I doubt she knows that little fact though. Her gaze stays there as she tells me, “I brought two packets of seeds with me before I left, and I scattered them all around his grave.” Her eyes drift to mine. “It’s nothing but a field of blue and white now,” she tells me and a chill flows down my spine. An odd sense of déjà vu pricks its way deeper into my bones.