And we wait.
~
“What happened?”
Hunter has finally moved away from me, just enough that I can breathe and he laughs, rubbing his eyes roughly. “She went to the office with her grandmother. Just a small meeting with one of the department heads. I didn’t think she needed me, so I stayed home. She wanted me to.”
There’s enough guilt in his tone that my heart actually lurches at it.
“This isn’t your fault, Hunt.”
His lips twist into a parody of a smile, and I hate that look on his face. I hate when he’s anything but calm or smiling.
Bitterness doesn’t belong there.
“I should have been with her.”
“The best bodyguard in the world can’t stop a car crash. And you haven’t been the best in years.”
I’m teasing, but something in his gaze shifts, darts to me, and goes curious. I raise my eyebrows, but he just shakes his head.
“Did the doctors tell you anything?”
“No. I’m just her fiancee.” His voice tips towards bitter again and I get it.
Scarlet’s cousins had been fighting her right to control the Robins Tech for years. Part of that was continuing to put off her marriage. Her parents had died when Scarlet was young—young enough that I don’t think she even remembers them.
Scarlet’s grandmother raised her, but she couldn’t protect Scar from the extended family forever, and they hated her and the threat she posed with a devotion that was almost frightening. Being named the heir to a multi-billion dollar company when you’re fifteen is bound to piss off some folks.
It’s why Rosalie hired Hunter. He was the son of a friend in security, with just enough training that he could shadow Scarlet at Wilderwood Prep and keep the most immediate threats from touching her.
It took him a good six years to admit that, of course. For a long time, he thought I was one of the immediate threats.
Hunter is very dedicated when he thinks something is a threat to Scarlet.
“Where is Rosalie?” I ask.
He shakes his head, exhausted. “She was in the car too, Wolf.”
Fuck.
~
The problem with falling for a guy you can’t have—and the girl he’s engaged to—is that in my life, they don’t go away. They get closer, worm their way in, get comfortable, and refuse to fucking leave.
~
My eyes actually ached by the time the doctors entered the waiting room. Hunter was dozing next to me, my leather biker jacket spread over him, and I almost didn't want to wake him. It'd been a long night, for both of us.
"Family of Ms. Robins," the doctor calls, and I struggle upright.
"Here. We're—" I wave at Hunter. "We're her family."
The doctor doesn't even try to contain his skeptical look, and I swallow my grin.
I know what it looks like. A big Mexican with tattoos crawling down his arms and an unshaven guy with messy hair and torn jeans—we don't fit with a girl like Scarlet, who’s all sugar sweet and smiles.
Neither of us are the kind of guy Scarlet brings home, and she certainly doesn't bring home two of us.
"That's her fiance," I say, hooking a thumb at Hunter. "I'm her best friend."
"This is for immediate family," the doctor says, hesitating.
"Check her chart," Hunter says hoarsely. He drops my coat into the chair next to him and pushes to his feet, stretching with a groan before giving himself a little shake that shouldn't be as fucking hot as it is, and that I pointedly ignore. Now is not the time.
"She's got me listed as next of kin, and I guarantee Charles Blackwood is on that list somewhere. Go ahead and check, if you need. We'll wait."
The doctor looks conflicted, but Hunter nods, all affable agreement and he turns away. The nurse comes back a few minutes later and murmurs to him and he—finally—flashes an apologetic smile at us. "Sorry about that. I'm sure you understand that our priority has to be patient confidentiality," he says, looking nervously between us.
"Tell us how Scarlet is," I say impatiently, and Hunter shoots me a quick glare.
"Please," he adds, turning back to the doctor.
"She was lucky," Dr. Caine says, glancing down. She's got stitches on her scalp from where the glass cut her. A fractured tibia and three broken ribs—that was the big problem. The ribs punctured her lung. We had to repair that and stop the internal bleeding. She's got a heart condition," his eyes flick up over us both, "Are you aware of that?"
Hunter nods. "Yes, but it's never been something life-threatening."
Dr. Caine nods. “It still isn’t, but it’s not something we were aware of and that complicated the surgery.”
“Is she going to be ok?” I demand, because that’s our priority. That’s what I need to know. I can feel Hunter tense next to me, his whole body going still and worried.
Dr. Caine nods again and offers us the smallest of smiles. “She will be. It’ll take some work and some care from her family,” he says, his gaze skating over us, slightly concerned, “but she’ll make a full recovery.”
Hunter makes a noise, or maybe I do. All I know is that he’s tugging me close, wrapping me in a hug, and I feel like I can breathe again.
Chapter 5.
It takes them three days to release her. It’s three days where Hunt and I orbit each other and her room and, when the staff kicks us out, we collapse at the nearest house—which is mine, incidentally.
Neither of us discuss the fact that we’re living together, working together, and have fallen into life so easily and naturally that it feels strange when one of us isn’t in the room.
Neither of us discuss what will happen when she’s released and life goes back to normal.
I think, maybe, it’s because normal for us is such a distant fucking concept. We’ve never been normal. From that first half smoked cigarette, we’ve been moving around each other and toward something bigger.
~
Scar, predictably, doesn’t mention anything different in me and Hunter when she wakes up and finds us arguing over the channel on her shitty TV.
She just kinda laughs at us and says, “Fuck, if I’d have known getting in a car accident would make you two get along, I’d have done it ages ago.”
Hunter gives her an exasperated frown, and I shudder, shaking my head. “Don’t,” I choke. She’s still in that damn hospital bed, still hooked up to machines that are helping her fucking breathe, and she’s joking. “Don’t joke,” I spit out and I’m in the room just long enough to hear her gasp my name.
I bolt.
Hunter snarls something low and vicious, and then he’s chasing after me and when he catches me, he throws me into a little supply closet. It’s like the pods at the Kingdom, and it’s dirty and it’s somewhere we don’t belong, with him pushed too close and her words too there.
I gasp and choke on it.
I’ve held it together, kept my shit together and kept calm while Hunter fell apart. I listened to the doctors when he was too angry, made sure he had food, forced him to sleep, and generally made sure that when Scarlet woke up, she wasn’t waking up to a complete and utter mess.
And now, now she’s awake, and she’s joking about it and I—
I just can’t.
His hands are on my shoulders and I’m falling apart, and he shakes me, gently. “Cachorro,” he whispers, and he’s close.
God, he’s been close, so fucking close, for days, and now he’s watching me. It throws me back, a decade and a lifetime, and I don’t think.
I can’t think, not past her rusty laugh, and the catch in my throat, and him.
I kiss him.
It's not the first time I've kissed him.
I kissed him in my dorm room and I've kissed him in the Kingdom and in Scarlet's bed while she watched. I've kissed him in my car with her pressed against my back, and, on one memorable occasion, in a pool in Fiji.
But this is the first time, in more years than I want to think about,
that I've kissed him and she wasn't there.
Hunter freezes, stiff and startled against me, and then he groans this fucking divine noise, and drags me into him.
My hands find his hair and his nails dig into my shoulders and he breathes something that sounds like finally into my skin, before he kisses me, his tongue darting into my mouth, licking in like—
Like—
Hunter kisses like a drowning man breathes. He does it deeply and desperately, fighting for it in a battle that doesn't feel like dominance, just feels like desperation and want.
I've forgotten how good it feels to be on the other end of that, to be crowded against the wall by his big body and bent as far back as I can go before I hit something that digs into my back and it fucking hurts, but he's licking at my lips and biting just enough to make my hips jerk against him, and I can breathe him in.
His hands are on me, and that thick spicy scent that's some kind of cologne Scarlet loves and the smell of just him—of Hunter—is rolling off him and it's not hospital disinfectant, and his voice is in my ear, breathing my name like a prayer. It's not the steady, damning beep of a machine, and when I look up at him, dazed and hungry, his eyes are bright black flames, and it's not Scarlet's frail body in a bed.
"Can't do this," I whisper, and he growls and kisses me again.
I let him.
~
Scarlet is sitting up on the mattress when Hunter finally drags me back, and I flush, staring at the ground in front of me instead of at her.
The girl’s in the fucking hospital and I’m tongue fucking her fiancé in a goddamn janitor’s closet. What the fuck is wrong with me?
She’s silent for a long moment, watching us and then finally, she huffs a little laugh.
“Ok, well. I suppose we’ll need to talk about,” she waves vaguely at us, “This. But in the meantime, do we have real food? And when the hell are they going to let me go home?”
I blink at her. “That’s it?” I ask, licking my lips.
I can still taste Hunter.
She laughs a little and gives me a small smile. “If you haven’t figured out that I don’t mind you two together, Wolf, you aren’t nearly as smart as I always gave you credit for.”
Hunter makes a low noise in his throat and her gaze drifts to him, lazy and amused.
“Behave, sweetheart,” he admonishes, and she pouts.
Fucking hell. These two might just break me.
I’m not entirely sure I’d mind.
~
It takes us another three hours to get Scarlet discharged, and an hour after that to get her home.
Home for Scarlet is a sprawling house in Buckhead. She used to live here with her grandmother, but Rosalie moved deeper into the city when Scarlet came back from college and moved into the family mansion.
I love Scarlet’s house. It’s not what I’d choose—I prefer my small house with it’s untended yard and broken dishwasher—but I love that this elegant, homey mansion that somehow screams Scarlet without being pretentious. It always feels like I’m wrapped up in her when I’m at her place.
Hunter carries her into the house and starts toward her room, and she punches him in the shoulder. “Quit it! I’ve been in bed for three solid days. Lemme sit on the couch.”
He scowls at her and she gives him a pretty pout. “Please, babe? Just for a little while. I won’t move and I’ll be good.”
“Will you be nice to Wolf?” he asks, and I almost fall over, carrying her bags in.
Scarlet throws me a saucy little grin and shrugs. “Only if he wants me to be.”
Hunter huffs a sigh and takes her to the couch, where he lays her out as gently as he can, before tucking a blanket around her. I look away. I can watch them having sex, can watch them fighting and her flirting with him, and I can manage.
It hurts but it doesn’t hurt like this.
Watching him be gentle with her, watching her soft smile—it makes my chest ache.
It’s what I want and can’t have.
I clear my throat and turn away. “I should go, let you guys rest.”
“Wolf,” Scarlet says, her voice a high protest. Hunter is straightening, his dark gaze skipping to me, searching and confused, and I can’t be here, not with the taste of him on my lips and her eyes pleading with me.
I dart into her space and press a quick kiss to her hair. “I’ll be by tomorrow to check on you, sweetheart.”
She shudders under my touch—from the nickname or something else—I don’t know and I can’t analyze it.
I nod at Hunter and then get the fuck out before either of them can talk me into saying.
Or worse—before they don’t bother trying.
Chapter 6.
After of almost a week of constant company, it's strange to be alone.
I'm a social creature, and after an hour of wandering around aimlessly and jacking off because my fucking bedroom smells like Hunter, I reach for my phone.
"Where the hell have you been?" Beast asks, his voice edging away from amused and into worried, and I sigh.
"Scarlet was in a car accident," I say simply.
Beast breathes a curse. "What do you need?"
"Uh. A drink, and some noise would be good."
"Call Charm. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
I nods and swallow the lump in my throat. I'm not gonna fucking cry. I haven't done that since Mom dropped me off at the White mansion and drove out of my life.
"Thanks, Beastie."
He mutters a curse and hangs up, and I grin, rubbing my jaw.
Beast and Charm are exactly what I need. They're loud and almost obnoxious as they fill my house. Charm's carrying a pizza and he shoves into the house without knocking, because Charm hasn't knocked to enter my place of residence since the day I met him.
"You do know we aren't roommates anymore, right?" I ask, eyeing him over my bottle of beer as he kicks off his shoes and sprawls onto the couch next to me.
"Shut the fuck up. Where's Beast?"
"Five minutes away. Apparently Beauty wanted attention before he left home."
Charm grins and shakes his head. "That's still weird, man."
I snort. Charm doesn't know about the night I showed up at Beauty's penthouse and found Beast a mess of bruises and tattered emotions, crashing into sub-drop and alone through it all because his damn Domme wouldn't step forward. It wasn't my place to tell him either, but I had my own reservations about the girl, even if Mal and Charm thought they made a great couple.
I had to admit that Beast is happier than I'd ever seen him, and that counts for a helluva a lot in my book.
The truth is, I’ve always been the secret keeper. I keep Mal's, from our father, from Briar, even from Charm and Beast, about why Briar married that trust fund dick.
I kept Beast's, when he was fighting his own insecurities and the shit that always follows him back to Atlanta when he went home.
I kept all of Charm's—his drugs in high school, the way his temper sometimes slipped too much and his scenes dipped toward dangerous, the way he was terrified of his family responsibilities and commitment, because he was sure he could never live up to his parents.
And I kept my own.
Sometimes, I'm pretty sure I'm drowning in secrets.
I sip my beer and wonder what he'd do if I told him I kissed Hunter in a janitor's closet while we waited for Scarlet to be discharged.
I wonder what he'd say if he knew that when I vanished in the club, I was watching them fuck.
He'd probably tell me I was an idiot and remind me that when I get my heart broken, it'd be no one's fault but my own.
And the thing is—I know that.
I fucking get it.
I just don't care enough to stop it from happening. I didn't when I found out just who Hunter really was, and I still don't.
If they break my heart, I’m going to be very aware of it happening.
The front door swings open and Beast almost falls into the living room, al
l cheeky smiles and bruised wrists. Around his neck is the thick black collar I haven’t seen him without since the day he first stepped into Beauty’s penthouse apartment.
Domestic bliss looks really fucking good on my best friends.
It’s been an adjustment to not flirt with Beast the way I have for years, to remember point a new sub in Mal’s direction when he needs it, to remember I can’t call Charming at three a.m. when I’m crashing because he was happily wrapped around a girl with the patience of a saint and the mouth of a sailor when she was woken up prematurely.
Domestic bliss has been good for them, but it hurts a little, watching everything change. It’d been the same for so long I’d begun to think it always would be.
Or maybe, I had just gotten lazy—gotten used to my fucked up version of happily ever after, content to be used and forgotten because if scraps were all I could get, well, I’d take it.
Whatever it was, watching Charm and Beast settle into the next chapter of their lives, a chapter I couldn’t share—it stung, hurting in the worst way.
I was happy for them, I was, but I also missed my brothers.
I missed this.
I lean back in the chair, listening as Beast babbles about Beauty and what she’s been busy with, and I blank out on everything that’s been rattling around in my brain for the past four days. I push Hunter and Scarlet away, push away the things I want that I can’t have, and I let myself drift in this moment.
It’s just my brothers, the taste of beer, and the comfort of home.
And if my couch smells a little bit too much like Hunter, if I lean into that—it’s no one’s business but my own.
~
“You’d tell us, right?”
I look at Beast, pretending to miss the point of the question.
“If something was wrong, you’d tell us.”
It’s a statement, and I force a grin that’s more cocky bravado than anything else, and nod. “Of course.”
A frown—he doesn’t believe me. “Charles.”
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