by Ivy Layne
“Compared to the rest of you, maybe. On a normal size person, they'd be tiny.”
It was the middle of the night. I was not prepared to argue Amelia's circular logic. I knew she was just trying to distract me from our conversation about whatever she was planning for Tate's wedding. Gage opened the door before I could figure out how to get her to talk.
I left Amelia in bed and followed Gage across the hall to my room. His hands were on the buttons of my shirt seconds after he turned the lock on the door. I batted them away and took a step back.
“What aren't you telling me?” I demanded.
“A lot,” he said, surprising me with his honesty. “But nothing you need to know.”
“I'd rather judge that for myself,” I said.
His hands went for my buttons again. “I know you would. You're just going to have to trust me.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I muttered. “I don't want to trust you; I want to know what's going on. I want to know what you and Aiden aren't telling me.”
“Trust me,” Gage murmured in my ear, slipping my shirt over my shoulders and undoing the clasp of my bra with a flick of his fingers behind my back. “I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Sophie. Just trust me. Let me take care of you.”
I let out a sigh, giving in as his hand covered my breast and his lips touched mine in a slow, lazy kiss. He backed me toward the bed, helping me step out of my jeans. I was on my back a second later, his hard, hot body over mine, his hips nudging my thighs apart, the head of his hard cock sliding against me, rolling over my clit in slow circles.
I forgot to argue. I forgot how much I trusted him, and how much I didn't want to. I forgot everything but the rising sea of pleasure and his long, drugging kisses.
I’d remember in the morning. That would have to be good enough. For now, I didn't want to fight. All I wanted was Gage.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Gage
“I do.”
Tate barely waited for the officiant to finish saying, “You may kiss the bride,” before he scooped Emily into his arms, bent her back and laid a kiss on her mouth that was borderline inappropriate for a wedding.
Emily didn’t look like she minded.
My new sister-in-law glowed with joy, the wide smile on her face matching Tate's. Their wedding couldn't have been more different from Charlie and Lucas's the week before. Aside from two close friends, the only guests were family.
Our uncle William had an out-of-town emergency, and while Mrs. W and Abel weren't strictly relatives, we considered them family just the same. They excused themselves to get dinner set up, and Emily dragged Tate off to take a few pictures with Annalise, who was acting as the official wedding photographer. I took advantage of everyone's distraction to sneak a kiss from Sophie.
She wore the same elegant navy blue dress she had to Charlie’s wedding, but this time she’d left her hair down, at my request. It flowed over her shoulders, the silvery blonde waves as soft as silk. I couldn't keep my fingers off it. If she'd been wearing white, she would've been the perfect picture of the angel I always called her. I looked down at her, framing her face in my hands and slid the pad of my thumb over the dark circles beneath her eyes.
She hadn't slept more than a few hours at a time since the break-in, waking abruptly after snatches of broken sleep, moaning and murmuring in plaintive tones. I hated seeing her so vulnerable. I'd asked her to trust me, and I knew she was trying, but trust came hard for Sophie.
It would have been easier if we’d caught the intruder. We’d made a little progress. The library window was fixed, and the Sinclair team had discovered how the intruder was entering the house – a long abandoned coal chute that fed into a closet at the back of the gym. Aiden and I had debated sealing it up, but at Cooper's recommendation, we'd left it as is, adding only a silent sensor to alert us if the chute was used. The next time this fucker tried to get into our house, we'd have him.
None of that was helping Sophie to sleep at night. Who knows, I might have been in the same shape if she wasn't waking me up so often. As it was, I'd had fitful nightmares myself, flashes of finding my aunt and uncle dead in the library, sometimes seeing Sophie in their place, blood spilled across her pale skin, her green eyes blank and glazed with death. None of us would relax until we caught whoever was breaking into the house.
Annalise had finally conceded that it was unlikely the intruder was her stalker, but she was still jumpy, hyper-alert and on edge. I doubted she would stick around more than a day or two now that Tate and Emily were married.
Sophie let me pull her down the hall to the wine room. Tate, Emily, and Annalise were occupied with photographs in the living room, Mrs. W and Abel in the dining room, while the rest of the family was sharing drinks at the temporary bar set up in the front hall. It was the perfect time to sneak off for a few minutes.
I wasn't the only one with that idea. I pushed open the heavy door of the wine room and was greeted by a startled gasp and a low chuckle. Vance had Magnolia pressed against the back wall, her dress hiked halfway up her leg, his hand on the back of her thigh and his mouth on her neck. Her dark red hair spilled over both of them, matching the embarrassed flush on her cheeks.
Over his shoulder, Vance said, “Get a room. I'd get one, but your girl is using mine.”
He had a point. While we all had rooms in the house, Sophie had taken his, and Amelia had moved into Holden and Tate’s. Sophie's hand firmly in mine, I tried to tug her down the hall, toward her bedroom but she dug in her heels.
“Not in the middle of the wedding,” she said.
“Technically the wedding is over, and the reception hasn't started yet,” I reasoned. Lively music sounded from the front hall, and I knew I'd lost my window. As expected, Sophie raised an eyebrow at me.
“I'm pretty sure that's the reception starting right now,” she said, “and I have to keep an eye on Amelia. She's up to something; I just can't figure out what.”
I gave in, but not before backing her into the wall outside the wine room and kissing her senseless. Her eyes were hazy and her lips swollen when I finally raised my head. “Now we can go to the reception,” I said, my lips against her ear, loving the way she shivered in my arms.
I could have urged her down the hall just then and locked us both in her bedroom. A few more kisses and Sophie would be more than willing to be late to the party. I didn't do it. Sophie wanted to go to the reception. She wanted to keep an eye on Amelia. So that's what we’d do. I'd have plenty of time alone with her later.
I kept an eye on Amelia as we got our drinks and joined my cousin Holden and his new fiancée Jo by the French doors overlooking the terrace behind the house. Holden had proposed to Jo not long after Tate and Emily had gotten engaged, though they were waiting to get married. They hadn't decided what kind of wedding they wanted. Considering we’d just had two in a row, and Jacob and Abigail were planning the wedding to end all weddings, Holden and Jo just wanted to enjoy being engaged for a while.
I listened to Sophie asking Jo about her work and studied Amelia, across the room. On the surface of things, she looked innocent enough, but there was a smugness to her happy smile that set me on edge. Sophie was right, Amelia was up to something.
Mrs. W appeared in the doorway of the dining room to tell us all it was time to eat. Tate had insisted she be a wedding guest and she, in turn, had insisted that she oversee the festivities, considering that it was only family. They'd both gotten their way, and after directing us all to our places, she took her own seat at the table. The seat beside her was empty, reserved for Abel, who Tate had also insisted join the party. Uniformed waiters, hired for the evening, carried in plates through the butler's pantry and set them before us.
Sophie sat beside me on the left. Amelia sat to her left, close enough to keep watch on, though as far as I could tell she wasn't interested in anything other than her soup.
We were just finishing the main course when Sophie saw it, tucked di
screetly beneath her placemat. A note in heavy white vellum, folded in half. She was teasing it out from beneath the placemat when I caught sight of the note in her fingers, the curious crease between her eyebrows.
“What's that?” I asked, instantly suspicious.
“I don't know,” she said, turning the note over in her hands before unfolding it.
Meet me in my office when Gage is asleep.
I need to see you alone.
A
I knew that handwriting, the arrogant slash of that A.
That fucking bastard. I fucking knew it this whole time. The way he warned me away from her. The way he looked at her. I risked a glance at Sophie, her wide, shocked eyes barely registering through my surge of fury.
“Gage,” she stammered, “I don't know what this is. I swear, I don't know why –” She looked up at Aiden, at the head of the table, and back at the note. “I don't understand.”
I shoved to my feet, tipping my chair over behind me and tore the note from her hands. “I do. And I'm fucking done.”
I stalked down the room to the head of the table, a tide of rage rising in my chest. He could ignore me. He could put me off. He could punish me for leaving and shut me out. I'd resigned myself to that, was even okay with it.
Going after Sophie? Fuck, no. Sophie was mine, and this was a step too fucking far. I reached Aiden's chair in a few long strides that seem to take forever and reached down, my fist closing around the knot of his tie. I hauled him up, knocking his chair back. I only took a moment to register the shock on his face before I planted my fist in the middle of it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gage
Aiden went down hard. His back hit the floor, and his skull bounced on the carpet. Then he was up, lunging for me. I met him halfway, arm raised and ready to strike. He hit me with a shoulder to the gut and took me to the floor. Smart move. Aiden had wrestled in high school. He wasn't trained in combat like I was, but on the ground, he had a chance.
My awareness dissolved into swinging fists, kicking feet, and grappling arms. Aiden didn't have my skill, but he was driven by rage, all his pent up resentment and anger and unspoken emotion flooding out through his clenched fists as we rolled. He pinned me, getting in a good strike to my temple before I scissored my legs and threw him off, kicking him hard in the back.
I got him in a choke hold for a few seconds, managing to get enough breath to growl out, “Keep your fucking hands off Sophie,” before he twisted free and I took another fist to the jaw.
An unexpected strike to the shoulder had me looking up to see Sophie standing above us, her arms crossed over her chest, a furious look on her face. “You two are complete idiots. I’m not going to watch grown men act like children.”
She strode from the room as I stared after her. Aiden let out a roar and lunged at me, catching me distracted, his fist connecting with my cheekbone.
We’d fought before. We'd grown up side-by-side and shared a room most of our childhoods. But we’d never fought like this. Over a decade of pain and anger, of betrayal and disillusionment, of grief and love, spilled through me. Somewhere in the middle of it, I realized I wasn't even mad anymore.
Sophie didn't want Aiden. She was mine because she wanted to be mine, not because I declared it so. Aiden couldn't take her from me. Only Sophie could do that. If I hadn't been on such a hair trigger lately, I never would've gone for the bait.
Bait.
The word exploded in my head in a flash of understanding. God dammit. Amelia. Aiden hadn't written that note. I went limp and fell to my back just as icy water splashed over us. Shocked and sputtering, I looked up to see Mrs. W standing over us in the same posture as Sophie had, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping, glower firmly in place. An empty water pitcher dangled from one finger.
“You boys are too old for this nonsense,” she said in a steely voice. “This is Tate's wedding, not a circus. Go sit out back on the patio and cool off. Don't think about coming back in this house until you've worked out your differences, do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma'am,” we said in unison. Aiden and I dragged our bruised bodies out of the dining room, ignoring the amused laughter of the rest of the family. I pushed my way through the French doors to the terrace and sat on the top step, the icy slate freezing my ass through my suit.
Georgia had been unseasonably cold over the holidays, but the frigid air felt good on my bruised and rapidly swelling face. Unwilling to completely give in I said, “You still have a pussy left hook.”
“Fuck you,” Aiden said, without heat. “Why the fuck did you hit me?”
I shrugged and winced at the unexpected pain in my shoulder. “Sophie found a note from you under her placemat,” I said.
“I didn't write Sophie a note. Why the hell would I do that?”
“Yeah, I figured that out while we were beating the shit out of each other.”
“Amelia.”
“Bingo,” I said.
A strangled laugh erupted from Aiden's throat, and he shook his head, pushing his hair back with the heel of his palm. “She told me if we didn't work things out she’d deal with us her own way.”
I let out a strangled laugh of my own and felt hot liquid warmth run from my split lip to my chin. Fuck. If my face looked anything like Aiden's, we were both a mess.
His dark hair was tangled and matted with sweat, falling over his forehead and almost hiding the swelling around his left eye. I could feel my own eyelid swelling to match his. By morning we'd have twin black eyes. And split lips. People had always said we looked alike.
I braced my elbows on my knees and stared down at the slate between my feet. Letting out a long breath, I said, “I'm sorry I left. I should've stayed. I should've manned up and stayed and helped you. I know you hated me for it. I know why you can't forgive me, and I understand.”
Beside me, I felt Aiden go still, and then his eyes on me. I couldn't look up. I couldn't stand to see the accusation, the blame in his eyes.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I don't hate you. What do you mean I can't forgive you? I'm fucking pissed you took so long to come home. And I'm pissed you almost got yourself fucking killed, but—”
I shot to my feet and faced him down, finally ready to take the judgment I was due.
“I didn't save them,” I shouted at the top of my lungs, the words tearing from my heart in raw pain and the sheer relief of draining a wound that had never healed. “I didn't save them. I was here. I was up in my room fucking sulking because I was grounded, and I didn't save them.”
My knees folded abruptly as if pulled by a string, and I sat back on the step, swamped with guilt and grief. Beside me, Aiden sucked in a breath and let it out.
“You had your headphones on,” he said, quietly. “They were in the library. You couldn't have heard anything.”
“I should've known,” I said. “I was here. I was upstairs. They died, and I didn't save them.”
“It wasn't your fault, Gage,” Aiden said, his voice a low rasp. “Is that why you didn't come home? Because you thought I blamed you? How could you think I would blame you?”
“Why wouldn't you blame me?” I asked. “I blame myself. If I’d heard something, if I'd gone downstairs, if I hadn't been sulking in my room like—”
“Like a teenager? Which is what you were. A teenager. Not super Gage special forces soldier. You were eighteen and unarmed. If you'd been downstairs, you probably would have died with them. Did you ever think about that?” Aiden asked.
“Maybe,” I conceded.
I had thought about it, but that logic had never felt like absolution. Maybe Aiden was right, and I would've been killed along with my aunt and uncle. But maybe if I'd been there things would've changed. We didn't know what had happened to them, only that they'd been shot in the library in a crime almost identical to the one that had taken my parents lives so many years before.
In both cases, the deaths were written off as murder/suicides and dismiss
ed, but we knew someone had killed them. We just didn't know why. Without answers, I couldn't stop wondering how I might have changed things.
“I'm sorry I've been an ass since you've been home,” Aiden said. “I want you to come back to the company. I do. I just—” he stopped and swallowed hard. “I understand why you left, Gage. It was hard here without you, but I understood. You found them. You walked in the library in this house, and you found them dead. I get why you needed to get away. I thought you would come home after a few years, but I figured you just needed more time. And then they told us you were missing and probably dead and—”
Aiden's voice choked off. I tried to speak and found my throat was locked shut.
We sat there in silence, fighting to get our emotions under control. Finally, Aiden reached out and punched me in the shoulder. Pain exploded, far out of proportion to his strike. I must've landed on it wrong when we'd hit the floor in the dining room. Shit, we were immature assholes, even in our thirties.
“I should've come home a long time ago,” I said when I thought I could speak again. Fighting off the tightness in my throat, I said, “I should've known you wouldn't blame me. I just… I couldn't stop dreaming about them. I still do.”
“Gage,” Aiden said, “it's been twelve years. You can't let it take over your life like this.”
“I know,” I interrupted, “I know. It's not just that, it's the last six months, and everything I did, everything I saw the years before that. It's a lot of shit all rolled up in my head so I can't sleep, and I'm on edge all the time—”
“Yeah, no shit,” Aiden said, and I laughed. “You were always Mr. Cool, and now you're jumping me at a wedding?”
“Yeah,” I said. It wasn't funny, not really, but I laughed anyway. “Cooper set me up with someone to talk to. My first appointment is next week.”
I shook my head and looked out over the back lawn into the moonlit trees behind the house. On the other side of those trees, through the dark woods, was my parents’ house, sitting empty and abandoned. I shook my head again.