I watched her from the bar glaring at the side of Storm’s bruised face. Rip was on his back on the sofa, staring at the ceiling with empty eyes. He still had his soul though, so his emptiness wasn’t as frightening. Not yet. He’d better keep it that way.
I poured Johnnie Walker over four glasses of ice with unsteady hands. My inability to reclaim my calm pissed me off. Two days had passed since we’d fell over the cliff. We’d all four been hiding out in Charm Loft. We all knew our families knew where we were, and this small reprieve was simply granted before our lives became theirs.
Closing our eyes against the truth was a chance to fight one last time.
I carried all four glasses over and set them on the table, taking one for myself and handing one off to Hallie. She took the glass, shooting daggers at Storm. She’d been trying to get him to talk for two days. I knew that was pointless, but she was determined to break his barriers.
Raul’s men broke him. Reverting into his shell was his way of surviving.
“Give up already,” Rip muttered, tossing back his glass and resuming his position on the couch. “He doesn’t talk when he’s happy. He isn’t going to talk when he’s upset.”
“That’s not normal.” Hallie took a drink and made a face. “Ugh. What is that?”
“Whiskey.” I pulled an arm chair over and put my feet on the coffee table after sinking down slowly. My broken ribs were making it hard to breathe. I didn’t know what we were going to do tomorrow when we played the Middle High Tigers, a killer team out of Atlanta. “Good for your nerves.”
She snorted under her breath, her sad tired eyes both faraway and too stuck in reality. It was unsettling to find contentment in the midst of so much unease. Her hair was wayward and messy in a bun, cascading down the sides of her face and brushing her shoulder tops. She was wearing one of Rip’s Charming Knights shirts—we hadn’t wanted to risk going home—and the blue and gold shirt flooded her body. But she was here. There were walls, but they weren’t ours. I could get up right now and kiss her. I could watch her out in the open. She didn’t seem to mind my endless gaze these past few days.
Not that I cared. I’d watch her even if she stared right back at me.
I stared down into my whiskey, swirling the amber contents through the ice. We hadn’t talked at all about what happened on Saturday, or about the truths that had been bestowed upon us. My eyes slid closed in guilt. She only had a percentage of Goodford Finance through me. Her father had sold her future to save his present. She seemed more concerned with Storm’s silence than that.
But silence could be broken.
Our situation was set in contractual stone.
“Lara doesn’t want anything to do with me,” Rip spoke up suddenly. “There wasn’t much there to begin with to be honest. At least not for her.”
“What about for you?” Hallie asked, turning away from Storm to rest her head near Rip’s on the couch. She was sitting on the floor beside both men.
“I won’t ever talk shit about love at first sight ever again.”
She ran her fingers through his hair. I saw her mind working, and when her gaze shot to mine, she understood what that meant for him. Stuck here for love when he could leave with his soul. “Could be lust. Kind of the same thing at first.”
He laughed humorlessly. “Does lust make you miss someone you don’t even know?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, peering at me through her hair for a second.
I winked, smiling softly at the heat that bloomed in her cheeks.
“But it could, I guess,” she said, returning to him. “Maybe she just needs time to figure things out.”
“I don’t have time. If I don’t get out of Charmant now, I never will.”
I was glad some part of him understood that love and freedom were interchangeable. You could find both in the other only if they were connected to begin with. Separate, they were just barely locked prisons eager to slam their doors and lock you in. I knew. I’d lived in the prison of Hallie’s love for eighteen years before she set me free.
“What’s her problem?” she asked, removing the hair on his forehead.
“Me,” he stated simply. “She just doesn’t care about me at all. There’s no reaction in her eyes, you know? Like when someone likes you, even if it is lust, there’s a spark. There’s no spark in her eyes. She wants nothing to do with me, because she knows who I’ll become. Raul loves her,” he added bitterly. “So she can pick and choose when her emotions matter. We never had that fucking luxury.”
“Another, anyone?” I pushed carefully to my feet.
Storm pushed his glass forward, eyes blank. I refilled our glasses and then found the food service menu, flipping through the options as my wife consoled my best friends. I didn’t need consoling. I had her.
And that was all I’d ever wanted.
That night, Dax entered our loft suite with his eyes downcast and didn’t wait for a tip after leaving the carts of food. I texted Storm as I made myself a second plate. Hallie and Rip were in a deep philosophical debate about the importance of hot sauce on greens. Storm put food into his mouth, but I knew he wasn’t tasting a thing.
Me: Keep Hallie entertained for a few hours.
I watched him dig out his phone and tap his pale fingers on the screen.
Storm: No
Me: I have to propose to her on the field on Tuesday. I need a ring to do that. Just let her in for an hour. Hell, you might like it. She likes hot guys too.
He glared at me so intensely I almost regretted the jab.
Storm: No
Me: This isn’t her fault. It’s mine. I asked you for help. She had no idea. Be mad at me. Not her.
Storm: Don’t worry. I am mad at you.
I sighed, putting macaroni and cheese onto my plate and stuffing it down my throat. Maybe there was no more point to secrecy. It only seemed to piss her off more anyway.
“Hals?”
She looked up at me. “Yes?”
“I have to propose to you at the game. Welcome my father’s new daughter-in-law in appropriately. Let’s go check out rings.”
She stared at me, her mind working, putting two and two together and adding a bit of her own to the equation. “It’s not honesty if you do what you want before the lie.”
“I’m gay,” Storm blurted out suddenly.
We all whipped our gazes around to him, where he sat at the table, fork in his fist. Every muscle in his body was clenched tight.
The only one who looked shocked was Hallie. Rip and I rolled our eyes and returned to the matter at hand.
“We’ll stop and get you something else to wear too.” I downed my drink and went over to my shoes.
“Raul threatened me with it. I wanted you to know it from me first,” Storm continued.
Rip chuckled. “Sorry to break this to you, bro, but I’ve known you were gay since we were twelve. I just never say anything because you didn’t. Figured I’d let you work through it on your own.”
“What did he threaten you with? Your browsing history?” I put my hands on his shoulders, grinning at the fire on his face. I kissed his cheek and hugged his shoulders. “You’re not going to like fall in love with me, now, are you?”
He shoved me off, his body so coiled with fear and hatred he felt like a rock. “What the hell do you mean you knew?”
Rip shrugged. “Did Wreck know?”
“Always knew.” I kept my grin in place, watching his face. “Summer at Ravine Camp. Swimming at the lake. We were thirteen, I think. That camp instructor took his shirt off and your boner almost took my eye out.”
He growled under his breath, the color of his face like the hot sauce debate he’d sat through.
“At my twelfth birthday party. Frank Grotto landed on you during spin the bottle. You didn’t look as pissed as you pretended.”
Storm was seconds from exploding from his rage. That rage wasn’t ours. It was his. With a father and mother who resented their son’s sexuality, he�
��d found a way to exist inside and not outside. It was his only way to survive.
“I wasn’t,” he admitted, giving us a rare honest smile. We all laughed while he ducked his head. “First kiss actually. Sparrow Cliff. Fourteen.” He cleared his throat and his shell visibly returned, sealing him safely inside. “Keep that between us. All of it.”
Rip and I locked our lips, as if we hadn’t known forever.
“Do you feel better?” Hallie touched his hand.
He met her eyes and pulled free. “No.”
***
It was freezing when Hallie and I left Charm Loft.
“Does being gay really matter all that much? Why does he think it does?”
I pulled out of the parking lot, turning the Mercedes left for High Drive. “Because his father is a misogynist sexist racist piece of shit. He hates everyone and everything. That’s why he thinks it matters.” I’d never really interacted with Ted Storm. Owner and CEO of Storm Motors, he hired an entire line of employees to shield him from the public. He refused investments from both our fathers, which made him obsolete in the Wreckmond-Goodford household. “And his mother took a few pointers from ours, except she got rich on her own to spite her husband. No different than us, Hals. We grew up on our own just like Storm did. He just hated himself the entire time while we hated everyone else.”
“At least he had you and Geoff.”
“Sure, Hals.” Beggars can’t be choosers, and we’d all gotten tired of begging years ago.
“I know, Wreck, goodness forbid you have a heart.” She snorted. “You have one. A big one. It’s just buried under your walls.”
I didn’t have a heart. She took it long before I wanted anything to do with it. “We both have no choice but to take this shit in stride, but between you and me, how are you doing? Really.” I flashed a glance from the road to her, finding her head resting on the seat and her soft sad gaze on me.
“You mean learning how my housekeeper was really my mother? About how my father sold me to his business partner? About how I can’t even fight it, or I might put the boy I love in danger? Or how you totally saved my life while risking yours? Or even how you proposed before you knew you had to do it in front of everyone? All of that?”
“You’ve always loved Illa anyway. It’s a small transition to make. I’m more concerned what you think about your father pushing you out of your legacy to save his own.”
She didn’t answer right away. When she did, she didn’t sound as sad as I thought she would be. “I don’t care about the money, Wreck, or the 24%. It’s actually freeing to know I’m not worth anything anymore.”
Her acceptance made it hard to breathe. All her life she’d been the Goodford heir, and though there was still Ben’s 51% for her in the far away future, she’d probably never appreciate it by the time it came for her to inherit it. She literally owned nothing. Suffered for eighteen years only to have her riches stolen from her.
I would be pure rage.
Not relieved.
“We’re married. What’s mine is yours. You know that right?”
“I’m not going to work for him,” she said instead. “I’m eighteen. I’m no longer a Goodford. Owen owns my father. So there’s no reason for me to touch Goodford Finance. I’m free of my father. Yours only needs my face, and in us there’s still a weapon, but I refuse to have a part in it. In fact, I’m not going to college for business either. I’m going to take art, and music, and writing—only magic. I need some magic in my life.”
I couldn’t help the sad grin that lifted my lips. “You going to leave me to take the reins? Run Globe Tonight and GF all on my own? You know you can’t do that. I’d love for you to, but if they suffer, we suffer.”
She took a deep breath and focused her gaze outside. “Don’t make me.”
The truth of her emotions came out in her plea. “Hals, don’t do that to me. I need you on my right. I can’t do this on my own.” The horrible truth was, I’d give her whatever she wanted. She wanted to go to college and take pictures and paint fruit bowls, I’d do it, but I knew where the threat would end up and that it would have to go through me first.
Gone was my obsession, and it its place was an entirely different hurdle.
I owned the world. My wife owned nothing, and if she did, it came because of me. I could hear the resentment in her voice even if she herself didn’t understand what her emotions were yet. Now I was the reason we were trapped.
I felt a new kind of worry. My father took away the one thing that bound us, the one thing that made us Charmant worthy.
He took away our creation.
Which made me want to hold her harder. Drive faster to the jewelry store. Pick any ring out that made her mine. There would come a day when love wasn’t enough. It had barely gotten me through, and her love was too new to trust. I feared all those years that she’d resent me one day, I just hadn’t known it would happen this soon.
The right thing to do would be to ease up on her. But the wrong thing was me, and I’d be damned if I lost her in any way. I’d take her body, if her heart should ever fall, but I wanted every single part of her.
And I wanted every part of her to want every part of me too.
“Wreck,” she said softly once I’d parked the Mercedes on High Drive.
Her softness hit every hard part inside of me.
“Look at me, please,” she begged. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. I love you. I love you, Cage. I have never loved the money. I have never loved the life. I don’t think I even loved myself, not until I started to live inside of your love for me. You are the only good thing in my entire existence. I’d live through that all over again if it meant I got to cliff jump with you one more time.”
I closed my eyes against her words, but my ears absorbed every single one.
“Live in your kiss one more time. Spread my wings inside of your hold one more time. Just because I didn’t love you for eighteen years doesn’t mean my love is any less true. Give me eighteen years, okay? You’ll never give me that look again.”
“What look?” I whispered, turning into her hold when she touched my face, eyes still closed. If I opened my eyes, I might start to believe her words. There was only down if I thought she loved me as much as I loved her.
“The look that says I’m going to hurt you as badly as your father has. You can feel as bad as you want to around everyone else, but you’re only allowed to feel good when it’s Hallie and Cage.” Her tear-soaked lips pressed to mine. “I love you, Cage. Don’t be afraid to feel how much.”
The thing about fear wasn’t that it existed. In some ways, we needed it. It made the calm and the good so much stronger. But when you’re cultivated in the emotion, good is just a temporary lapse in circumstance.
“We can do this. Together. Globe Tonight, GF—we’ll do it all together. I’d never leave you on your own. All you had to do was ask.”
Sneaky brat. I kissed her, keeping my eyes closed and using my tongue to say what I was too afraid to say. I needed her, or I’d never exist. I needed her to love, to give my soul a reason to never sour. I needed Hallie, or I’d never find happiness any other way.
***
On Tuesday, we arrived at school like it was any other day.
We wrote our scars off on practice, even though the rest of the team was bare of them. No one would ask us. They’d spin secrets and find far more comfort in their lies, than any truth we’d ever give them. Hallie was wearing W’s gift, the black and white picnic pattern skirt, with a bow across her waist. Her long legs were made longer in a pair of Christian Louboutin black pumps. Her bronze hair was flowing and silky, full of body and shine. Her top was black lace on the arms and tucked into her skirt, making her look long and tempting.
Hallie Wreckmond was stunning, but it was the subtle freedom in her gaze that made her truly sexy. The hand she had around mine, the connection in her grip.
She was sin, but I’d never go to hell for feasting. I could sin again and again a
nd suffer only when we were apart.
That was love.
Feeling like this couldn’t be real but living only in her reality.
“You ready?” I asked, outside her locker.
She took a deep breath and gave me her starry eyes. “Tell me you love me.”
I grasped her face tenderly between my hands and locked her gaze with mine, shutting out the stares in the hall or the undoubtable nerves I had for our game. “I love you with every part of my charcoal soul. The only reason it isn’t black is because of you.”
Her lips smiled delicately before mine came down on hers. I wanted between her skirt, to peel her panties down her legs and not have to worry about hurting her. I wanted to give her the dark parts of me she’d only saw glimpses of. Raw passion twisted in my guts. I only stopped when she whimpered. That whimper would turn into moans and I didn’t think it did either of us any good to start humping each other in the hall.
Façade or not.
***
I stood on the sidelines, the Middle High Tigers huddling on the opposing team’s sidelines. Their red and white jerseys were stark against the gold and blue of the Charming Knights stadium. Our mascot, a knight with his sword, ran up and down the field as the Charming Stars Cheerleading team catapulted their selves into the air and the crowd stomped their feet to the anthem.
The energy was charged. A battle was about to start.
My ribs were wrapped, and the stadium was filled. I wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow. Coach didn’t know that his best players were battle torn and banged up. Storm had kept himself scarce during our locker room talk and Rip had led the speech like any self-respecting Charmant prisoner. He was charming, smiling, as effective as we were bred to be.
The stadium was brimming, but I spotted him staring at one spot intently. When I glanced over, I found a scout with a New York Jets cap on. My heart soared. Scouts were here for him. This was his only chance. If they’d already spoken to him, they wanted to see him. They wouldn’t come back if for some reason he bombed.
Wrecked: A Novel (Charming Knights Book 1) Page 25