“Like a bear witnessing her cub getting kidnapped, only infinite rage and no maternal instinct.”
I grinned. “We should do it.”
Nash let us in with his key, my shoulders brushing his arm near the doorway. The smile on my face died at the sight of Basil and Reed sitting at Betty’s island. They didn’t look happy to see us. Even Betty didn’t look happy to see us.
“Fuck,” Nash muttered beside me.
I recovered quickly, leaping at Reed for a hug. “Reed!”
He returned it with an awkward one-armed pat. “Why are you here with Nash?”
“I needed a ride to Eastridge.”
“Looks like more than a ride, Em.”
“Excuse me?”
“Tell me you’re not going to do something stupid.”
I distanced myself from him, flicking my attention to a wide-eyed Betty behind me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
This went from zero to a hundred fast, which told me Reed had already been in a mood. I gathered the situation as quickly as I could. Basil looked like herself, but didn’t act like herself. No scowl. No eye daggers thrown at me. Disconcerting.
Betty clutched her thin silver bracelet, an anniversary gift from Hank. Also a clue they were discussing something bound to break her heart. The last time Reed looked like this, he’d been cuffed in my living room.
He edged closer to me, which made Nash shift behind me. I held a hand out to my side, stopping them both.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I demanded, “before hounding me with accusations you cannot take back.”
If this was his reaction at the sight of me and Nash, how would he react upon learning we’d had sex?
On. His. Bed.
“Ask yourself this,” Reed began, ignoring me, “do you want to be with someone willing to let his brother go to jail?” He jerked a finger at Nash. “Better yet, ask him how he got his millions or billions or what-fucking-ever.”
“Reed…” I didn't know what to say to that, except I knew I’d hate the answer.
Nash positioned himself next to me. Reed narrowed his eyes at us. We looked like a unified front.
“You told Emery she couldn’t go to Dad’s funeral?” Nash’s voice pitched low.
Betty gasped and clutched onto the kitchen rag on the counter. “Reed!”
“You made her stay in Eastridge and bury an urn by herself?” Nash stood nose-to-nose with Reed. “And when Ma asked where Emery was, you didn’t tell her the truth? And you’re pissed at us for lying?”
I expected an argument.
I expected some yelling.
I expected Betty to cry.
I did not expect Reed to swing his fist at Nash.
Reed’s knuckles connected with Nash's face. It barely budged.
“Close your fist if you intend on doing real damage, little brother.” Nash stepped forward into Reed’s fist the second time, allowing Reed free reign on his face.
Punch. Uppercut. Another punch.
“Stop!” Betty shouted.
Basil cocked her head and observed the situation, elbow resting on the island counter.
Meanwhile, I slithered between them, knowing it was a bad idea but doing it anyway. Nash’s eyes cut to mine at the same time Reed’s body fell forward, pushing me onto the hardwood.
Nash split his attention to me, lingering on my wrist cradled in my palm. He sprung into action, twisting Reed into a headlock. He bumped his knee against Reed’s, forcing him to kneel.
“Don’t fight it.” Voice low, his arm tightened around Reed’s neck. “Tap out, and I’ll let go. Don’t make Ma watch this.”
“Emery!” Betty rushed to me, hands flying over my face, but I couldn’t look away from Reed and Nash.
I imagined this was what watching an asteroid hit Earth would be like. Fascinating, destructive, and oddly beautiful.
It made sense how Nash had won so many fights. Boardrooms and offices were child's play. This was his element.
He wasn’t a cruel prince. He wasn’t a twisted warrior either. He was both, and it turned him into a man who would rather break than bend.
“Are you okay?” Betty brushed hair out of my eyes.
“I’m fine.” I thrust myself off the floor, enchanted by the enigma of Nash Prescott.
“Enough!” Betty grabbed a hot pink fly swatter and swung the thin plastic near her sons as if she wielded a knife. “Stop it! I will not have you stain my floors with your sweat and blood. I will not have you ruin my holiday. And I will not have my sons fighting in my kitchen like poorly trained dogs battling over scraps.”
Nash released Reed, who coughed a few dozen times. He beat at his chest, forcing more air out it.
“It’s my fault, Reed.” Betty set the swatter down and helped Reed to his feet. “Okay? I was the one who wanted to keep Dad’s illness from you. I was the one who told Nash to let you take the fall. It was me. Be mad at me.”
“Ma—”
“Let me finish. It was selfish, okay?” She cupped Reed’s cheek. “Nash shouldn’t have done that to the Cartwright boy, but when he tried to tell the cops it was him, I begged him not to. We needed him.”
“You needed the five hundred bucks he sent you and Dad each month,” Reed spit out. “I almost went to jail over five hundred dollars.”
“No, baby, I needed my family together.” Betty’s fists seized his collar. “You were a minor. He was an adult. I thought there was no way they’d actually arrest you, so I made a choice. I know now it was a wrong one…”
My lips parted. The wall caught my weight. Leaning against it, I sliced my gaze to Nash.
I remembered that night.
Broken nose, rib, and leg.
Separated collar bone.
Dislocated shoulder.
The scar on Able’s forehead I liked to smirk at.
Nash tried to tell the cops it was him, but I always thought he’d been covering for his brother.
“That was you?” I whispered to him.
Nash nodded. Once.
Tension coiled his neck. The fight mode hadn’t fled. Two clenched fists hung at his side. Blood trickled down his temple. A gash opened above his eye, which I figured would become swollen and black by tomorrow.
This warrior, with the cuts and bruises and scars across his chest, had fought for me.
“Why?” My murmur went unnoticed by Reed and Betty.
Nash, however, never looked away from me. “He hurt you.”
It never got that far, I wanted to argue, but I knew it was the same thing to Nash.
“Why did you let Reed hit you?”
“He needed it.”
Can you be any more selfless?
It might have been a flaw at this point.
Nash had a brash tongue, a lack of filter, and the uncanny ability to pinpoint the exact thing to say to throw someone off balance. He pushed people away, never allowed anyone to see beneath his skin, and had no problems hermiting himself for eternity.
He also gave so much of himself, the only thing he kept was his kiss, and I’d taken that from him, too. Sacrifices littered his past and would probably stain his future. And it was a very Nash thing to hurt someone to heal them.
People measure love by how much someone receives, but I measure it by how much someone gives. No one in the history of the universe has ever or will ever have more love than Nash Prescott.
My villain.
My knight.
My prince.
My Ben.
I had to tell him.
“I’m fine, Ma. Don’t worry about it.” Nash tossed the blood-stained rag into the trash, pressed a kiss to Betty’s forehead, and drew her in for a hug.
“You sure, baby?”
“Right.” Reed leaned against Basil, who slid a palm into his back pocket. “Coddle him some more, Ma. Good going.”
They ignored him.
Reed swore, grabbed his phone and keys, and swung an arm around Basil's shoulder. “I’m sorry
for ruining our breakfast, Ma. Basil and I have to get going. We’ll be back later, but I don’t think we’ll make it to Pastor Ken’s sermon.”
Betty turned to him. “It’s okay, baby. The walls of a hospital have heard more sincere prayers than Eastridge’s church. We can stop by the children’s unit later and donate some teddy bears.”
“Sounds good, Ma.”
Reed locked eyes with Nash before kissing Betty’s cheek. I followed him to the door, surprised when Basil tipped a shoulder up at me, as if to say, boys, what can you do?
I slid my hands into my pockets after Basil left for the restroom. “Are you mad at me?”
Fury lined Reed’s face for a second. He released a sigh and gathered me into a hug. “No, but I hope you know what you're doing.”
I don’t.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I offered him a lazy grin and rested my forehead against his shoulder.
I hadn’t had an opportunity to mourn the idea of me and Reed, to dig a grave, and label it friendship. In reality, I should have years ago when I’d slept with Nash. But standing in Reed’s arms, I realized why I never had to.
My heart didn’t caper inside its cage.
My body didn’t experience an earthquake.
I wanted to understand him, but I didn’t yearn for it.
I felt loved, but not in love.
He was just… Reed Prescott.
My best friend.
That’s all.
Only ever my best friend.
I palmed a stash of joints.
I’d poached them from Reed’s bag before he left, just to fuck with him for the punch. Leaning against the hood of my car, I watched Emery run her fingers across the massive double gates to the Winthrop Estate.
She crooked her head to study its height. “How likely are we to get arrested for trespassing?”
The weed wafted to my nostrils. I reeled a joint out of the bag and tossed the rest through my open car window. “Considering it's the Fourth of July and Eastridge is about as corrupt as a North Korean election, not at all.”
I neglected to mention I was the unhappy owner of the sixty-one-acre property. Maintenance fees for groundskeeping and cleaning staff auto-paid from one of my personal bank accounts.
My efforts started and ended there.
Emery tipped her chin at the joint nestled between my thumb and forefinger. “Are you going to light it up?”
Half my damn face throbbed, but I ignored it. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Corrupting you sounds more fun than it actually is, Miss Winthrop,” I lied. Mostly because the opposite was true, and she tasted of bad decisions and something to fight for instead of just something to fight.
Her blue-grays glinted with the challenge. Two fingers drifted down her shirt and thumbed the rim of her jeans, dipping just inside. “Do you like it?”
I swallowed, following the path of her fingertips. “Yes.”
She tugged a fraction, flashing me a peek of smooth skin. “How much restraint does it take to not devour it?”
“Fucking all of it.” Tossing the unlit joint to the leaf-covered ground, I crushed my heel on it. “Are we breaking and entering or what? I’m beginning to think you’re too vanilla for this criminal lifestyle, Jailbait.”
Emery gifted me with her throaty laugh, so pure and fucking genuine, it traveled straight to my cock. Her teeth grazed her lower lip, chancing a final glance at me before she began climbing the gate.
If I pinned her to it and fucked her hard, she’d probably beg me to fuck her harder. She'd been giving me those eyes since I let Reed go to town on my face. Blue one darkening. Gray one lightening.
They spoke all the words she'd never say.
I need you inside me, they challenged. Give me everything you’ve got.
It took all my self-control not to slide her jeans down her legs and sink inside her.
She was still a walking, talking, breathing rift between me and my brother, and I needed Gideon’s location.
A conversation was long overdue.
Not to mention, Ma had pulled me aside at the house and told me Brandon stopped by a few times to talk to her, too. I realized I’d been so wrapped up in discussing Emery that I never asked Dick the PI who the second party to profit from the Winthrop Scandal was.
Now, Brandon was on my ass like a rash, stalking Ma and Emery. I'd burn myself with him, just to see him wither to ashes.
Emery whooped from the top of the gate, straddling it on either side. I edged forward in case she fell.
“How’s this for vanilla?”
I tilted my head. “The sun’s shining right on your tits. Are those hearts on your bra?”
“I’m not wearing a bra.”
Fuck.
She covered her palms with her hoodie, slid down one of the gate’s iron pillars, and landed with a Selena Kyle crouch. Her brow lifted as if to say, beat that.
I skated into my driver’s seat, inched to the gate box, typed the code, and pulled up beside Emery.
She swung the passenger door open. “What the hell? You know the code?”
“It’s the same one.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“Worked out just fine.” I parked in front of the mansion’s double doors. “I’m in the company of a criminal mastermind.”
“Do you think someone’s in there?”
“No, but we’ll knock in case.”
Emery followed me up the steps. She knocked while I retrieved the spare keys beneath a rock. “It doesn’t bother you that we're breaking in?”
“Word around town is no one lives here.” I swung the door open.
Her lips parted at the sight of the foyer. The ridiculous Dionysus statue welcomed us, pristine given the weekly cleaning service I paid for.
Emery’s fingertips trailed along the staircase’s railing, coming up without dust. “Isn’t this weird to you?”
“What?”
“Somebody bought this place, and it looks like they never touched it.” We walked past a few rooms and into the kitchen. “Even Virginia’s Swarovski dinner plates are set in the dining room. They’re not even dusty.”
“What I find weird is you calling your mom Virginia.”
Actually, I found it weirder she hadn’t called her that from the start. The woman made the evil step-mom from Hansel and Gretel seem like a peach.
“What I find weird is that I bothered to call her Mother for twenty-two years, and it took a text from her to get me to stop.” She flung open the refrigerator, which the staff kept stocked for themselves, and pulled out a bag of frozen peas. “This isn’t even expired.”
I said nothing, watching her as she approached me.
She pressed the bag to my eye, gentle at first but firm when I didn't react. “It was always you, wasn’t it?” she asked. I had no idea what she was talking about. She sucked in a breath. “Able was a dick, and I had revenge on my mind. If you hadn’t hurt him, I would have. Thank you.”
She was staring at me hard, looking at me like I might have a heart. I pulled at my collar, remembering after that I wore a Henley, not a button-down. Her breath fanned my cheeks, rushing to my neck. Mint and the strawberries she’d eaten at Ma’s.
If she didn’t move, I’d kiss her.
Fuck Reed.
Fuck Gideon.
Fuck Virginia.
Funny, how I never wanted to kiss anyone before, and now all I could think of was owning Emery's lips.
“Keep the ice on it.” She replaced her hand on the peas with mine, lingering, eyes jumping to my mouth. “I wonder if my room is the same.”
It was.
I didn't tell her.
Her eyes dropped to my lips once more. The sharp inhale confirmed she wanted them on hers, too. Three more seconds of staring, and I’d give it to her.
Two.
O—
She stepped back and strode to her bedroom. We passed the library, piano room, her parents’
room, and the game room without stopping in any of them. If I didn’t know better, I would think she hadn’t grown up here. That these walls, this roof, the fucking statuario beneath our feet meant nothing to her.
In fact, she acted like she had no claim to the place. It bothered me. Not in the fairy tale Emery-and-I-met-here kind of way, but something that had less to do with us and more to do with the fact that she thought she had to be strong by pushing the past away.
She didn’t.
I’d been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. It fit three-sizes too small, and every time I wore it, it damn near choked me to death.
Probably why I blurted, “I bought it.”
She squinted at me and kept walking. “You bought what?”
“The Winthrop Estate.”
Her feet stopped, but her back faced me. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Always lying.
Because I thought it would lead to clues to take down your family. Turns out, I was wrong. You’re probably innocent. Your Dad is probably innocent. Two more victims of this mess. So much of that going around.
Instead, I offered, “You can have it.”
She finally turned to face me, conflict written all over her face like a billboard to her thoughts. “I don’t want or need your charity.”
“At the very least, the things in this room are yours. You can take them or leave them here to retrieve whenever you want.”
The bag of peas hung loosely in my hands, brushing the side of my thigh. She focused on my eye, released a breath, and nodded.
In her room, she walked straight to the nightstand and pulled out a music box. The contents rustled when she shook it. Her relieved sigh piqued my curiosity. Setting it down, she disappeared into the closet.
I peered in the box, skimming over the tightly rolled papers. The corner-most one appeared loosest. Grabbing it, I unraveled the strip as if it were a fortune cookie.
You ever look to the stars and wonder if there's life out there? If there is, the aliens are probably pissed we keep crowning humans as Miss Universe.
I bet they’re floating in space with their superior technology, thinking—we could help them cure cancer if only those humans would stop considering themselves as the center of the universe.
Devious Lies: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Cruel Crown Book 1) Page 36