Текст книги "Six Brothers"

Автор книги: Lili St. Germain

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 7 страниц)

“It’s going to scar,” he continues.

What’s another scar?

“Doesn’t matter.”

He laughs. “Nothing much matters when you’re high.”

“I am not high,” I say, staring at the weird shapes the ceiling fan is creating on the walls.

“Okay,” he says, standing to admire his handiwork. I crane my neck, trying to get a glimpse of my war wound without sitting up.

“Do you feel okay?” he asks.

I shrug lazily, floating on a cloud of fluffy marshmallows. “As well as I can when I’ve just been stabbed.” A thought enters my fuzzy head and I frown.

“How do you know how to stitch wounds, anyway?”

His face appears directly above mine, a hint of amusement on his slightly upturned mouth.

“I’ll tell you some other time,” he says. “Come on. We’re getting out of here. I’m taking you to my place.”

I sit up and look around the nondescript room. “Isn’t this your place?”

“Samantha,” he says, the hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. “You really think I live in a bikers’ clubhouse?”

Ten

We are roaring down the highway when it occurs to me that I’ve driven this route before.

“Where are we going?” I asked. It was hot, the air blowing into the car stifling. Jase and I sat in the backseat, Mariana and my father in front.

“You’ll see,” Mariana said, her Columbian accent clipped and anxious.

I looked over at Jase, who was glancing between Mariana and my father before landing his gaze on me, a troubled expression on his face. I put my hand on the hot leather seat between us and held my palm up, wiggling my fingers. Jase smiled, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners, grabbing my hand and squeezing it.

My father stopped the car when he reached Mariana’s house, parking out the back, hidden from view. My stomach roiled when he did that. I had grown up in the life and I knew that when my father started hiding and acting secretively, things were about to get bad, real fast.

Inside Mariana’s apartment, the one where Jase lived, we were told to sit down on the sofa, Mariana and my father sitting across from us.

“Daddy,” I said thickly. “What’s going on?”

He sighed, his eyes pinched and old, as he looked pointedly at my hand and Jase’s, squeezed protectively together between us.

Mariana didn’t sigh, though. She smiled, her beautiful face lighting up with things long forbidden for the mistress of the Vice President of the Gypsy Brothers. For although the name suggested they were vagabonds and travellers, the same could not be said of their families, their children, their mistresses. These people were effectively trapped in a web of lies and bloodshed, forbidden to step away from the watchful eyes of the club.

“We’re leaving,” she said, hope dancing in her eyes. That hope she carried around with her was such a dangerous, devastating thing to clutch onto.

I nodded, looking at Jase, who looked like he was about to flip out.

“You are coming with us, hijo,” Mariana said affectionately, reaching her hand over to brush his cheek. “You don’t need to be scared. I will always take care of you as if you were my own.”

I continued to look at my dad, one thought troubling me, a weakness in their plan.

“Is mom coming?” I asked, finally noticing the way Mariana and my father sat so closely together, their knees touching every now and then, her hand patting his arm, the way she gazed up at him and the way he looked down at her.

My throat constricted as I saw what they had been trying to hide for a very long time.

“No,” my father said heavily, and I could practically taste the guilt in his words.

I didn’t drop his gaze, something powerful passing between us. I needed him to know that I understood. Why he would leave his wife, the mother of his child, to the wolves.

Because she was one of them.

“Good,” I said firmly. “She’d only rat you out.”

At that, my father hung his head, with relief or sadness, I’ll never know.

“You’re a good girl, Juliette,” he said to me, his words hitting me hard in the chest.

A few weeks later, we were all either dead, or wishing we were.

Before I know it, we are at Jase’s place. He’s never moved, even after Mariana was killed here. I am shocked, thinking of all the times my hand itched to snatch up the phone and call him, to tell him that I was safe, to tell him that I was loved by someone, even if that someone couldn’t be him. I wonder what compelled him to stay here, and realize that since his own mother died, it’s probably the only place that’s ever felt like a home to him.

He helps me inside and past the same sofa from my memories, the smack and my grief threatening to tear me open and expose all of my secrets. As Jase helps me to his bed and tucks the covers over me, I swallow back tears, and the powdery remnants of snorted heroin that coat my throat.

“Sleep,” he says, gentle and firm all at once. I open my mouth to protest, but he has already left the room.

Hours later I wake up with a start. Where the fuck am I? I can smell coffee and bacon, and my stomach complains as it reminds me it hasn’t been fed in a very long time.

My mouth tastes horrible, bitter and stale, and I crave that coffee like an addict needing a fix. I throw the covers back and stand gingerly on my leg, testing it with my weight to see if it will hold up. It hurts, but less than it did before, and I can limp to the kitchen by holding onto the walls and placing most of my weight on my unharmed leg.

Jase is busy, cracking eggs into a pan and flipping pieces of sizzling bacon. My stomach clenches again. I am positively starving. I collapse onto a stool at the breakfast bar, hauling my leg into the least painful position. Spying two coffee cups in front of me, I grab the handle of the closest one and drag it across the bench toward me. It is hot and bitter, a strong Columbian blend just like Mariana used to make, and I have to wonder what else Jase continues to do just like her.

I wonder if he thinks I look like her, too? If he’s been trying to place me since he laid eyes on me, or if he’s had me figured out as her taller, paler doppelgänger all along?

“How’s the leg?” Jase asks as he butters toast on two plates.

I nod. “Alright. Thank you.”

He chuckles, and I wait for an explanation.

“You won’t be thanking me when you see the butcher job I made of sewing you up,” he says, sliding a fried egg onto each piece of toast.

I shrug, sipping my coffee. “It doesn’t matter.”

He surveys me intently as he finishes adding pieces of bacon to the plates, handing one to me. “It might make it hard to get a job in your line of work,” he says, aiming for casual but with a definite question behind his words. “After you leave, I mean.”

I almost choke on the piece of bacon I’ve swiped from my plate, my mouth full of delicious grease and salted meat.

“Let’s eat on the balcony,” he says, taking my plate back from me and walking over to the bank of glass windows that overlook Santa Monica bay.

He kicks open a sliding door with his foot and steps out to a terrace, large enough to hold a round table, two chairs, and a couple of potted plants.

I grab both coffees and go to walk, pain shooting up my leg. Jase hurries back to me and takes the coffees, setting them on the table with the food and zipping back to help me hobble to the table. With his help, I take a seat and breathe in the cool ocean air that drifts in from below us.

Jase eats quickly, almost demolishing his plate before I’ve even picked up my fork, and afterwards sips on his coffee, looking studiously to the horizon and the turquoise water beneath it.

“You like views,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I can edit them or stop myself. “The roof, this balcony—seems like you’re always looking to something else.”

A smile tugs at the corners of his wide, sensual mouth, and he tears his gaze away from the water to look at me. “I like looking at beautiful things,” he says, his gaze lingering on me so that I blush and look away. “It helps me forget the ugliness of my life.”

“Is your life really that ugly?” I ask, and more than anything in the world, I want him to say no. I want him to say that he’s happy. But I can see on his face and hear in his words that he is not.

He chooses not to answer, instead gesturing to the apartment behind us. “This place used to belong to Dornan’s last obsession,” he says, his eyes dark and troubled.

I don’t say anything; just stare at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

He places his coffee cup down and scratches his thumbnail across the rim absent-mindedly.

“She’s dead now,” he finishes, his voice thick with finality.

“What happened?” I ask, afraid to hear his version.

“She was faithful to him, and the club, for ten years. And then she tried to leave,” Jase’s voice cracks, “and he killed her.”

I swallow the enormous lump in my throat, not allowing myself to imagine what life we could have had if they had succeeded. If we had gotten out. It would have been glorious.

“She was from Columbia,” Jase says. “She’d been here for years by the time I got here, but she still had this really thick accent. At first I could hardly understand what she was saying.” He laughs without a sound, but his tale is not a happy one. For a moment I wonder if she was alive as Dornan cut her head off. I’d put all of my money on yes.

It suddenly occurs to me, as I’m staring at his lips move, that we haven’t spoken about what happened last night at the wake. That kiss, so brief, but full of so much feeling, my heart skips a beat just remembering it. I want to press him about it, but I’m scared he’ll run again, so I leave it.

“Does your father know I’m here?”

Jase’s expression becomes angry, his teeth gritted and jaw set stubbornly. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him.”

I nod. “I should call him. He’ll be angry if he gets back and I’m not there.”

Jase just looks at me incredulously, his eyebrows raised as high as they’ll go.

“I was supposed to clean up all the blood,” I add by way of explanation.

His mouth drops open as he listens to me speak. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks, his hands becoming fists again. Fuck.

“Please don’t be like that,” I say. “You don’t understand.” You don’t understand, you don’t understand. Fuck, I still love you, after all these years and you just don’t understand.

He runs a hand through his short hair, a look of exasperation on his face.

“I understand perfectly,” he says in a measured tone. “I understand that you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

I swallow thickly. I want to respond but my brain suddenly feels like mushy soup. My leg is positively humming, and although I’m accustomed to pain, this feeling that quickly spreads over my body is something else entirely. My nerves are shot, hissing and screaming every time I take a ragged breath. I can feel sweat gathering on my forehead and I’m feeling kind of dizzy.

I open my mouth to say something, but I’m confused and no words come out. I close it again. I’m thirsty. I reach out to grab the glass of water that has miraculously materialized in front of me. It’s in my grasp for all of two seconds before it slides out of my fingers and shatters on the floor, water and shards of glass sloshing around my feet. I just stare. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Everything feels murky and thick, as if I’m trying to walk along the bottom of a muddy river.

Jase is talking to me but I can’t hear him above the angry buzzing in my ears. I need to close my eyes, just for a moment, and then I’ll be okay.

Then everything will be okay.

Eleven

This time, when I wake up, I’m in Jase’s bed again, but everything is different. I look down to see that my black dress is gone and I’m wearing a large black T-shirt and a pair of boxers. My cheeks burn as I realize someone had to undress me to redress me.

I see movement to my left and turn to see Jase, sitting in a chair he’s pulled into the bedroom, watching me intently. It is then I notice I’ve got an IV nestled in the crook of my arm, a clear plastic tube carrying blood from a bag into my vein.

I sit up with a start and fiddle with the cannula impaled snugly in my flesh, a piece of tape securing it.

“Hey,” Jase says, peeling my fingers off the cannula. “It’s a blood transfusion. The doctor just left.”

I stop fiddling for a moment. “A doctor?” I repeat. “How long was I out?”

Jase shrugs. “It’s almost seven.”

I think back to the morning. “But I woke up at seven,” I protest, confused and feeling pathetic and vulnerable.

“At night,” he clarifies.

“I slept for the whole day?” I ask, throwing the sheets off me.

“Yes,” he says slowly, as if I’m stupid.

“Why do I feel like I just injected a bunch of heroin?” I ask, too tired to get out of his bed. Instead, I slouch back against the soft pillows.

“The doctor gave you some morphine,” he said.

“What?” I’m struggling to remember the pain. It was bad, but it wasn’t that bad. Parts of my tattoo hurt more than the stab to my thigh. “Why?”

Jase raises his eyebrows and I can see him fighting off a smile. “I told him what a hero you were trying to be this morning. How you can’t stop, even for a minute. So he gave you something to let you get some rest.”

Now I’m the one who is angry. “You let someone drug me?” I ask incredulously. “Sedate me? What am I, a dog?”

“That’s how he treats you,” Jase mutters under his breath.

I sit up again and swing my legs out of the bed. I glance at the almost empty bag of blood sitting on the top of the mahogany bedhead above me, gravity ensuring a steady stream of the stuff into my veins. I reach my hand over to pull the IV out and Jase’s hand darts out, covering the cannula.

“Stop,” he says. “Just let the rest of it go in. You lost a lot of blood.”

I take my hand away reluctantly.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “I’m just trying to help. You said no hospitals, so I got my dad’s doctor to check you out.”

I stiffen, wondering if the doctor undressed me. I look down at the boxer shorts and T-shirt, panicking. The tattoo is good, Elliot did an amazing job, but if the light is right…if someone was looking hard enough…the scars still remain.

“There was blood and glass all over you,” Jase says. “I didn’t look, I swear.”

I relax a little, detecting no animosity or suspicion in his voice. Then I hear a knock at the door and jump to my feet, the room whirling instantly around me. I grab the bedhead to steady myself, looking down at what I’m wearing. If Dornan sees me in his son’s underwear…

“Is that him?” I ask worriedly.

Jase sighs. “Sammi, for God’s sake, lay down, okay? It’s just the pizza guy bringing some dinner. Dornan’ll be back in a couple hours.” He points at the bed and waits for me to lie down again before he leaves the room. I smooth the covers over my lap as I wait, fiddling with a single loose thread of cotton. A whole day with Jase, and no Dornan. The thought makes me feel anxious, and delighted, and exhausted all at once..

He comes back in a few moments later, balancing boxes of pizza in one hand and a handful of dollar bills with the other. He shoves the money in his jeans pocket and brings the pizzas over to the bed, arranging the boxes on the empty side next to where I lay. The smell of tomato sauce and garlic invades my nostrils and I can feel my mouth watering.

“Pepperoni or cheese?” he asks me.

“Pepperoni, please,” I respond, and he hands me a napkin with a large slice of the best looking pizza I’ve ever laid eyes on resting on top. I take a massive bite and struggle to chew it, my mouth is so full. It tastes divine.

Jase eats slowly; he’s clearly eaten since breakfast. We don’t speak until I have downed four slices and am considering a fifth. Jase has finished and is sitting patiently in the chair beside me. I can feel him watching, waiting to broach something with me.

“What?” I ask him.

“What, what?” he responds, a look of amusement on his face. I smile, feeling a lot better after eating.

“You look like you have a burning question for me,” I say, looking around for some water.

“I have lots of burning questions for you,” Jase says, slouching down in his seat, his feet resting on the edge of the bed frame. “I just don’t think you’ll like any of them.”

I am feeling talkative, despite my secrets. “Go ahead. Ask me something.”

Ask me if my name is Juliette and I might say yes. Ask me to kiss you again and I’ll do it. Ask me to run away with you and I just might.

“Where are your family?” he asks, sitting up in the chair.

Predictable. “Dead,” I reply. Technically, it’s not a lie. Dad is dead. Mom might as well be.

“How?”

The easiest answer. “Car accident.”

He nods. “I’m sorry.”

I shrug. “Why? You didn’t kill them.”

He rolls his eyes. “I meant I’m sorry for your loss. My mother was killed as well.”

“Was killed,” I echo, even though I already know what happened. “Like, on purpose?”

His eyes cloud over and for a moment he’s somewhere else. Then, he blinks, and the cloud lifts. He nods. “On purpose.”

I eye him warily. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I say.

He shrugs. “I’m sure my dad will tell you eventually. When she found out she was pregnant with me, she left the club and went back to her family in Colorado. Somehow, Dornan found out about me when I was fifteen. I came home from school one day and she was dead in the bathtub.” He seems detached from his story as he is telling me, and I can only assume it is because he is numb after all of the horror of the past years. I can’t help but remember the shy, angry boy who showed up with the title of Dornan’s long-lost seventh son when I was thirteen and stole my heart.

I study his face, chewing on my lip as he surveys me wearily.

“What happened last night?” he repeats the same question he asked me when he found me last night, bleeding and naked.

I think for a moment before I respond. “Your father told me he thought I would be a good mother for another son. Or daughter,” I almost choke on the words, they’re so bitter. “I tried to say otherwise and he got mad. Plus, he’s suddenly realized that I remind him of his dead girlfriend.”

Jase pales. He doesn’t say anything for a little while.

“You look a lot like her,” he says finally. “It’s almost frightening. The eyes are different, but your hair, your face,” his eyes slide down to my chest and quickly back to my eyes. “It’s uncanny.”

“What happened to her?” I ask softly. I know she died, and I know what Dornan said about beheading her, but I don’t really know what happened. Why she and my father weren’t able to make their escape with us.

Why it all went so horribly wrong.

“She tried to leave him,” he says. “I think he would have let her go, if she’d just disappeared, but…“

“But what?” I press.

“But she tried to take me with her,” he says finally. “It’s my fault she died. It’s my fault they all died.” He looks defeated as he ends that sentence, his eyes tired and turned down at the edges, his teeth grinding on each other as he flexes his jaw.

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” I say. “It just seems that way to you because you were the one left behind to deal with it all.”

He shrugs. “Everyone I love, dies. So I live alone, and I keep to myself, mostly.”

Such a jaded way to be. “That’s so sad,” I say softly. “What about your father, though? Your brothers? They’re family, too.”

If looks could kill, I’d be diced into little pieces right now under Jase’s scathing gaze. “You mean, my father who stabbed you because you look like a dead woman? Or my brothers, who are animals?”

“Sorry,” I say.

“You don’t know anything about this family,” he says passionately, shaking his head. “You should’ve just stayed the hell away from all of us.”

“Well, it’s too late now,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. “I may as well enjoy the ride.”

Jase just shakes his head, my pun clearly lost on him. I care so much, I want to fling myself open and tell him every dirty little secret my soul is keeping trapped behind a wall of fiery lies and deceit.

But I can’t. Not because I don’t trust him, because it’s clear to me now that he’s a reluctant prisoner in this family, even more than I am.

I can’t tell him because I can’t bear for him to know what I’ve done. I can’t bear to see the disgust on his face when he knows that the girl fucking his father and picking off his brothers one by one is the same girl sitting in front of him.

But more than those reasons, I can’t bear to tell him because I know what he will do. He will want to run away. He’s a lover, not a fighter, and he doesn’t have it in him to kill them all. He might hate them but he’s not a murderer.

I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.

And then, of course, there’s that tiny seed of doubt that lurks in the darkest corner of my mind. The possibility that he won’t understand.

The possibility that, once he finds out how I’ve deceived him and killed his brother, he’ll side with Dornan.

Nothing is more terrifying than that thought.

“Can I ask you a question now?” I ask, my heart beating faster at the thought.

Jase shrugs. “Sure. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer, though.”

I take a deep breath, my heart buzzing nervously in my ears. I can fuck Dornan’s brains out and feel nothing, yet whenever I’m around Jase, it’s like fireworks every single time.

“Why did you kiss me?” I ask boldly.

Jase laughs mirthlessly, cocking his head to one side as he considers my question.

“Why do most people kiss other people?” he asks.

I shake my head, a small smile playing on my lips. “That’s not fair,” I say, wriggling to the edge of the bed so that I am facing him squarely, our feet almost touching. “You can’t answer a question with a question.”

He shrugs, an amused smile dancing on his gorgeous lips. I can’t help it. I reach my hand out and cup his chin, brushing my thumb against his bottom lip. He stares at me, his expression unreadable, and I can’t help but feel like we’re falling into an abyss that neither of us will make it back out of. Not intact, anyway. I might have a new face but I still have the same heart. He might have lost me once but I’m still his, and he is still mine.

I lean closer, our noses almost touching. He mirrors my action, putting a hand on my cheek.

He shakes his head minutely. “What are you doing to me?” he breathes, his eyes never leaving mine.

I’m loving you, I think. But I can’t say that, so I show him instead. I close the small distance between us, pressing my lips to his. He groans softly, a sort of primal noise that begins in the back of his throat and makes my tongue quiver as it finds his. His other hand goes to my waist, to the place where I am scarred underneath all that pretty colored ink, and I shudder involuntarily. He moves the hand on my face to the back of my neck, pulling me closer, kissing me deeper. I feel like I am falling forever, but it is a good fall. It feels amazing.

It feels like I was born to love this man.

And yet, as I kiss him, as I love him, my heart drops. I freeze.

I shouldn’t be doing this.

For his sake, I can’t do this. If I let him kiss me like that it’s going to rip both of us apart, and we’re already both broken enough inside.

Jase feels me freeze and pulls back, panting slightly, frowning. “What’s wrong?” he asks softly.

I swallow thickly, angry and sad that our fleeting moment is gone.

What’s wrong? The battle within me is being fought like a bitter war, making my mind spin with possibilities. I’ve only just begun and I just want to be done already. An image of Dornan and his remaining sons burning a painful, fiery death as Jase and I watch on briefly flashes through my mind.

If only it were that easy.

“Everything,” I say, bursting into tears. I’m so, so tired, my body is still in some kind of shock and just to make a bitch feel even worse, I think it’s almost that time of the month. I’m a seesaw of emotions.

Jase’s expression turns from confused to worried, and he moves from the chair to sit next to me on the bed in one quick motion, never breaking our gaze.

He opens his mouth as if to say something, then thinks better of it. I’m so tired of lying; so sick of being strong.

My resolve falters as he guides my head to his chest. I lay it there willingly, clinging to him, because if I let go, I’m afraid of what might happen next.