It worked for about three minutes, and then I heard Tank calling out my name. I gripped my satchel with my fingertips, pulling it higher on my shoulder, and kept on walking.
Because he knew.
He knew he was my rock.
He knew I liked him.
And I’d just seen him kissing another girl—devouring her. And I’d stupidly told myself that coming back to Chicago wouldn’t be so bad as long as I had one friend.
Just. One.
“Hey, wait up.” Tank grabbed my hand and turned me around.
With a sigh, I waited as his fingers left my shoulder, pulling away a bit at the jacket uniform. “What?”
“He being an ass to you?” Tank actually grinned; his lips were wet from her kiss, his stance casual like he’d just been ordering fries at McDonald’s.
Why was I constantly surrounded by blind idiots?
Men who were mean by accident?
I would prefer the ones who were mean on purpose.
Then again, that was half and half with Ash, but with Tank? I expected more. I came back expecting at least this close friendship that we used to have, a safety net that I so desperately needed.
Instead.
I came home to a pawn.
A man who would do everything and anything to keep the mafia safe, to keep himself safe, to make sure his secrets were safe.
It reminded me of the first time I met him when he made me promises he clearly was having trouble keeping.
“No,” I lied but answered his question. “He’s just being himself.”
Tank snorted, then wiped his sleeve across his mouth. I followed the direction with my eyes then looked away in disappointment. “Who is she?”
Next to me, I could feel him still. “What? Bianca?” He let out a snort. “She was a distraction, a cover, nothing more.”
“Mmm…” I nodded. “A cover so that what? Nobody suspects you of being FBI?”
In an instant, he was all rage, cupping his hand over my mouth, his eyes wild. “Are you fucking crazy?”
I did not recognize this man.
I did not recognize the wild green eyes.
The pale face.
The way his mouth pulled back into a tight line.
And in that moment, I realized he was theirs.
No longer mine.
Owned.
Gently he pulled his fingers back. “Sorry, I just, I can’t blow my cover, can’t let the office know how far— I have to choose soon, Annie, just like you, and I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“You let yourself fall,” I answered simply. “Like the rest of us. We saw. We took. We fell, and now we’re all trying to figure out what falling actually means.”
His green eyes narrowed. “You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, right?”
No. Not anymore. “Yeah. Of course.” I shrugged. “I gotta head to class, but I’ll see you later…”
“Annie.” He reached for me again, his smile kind now, sexy, compelling as he pulled back then crossed his bulky arms. “We should hang out this week.”
“Sure. Yeah.” Over Ash’s dead body. “I don’t want to be late.”
I walked away from his easy smile.
I walked away from Ash’s angry stare.
I walked into class and pulled out a chair.
I sat and took notes, not remembering what class I was even in.
And never, in all my life, even as an orphan, felt so alone.
Chapter Eight
“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.” —Rabindranath Tagore
Annie
October
“Get out,” Ash barked.
I was so used to it by now that I was basically a robot. He’d make me breakfast in the morning all smiles, he’d give me maybe fifteen minutes of reprieve where I was able to actually look into what seemed like his soul, and then he’d close me out.
Like he was rewarding me for eating.
Only to punish me for surviving him.
I learned early on that he liked being provoked almost as much as he liked me being submissive, so I just simply…
Stopped.
I stopped fighting.
I stopped talking.
I stopped existing.
After all, I was the reason he had wanted to die last year; I was the reason he almost had.
I was the reason for everything.
The cause.
It didn’t matter that I had my own reasons.
That I was a victim.
Because he was too busy taking over that entire role for himself, not allowing anyone else the chance to even grasp at the last remaining pieces that said that life wasn’t fair—for either of us.
I guess my only saving grace with him was that he was nice to me in the mornings only to be completely cold at school.
I reached for the car door handle and hesitated, then looked over my shoulder with a sigh. “I get it, you know.”
He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. “You get what?”
His jaw was sculpted into perfection, his full lips pressed together in a firm line as his chin jutted out, his whiskey-colored hair fell across his brow.
It hurt to stare at him.
Someone so beautifully mean.
“You hate me. I get it. I get that you have a part to play at the house and a part to play at college—you don’t have to punish me to remind me. I get it. I know that after eggs and orange juice, I march my ass to the car of your choosing. I know that I get in and let you turn on whatever music you want. I know that the minute you park the car, the expectation is for me to get out, for you not to be seen with me and for me to hurry and get on with my day so I can get on with my life, so I can be the good little orphan who graduates and moves on. I get it. I’ve gotten it since I was nine, Ash. You reminding me only sets the remaining pieces of hope in my soul to burn. And I don’t know if I can do that for another year. So please, just… when you park, could you say nothing?”
He was quiet.
His head bowed a bit, maybe in shame, maybe in submission, and then he pressed the unlock button on the door and rasped, “Be safe.”
As much of an ass he was.
He always told me to be safe.
As if I mattered.
As if my safety was his top priority.
And I’d had it.
“Don’t,” I pleaded, my throat thick. “Don’t ask me to be safe when the most convenient thing for you right now would be to lay down in front of your car and squeeze my eyes shut as you put it into drive—”
“Stop!” He had my wrist in his hand before I could escape, his chest heaved, and then he was pulling me, jerking harder, until I was nearly halfway across the console.
Hand shaking, he released me. I was too afraid to move. His blue eyes flashed as he reached out and touched my cheek with his right hand, then his left.
In all my life, I’d never felt revered.
But in that moment, I was somehow his.
Owned by the look on his face.
By the clench in his jaw and the trembling of his fingertips as he held me captive and whispered. “I don’t know how.”
“How?” I repeated, throat dry.
“To be a friend to the one person I blame for taking everything I’ve ever held close in my life, and yet I know I should. I want to, but then I see you, and I see—” His voice cracked. “I see her. I see those last moments.”