However, it didn’t mean my body didn’t react to hers.
But now, my senses long for Bay in ways I can’t fully form into reasons I can understand. When she mocks my actions and draws my finger down her lower lip, I almost fall to my knees.
My whole body tingles with the sensation of desiring more, but the rationality in my brain kicks on in warning that this is a dangerous game I’m playing. I may turn into my lust-filled brothers in one way or another.
“What else?” she asks me, her voice gentle and quiet while she permits my hand to fall to my side.
I don’t know how to explain to her I’m apprehensive about what’s to come. That I’m not able to give her what she wants because I’m too closed off and happy there.
I shake my head. Anything else is too much right now.
“Then listen to me, Ozzy,” she says, her tone hardening, as though now she’s displeased with me. “Get it through your thick head that there’ll never be a day when I’ll choose someone outside of this group over you. You are notdisposableto me. You married me. You saved me from Ramsey, and it’s not something I’ve quickly forgotten, nor will I ever. You’remine…and I’ll never allow you freedom unless you fight me for it. Got it?”
Fight her for it.
I nod through my rampant thoughts, dissecting everything she said as she leans back and curls herself right back into a ball underneath her blanket.
She sends me one last withering look, as if I’m fucking stupid, but I don’t feel like it.
I feel like she just took ownership of me.
Like she just stamped her damn claim on me.
She did. She just said it.
I remember Reeve saying women are fleeting things. One moment, they want something, and the next, they change their minds. There is a reason for everything—each action, word, or idea.
Pondering the present, I feel slow that I’m not fully picking up what she’s laying down, but I do understand one word.
Mine.
THIRTY-SIX
bay
Standingin front of a bunch of random men who were supposed to follow me after I took The Landing’s seat is one of the last things I wanted to do today.
In fact, I believe it’s a tremendous waste of time.
The Void isn’t going to follow me anywhere but over a cliff, where I’m the person tumbling to my death. But according to Hot Rod and Juice, Levi gave the green light to do this.
I just wish he would’ve been able to tell me himself.
The way we’ve left things is on my damn nerves. We’ve barely been able to talk about what happened, what it means and most importantly, where his head is at.
Not that it would spew out of his mouth like that and vice versa, but it’s been stabbing at my last nerve that we’re so open-ended right now I’ve had a hard time sleeping.
Didn’t stop you from fucking Cairo either.
Yeah, about that… I’m going to need another open conversation with Levi that I don’t want to have. If he orders me to cut ties and not touch him again, I’m going to have a hard time.
I’m going to hate that.
“I appreciate you meeting me, Haven. It’s time we go over a few things.”
I stare up at Ramsey, tucked a few safe yards away, with his little ghetto group of boys behind him. And the only thing that enters my mine isn’t the way we’re standing at The Landings-South Shore border, both of us on our correct sides, but the way he called me Haven.
Haven.
