Needing to change before he got here, I dragged myself upstairs and kicked off my shoes. The uniform followed, and I pulled on jeans and a white shirt, tying my long hair back into a loose braid.
When I got downstairs Stewart was opening the door, and it was almost as if our huge front entrance shrunk around the giant badass that was Dylan. When he looked up and saw me at the foot of the stairs, he inclined his head asking me to follow him outside. I nodded, figuring that whatever he wanted to tell me was Delta business.
We walked across the soft grassed area away from the house, and when he stopped, he ran his gaze over me. “I was worried about you,” he said in that quiet, confident way of his. Dylan from the start might have looked like the scariest, but he was the most caring. I’d seen it enough times now to know he was the one that held the others together. Beck was their leader, their fury, their fear. But Dylan was their heart. Loyal. Lethal. And … lonely.
“You think Beck could hurt me?” I asked, because what else could he have worried about.
The smallest of smiles tilted up his lips. “There are many different ways to hurt someone. And some are harder to recover from.”
There was pain in his voice, hidden deep under the neutral tone he used.
Unable to stop, I reached out and took his hand. “Who hurt you?” I demanded, surprised by the venom in my words. It pissed me right off to think of his pain.
All of their pain.
It was becoming my pain too.
Dylan glanced at our hands before lifting his flawless face back to meet my gaze. “You’re never afraid to touch me,” he said, his fingers tightening around mine.
I tilted my head to the side as I stared, trying to figure out what he was talking about.
“Why would I be…?”
Cynicism washed away every other expression. “My mother would never touch me because I was the result of an affair with the nanny. My father was fucking ashamed of me because he likes to whitewash his world, but of course, he couldn’t keep his dick out of the not-at-all-white hired help and here I am.”
I’d wondered how an ancient as fuck, bunch of old assholes had accepted someone like Dylan into their inner circle. I personally, loved the creamy darkness of his skin, the slightly exotic tilt to his cheekbones, and the scary glint in his eyes. But that wasn’t Militant Delta Finances. They were about being rich, white bastards.
“Your real mom?” I whispered.
He shook his head. “Disappeared. Probably dead.”
My hand clenched around his, and he shrugged. “Can’t miss what you’ve never had, and since my father’s wife couldn’t have any children of her own, I was raised as a legitimate child. But only in public. Behind closed doors...”
Jesus Christ. I couldn’t even imagine what had gone on. “Is that why they made you do all that survival stuff?”
Dylan shook his head. “Nope. I think they would have preferred I didn’t learn how to defend myself, but it’s tradition. And they’re all about tradition.”
Another broken boy. Desperate for love and acceptance. This was why he cared so much, why he’d gone the opposite way to Beck.
His beautiful face was still, staring down at me with depthless eyes. For a moment I wondered why it couldn’t have been Dylan. Why the fuck was Beck the one who ripped my heart out of my chest every single time he was around me?
“I’m always here for you,” I said to Dylan, because he was important to me now. “If things get hard at home, come and find me.”
He shook his head, and like watching someone wipe a slate clean, he pulled all of the sorrow away and was back to being cool and collected. Gently untangling our hands, he crossed his arms over that impressive chest. “I actually stopped by for another reason,” he said all business. “It’s clear someone tampered with the security footage at the mall. Something was going on, and since the guy you saw was close to you, I’m going to hazard a guess that Huntley has figured out that you’re a weakness in our ranks now. The rest of us, we can take care of ourselves. We’re trained and dangerous. You…” his eyes ran down me slowly. “Are a lot of things, but you’re not dangerous.”
I snorted. “You’ve clearly never seen me during shark week.”
He flashed me a lopsided grin. “Hormones aside, I think you need to do some training. At least learn basic defense and to shoot a gun. It won’t be enough, but it’s better than nothing.”
I closed my eyes and let out an exaggerated gust of air. “You’re probably right, and I’m actually pretty good at anything athletic, so hopefully I pick it up quickly.”
Dylan nodded. “We’re good trainers.”
“We’re…” I said with a groan. “All of you will be training me?”
His lips tilted up. “There’s no one better with a weapon than Beck.”
I should have guessed that. Dylan was the martial arts expert, and Beck was the “shoot them in the fucking head” expert.
