“I’ll figure it out!” Alex snaps and slaps the edge of his desk with enough strength to make the whole thing shudder. “We’ll figure it out. We always figure it out.” He pauses for a deep breath. “Max, Vin, come on. We made it this far. Remember what we’ve survived. Since when do we let a pissant like Jeremy ruin our lives?”
He’s got a point. We’re tough men. We’ve killed in order to survive. We’ve done terrible things in service of our country, even worse things to protect one another in the midst of bloody wars on the other side of the world. Upon our return, we swore we’d never let anything, or anyone, get between us.
“We’re building something with Raina,” Alex adds after a long, heavy pause. “It won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible either. Kaleb won’t disavow his sister, I’m sure of it. He loves her and he wants to protect her. He just needs to stew in his own juices for a few days, and then we’ll talk to him. I have faith, brothers, don’t you?”
“I’m trying really hard here,” Max replies with a bitter smile. “But after everything we’ve done, I admit… I’m not sure we deserve her. Kaleb’s right; she’s a good girl, a genuinely good girl.”
“We didn’t ruin her,” I say to him. “Forget the bedroom talk, that’s different. She performed beautifully in our kitchen. The guests were elated. The menus were stupendous. She earned her head chef’s hat at The Black Swan. And she is fucking passionate, which is what hooked us in the first place.”
“Everything we did in the privacy of Haus of Sin, we did because we wanted it,” Alex chimes in. “Becauseshewanted it. Because it feels right. We belong together as weird as it may sound to others, including Kaleb.”
“Then we should tell Raina that, too, again and again, until she doesn’t feel the need to be alone in her room, like she is right now.” Max sighs deeply.
Finally, the three of us head upstairs, heeding Max’s advice and eager to talk to Raina about all this. We’ve come up with a plan to get Kaleb on board, and we want her to be on the same page, as well. But as I push open the door to her room and find it empty, I feel the air hissing from my lungs in sudden, unbearable disappointment.
“Where the hell did she go?” Max gasps.
Alex circles around her bed a couple of times, then looks out the window with a frown. “Her car is gone.”
Downstairs, Raina’s luggage is no longer where we last saw it. She actually loaded everything in her car and drove off while we were packing. But there’s a note on the side table in the lobby with her rushed handwriting.
With trembling fingers, I pick it up and read it out loud.
“Went back to Portland. I’ll be in touch about The Black Swan. But I’m sorry, everything else has to stop. It’s too much. XO, Raina.”
It’s a punch in the gut, the worst kind. My insides are squirming and my stomach is turning inside out. My first thought is to go after her, to catch up and to stop her. But even I have to admit that this is a delicate and complicated situation. Raina needs to deal with it in her own way.
“She fucking left,” Alex says, reading the note again.
“We have work to do,” Max replies.
Alex glares at him. “What?”
“Hey, I’m all for going after her, man. But we can’t while we still have this blackmail cloud hanging over our heads.”
“No, it’s?—”
“She asked for some space,” I interrupt. “We should respect her wishes.”
And it’s fucking killing me to say so.
26
RAINA
Sitting with Vivian in my kitchen was supposed to be comforting. We’re nestled by the window, each nursing a warm cinnamon tea while watching the rain pour down over Portland’s historical buildings, which is how spring starts in these parts, with cold showers and gloomy, grey skies as the temperature hikes up and down until the first blossoms pop open.
It’s a sort of limbo, much like how I’ve been feeling over the past few days since I returned from Haus of Sin. The whole experience feels like a distant dream, and I miss it, maybe a little too much.
“Raina, Alex’s calling again,” Vivian says, pulling me back into the present.
I crane my neck to get a glimpse of my phone’s screen. I left it on the table a few feet away. I let it go to voicemail again. “I asked for some time to think about everything,” I grumble. “He’s not helping.”
“My guess is he misses you,” Vivian replies. “And I can’t exactly blame him. You’re quite the woman.”
“I miss him, too. I missthem.”
“Then why don’t you talk to them?”
