I should be asleep.
I should stop caring about what Roman, Colton, orJace thinks of me, but that’s the thing about them. They’ve always had a damn chokehold on me, and not even an exorcist could purge them from my system.
My phone buzzes on the counter, and I look to see Sarah’s name light up the screen. I grab it, already smiling as I swipe to answer.
“Hey, babe,” she says, her voice half lost under pounding bass and loud laughter. “I was just checking in on you, after everything that happened today. I am so fucking sorry I didn’t reply to your texts. I got caught up.”
I frown. “What is that in the background? Where are you?”
“Oh, nowhere,” she says too quickly. “I’m at the restaurant, and they're having some sort of party across the road.” Sarah’s father owns a restaurant in the city, and she usually fills in for one of the staff whenever they’re off sick. Though it literally sounds like she’s standing beside a DJ, I don’t push. I’m too exhausted.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just tired. I’ve been in my room for hours because I don’t know how to fucking talk to them,” I say on a sigh, but I’m not so sure she can hear me over whatever is going on in the background.
“Tell them how you feel, Bailey. Life is way too fucking short to live never knowing,” she says, her voice almost yelling into the phone. “Babe, I have to go. Call me with an update tomorrow. I love you. Don’t forget to take your birth control! Get that dick,girl!” Someone shouts her name before the line goes dead.
I exhale slowly, the weight in my chest growing tighter, knowing she’s still trying to hold herself together. Sarah is still in survival mode. She lost her mom to cancer two years ago, and she’s moved through the world fast and recklessly ever since. Like if she lets herself slow down, the grief will catch up to her and swallow her whole. I’m not about to tell someone how to grieve. Or hownotto. There’s no right way to carry that kind of a loss, and if partying is how she escapes that, all I can do is be there for her if ever she needs me.
I stare at my reflection through the fog on the mirror.
God, I wish I were brave enough to take her advice, I really do, but it’s not that simple. One of the three people I cannot stop thinking about looks at me like I’m nothing more than the dirt beneath his shoe. Not to mention… he has Jace, maybe even Colton, too. Besides, he’s my stepbrother. So yeah, I am already halfway to fucking hell.
I step out of the bathroom and into the darkened hallway. Everything is quiet, which likely means that the guys have all gone to bed. I didn’t notice anyone was awake when I went for my shower, and I can’t help but feel like my being here is making them uncomfortable.
My fucking stepfather.
He has no idea what’s going on half the time, yet he intervenes whenever he feels like it without a single care about whose life is disrupted.
My bare feet make almost no sound as I tiptoe toward my bedroom, half ready to collapse into bed, but the moment I push open my door, my heart nearly stops beating, flying straight to my throat.
Roman’s lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, and he doesn’t even bother to look at me when I take a step forward. He’s completely at ease. As if breaking into my room in the middle of the night is a normal fucking thing to do. I flick the light on, about to ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, when my eyes fall on the Ghost face mask, dangling from one of his hands. My stomach immediately twists tight with dread, because the memories—the truth—everything hits me all at once.
No. That’s not possible.
Tears begin to well in the corners of my eyes, hot and unwanted, and I use all my strength not to let them fall because I’ve shown him enough fucking weakness to last a damn lifetime. His other hand lazily spins a knife by the handle, the blade glinting in the bedroom light. It takes all that I have left in me not to fall into a heap on the floor with the weight of their betrayal and the level of humiliation I feel.
Was it all just a game to them?
What did I ever do wrong to deserve any of this? Tobe cast aside like I never meant anything to any one of them, all for them to strip me bare and take from me something they had no fucking right to take. I may have been a willing participant, but they were not the strangers I thought they were.
“I was going to admit how I felt about you that day,” Roman’s voice breaks over the silence of the room, and the warring thoughts slicing through my mind. “We all were.” My brows furrow as I process his words, leaning with my back against the door for support. I don’t trust that I won’t fall, drop this towel, and make even more of a fool of myself.
The silence is thick between us, and I realize that there isn’t anything that I could say that would matter in this moment, because we may have been apart for three years, but they still know me better than anyone. He will see my heart written all over my face and know just how fucking shattered it is from their humiliation. “We were ready to risk everything. Every rule, every line, because if there was even the smallest chance of you being ours, it was worth every consequence.”
Roman’s gaze remains locked on the ceiling, and my heart beats in a frantic rhythm as I listen to the words I’ve been waiting to hear since the moment I met him.
“We owed you the truth, yet the truth was the one thing you could not have. They would have killed you. They would have ripped you from our lives to prove to us that we were theirs to control.” He exhales a harsh,sardonic laugh before shaking his head in disgust. His Adam’s apple bobs with the motion before he closes his eyes.
“My father. He isn’t a good man, Bailey. None of us are. We used to be. Once upon a time, we were as innocent as the next guy. Until The Order sank their teeth into us.” Confusion washes over me as I try to comprehend his words.
The Order?
My mind races as I try to recall a time I may have heard about it, but I come up short. Then, I remember an old rumor that a group of guys from their old football team started, accusing Roman, Jace, and Colton of being in some sort of secret society. I lock this away for another time, as I’m too afraid to interrupt him in case he goes back behind those walls of his.
This is the first time Roman has ever opened up to me, and I can’t bring myself to jinx it. I always knew that Keith was an asshole. The fact that he’d force his son into a life he didn’t want to be a part of infuriates me.
“It wasn’t until initiation day that we realized there was no backing out of our world. We hesitated at first, but we were a bunch of idiots, because there is no way out of this. Our oaths were sworn in blood, both our own and the first dozen men whose lives were taken by our own bare hands. It was then that we knew we’d be the biggest assholes on the planet for making you ours,because you would never be ours in the way that we wanted.” My knees are weak, threatening to give way, as my breathing starts to quicken with the shock of his declaration.
“The Elders have handpicked almost every person in our bloodline for five generations, and they’d only see you as a threat. Because we would never fully commit to them or whoever they’d choose for us to wed, when the love of our lives was, and always will be, my fucking stepsister.” His voice is raw with heartbreak and contempt, and when his cerulean eyes finally flick to me, my whole fucking world tips upside down.
