It wasn’t as if I had been thinking about leaving Chloe defenseless against the cartel. I wasn’t that kind of person. But I knew what was stirring in my gut. I knew what my stomach did every time I was around her. I saw the way she looked at me whenever I was in the same room as her, and I wasn’t sure if I could do it.
I wasn’t sure if I could fail at this kind of a task again and survive it.
“She’s not Tiffany,” Stone murmured.
Just hearing her name stirred anger within my chest. “I know that.”
Frost paused. “Who’s Tiffany?”
“No one,” Stone and I said in unison.
Frost held his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m going to go and deliver the news to Chloe. She’ll want to know what’s happening.”
I nodded. “Good idea.”
Stone nodded along with me. “Yep. Sounds good.”
And after Frost left, I leveled my president with a gaze. “You don’t ever say her name ever again. Understood?”
He sighed. “Yeah, I get it. Sorry, I’m an idiot.”
Yeah, you really fucking are sometimes, Stone.
Two
Chloe
I ran my fingers along the charm on my necklace as I sat in the hot bath I had drawn for myself. I leaned back, settling my head against a pillow that Lexi had demanded Frost obtain for me. I smiled softly as my fingers lazily traced the engraved outline of a lily on the charm of my necklace.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered to myself.
I tried to process as much as I could, but the truth of the matter was that I had been cooped up with this crew for three days and I already wanted to kill all of them. Lexi and Frost incessantly checked on me. Notch and Ruby filled in the gaps, wanting to check on my health. West brought me food just about every hour on the hour, as if I were four hundred fucking pounds and looking to gain more weight.
And while I enjoyed their kindness, I wasn’t used to so many people in my personal space.
Jesus, that shin bruise is rough.
Every time I wanted to look in the mirror, I stopped myself. It was one of the reasons why I had filled the tub with so many damn bubbles. I didn’t even want the water acting as a mirror to show me how bad the bruises on my face had gotten. Every time Nattybug looked at me, she recoiled for a split second before coming to give me a hug. Every time Frost laid eyes on me, pity flooded his orbs. Every time West looked in my general direction, he looked like he simultaneously wanted to whisk me away while also murdering the asshats who had done all of this to me.
I sank deeper into the tub until my chin touched the tops of the bubbles.
“It’s going to be all right,” I whispered.
The more I thought about the position I was in, the more I played with the charm. Well, it wasn’t really a charm but it looked like a charm to everyone else. It really was a thumb drive. A small USB drive concealed to look like a delicate charm that housed all of the information I had on my real family. My birth family. The ones who had given me up. It was the only thing I had to connect me to them, and I never took it off. Not even to shower.
Hence why the damned thing was waterproofed as well.
Every time I moved, the pain in my rib left me breathless. Every time I shifted, the aching of my bones settled deeper into my marrow. I hated being around this many men at once. I hated the heavy footfalls at all hours of the night. The booming voices up and down the hallway as they shouted at one another as if they didn’t know how to simply walk up to someone and be a normal fucking human being when having a conversation.
And every time I walked into the living room to find a handful of them relaxing on the couches and the chairs, my mind ripped me back to that moment.
That fateful moment my senior year of high school that changed everything about the way I lived my life.
“Come on, just one more drink,” Brad coaxed.
He tilted my glass up to my lips and I opened my throat to chug.
“Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Yeah, Chlo! Chuggy Chlo! Chuggy Chlo! Chuggy Chlo!”
