Then, the heavens parted for us.
“I think I know what she’s after.”
All of us turned at the sound of her voice. We turned toward the door and saw her standing there, draped in a long shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Her hair sat tangled against the crown of her head. She yawned as she rubbed her eyes, and I rushed toward her. I tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear before she threaded her arms around my neck, and her hug was so warm and so comforting that I almost forgot where I was.
Until Axe cleared his throat. “Come on in, Brielle. Everyone?”
The guys mumbled their names as I walked her to the head of the table. “You okay to do this?”
She nodded softly as she cupped my cheek. “I know what she wants, Mav.”
“What does she want?” Axe asked, standing behind her.
She turned toward the head of the table and found all eyes on her.
“We’re ready when you are,” Dee said, looking up at her.
Then, she took a deep breath in through her nose.
“So, I was going back over the paperwork you guys gave me when I woke up this morning…”
24
BRIELLE
You know that feeling when you want your eyes to stay closed so badly, but they simply won’t? Where you battle your own eyelids for a few more minutes of sleep, only to be pulled awake because they can’t stand to be closed any longer?
That was how I felt when I raised myself up from bed.
“Axton?” I asked groggily, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed.
I didn’t expect him to be there, especially after everything that had happened. But the lack of his voice and his presence gave me pause. My body ached in so many wondrous ways that it made me shiver. Thoughts of last night raced through my mind, shivering me to my core as if we had never stopped. I raked my hands through my hair, catching my knuckles on knots that made me hiss as I stood to my feet. And after I dragged my ass into the bathroom, I stared at myself in the mirror.
Watching my eyes stare right back at me.
“Jesus,” I whispered, turning on the sink.
Splashing some cold water in my face helped my brain to wake up, but I needed coffee. Coffee, and a shower. I needed something substantial if I had any hope of making myself useful. I couldn’t leave things as they were, not when that psycho maniac was still running around out there. For all I knew, my fucking family was in trouble. For all I knew, she had researched me and put my parents in her crosshairs simply for passing her over for adoption.
Why did she get passed over for adoption?
As I gazed at my naked body in the mirror, I thought back to those papers. To that file Dante had given me while I had been in that bath. Jesus, it felt like a fucking lifetime ago. Water dripped off my chin onto my chest, highlighting the fading marks Dante had left behind with his mouth. I grinned as my fingertips danced along their swollen existences. A warmth cascaded through me, like a waterfall spilling over the edge of a hot cliff face. But even as I stood there remembering the carnal desires we indulged the night of the gala, that question kept running circles around my thoughts.
“Why the hell wasn’t she adopted?” I murmured to myself.
I yanked the hand towel off its rack and wiped off my face. Then, I pivoted toward the shower and couldn’t move quickly enough to turn on the hottest water that I could stand. I was coated in things I didn’t even want to look at. I had dirt caked in places that dirt should never touch. The water poured down to the marble shower floor, and as I stripped out of my clothes, I relished the way the steam gathered all around me.
As if it were cloaking me away from the world.
“Oh, hell yeah,” I groaned as I stepped into the walk-in.
It felt like I hadn’t taken a decent shower in days. Dirt and mud dripped down my body, rolling with the beads of water, carrying the stains of my sins toward the drain. I dipped my head and let the water wash over me like ocean waves battering against a sandy shoreline. I pressed my hands into the tiled wall. Steam filled my nostrils and my lungs, hydrating me from the inside out. The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end and my muscles involuntarily clenched and released.
Clenched, and released.
Clenched, and released.
“Goddamn it, I love this shower,” I whispered to myself.
