“Take him to the warehouse and chain him up,” I tell Beast.
The farm would be better, but it’s upstate and we don’t have time to waste getting him up there.
Lucky for him.
Chapter Sixteen
Kinsley
At the knock on my door, I glance at the clock. It’s stained glass with a cross in the center. It’s religious as shit, but I like the colors and the design, the one thing I never took down that reminds me I’m living in a church. It's late, too late to be Colton.
I’m not surprised to find Rebel leaning a forearm against the wall when I pull the door back. The look on his face makes me stop what I was about to say. It’s not sex hunger, or a look that says he wants to talk either. I’m not sure what it is.
His fists are bruised, and there is blood splattered on his shirt. Instinctively, I want to check he is okay or ask who he got in a fight with. I clamp my lips together when Rebel stares at me, his look daring me to start an argument.
Behind the anger at whatever happened to him tonight, there is something else in his eyes. He needs something he doesn’t want to ask for.
Against my better judgment, I pull the door open and let him inside.
He’s so big he takes up a lot of the air, or maybe that’s just the oxygen he is pulling from my lungs with how goddamn gorgeous he is. And the stupid part of me is excited about him coming here.
He looks around, anywhere but at me. I’m not stupid, there are things going on at the club that had their president come talk to Colt. He wouldn’t tell me what they discussed, which pissed me off.
Rebel walks toward the spare bedroom, bringing back memories of the last time he was in there. I won’trunafter him, but I follow at a slower pace. I’d hung a blanket over the portrait of Stryker. I hate he is staring at it, and can picture the smug look, but when he turns around, he’s anything but.
“Will you finish this?”
He stands beside his own portrait. He made a point of saying I was doing it wrong because I didn’t draw his tattoo. Instead of asking questions or saying no, I go to the easel.
Neither one of us says a word as he takes off his cut and shirt, unfortunately for me leaving his pants on, then he positions himself so I can see the tattoo.
Standing in front of the easel, I gather what I need and get to work.
It’s easy to get lost in my art, something I have done more than once when I needed to shut out reality. Rebel sits still until I tell him he can move if he needs to.
They are the only words we speak for two hours.
By then, my hands are aching, and he shifts, the muscles of his back flex and stretch, I swallow back the rising lust, it’s time to stop. I break the silence, asking him the question playing on my mind since he tugged off his t-shirt and revealed this tattoo the last time he was here.
“Who is it?”
He’s sat so still for so long, the shrug of his shoulders makes him groan, and he follows the shrug with a roll of his neck.
“My dad.”
His voice is low, but still startles me. I do a good job of hiding it.
“He died in Afghanistan. Raven and I were kids.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Our circumstances are different. As an eleven-year-old child, who’d known nothing but loneliness, it still hurt when my father was gone. Mostly because he left me alone with my mother. She was always the worse of the two.
At least during his lucid moments, my dad looked at me as if he felt something. He talked to me, made me peanut butter pancakes, where my lifelong obsession came from. It was one of the few good memories I had of him.
“What about your mom?” I ask, before I go down the rabbit hole of darkness.
I won’t be able to escape it, not by asking these questions because Rebel won’t let me get away without giving him something in return.
