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“Promise me you’ll always see me as this,” he gritted, his head shaking. He hugged me, fucking me so deep. “I’m only this for you. The one who makes you come and the one who bleeds for you. Today. Tomorrow. Forever.”
Forever.
“I promise,” I said, my arms gripped around him. I bit his neck, and he roared, his thighs jutting forward in quick succession. Heat exploded in my belly the same time he flooded deep inside me, his body stiff and fingers biting into my flesh. His head touched the seat in a gorgeous tousle, lengthy spools of blond falling back, his eyes closed. He even came beautifully.
His eyes opened, and he wet his lips before kissing me again. He sucked me in, and I drowned within his depths. I didn’t know it was possible to love someone so much after hating them. He wasn’t just heaven.
He was a miracle too.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sloane
Bru missed Thanksgiving at the Mallicks’. I begged him to attend, but he said he had other plans. Since he’d been at Callum’s, he’d been going off on long weekends, ones during which Callum was allowing him to do college visits and basically any other thing he wanted to do. If he wanted it, Callum provided it, and this hadn’t been uncommon before Bru had left. Callum had always bent over backward to be helpful, and I appreciated him taking care of him.
I just wished I could have.
The Monday after Thanksgiving break, things returned right back to what they were in the halls of Windsor Preparatory, my brother in his clique and me with my own. Another new change was he’d gotten new friends, getting more and more involved in anything academic, which meant the kids in those clubs too. When we’d first gotten here, he’d been all about the football bros, Court, and Legacy.
Now, he seemed to stay away from anything at all that had to do with any of that, them. If I was with Dorian, Ares, and any of Legacy, I got an awkward wave from my brother or a stiff smile, and when I wasn’t with them, the interaction wasn’t much better. I asked him how he was doing, and the one or two-word responses that followed only unsettled my stomach. My brother was here, but he wasn’t here.
“I just need time,” he said to me one day. I’d confronted him about the holidays coming up. I wanted to be able to see him and open presents with him. We never did anything big, but we were always together.
He said of course I’d see him, of course we’d meet up, but anything having to do with him coming over to the Mallicks’ had been questionable. He said he still needed time for all that, but I’d given him time.
It’d been weeks.
I really wasn’t dealing with all this well, feeling myself give one or two-word answers in the majority of conversations I had. No one pushed me about anything, but they weren’t stupid. I was missing Bru, and every day I felt like I had one toe dipped into two different lives. One was with Legacy, and the other was the one I’d been forced to leave behind. It made me a non-participant in the life I felt I had left, and I knew that the moment I ran into a few members of security outside of Brielle’s office.
Forrester, the head of security, was ushering people out of the headmaster’s office with boxes in their hands, and when I asked about that, Forrester said Brielle was moving things back to city hall.
This was the building she worked at as mayor, and since I hadn’t heard about a move, I passed him, heading inside. I had to pass the freakier-than-shit King Kong bust on my way into the office. I knew the school’s mascot was the king, but that thing freaked me out every time I saw it. Even when I’d been a student assistant for Principal Mayberry, I’d found myself giving it a wide berth.
Because I was familiar with the space, I waved to the headmaster’s secretary once inside Brielle’s office. I saw her secretary a lot here since I used to be a student assistant, and she didn’t bother to announce me to Brielle. She just told me to go ahead inside, and I passed more movers with boxes on my way. Brielle was ushering another in bib overalls when I finally did get in there with her.
“Oh, hey, honey,” she said to me, signing off on a clipboard when it was presented to her. She finished, and that person left too. “What’s going on? Everything okay?”
It was for once, yes. I’d had so much drama in my life recently, so I wasn’t surprised she asked, though.
Brielle came around her desk, her slacks long and brown, her top flowing. She came just to my chin, which was where most people did. She put a hand behind my back. “Aren’t you supposed to be in science this hour?”
She knew my schedule, along with everyone else in my life. I nodded. “I was just coming from the bathroom. Saw Forrester and he said people were moving things out of your office?”
The place almost appeared bare through further observation, barely more in here than a desk and chairs.
“Yes. I’m actually headed back to the Mayor’s office following the holiday break,” she said. “Thought I’d get a jump on things. The school hired someone for the position ages ago. They’ve been on standby, waiting.”
They were waiting for me to be okay, I guess, but she didn’t say that. We all knew Brielle was only here for me.
Another man came in and handed Brielle another clipboard. She signed this one too, then instructed me to wait a second while she pointed out to the movers a few things that needed to be packed in the foyer as well. By the time she came back, I was sitting down, and she closed the door. She smiled. “Sorry about that.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, but did frown a little. I had been neglecting this life and her. She’d been right here, so close to me, but I had never not once made it in here while she’d been headmaster. I messed with my hands. “I wish I would have gotten in here to see you more. I’m sorry about that. I…”
Brielle joined me in one of the student chairs, quickly waving me off. “It wasn’t your job to come in here and see me. I was just here to help and make sure you got acclimated okay.”
Even still, I couldn’t get in here once? I shook my head. “I guess I’m just kind of bummed. I don’t really feel like we’ve gotten to talk.”
She’d been working a lot more recently, her and Ramses both. They’d ask me if that was okay before they’d done it, and it had been. I wanted them to go back to their normal lives and not feel the need to watch over me.
