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Suddenly, realization hit. Alpha Prime used me. The way this was happening confirmed my darkest fears. Because they had Helena as their go-to, and they’d set this all up. No one moves out so fast and quiet without planning it out beforehand. No one has their closer ready with a check without having it all scheduled in preparation.
With trembling hands, I stared at my cell once more. But the screen was blank. Helena had hung up, wiping her hands of this mess.
Call them! Find out what's going on! a part of me commanded.
But my heart was numb, limbs unmoving. Hot tears rushed down my cold cheeks. The room blurred. Everything around me took on a nightmarish quality. That is, everything but the pain. It stabbed into me like a knife to the belly, painful and raw, my guts leaking out.
“Why?” came the shriek from my throat, belted into sheer emptiness. “Why?”
I screamed the question again and again until my vocal cords were scrubbed raw. But there was no one around to hear me much less answer. Sadness clawed at me from the inside out and a great shudder rocked through me very bones.
With their names on my lips, I collapsed in the bed and sobbed, my heart breaking. Everything that made me Katy Baxter seeped away, disappearing into the cracks of the floor. Because these men had transformed me. They’d made me into the woman I was today, sassy and confident, ready to take on the world. But without any warning, they’d ripped it all away in one fell swoop. That was the band’s power, the absolute command Alpha Prime had at their fingertips.
And what did it mean for me? I didn’t know, my heart breaking as hot tears poured. Certainly, it felt as if the world was collapsing because everything I’d learned had been based on our mutual love and adoration. Yet now, it was clear that my dreams had been nothing but myths. Our relationship had been a convenience for the band, something that they paid for. And now that the men were done … there was nothing left but ashes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Trent
I felt like an asshole in the worst way.
My nerves jangled like an out of tune guitar. The leather of the airplane seat squeaked when I settled back with my iPad, trying again to write the song I started a few months back—when we first met Katy.
Our girl, Katy. Kitty-Kat.
The plane soared smoothly into the great blue sky and yet my stomach wouldn’t settle, slushing queasily. We just took off from New York City and Queens was now a shrinking set of squares and houses outside the window and below us.
Mace stared moodily out a porthole, a heavy frown settled like the mask of a stranger on his face. Resting on his thigh, one hand clenched into a fist then unclenched in an endless rhythm. He hadn't said a word since we left Manhattan. Not to me, Nick, or even the pretty girl who’d escorted us to our cars. Because ever since Katy, he hasn’t noticed those hooches. They don’t stand a chance anymore.
“This fucking blows,” I finally said, because it was true.
Nick sat at the back of the plane away from both of us, staring into space. His cobalt eyes were faded and he didn't once put away the bottle of whiskey that he’d picked up at the hotel bar on our way out. Fortunately, it remained capped and un-drunk. Still, it was clutched in his hand like a loaded gun.
Nor did my man buckle his seatbelt. None of us did. Why would we when we didn't have a stewardess telling us to?
Katy Baxter. Our girl.
She was supposed to be here for us to tell us what to do. To be our flight attendant. To be our assistant. To be our everything.
There was a problem, and it was real. Nick was the one who'd said how we were screwing over the sweet girl by not letting her live a normal life.
“I don’t know how long we can do this to her. She’s the homemaker sort. I mean, you saw her when we first met,” he had asserted. “We said we were going to let her go. How long until we bite the bullet?”
Fuck that. She should be with us. We shouldn’t just toss her to the curb because she was worth more than that. The three of us could love her. She deserved better than some loser with a receding hairline, bad breath, and a mediocre job.
“Fuck,” I growled again.
“Get over it, man,” Nick grunted at me. “We decided. We left her. The shit is done.”
But it wasn't done. Not really.
After we passed out in bed with Katy, I woke up feeling like I was in paradise. Katy's tits were smashed into my face, the taste of her pussy on my tongue, my balls squeezed tightly from unloading inside and on her so many times. I was drained, but I had a thought. Maybe I was being stupid, but at that moment, I thought that we could make it work. Katy was safe with us. She didn't have to leave. We could be together and have her stay with the crew, living out her days full-time with Alpha Prime.
Then my problem-solving had come to a dead stop. It could never work out that way. Eventually, the eighteen-year-old would grow up and she would realize that being with three men simply is not possible in the long-term.
Disappointment crushed my soul, the air like lead in my lungs. Shit this felt so bad, and the reason was totally clear.
Because I loved her. In fact, all of us did. We didn’t plan on it when falling in love was for suckers. Who wanted to be stuck with one chick for the rest of their lives when you could have a line-up of the best of the best?
