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Chapter 26
“Evie, fuck,”Kingston whispered into my ear. His voice was husky and filled with strained emotion, as if that single word contained every emotion he was dying to tell me, but hadn’t been able to. “It’s been killing me, being close to you but not able to touch you.”
“I know, me too,” I said. “I feel so disconnected from you guys lately, I hate it.”
“I hate having to act like a piece of shit to you,” Valen said on my left side. “It physically hurts to be so cold to you.”
“I hate how our lives don’t belong to us,” Archer said from my right side. “We deserve so much more. We should be free with our love, fuck all of this control bullshit.”
I nodded my head and felt tears well up in my eyes, threatening to spill over down my cheeks. I couldn’t have that, not here when I wanted nothing buy joy with them for the short time we were together and free.
I sniffled and introduced them to Mark and Penny to distract myself. It was a little awkward when they locked eyes on Penny; they hadn’t really had a chance to talk to her since the party where they’d seen her at her absolute worst and they’d never had a chance to apologize.
“Listen, Penny,” Kingston said, taking the lead. “I’m really fucking sorry about that party. The Organization kinda set it up, and we took the chance to use it against Evie.”
“I’m so sorry,” Archer said, and Valen joined him with his apology. There was a tense moment where Mark’s fists twitched and I knew that he had been told everything about Penny’s history. And I was flooded with shame again, realizing that he knew my part in covering it up. I felt exposed, vulnerable.
But Penny saved the day yet again. She shook her head franticly and said, “No, no, no. Never apologize! I know you guys saved me. You were total dicks to my friend, but you saved me from those guys. I wanted to thank you!”
Then she turned to me and kept going. “And you, I know I’ve said this to you more than a couple times already but I’ll say it again in front of everyone here. You do not need to apologize to me, you did what you could to keep me safe even if it backfired. And we know why you did that, why you thought that was the best thing to do. I won’t go into it again, but you thought it was the way to save somebody from the horror of what happened to them.”
“Thank you,” I said, and we opened our arms and hugged it out. Tears of joy spilled then, and I felt like we’d taken one final step to reach our former state of friendship. I was so grateful for her and all the support she’d given me over the years.
I would strive to be half as good to her as she was to me, and that would make me better than most.
We broke our embrace and looked at the guys, laughed and I said, “So, who brought something to drink?”
“Now we’re talking,” Archer said. “Follow me to the bar, my friends, and we can make whatever we want.”
We followed him to the room at the back of the mansion where his family held parties for the few times a year they were actually home. We got a few drinks from the bar in the corner and hung out for half an hour or so.
But slowly, as we wound down, we began to naturally drift off into our separate groups.
Penny and Mark went to the formal living room at the front of the house to cuddle in front of the fireplace while the Kings and I stayed in the rec room near the back. This was where we’d fooled around previously, and we could relax and just enjoy each other’s company.
Kingston sat on one of the big, plush sofas and pulled me onto his lap. I swung my feet up and put them across Valen and leaned back against Archer. I was basically in heaven, just missing Ryker to make my moment complete.
But it was bliss compared to the horrible time I’d been having lately.
At first it felt like we were deliberately not speaking about the Organization or Mitchell just so we could remain in our fog of happiness.
But eventually it had to be said. Something had to be mentioned, or I felt like we were fooling ourselves into thinking everything was okay now. My constant hypervigilance wouldn’t let me pretend for too long.
“So what the fuck is Mitchell’s deal?” I asked at last. “He seemed cool at the party. We got to use his guest room or whatever, but now he’s such a dick.”
“Mitchell is balls deep in the Organization,” Archer said from behind me. “His family is one of the oldest members a few generations back and he takes great pride in exerting his control outside of the group.”
“That’s basically why we kicked him out of the Kings at the beginning of the year,” Valen said. “He couldn’t accept Kingston as the leader, and it was pretty fucking ridiculous. He was posturing to the point of absurdity.”
“Yeah, he had problems with one of ‘the poors’ taking the lead, as he called me,” Kingston scoffed. “He tried to fight me and lost badly. He’s had it in for me ever since.”
“Do you think he volunteered for the role of watcher?” I asked. “He seems to take way too much pleasure in it.”
I closed my eyes and felt Valen’s hands massage my feet while Archer stroked my hair and shoulder and Kingston ran his hand up and down my stomach, gently touching me in a possessive, sexy way.
“I think he takes pleasure in hurting others,” Valen said. “A lot of the men in the Organization seem driven by this one principle. To cause harm and destroy lives just to get their kicks.”
“There’s something else we need to tell you,” Kingston said, pausing his hand directly on my stomach. He pressed down just a little harder, as if to comfort me while he broke bad news to me.
