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“You know you’re not good at sharing,” I say softly, a sad smile tugging at my lips. How can I make this better? How do I ease his pain?
“For you I could.”
“You’d hate it. I’d make you miserable and I can’t do that.”
“You should give me a chance. It’s up to me to decide if I want to—”
“It’s up to me too. And I just…” I take a deep breath, aware that I’m about to rip his heart out. But knowing that ultimately, I have to. “I just don’t feel that way about you.”
He hisses in pain, his face falling. Climbing out of my bed, he storms for the door. He yanks it open and stares at me coldly for a moment.
“You’re a real piece of work, Amelie.”
The door slams shut and my heart thunders in my chest. He doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t love me. He…Tears stream down my face. This is not how I saw this vacation going at all.
I wait for Smalls to come back and say he didn’t mean it, that he was just having a moment, but it doesn’t happen. He finally said all the things I’ve always wanted to hear but now things have changed. The Knox brothers have wormed their way into my heart and each one makes me feel things I never knew I could feel. It made me realise that what I felt for Smalls was puppy love; he protected me and made me feel safe, and I clung to that for a long time.
My bedroom door swings open and for a split second I think it’s going to be Smalls but Kalen comes barrelling into the room and jumps onto the bed, a huge smile plastered on his face.
“Guess what?!” he asks. I shake my head. Something has made him super happy this morning, so he certainly hasn’t run into Smalls.
“You’re mad and I’m not,” I throw back. He looks at me like I have lost my mind.
“No, Chelsea has changed our plans for today. She has borrowed someone named Linda’s minivan.” I try to keep up with how fast he is talking. “And we are all going to the zoo! Can you believe it?! They have kangaroos at the zoo! And you know how disappointed I was when I found out you don’t keep them as pets!”
I laugh at his enthusiasm. We have been to Australia Zoo a million times, Chelsea loves it. I think she secretly had a crush on Steve Irwin growing up.
“We have to meet downstairs in half an hour, so get dressed.” With that he kisses my lips and pushes himself up on the bed and races back downstairs.
Getting up, I check my phone. I have a few texts from Baxter, a couple from Elsie, Slate and Sawyer. One from Onyx catches my eye.
Onyx: I miss you. When are you coming back?
I hit call and walk over to my door and close it. Kalen has said since I’m here on holiday I need to not keep checking up on Onyx, but he needs me.
“Hey,” he says, answering just as the call would have connected to the answering machine.
“Were you working out?” I ask. He is still on strict orders to take it easy.
“Just a small jog, it’s the only thing that takes my mind off things.”
“Are you still having nightmares?” I know Onyx, he takes everything on his shoulders, what happened to Slate as a child has always weighed him down, and now this.
“I keep dreaming that they come back and take you away from me…As much as it kills me to say this, I should have listened to Branson.”
“What was that? I didn’t quite hear you,” I joke. Baxter is going to get a kick out of this when I text him back.
“I’m being dead serious Amelie. He didn’t want you in; he knew something like this would happen. The Order is no place for women.”
“You take that back! Women can do exactly what men can. The difference in this situation is that you have feelings for me, you feel responsible for me in some way, but so help me if you get in the way of Sawyer’s plans, I will kill you myself. That old fool doesn’t get to try to take me down over his hurt male pride and get away with it.”
“I’m sorry. We dragged you into this lifestyle and it’s for life, Amelie. You can’t walk away. We didn’t quite grasp that when we joined, and you’re poised to take over and rule, that’s a lot more to handle.”
“I know. And we’ll all deal with it together, as a unit.”
He sighs, hopefully realising I'm right.
A loud bang has me jumping round to face the door.
