AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t think he’ll care how they feel, personally. It’s well-known that that man goes his own way in life. If he’s decided he wants you, no one will talk him out of making you his.” She paused. “Maybe not even you.”
Chapter Four
Curled up on the plush armchair in my bedroom the next morning, I smiled as Brooks’ face appeared on the screen of my phone. “Well, look at you, Mr. Clean-Shaven. When did that happen?” He’d had a beard since he’d first developed facial hair.
Ruffling his reddish-brown hair, he shrugged. “My girl was complaining about rug burn, so—”
“That’s really enough detail for me. How are you guys?”
“Good, good.” He began talking a mile a minute, his blue eyes alight with pure wonder as he told me about a rainforest tour he’d recently experienced. He’d moved to Kenya only three months ago and he treated every work-free weekend like it was a vacation, exploring everything the place had to offer.
After ten minutes or so, he slitted his eyes as he looked at me. “Is everything all right? You seem tense. And you’re not as chatty as usual.”
I sat up a little straighter, though I kept my legs tucked under me. “I need your input on something. Something that may sound bizarre. Dax and I, well, we once made a pact.” I expanded, relaying the specifics and explaining that Dax wanted me to keep my word.
Brooks’ eyes went wider and wider as I talked. Once I was done, he sat back in his seat and whistled. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“I can’t believe you never mentioned the pact until now. This is juicy stuff.”
“I wasn’t serious about it, so I didn’t feel a need to share it. But now … I suppose some would say I’m an idiot to even consider this; that I should hold out for somethingreal. Meaningful. Special. But I’ve started to think that my chance at that died with Lake.”
He scratched at his jaw and then paused with a frown, no doubt unused to the lack of a beard. “I suppose, given how untraditional this is, I should tell you it’s a dumb idea. But I married my girl after only dating her for a month, and we’re now in a three-way relationship with another guy. I’m in no position to judge anyone on who they choose to spend the rest of their life with.”
The door creaked open as Gypsy padded inside, twitching the tip of her tail. She was also carrying a white shoelace in her mouth. I was pretty sure it wasn’t usual for cats to “collect” and stash objects, but she made a habit of it.
She also made a habit of leaving mauled corpses of dead rodents in my kitchen. Yes,mauled.
Adjusting the position of the light-purple cushion behind me—which went wonderfully with the room’s silver-and-lavender color scheme—I said to Brooks, “You know me, so I don’t have to explain why I’d consider this a viable option for me. I came up with some pros and cons when I talked about it with Alicia.” I quickly read the entire list. “There should be more cons, really.”
“There is a con you’re not seeing.” Brooks palmed the back of his head. “You say you think that your chance at something special ended with Lake, so I’m guessing you’re feeling that you don’t emotionally need more from Dax than what he’s offering. Maybe you don’t. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy for you to be with someone like him.
“He’s a great guy, Addie. A sincerely trustworthy person. Hell, I trust him one-hundred percent. But that feeling isn’t mutual, and I know it isn’t a slight to me. He’s just a very guarded person.”
That was something I’d noticed when we first met. Dax didn’t show affection—verbally or physically. He didn’t expose his deeper emotions or talk about his feelings. It wasn’t that he was cold-hearted, just reserved.
But it didn’t bother me that he wasn’t the warmest or friendliest of people, because he wasauthentic. There were too many fake people in this world. Dax didn’t lie about what he thought or felt. He was real.
“When we were kids, all people saw when they looked at him was the step-grandson of death row convict Michael Bale,” Brooks went on. “It made Dax an obvious target, so he had to deal with a lot of shit. Other kids would bully or challenge him. He got into so many fights it was insane. Especially with a particular group of kids—they were sons of cops, judges, and attorneys; the kind of kids who thought they could escape arrest. And they did. The sheriff didjack.”
Five years younger than Dax, I hadn’t been aware of his difficulties back when I was a child. But I’d later heard plenty of stories about it. I’d also heard how Dax’s father, Blake, made those boys pay in other ways, since the law failed his son.
“The press …” Trailing off, Brooks shook his head in disgust. “Whenever Bale ended up in the headlines again, reporters would lurk outside Dax’s house or school. Can you imagine having perfect strangers snap pictures of you and push recorders into your face, asking for comments on what it’s like to have Michael Bale as a granddaddy?
“Making it worse, there were a couple of journalists whopouncedon how he was always fighting and getting expelled, implying the violence came from Bale’s influence; that Dax might even follow in his footsteps. The truth was that Dax was just retaliating, but those reporters madehimout to be the monster.”
My chest clenched as I pictured a little boy being targeted by kids who tried making him prey; a little boy who’d fought back rather than let those predators break him … only for him to be blamed for it all. Blamed for beingbullied. It was fucked up.
“Those same reporters had ‘sources’ who gave them lots of details. It was hard to know who was leaking that stuff, though—it could have been teachers, students, neighbors, friends, family,” said Brooks. “That kind of betrayal, that feeling of not being sure who exactly you could trust … it leaves its mark, you know?”
Of course it would. I knew about betrayal, though not quite to this extent. But I was familiar with the wounds it left.
“All of this changed because, over the years, Dax became someone to fear. Notorious in his own right. People don’t look at him and see Bale anymore, no, they see someone who’d they be suicidal to fuck with. But Dax pulled inward during that personal journey. He trusts maybe a handful of people. There’s only so close you can get to someone like that,” Brooks warned, his tone careful.
I slowly nodded. “I understand that.”
“Youthinkyou get it. You think you’ll be okay with it because it didn’t bother you years ago. But that was a fling—you didn’t have to care that it would be shallow and temporary. A marriage isn’t temporary. But with Dax, it could still be shallow.
