AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We took the canoes out to the tiny island in the middle of the lake. It was an hour commitment, but we dragged our boats onto the sand and laid out our picnic beneath a tangled canopy of branches. Sasha and Kas immediately stripped down to their bathing suits and jumped into the water, leaving me and Lavena to enjoy the early morning sun.
“If they delivered this far out, I would live here,” Lavena decided, beautiful face turned up towards the stray sunrays poking through the leaves.
“No, you wouldn’t,” I sighed from my reclined position, my book open in front of me. “You hate nature.”
Lavena clicked her tongue. “You’re not wrong. This dirt is murder on myLouboutin’s.” She exhaled and flopped down on her towel. “We need to go to France.”
I peeked at my best friend over the edge of my read. “Why?”
“Do you need a reason to go to France?” she countered, turning her head towards me, sunlight glinting off the frames of her dark glasses. “It’s France.”
“I guess not.” I pulled my book back up, not really registering the words, but needing the distraction.
I tried to put Darius and our conversation on hold in my brain. I tried reminding myself I was with my friends and there would be time later to think about everything else. There was also the fact that they would know something was wrong and lying to them wasn’t an option.
“Do you think this will ever change?”
Dropping my reading façade, I tucked the bookmark back into its place and set the novel aside to fix my full attention on the woman next to me. “The cabin?”
Lavena shook her head. “Us.”
I held stiff against the guilt balling up in my throat. “What do you mean?”
A pale, slender shoulder jerked up in a shrug. “I don’t know.” She rolled onto her side and propped her head in her hand. “Do you think we’ll always be like this. Us all here together like this?”
It was my turn to shrug. “I mean, maybe? Eventually, things might change. Like we might have spouses and children. What?” I asked when Lavena made a face.
“I don’t plan on having either of those things.”
Lavena aversion to conventional relationships wasn’t anything new, but the line of questioning had me really looking at my best friend, at her delicate, porcelain features and her brilliant, blue eyes. Freckles littered the narrow arch of her nose and lightly dusted her cheeks.
The Medlock genes were next level in the three siblings. Each one had the confidence and beauty that came with having everything at their fingertips. Lavena had a little extra, in my opinion.
“What if you find someone you really care about and—?”
“He would be an idiot to stay.”
“That’s not true,” I whispered. “What about Enzo?”
Lavena raised a shoulder. “What about him? He’s great, and I do care about him, but I would never marry him. He knows that. He’s welcome to find someone willing to settle down with but it won’t be me.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why can’t it be you? You’ve been together for three years.”
She put up a finger to stop me. “We’ve been fucking for three years. It only started because I was in a bad place and he was there to get me through it, but he knows the rules.”
I sighed, genuinely exhausted by all the rules. “Why are there so many rules?” I asked.
“Because they’re necessary. Just like normal people, we have rules that keep order. Without them, it would be a blood bath outthere. Rules remind us that there are limits and consequences, like thinking it’s a good idea to be with someone like us.”
“What’s wrong with—?”
“Everything.” Lavena sat up, her pale eyes focused. “Anyone who thinks this life is glamorous or romantic needs a reality check. We are not relationship material, and unless you were born into this life, it’s dangerous.” She paused to glance over to where Sasha was Kas were having a race, their lithe bodies cutting through the water with barely a splash. “Do you remember when Walter fucked up the books and Dad went to jail for six years?” Her attention returned to me. I nodded. “Mom was alone with three kids and a whole empire to keep together. The uncles warned her to start selling everything because they didn’t think Dad would be getting out alive. Leaders don’t last long in those places. There are too many rivals who want blood or power, but Mom laughed … hard! She asked them who they thought they were talking to. Alexander Medlock may have been momentarily preoccupied with other matters, but they would be answering to her until his return and if they ever talked about her husband dying again, she’d make sure it was the last thing they ever did.” Lavena stopped to smirk, pride radiating. “Mom was pretty bad ass. But the point is, she came from the life. Her marriage to my dad had been arranged to unite their territories. Mom grew up knowing what to do, how to run and operate the business.
An outsider would get eaten alive. Most of them run. They pack up like little bitches and disappear. Most get silenced and vanish. Now.” She put both hands up, palms facing the sky. “Let’s say Enzo finds someone and she stays,” she lifted her right hand higher, “she gets to watch the person she loves most in the world get brutally murdered, because that is always how this story ends. On the other hand,” she lowered the right to raise the left, “now, she’s a liability. He will be so focused on keeping hersafe that he won’t notice the gun until he’s dead. Ultimately, no matter what, he will die, and she will be left alone, unless she dies too.” She lowered her hands. “Those are the only options, Kami. That’s all this life is. Enzo, once Morpheus dies, will be next on the throne. His job will be to have babies and pass the Trevil name along. Then he will die.” Echoing pain stared back at me from a face tense with anger. “I’m not strong enough and I’m not stupid enough to handle that. I can’t give him my heart just to lose him in the end.”
Each explanation cut into my gut, severing my heart from the rest of me. The truth of her words left a hole in my chest as wide as Montana. It could have been its own galaxy, a solar system of emptiness so vast and wide, nothing could survive.
I hadn’t taken any of that into consideration. I hadn’t thought once that I could be the reason Darius dies. I never thought my love for him could take him from me forever. But I should have. I should have realized just how vulnerable I was making him.
