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“You’re more than enough,” I whisper. “You’re…everything.” He begins to shake his head adamantly in denial, but I continue before he can lose himself in self-deprivation. “It’s not you, Ryker. It’s me. I’m the problem. I’ve somehow fallen in love with five different men.” A bark of dry, humorless laughter escapes me. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. Heck, I didn’t even know it happened until recently. You guys were my best friends, and suddenly…you were more. You were my everything. Are my everything. I don't want to offer you only a piece of my heart, Ryker, because that’s not how this works. You all own the entirety of me. I don’t know how to articulate it, and I know I’m rambling…” Ryker’s form is hazy through the translucent veil of tears shrouding my vision. I let out a hiccupping sob. “I don’t want you to share me. I would never ask that of any of you. Heaven only knows that I’d lose my shit if I had to share you with another girl. I’m confused and scared. I have feelings for you, all of you, that I don’t know how to deal with. Maybe I should just let you go and find somebody else and?—”
“No.” Ryker’s in front of me before I can finish that thought. Even through my sheen of tears, I can see the fury twisting his face into something unrecognizable. “You don’t get to say that shit to me.”
“Say what?” I desperately brush at the tears stinging my skin, but for every one I get rid of, a new one replaces it.
“You don’t get to tell me to move on, as if something like that is even possible. You don’t get to invalidate my love for you.”
“I wasn’t?—”
Indecision wars on his face, and the sight of it quite literally steals the words from my mouth.
I anxiously lick my lower lip, and Ryker’s eyes zero in on the miniscule movement.
“I can’t give them up,” I whimper, my erratic emotions twining together in a ball that’s impossible to unravel.
“I know.” His gaze doesn’t move from my lips.
“And I can’t give you up, either.”
“I know.”
“And you can’t share.”
“I know.”
“So, where does that leave us?”
Ryker doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he leans forward and presses his lips to mine.
12
LANDON
We got the files. Beckett’s going through the information now.
Dominic’s words play on repeat in my head as I sit opposite Raymond in the spacious lobby.
The files.
Senator Reece Whipers’s files.
Fuck.
I squeeze my eyes shut in an attempt to fight off the encroaching headache.
“You look like shit, boy.” Raymond’s dark chuckle floats through the air, and I snap my head up, focusing on him.
Construction on most of the lobby has been completed. Hell, it has even been decorated. Three couches are situated in the middle of the room in a perfect C-formation. The middle one—and the one I’m currently sitting on—faces a stone hearth and the flat-screen TV mounted to it.
Behind the television, in a separate room, are an assortment of tables and a currently empty buffet, which will probably serve breakfast once the hotel is operational.
During one of my research sessions, I discovered that the company Obsolete owns the land and has been constructing a high-end resort on it for years now. More digging proved Obsolete to be a shell company.
Any guesses which asshole owns it?
I’ll give you a hint. His name starts with Ray, ends with Mond, and rhymes with Daymond.
The asshole in question sits on the couch to the left of me, his posture decidedly indolent, even as his eyes remain alert. Hyper-focused. Probably because he dismissed his security to allow us time to talk alone. He holds a glass of bourbon in the hand that isn’t sprawled across the back of the couch.
