The Boy I Grew Up With

She laughed, a small one. “Manny’s. Brandon. My home. All of that’s here. Suki. Cruz. Ava. Gus even. All my staff. They’re here.” Her fingers relaxed and began to rub against mine. Her thumb caressed the palm of my hand. “If you want me to have a better life, I’d have to leave, and that’s not me. I am Fallen Crest. I am Roussou. This place is who I am.” She looked up, our eyes meeting. “You are who I am.”

Nothing. No one. Not a natural disaster. Not a random crime. Not bad luck. Nothing was going to hurt her. That vow pounded in my chest, and I touched her lips, rubbing over the bottom one. “I love you so fucking much.”

A blinding smile came back at me, and she gave over, surrendering everything. I could’ve picked her up and cradled her like a child.

“I love you too, so fucking much.”

I stood up, holding her like she was nothing, and I carried her into her room.

46

Heather

I was out of commission for the next two weeks.

I was confined to my house at first, and I wanted to climb the walls, hearing the noise at Manny’s, hearing the opening and slamming of car doors, hearing people laughing, knowing they were all going to my place of business. Then hearing the music, smelling the smoke—I was in hell.

I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to be in the chaos.

This was torture.

Brandon walked in one time, saw me holding a pack of smokes, and promptly called Channing. I’d indulged the night after I was attacked, but that was it. I’d gone back to trying to stop, and I’d stayed at Channing’s house after Brandon caught me.

It was quieter there, sometimes. Channing didn’t want me at the warehouse. He said they’d handle everything. I wasn’t supposed to stress myself out. Stress was bad for concussions. Yeah. Well. This insane boredom was worse. He came home every minute he could, and I knew Bren was in and out. She was mostly out—or sneaking in late at night.

Channing had tried to keep track of her, but it was a losing battle. Bren could move around the house like a cat, and her guy was the same. If they were having sex, they were damned quiet—and that was an if because I didn’t fully know what was going on. I think Channing did, but he didn’t want to talk about them.

We usually switched on our fan to cover our noises too. We were high-class, in a trailer-park kind of way.

We were high-class, in a Roussou kind of way.

Then, Channing came home early one afternoon.

I didn’t see him. I just heard him, but it was enough. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was in the kitchen when he came in. He went to the bathroom, opening and closing drawers. The closet door opened. Something was going on, but I waited. He’d come to me, and a few minutes later, he did.

A suitcase came with him too, along with my traveling bag.

He rested that on top of the table, laying an airplane ticket beside it.

He was sending me away.

“No.” I shook my head. Decision made. Conversation done. I wasn’t going anywhere.

He raked a hand through his hair and sat across from me at the table. “It’s not what you think. Mason called me.”

I sat up, leaning forward. “Is Sam okay?”

“He thinks Sam’s going to have the kid soon. He wanted to fly you out as a surprise.”

Convenient timing. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Really?” But I was doing the math in my head, and it was close.

“Really.”

He schooled himself. He wasn’t shifting his eyes around. He wasn’t moving, scratching, itching, being restless. There was no finger tapping, no foot tapping. He was calm. This was the dead serious Channing, but without the dead part. There was no intensity from him, just a matter-of-fact expression.

“I don’t believe you.” I called his bluff.

His phone shot across the table to me. “Call Mase for yourself.”

I shoved it back. “Mason will lie to have your back seven days out of the week. Sam would do the same for me.”

God. A bubble of frustration rose in my throat. I couldn’t call Sam because it was getting close to her due date. That was true, but I couldn’t ask her if Mason wanted to fly me out as a surprise. That could be true too. I had to go with my gut. If Channing was going to make moves, he’d want me safe—and flying to Massachusetts was pretty safe for us.

I tried a different tactic.

“I’ll stay at one of their houses in town,” I offered. “Mason bought a house. I could go there. Or Nate’s parents’ house. They’re never here. Or hell, even Sam’s parents’ house. Malinda and David. They’d put me up.”

I would be close, but safe.

I waited, not looking away, but Channing didn’t break. He shook his head and sighed, his shoulders lowering. “I have other safe places I could ship you to if it were for safety reasons. Mason really is flying you out to surprise Sam. When you come back, he’s going to fly Malinda out. She’s going to stay with them for a while, help Sam with the baby.”

I gritted my teeth. It all sounded legit, and that made my toes curl. Channing was sending me off to get me out of the way, but dammit—he was doing such a good job. I began to feel obligated to go.

“You fucker.”

He smirked, a cocky half-grin. His eyes flashed at me, darkening. “How’s your head?”

This was another of our routines. Channing would come home. Sometimes it started right away, other times later in the evening or after we sat outside for an hour together, but that question always came around.

How was my head?

Any headaches?

What was eight multiplied by twenty?

He was a jerk with the last question. They were supposed to be questions I could’ve answered before the concussion—multiplication and asking me to recite the capitals of all fifty states weren’t those questions. I still didn’t know, and I was rounding out the end of my two-week concussion-healing timeframe. I was good. I was fine. I was ready to wade into the fight.

Fucking Richter had taken me, had made me scale a tree, and I wanted in on that revenge. I knew Channing was cooking it up. He’d started to stay away longer and longer, sometimes dropping into bed at three or four in the morning, only to get up and head out around six. Every time I asked, he recited the doctor’s words: “Rest. Eat right. Dark rooms. No television. No internet. Nothing that would stimulate the brain.” He followed that up with a recent study that said it could take up to a hundred days to fully recover from a concussion, if a person didn’t follow those guidelines.

Every time he said this, I told him to “stuff it.”

He would cite the source in response.

By the time that exchange was done, I always did have a headache, and then he’d kiss me softly and say, “I told you so.”

I wanted to punch him. One time I did, but Channing only caught my hand, started laughing, and tucked me under him. I wasn’t complaining. That was one activity I could do.

Fine. I swallowed my growl.

I’d go. I had to now.

But I was going to suck him dry of all the information I could before I left.

“What’s going on with Richter?”

Channing relaxed, leaning back in his seat. “He’s going down. That’s what’s going on.”

“Have you talked to Traverse?”

Channing’s eyes grew hooded, and a wall slid in place. He got up, like I knew he would. He hated when I turned interrogator, and he went into the kitchen and looked through the fridge.