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“Mmmm.” She shifts under me and yawns. “You can’t come at me with your seven-hundred-dollar perfume and expect me to keep this platonic, Rika. It’s devastating.”
She’s my safe space.
Still innocent. Still pure, no matter the ugliness that comes into her life.
I know I shouldn’t seek refuge in her as much as I do, but there’s so much going on, she seems to be the only one who realizes that I’m… Weak.
“But then…I might never have become friends with you,” she tells me. “My path with you and the guys might never have crossed, and I wouldn’t have a family.”
“I need Will back, Rika,” she whispers. I lift my head, resting my chin on her chest and seeing her eyes glisten. She purses her lips to keep her emotions in check, but eventually, she explains, “I love you and Banks and Winter and the guys, but…Will gets it.”
All the time Damon wasn’t around, Alex was there for Will.
And we always looked at it like that, too. Alex is with Will. Alex is taking care of Will. Alex keeps Will company. But none of that was really true. She hung onto him just as much as he hung onto her.
Will does that, too. I start to rub her head, but then the cabin door opens, and we both look over, seeing Banks standing in the doorway.
I miss banks
Laying at my side, she joins me in giving Alex a scalp massage, except Banks’ massage looks more like how you rub a dog’s head, curling her fingers and lightly scratching.
Banks and I both start to laugh. She has like fifty-eight dogs—okay, not that many, but a lot—so petting probably comes naturally to her.
“Except Michael doesn’t catch him, and you never come up.”
“Get your ass in here, and I’ll show you what death looks like!”
“Everything on the table tonight,” he commands. “Everything.”
I look up at my ceiling, turning my eyes toward the sound of the helicopter above descending onto the yacht.
Rich people
Michael didn’t come to find me when he arrived.
Is sth going on withbthem
My insides melt, and after all the years of wanting him and loving him, I’m still sixteen with a crush from afar. Loving someone so much it hurts.
The love. The need. The longing. But now, it’s different. There’s a hesitance there now, too. Like he’s unsure of what to do with me.
But I simply love it. I love us.
“It’s a collar,” Banks spits out.
I love her
“All right, considering our agenda, let’s first tackle the—” “I want to kill your father,” I say, cutting him off.
“I won’t,” I add. “I just want to. I wanted you to know that.”
“You don’t talk even when we are in private. The only time things are good lately is when we’re fucking.”
Calm down michael wtf
“I was there when she was five and eight and thirteen, so you remember where you and she started the next time you want to imply you have any more responsibility or love for her than I do,” he bites out. “My woman. Sit down.”
As much it hurt, though, Michael was right. Things are okay but only great when we’re in bed lately.
“This was your fantastic idea,” he says. “So out with it. You resent me for not avenging you. My father killed yours.” And then he gazes around the table, leaning back in his chair. “Is that how you all see it? I haven’t defended her?”
“And even if I could find more, I can’t put my mother through the humiliation.” He drops his eyes, pausing. “I know what your father’s death did to your mother, Rika. What you’re asking is only fair. I know that.” His eyes raise to mine again, pained. “But I killed her son, Rika. I can’t…kill her…”
“I’ll do it,” Damon chimes in.
HELL YES
We’re not criminals, and I have to constantly remind myself of that. We don’t break laws for personal gain. We do it for fun.
“I want him gone. Out of Thunder Bay,” I tell Michael. “And out of Meridian City.”
“We won’t have to,” Banks interjects.
THATS MY GIRL
“He’ll give everything to us,” she says. I hold back my smile. My favorite thing about Banks is that she proudly refrains from bringing anything to the table unless it’s a solution. I’m listening.
But couldn’t we say the same things about ourselves? We’ve hurt each other. We’ve killed.
“And I don’t want his name,” I add.
YES GIRL
“Because it’s worked before.” Damon grins, teasing her. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“We need to know what kind of fortress we’re dealing with first,” Banks tells her. “If the stories are true, they’ll have free run of the house and grounds. If we’re able to get to them, then they’re also able to get to us.”
“There’s a reason Blackchurch is like that,” she continues. “Why it’s not simply a luxury spa with locked cages and guards. Why they’re left alone as if they’re dogs thrown into a pit to eat or be eaten.”
“They’ve burned their bridges and decided not to be part of a family,” Banks goes on, “so now they’ll learn their place in the natural order.”
“They will have resorted to base instinct,” Banks tells us. “Their lives are about survival now. The rest of the world does not exist anymore. They’re a system of their own with rules and laws…” She pauses. “And consequences.”
She might know more about Blackchurch since Gabriel considered sending Damon, or she might just know what happens to dogs in cages. Either way, I know everything she says is true.
“There will be an alpha,” she continues, “and Will…will not be it.”
“Because he has an advantage over those other prisoners,” she tells us. “He’s been in prison already. He’s done this before.”
I want to look away, because I can feel the tears at the back of my throat. I want to tell him. I want to get rid of this pain and fear, but… Our future looks perfect. I’m about to change it.
We’re in love. Right now, in this moment. Things change in seconds, and I can’t.
Just let me make love to him one more time before I fuck everything up.
His plans to put Banks in D.C., which he thinks I don’t know about, but really, it makes perfect sense.
She deserves eveeything
Once she finishes her degree, he’ll convince her to run for state legislature until she’s thirty and old enough to run for Senate. Everyone perfectly positioned to make the world how we want it to be and connected enough to keep making money. It’s shady as hell, but she won’t be bad in that office. Not bad at all.
“It has to be in private,” I tell him. “He’ll be angrier if I put him on the spot in front of everyone.”
He’ll be in a terrible position, though. One where he’ll be between a rock and a hard spot, and I’d be asking him to make a choice where both options leave him giving up something he wants.
“It would kill me to see him with another woman,” I whisper. “What if he marries someone else, and I have to live in Thunder Bay and see them?”
