Page 31 of Before the Fall
“Jaxon, wait!” Ryker barks behind me, and for a fleeting moment, I consider marching back down the fucking stairs and letting him have it. Both barrels.
I don’t, though. Yes, I have every reason to be royally pissed. The woman I love is either dead or somewhere at some hospital nowhere near where I am at the moment. I’m supposed to kill her father. I’m beat up to fucking hell. And all of this is because Ryker didn’t kill Victor months ago.
That said, I’m nothing if not loyal, and I threw my lot in with Ryker when I had to make a choice between my uncles. I can disagree with Ryker about what he should have done to handle Victor before this, but he’s still my boss.
Even if I want to knock him the fuck out right now.
So I ignore him and keep walking to that room, desperate to lay my head down for just a little while. If I can get even a few hours of solid sleep, maybe my life won’t seem so fucking terrible when I wake up.
I feel my eyes closing even as I walk. Well, just my left one since my right one I can’t even see out of it’s so fucking swollen. I hope I get the chance to give that Dickie payback sometime soon. Let’s see how he likes me shoving my goddamned fist into his face.
“Jaxon, wait!” Kaia calls out as she rushes down the hallway to stop me.
I like my aunt. I really do. But right now, all I want to do is snap at her to leave me the fuck alone. Do these people not understand what I’m going through? I’ve lost everything. At least give me a chance to recuperate a little before I have to deal with it.
She catches me just as I’m about to walk into the bedroom. “I need you to know something before you go in there.”
“What? Like I should wear clothes this time so I don’t flash you like I did last time? Fine. To be honest, I wasn’t even going to change, so assume those sheets you have on the bed are going to need to be bleached to hell since I’m bloody underneath all this.”
She seems uninterested in me, oddly enough, and instead looks at the door like there’s something in that room I can’t see. Did she change the kid’s room to this one, and I’m about to walk in on Maxim taking his nap?
“Listen, Kaia. It’s been the day from hell. I don’t want to talk about anything right now, okay? I’m about as down as a man could be, and in addition to the shit you can see they did to me, I’m pretty sure I’ve got at least a few bruised ribs. Maybe even something going on with my spleen. So whatever it is you want to tell me, I don’t care. In fact, I’m so fucking low at this moment, I don’t care about anything.”
Frowning, she looks like she’s going to cry when she opens the door for me. “It’s not all bad, honey.”
She has no idea how fucking awful it is to be me right now.
I walk past her without a word into the bedroom and wonder why in the middle of the day it’s so damn dark in here. Not that I mind. It’s definitely better than the other day when Kaia came in and proceeded to try to kill me with sunlight.
As I strip out of my clothes, I silently chastise myself for blaming her. It was the hangover, not her who was trying to kill me.
But I’m an ornery motherfucker. I don’t die that easily.
I catch a whiff of a familiar fragrance, but I push that out of my mind as quickly as it appears. That perfume Tia wears that smells like flowers in the summertime is probably similar to the detergent Kaia likes to use on the sheets. I can’t remember the name of it, but it doesn’t matter.
It’ll be nice to be surrounded by something that smells so much like home.
Undressed, I throw back the covers, and the scent grows even stronger. There, in the dark, I tear up. Christ, is she dead, and I’m just too stubborn to admit the truth? If she is, it’s my fault. I broke up with her last year to save her, and what ended up happening?
The same fucking result anyway.
God, it’s days like this that I fucking hate my life. Why couldn’t I have been born into a family of landscapers or tailors? Hell, I’d take a family full of fast food employees if it meant I’d get to have her in my arms again.
I sit on the edge of the bed as the misery I’ve been denying washes over me. Tia’s gone. I fucking lost her because of who I am. Everything I worried about the entire time we were together happened, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.
Behind me, I feel something push against my back. Did someone leave a laundry basket on the bed? That would explain why I’m smelling that summery flower scent. It would also explain why Kaia was in such a hurry to catch up to me. She could have just said there was something on the bed.
“Who’s there? Kaia? Is that you?” a soft voice asks.
I jump up, stunned it’s a person and not a basket full of fucking sheets next to me. I hurry to turn on the light and nearly fall over when I see her.
Am I dreaming? Did that shithead Dickie beat me up so badly that I’m hallucinating? Is it possible Victor didn’t let me go and I’m still tied to that chair in his house getting the tar kicked out of me?
“Tia? Is that really you?” I ask, sure I sound like a fucking madman who’s losing his mind.
She stares at me like I’m a stranger, which makes me sure this is some fantasy I’m playing out in my head as I get pummeled by Victor’s henchman. Tia’s dead. She’s not here. Fuck, I’m not even here.
Finally, the vision I’ve created in my mind says, “Jaxon! You’re alive!”