Dahlia Aldridge
My heavy eyelids struggled to open, a light, cold sweat breaking out across my body and causing a tremble to work its way through me until I was gripping the blanket so tightly my fists hurt. My body was sore. My throat especially, and I knew it was from yesterday. I felt dehydrated, and my stomach churned, clearly far too empty despite the pasta I’d had hours ago. I felt like total crap.
A shaky exhale broke from my lips as I forced my eyelids to open completely, my gaze focusing on the slowly encroaching dawn light that was illuminating the dark floors of my bedroom inch by inch.
It was going to be a sunny day.
Something about that felt extremely out of place. The past twenty-four hours had been anythingbutsunny, so the concept almost felt mocking. Muttering a small curse under my breath, I tried to shake myself from the moment. I was normally decent at staying positive, but that was clearly not on the agenda today.
No. I couldn’t think that way.
I could be positive! I had to be. Or at least try.
Maybe the blue skies and sunny weather would make today easier. After all, while it felt like my entire world had been flipped upside down in a matter of twenty-four hours, to the rest of the world, it was a normal Wednesday morning in late August. Not one filled with confusion and a contrasting sense of relief that most of the secrets between my boys and I had been laid bare.
I still didn’t understand everything, but I also knew now that if I wanted to know something, all I had to do was ask and the information would be at my fingertips. It was that easy and that complicated. One, because I would have to actually decide what I wanted to ask first, and considering the ridiculous amount of questions popping through my brain, that was challenging. But secondly, I had to be prepared for whatever answer I may receive.
My boys may not have told me everything, but they wouldn’t lie to me. That much was clear.
I swallowed, thinking just how clear King had been about his feelings towards me. My skin flushed as I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to get my body to behave, knowing now was not the time to be getting turned on.
Despite the hell that the last twenty-four hours had brought between the social media attack and the realization that the Brooks family was possibly putting my boys in danger, I was finding that there was a small reason to be positive. A ray of light that was successfully breaking through all of that, removing years of doubt that had accumulated on my soul.
My guys loved me like I loved them.
Not in a friendly way—although they were very much my friends—but in a much more complicated way that was tinged with a darkness that I hadn’t expected. While only King and Sterling had told me directly, I was starting to see clearly how all their actions had reflected that truth. I honestly felt a bit dumb, because they had made it very obvious this entire time how they felt, and I had been so caught up on being insecure that I had never realized it.
Biting down on my lip, I considered the only part of the equation King hadn’t included.His cousin.
There was a very large chance that I was going to fall down that rabbit hole of emotions regarding Dermot much faster than he did, if he did at all. I’d made it clear how I felt about him, and while I knew he liked me, there was a level of insecurity that paired with not having as close of a relationship with him. Even Stratton was easier to be sure about than Dermot, mostly because I had been right about Stratton. I had been right to never give up, despite him pushing me away time and time again.
Never again.
Suddenly, a heavy arm shifting around my center pulled me from my thoughts as it tugged me against its owner possessively. My toes curled as a large hand slipped underneath my sleep shirt and splayed across my stomach, an exhale against my neck causing a heated shiver to roll through my frame. My skin prickled, and their nose brushed against the sensitive skin there, making my attempt to not get turned on a complete and utter failure. Something that I had no doubt the man in question would love and goad me about endlessly.
Yates Carter.
The cocky, blunt, oddly possessive, brilliant man had left me reeling in the past twenty-four hours. I thought I had known everything about Yates, and maybe I had always known this side of him existed, but if you had told me before this past weekend that I would be waking up with his arm around me, I would have laughed. Not because I wouldn’t have wanted that. No, I think I had come to terms with my not so little crush. More because I didn’t think either of us would be able to stop arguing for long enough to fall asleep like this.
Then again, the Yates I experienced last night in the midst of the crisis was a far stretch from the man I enjoyed poking at and teasing. No, this man had been controlled, eerily calm, and left me nearly melted with desire at the way he took charge of the situation and, more importantly, me. I was positive there was a problem somewhere in how much that concept appealed to me.
So while it should have been surprising, it felt right that he had me currently wrapped up in a tight, possessive, cocoon-like hold that surrounded me with his warm, familiar scent. My lips pulled up happily as I curled further into my soft, luxurious bed, wondering how long the two of us could stay like this until he decided to wake up.
From what I knew about King and Yates, both of them were morning people, and while I didn’t know what time it was besides ungodly early, I figured his internal alarm would be ringing in no time. Then again, last night had been a late one, and I had fallen asleep on his lap in my father’s office before they had even finished working, so I had no idea when he actually fell asleep.
My guys had spent several hours sorting through boxes of information, along with files from a few laptops I had never seen before. Everything had been extremely organized, impressively so, and stored in not only paper format but electronic as well. I wasn’t one to normally find organization sexy, but somehow Yates had made it exactly that, which was absolutely dangerous.
No one needed to have so much sex appeal that they could make file folders sexy.Just saying.
Unfortunately, now that it was morning and my adrenaline from last night was gone, I found myself frustrated that I hadn’t asked more questions. I had simply laid there, curled up against Yates, watching my boys with a sense of numbness that blocked out the anxiety. I had finally felt safe enough to do so, after months of secrets and living with the fear of never wanting to look at my phone, so when I had the opportunity to finally relax, my body completely jumped on board.
Now though, I needed answers. Starting with what all of those boxes had contained. Were they the boxes and files that made up the dossier of everyone in Camellia? And why did all of the guys seem to offer Yates a series of odd looks after returning from his house? What was in that fourth-floor room? Because I had one hundred percent not missed the tone of voice King had used when asking Yates if he was sure about him going in there.
Had I ever even been to that floor of Yates’s house?I frowned, realizing that I hadn’t because his bedroom was on the third floor.Well… that would clearly need to change.
I know, curiosity killed the cat… and I would no doubt end up in the same situation… but it was a wonderful distraction from the other, more daunting questions running through my head.
Like, why had the FBI decided to work with them? Why not contact our parents? What did that say about the influence that my boys had, and why did I feel like it was far more than I realized? Also, how did the Brooks family play into all of this?