Slade rears back and forces my eyes to him. “Are you kidding me? Why the hell didn’t you tell me? I would have gone with you.”
Oh, Jesus. Had Slade been there and seen his mother walk through the door, all hell would have broken loose. I shake my head and give him an encouraging smile, knowing that he comes with the purest intentions. “It’s fine,” I tell him. “I went with Shay. I spent the morning sharing everything with her and then she offered to come with me.”
“That couldn’t have been easy,” he comments. “Are you alright? You should have said something and I wouldn’t have come at you like that.”
“Trust me, your idiotic bullshit was exactly what I needed to get my mind off it.”
Slade rolls his eyes. “I resent that,” he tells me, raising a cocky brow and waiting for my returning smirk before continuing. “What happens now? Do they arrest him and then it’s all over?”
I shake my head, wishing I had better news. “Not exactly,” I say, wondering how I’m going to explain this. “They’re still investigating mine and Blake’s kidnapping, so it’s getting added to the ever-growing list of bullshit they have against him. It could take months to get an arrest. There are thirteen years of crap to go through. Lucien is a powerful man with all sorts of connections so when they go after him, they need to make sure he won’t get off. They want to nail him and despite knowing that he’s probably going to come after me in the meantime, I want this done properly so he can’t get off.”
“Shit, Virago…”
“Yeah,” I say, realizing he’s completely lost for words, the same way I seemed to be. It’s a lot to take in and I can’t exactly say that it’s something everyone goes through because it’s not. This is new territory for us and I want to tread carefully.
“You really think he’s going to come for you?”
I nod, looking up at him so he can really see the concern in my eyes. “I’m almost sure of it, but what scares me is that while he’s here, he could come for you.”
“Don’t worry about me, baby. I can handle that prick. You just focus on doing you,” he pulls me back in and I lay my head against his chest, listening to the heavy beat coming from within. “I’ve got you, Virago. I’m going to keep you safe.”
I relax into him, I know he means that with every piece of his heart, but Slade is no match for Lucien Valentine. He’s a high school basketball star, Lucien is the devil. We’re playing in two very different worlds and someone is going to get burned.
When the shower runs cold, we escape back into my room and quickly get dressed before we have to explain what we’ve been doing to Shay. Slade sits up on my bed, playing on his phone as I make myself comfortable beside him with my sketchpad.
The hours quickly tick by and before I know it, the bedroom door is swinging open with Damian standing expectantly in front of us. “What the hell do you want?” Slade questions, glancing up at him for the shortest moment before dropping his attention back to his phone.
“It’s Friday night. I wanna go out and do something.”
“Then go,” Slade grumbles, making my lips pull into an amused grin.
“Nope, that’s bullshit,” Damian says, striding deeper into my room until his hand is curling around my arm. “You can stay here and fuck around all you like, but I’m taking Sky with me.”
I have only a second of warning before Damian launches me off the bed. My sketchpad falls to the ground as my pencils are thrown off my lap and fly halfway across the room.
My shoes are tossed at me and I’m quick to put them on before Damian decides to do it himself. “What the fuck, man? We were chilling.”
“Yeah, and now she’s chilling with me. In or out, bro?”
Slade groans and lets out a loud, irritated sigh. “This better be fucking worth it,” he says, getting up from my bed. He grabs his things and the three of us stalk out of my room.
We walk through the house and find Shay sitting on the couch with the whole tub of ice cream as Ben sits beside her with his feet popped up on the coffee table. Judging by the five empty bottles on the floor and the glassy look in his eyes, I’d say he’s well and truly fucked. Ben rarely drinks so I don’t doubt that it’s gone straight to his head.
“Hey, we’re going out,” I tell them as the three of us walk out the door.
Ben’s eyes flick to me. “Are you going to be drinking?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Drugs?”
“Nu-uh.”
His eyes slice across to Slade before coming back to mine. “You don’t plan on having sex?” I shake my head again and Ben scrunches his face in distaste. “Then why the fuck are you even going out? How fucking boring.”