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13
REBEL
I didn’t feel as triumphant as I thought I would when Vaughn walked out of the room and back to his own. The door slammed a moment later, and I winced at Kian. “Why do I just feel like we kicked a puppy?”
He sighed. “’Cause Vaughn is real good at putting on the puppy-dog eyes when it suits him. Don’t feel bad. He’s a professional liar.”
I cocked my head. “There’s a story there. That was said with the hurt of a man betrayed.”
“It’s nothing. Ancient history. We’re both over it.” He tossed his magazine aside and stood, offering me a hand up. “Come on. Let’s get the rest of your stuff out of your car now that his lordship has graciously approved your stay.”
I followed him, both of us eyeing Vaughn’s bedroom door as we passed to go down the stairs. But I was soon huffing and puffing, carrying boxes to and from the car and into my new room, and too excited about the prospect of living in this massive house to worry about Vaughn being a jackass. He wasn’t my problem. Especially since the man had a wife who could worry about him.
Plus, Kian was entirely distracting. He lugged the heaviest of my stuff up the stairs, placed it all neatly in my room, until only one box was left.
“I can grab it.” I reached for the last, overflowing box.
“It weighs more than you do. Not a chance. Give it.”
He swiped it before I could stop him, and I slammed down the hatchback’s door, before locking it.
Not that anyone was going to try stealing it around here, when there were BMWs, Porches, and Mercedes everywhere you looked. We walked up the staircase side by side, Kian chattering about the history of the house and how his dad had worked here when Kian was a kid.
“He landscaped the yard, renovated the ground floor bathroom, built the pool house…” He put the last box down on the writing desk in my room and paused mid-sentence.
I glanced over at him. “Your dad was the one who built the pool house, and then…” I prompted, truly curious about the property I’d inherited. I suddenly wanted to know everything about it, from its history to the people who’d owned it and lived here over the decades. It had to be one of the original properties in the area, perhaps once surrounded by land that had been sold off to make way for the new houses.
But Kian had lost interest in the story. He plucked three square photos from the top of my box and stared down at them. Horror stole the color from his face.
Oh fuck. I should have buried those deeper. I stormed across the room and snatched them from his grasp. “Those are private.”
He spun and glared at me.
I flinched at the intensity, and he backed right off, hands up. “Shit. Sorry. But what the fuck, Rebel? What are those?”
I swallowed thickly, exhaustion swamping me after a long, emotionally charged day. I didn’t have it in me to lie. “Photos to remind me of the injuries I sustained after I was attacked.”
He ground his jaw. “Who did it? A boyfriend?”
I shook my head quickly. “No. I made a bad decision in going home with a man who had friends waiting…” Tears pricked the backs of my eyes, emotion welling up in my chest from just looking at those photos again. I didn’t even want to talk about it for fear I’d cry. But then it was too late. The tears spilled over and coursed down my cheeks.
“Fuck,” Kian ground out. He wrapped his arms around me, dragging me to his chest in a bear hug.
I stiffened in his arms.
He must have felt it. He pulled back quickly. “Shit, sorry. That’s probably not what you need right now after what they did. Not everyone is a hugger.”
I was stunned to find that though his embrace had taken me by surprise, it hadn’t scared me. Kian gave off an overgrown teddy bear with golden retriever energy sort of vibe. It was hard to feel scared around a man who encouraged you to jump on his bed.
But at this point, I didn’t trust my own judgment. So I let him back off, even though the hug had felt kind of nice.
Kian tapped his fingers against the box. “I can promise you, though Prince Stick Up His Ass can be a royal dickhead, he won’t hurt you. I’ve known him long enough to say that with one-hundred-percent certainty. And full disclosure? I’m good at hurting people, but I’ve never laid a hand on a woman, and I never will.”
He sighed when I didn’t say anything.
“Talk is cheap, though, huh? I bet you went home with that guy, thinking he was nice too. Am I right?”
“I wish you weren’t.”