Page 22

I gasp as a sob tears through me. My vision blurs as I fight the urge to fall over.

The room tilts dangerously on its axis. I’m melting into nothing, seeping into the earth, dark and damp inside me where something good should be.

How can I be good? I want to be good… I want to be something worthy of love.

I start to fall over but firm hands hold me tight. Dante is danger, but he’s also safety.

The handcuffs fall away with a loud clunk.

Dante’s warm hands move up and down my arms, carefully tugging my wrists to sweetly hold them in his lap.

I sway closer until my forehead is pressed against his broad chest. His hand comes up to gently hold my neck while I sob into his perpetually warm skin.

“I’m so sorry, Dante. I’m sorry. I didn’t…

” I gasp as the sobbing reaches a crescendo.

I can’t breathe. Every word is a hiccup.

“I didn’t mean, didn’t want to… I don’t want to hurt people.

I hurt inside.” I pull away and hit my chest as Dante stares down at me with real fear in his eyes.

“Everything hurts all the time. I miss my mom and dad. I don’t want to disappoint Mason anymore.

I want to let you… let you take care of me.

I want to stop being a fuckup. Help me stop being a fuckup .

Please,” I cry out, only for Dante to tug me back into his arms.

He stands in one quick movement and deftly carries me to the bed.

When he tries to pull away, I reach out to grab on to him, hysterical and unwilling to let him go.

All of the emotions are too much, I don’t know what to do with them.

Where do all the emotions go when I can’t burn them away?

Dante shushes me, but climbs into the bed.

I cry for I don’t know how long, until my head is pounding and I feel like all the bad thoughts bled out of me to leave me renewed.

Dante’s hand glides gently up and down my back in a soothing motion that renders me even more lightheaded than the crying did.

“Reid… tell me your color.”

“Green,” I whisper.

“You did so good… you waited for me like a good boy.” Dante dips down so that our gazes lock and he smiles, that real smile that feels like it's only mine. He gently wipes tears from my cheek with the edge of the pillowcase. “You’re so perfect when you let yourself be. So good. I’m so proud of you for doing what I said. Okay?”

I nod quickly, feeling like I might cry again.

Dante leans down to kiss me sweetly, almost a promise, but not a vow.

When he pulls away, he spends the next few moments carefully undressing me.

I close my eyes under his tender ministrations.

He rolls away for a second to return with a bottle of sports drink in his hand and a chocolate bar.

Once he’s manhandled me between his spread legs, he feeds me bits of chocolate and sips of the grape-flavored drink.

I hum softly between each bite and swallow until the chocolate is gone and the drink is half empty.

Dante keeps me between his legs, back pressed against his chest. His hands skim over my chest, to my scarred stomach, my arms, then my thighs. I feel floaty and tired, like the world would disappear if I blinked too hard. I wouldn’t mind as long as I was in the safe net of Dante’s arms.

“It’s going to be okay,” Dante promises.

For the first time in a long time, I agree.

Everything hurts when I blink my eyes open the next morning. Inside I feel like a marshmallow that spent too long on the fire and outside I feel like I ran three marathons back-to-back.

“Ugh,” I groan while stretching out my limbs.

“Careful,” Dante murmurs while gently resting his hand over my stomach. “Do you want some coffee? Breakfast?”

I hum and roll over to shelter myself in his arms. A grin inches its way over my lips when his arms immediately circle around me. This is safety.

“Scrambled eggs with sourdough toast, apricot jam, and lots of cheese in the eggs, please. And coffee.”

Dante chuckles. He presses a kiss against my forehead before silently leaving the bedroom to scrounge up something as close to my request as he can find.

I fall back asleep while waiting, only rousing when Dante’s weight tugs his side of the bed down.

Squinting up at him, he smiles and wiggles a mug of coffee in front of my face. That does the trick.

I sit up and gratefully take the coffee.

The sweet nectar of the gods almost burns my tongue, but I don’t care at this point.

Dante removes the mug from my hands after a few decadent sips, only to slowly start feeding me the eggs.

Jacob must’ve made them because they’re fluffy, with just the right amount of cheese.

The toast is already perfectly smeared with butter and apricot jam as if Dante had it all lying in wait before I even said a word.

“You’re good at this,” I mumble around a mouthful of food.

Dante raises one eyebrow. “At what?”

“Taking care of me after…” I do an odd hand motion that I hope he’ll understand. Dante’s eyes sparkle and his lips curve up in a half-smile. “You know.”

“I’ve never been like this with someone before… you bring it out in me. We’re both learning new things.”

“Don’t learn too much and then think the grass is greener somewhere else.”

Dante frowns. “You’re the only grass I want.”

“Oh?” I ask as he feeds me another bite of eggs.

He blushes slightly and avoids my eyes. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Okay.”

We finish breakfast, then take a long, very sweet shower.

Dante pointedly ignores my hard cock and his own, and I wonder if that’s a sort of lingering punishment that I should start to expect after he’s taught me a lesson.

Dressed in a pair of my own sweats and one of Dante’s faded band tees, I descend the stairs to face the choir.

All the boys are in the kitchen. Jacob’s washing dishes at the sink, while Parker reads at the table with a piece of toast between his fingers, and Hayden is typing away at his laptop with a very angry sort of look on his beautiful face.

Dante clears his throat so that they all look up, then glances at me. Oh. Right.

“I am… sorry… about yesterday,” I say through gritted teeth.

Parker lifts one bushy eyebrow. “Sorry for what?”

Oh, Jesus Christ.

“Being a little shit. I won’t smoke anymore.”

Parker hums, then returns to his book as if totally disinterested with my apology. Dante should teach him a lesson. Wait, no. I don’t like that. Dante is only allowed to teach me lessons. But someone else should definitely teach Parker a lesson because he’s obnoxious.

Jacob finishes at the sink, then salutes us all. He disappears upstairs, leaving a frowning Hayden staring after him.

“Mason appears to be leaving the house today, so I’ll be tracking him.

” Parker aims a steely look at me. “I placed a very heavy security system around your house on top of your subpar one that looks fancy but doesn’t actually do shit.

It was hard bugging the place while Mason was there.

You both don’t have as many survival instincts as you should, you know.

He slept through me breaking into the house. ”

“You broke into my house ,” I squawk.

Parker disappears through the front door without a worry about my fury. I turn to Dante with narrowed eyes, but Dante just shrugs.

“You said to keep Mason safe,” Dante points out as if my fury doesn’t matter to him one bit. “You’re here. Gotta do it some way. Now, I have class today, so be a good boy and work on your homework here. Okay?”

I flush at being called a good boy in front of Hayden, but nod anyway.

I will be a good boy. Because maybe that means Dante will come home and treat me well.

Maybe. When Dante disappears out the front door with his backpack slung over his shoulder, I’m left alone with a still furiously typing Hayden.

Scully sits in his lap, purring, and every now and then Hayden pauses to rest his hand on her head and give her a little scratch.

It’s cute. Maybe they’re both psychos and she’s his familiar.

“What are you working on?” I ask because I’m nosier than my self-preservation instincts allow.

“I’m trying to steal half a million dollars from this pharmaceutical company that stole a patent from someone for a treatment for multiple sclerosis,” Hayden explains while still typing. He chews his bottom lip and squeezes one eye shut. “Obviously you’re sworn to secrecy or I’ll kill you.”

“About what you’re doing now or… all of it.”

Hayden pauses to glare at me. “All of it.”

I shrug. “Who am I going to tell? I don’t have any friends and my brother wouldn’t believe me. Also, I’m on your side. Capitalism is evil.”

“Is that why you’re okay with all of this?”

Is it? I don’t know. I think about it for a moment while Hayden returns to typing.

“Maybe, but also maybe there’s a little part of me that just likes the chaos.”

Hayden snorts. “You are a chaos gremlin, for sure. Do you know anything about Linux?”

“What language?”

Hayden lifts his head slowly to look at me for what feels like very fresh eyes. He leans forward slightly in his chair with an assessing sort of look.

“Ruby.”

I wiggle my fingers at his computer. “Give me.”

Hayden frowns, looks down at his computer, then pushes it toward me with one finger. I squint at the screen, desperately trying to understand what he’s doing. It’s the backend of a program for sure, but it looks like he’s trying to kill it without someone being able to find the death switch.

“Are you trying to make this defunct?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were stealing money from a pharmaceutical company.”

Hayden huffs in frustration. “I can’t just hack into their bank account and steal it back. Instead, I’m crashing an app the CEO invested money into so that when the stock market opens tomorrow, it’ll open low enough to scare investors into selling in mass.”

“Devious,” I compliment with an impressed smile.

Hayden sits up straighter. “Thank you.”

Hayden and I spend the afternoon passing the laptop back and forth until we’ve dismantled the app from being able to work properly, even with the fail-safes in place.

By the time we’re satisfied with the destruction, Jacob is wandering in to start cooking dinner.

He takes one look at the two of us cozied up at the table together and sighs dramatically.

“Can I help?” I blurt out while Jacob’s head is buried in the fridge.

Jacob aims an odd look at me over his shoulder. “I guess. Can you chop vegetables?”

“I’m pretty good with knives,” I say with a leer.

Jacob stares blankly back at me. “Okay.”

I join Jacob at the counter. He slides a cutting board in front of me, then plops down potatoes in a variety of colors.

He tells me to chop them into quarters, so that’s what I do.

It’s mindless, makes my brain shut off much like working on the coding with Hayden did.

I have sets of equations to do as homework, but I think this matters more.