Page 35

Levi

I pull Della’s bedroom door open.

Xavier stands outside, fist raised, ready to knock. I nudge him back as his eyes drift over my shoulder to linger on Della’s sleeping form.

It’s still early, and it took everything I had to slip out of that bed and dress instead of staying right there forever. I covered her with her sheet and kissed her hair, wanting to stay, hating myself for what I’d done.

Xavier’s eyebrow rises. “When you said you’d look out for her, this wasn’t what I thought you meant.”

“Quiet,” I hush him as I peek over my shoulder. After I’ve confirmed she’s still sleeping, I pull the door closed behind me and motion for Xavier to follow me down the hallway. “Yes. I slept with her. You can stop looking at me like that.”

His gray eyes dip and sparkle with amusement. “Yeah, I got that with the way you're hanging out of your pants.”

“I’m not.” Still, I check to confirm it. I’m not. When I lift my head, he’s grinning at me. “Prick,” I mutter.

He’s traded his gardener’s overalls for blue jeans and a white T-shirt. His dark hair is slightly damp. He couldn’t have come back from Haven Academy and showered that long ago. Like me the night before, he came to check on Della.

It’s become a daily habit for all of us these days to want to make sure she’s okay. She hasn’t just slipped into our home; she’s in our hearts, and I can’t imagine her not being here.

I just hope I haven’t fucked things up for all of us.

He bumps my shoulder as we reach the staircase. “What’s the reason for the scowl?”

“Sleeping with her was a mistake.”

Della needs time to recover from what happened to her, not for an alpha to jump her the way I did last night. It was a mistake, but it doesn’t feel like one.

After another probing look, he claps me on the shoulder and leads the way downstairs. “Come on. You look like you need a drink.”

In the kitchen, he pours us a generous helping of whiskey from a bottle he retrieves from a cupboard next to the refrigerator. None of us are big drinkers; we’re rarely at home to relax with a glass of anything.

But today?

Today I need a drink. Maybe it’ll dull the guilt twisting my gut that I took advantage of Della when she needed me to comfort her instead.

“I should tell you how crazy it is for us to be drinking whiskey for breakfast,” I say as I take the glass he offers me.

“Will you?”

“Remind me tomorrow.” I roll the liquid around in my mouth: caramel, hints of tobacco, and teak. Then I take another sip while leaning against the kitchen island. “Anything exciting happen at the school that you need a drink?”

He shakes his head. “After what happened to you in the sauna, I stayed away from anywhere someone could lock me in. It felt good to leave it behind, though. Like I was coming home to something good.”

Della.

I make a soft sound of assent and sip from my glass as he does the same.

“So, what happened?” he asks, setting his glass down.

“She’s recovering. She doesn’t need this.”

“Ah! So, you think you took advantage of her?”

My guilt burns hotter, and I swallow down a bigger gulp, because that’s exactly how I feel. “Vincent didn’t bring her here for us to fuck her.”

She’s here to heal and recover. For us to keep her safe from the alphas who hurt her.

She’s said that her abduction wasn’t our fault. She’s wrong. It is our fault. I almost wish it were just guilt motivating me to want to take care of her. Maybe it won’t hurt so much when she realizes we’re the biggest source of her pain and walks away from us.

Xavier sips his whiskey. “He’s been so focused on revenge for Aly for so long that I’m surprised he was the one who suggested bringing her here.” He watches me over the rim of his glass. “And how was sleeping with Della Jackson?”

It isn’t an innocent question. There’s interest stirring in his gaze.

Vincent has resembled a monk with his all-work, no-play habits. Working out became a crutch to focus my mind and body elsewhere. Rarely, I’d go to a bar and meet a girl—nothing permanent. Everything is temporary, including the houses we rent for a few months.

Xavier is the one who hasn’t completely shut off his desire to feel. He’s been with more women than we have since losing Aly. Not a lot. Just more than Vince and me.

But Della has changed things for all of us. How we feel, our desire to stay at home and be with her, and even how the house feels.

I hadn’t wanted to leave her.

Guilt and fear drove me out of her bed far sooner than I’d wanted to leave. Guilt, because I should have been focusing on her needs, not my own. Fear, in case she woke first, and I saw the regret in her eyes as she slipped away.

“Our priority should be on Aly,” I say instead.

He tilts his head. “That good, huh?”

So good, I’m getting hard when I remember how perfect she felt as I slid inside her. The soft moan she made as her nails clung to my back and she bucked against me when she came.

I roll the amber contents of my glass, move to take a sip, realize I crave the woman upstairs more than the drink, and return the glass to the white marble counter. “I’ve started thinking that we need to start living more than we have.”

“Me too.”

I jerk my head up at Xavier’s quiet words.

He’s staring out of the double doors that lead into the backyard.

“There was a girl at the school. River. I was on my way to rescue you from the motel when I saw her sitting on her own. At first, I didn’t even see her.

Then I told myself to ignore her. It didn’t matter that she seemed to be upset.

She’d get over whatever was upsetting her, or someone else would come along and talk to her.

” He looks at me. “I tried not to think about how many people I’ve walked past the last few years, telling myself they didn’t matter when they needed help.

Every person Della bumps into, she stops to help.

We need to be better. All of us need to do better. ”

“Was she okay?”

One side of his lips kicks up in a crooked smile. “I convinced her to run away.”

I blink at him. “You did what ?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t intend to. What Della was doing at the school is what we should all have been doing. That cage is the worst kind of prison because the inmates don’t even know they’re trapped.”

“So, what happens now? With Della? With the investigation?”

“I like her,” he quietly admits. “Even when I tell myself not to. I like her. And the investigation?” He shrugs. “We’re out of suspects. The Council and the city are turning on Vince, so we need to pull him out before someone tries to end him.”

“We have to get those alphas who hurt her,” I say, hoping Della is still asleep as I voice a thought I’ve been having with increasing regularity. “Finding Aly’s killer is important, but we have to get the guys who hurt Della, Xavier.”

He raises his glass, not so much in a toast as a fierce promise with the determination glinting in his eyes. “We’ll skin the motherfuckers alive before we put them out of their misery.”

They tried to break an unbreakable woman. A woman I started falling for the first time I put her on her ass in a fencing lesson and she refused to stay down.

A woman I would set the world on fire to protect.

I clink my glass with his. “Where’s Vince? We should talk to him—and possibly Lucas Security—about tracking them down. Vince said they had a deal.”