Page 12 of Sunrise (Monarch Club #3)

Vault

This is not the boy I loved when I was a kid. He’s the man I’ve fought tooth and nail to get back to for the better part of a fucking decade.

He’s right, I’ve worked my ass off to cope with the shit from my past and seeing that I’m an occasional Dom at a sex club, can take a woman to cloud nine with my body, but still shatter when I kiss a man is brutal on my pride. I thought this would be easier by now.

I called Yellow earlier. I screamed Red.

The trigger had nothing to do with what happened to me back then, and everything to do with what happened after . After I got home that day. After Knox saw me on the floor crying in my own shit smeared and blood-stained boxers. After… he kissed me.

I felt like two people trapped in a soundproof room with a glass window separating us. Vault A had checked out already. He stood in the center of the padded room and didn’t feel a fucking thing. Vault B was a nuclear weapon. Hit the wrong button and he would destroy earth.

He kissed Vault A.

Vault B watched .

I’ve been these two people ever since, and the glass separating my two parts has thinned considerably with Sophie and Ryker’s help. I never had to tell Ry what happened to me. He knew. Somehow, he fucking knew. When I got the Medusa tat on my back about five years ago, he sat with me for it.

Now, Sophie, I did tell. You have to be upfront and honest with your partner or shit goes sideways.

I came to her, infatuated, yearning for a taste of connection again, and ended up so attached, I’m officially wholly in love with her.

It’s not just what she’s like in the bedroom at the Monarch—which is the only place we’ve ever fucked—it’s how she so swiftly became part of our family. We all love her in some way.

Is Knox in love with her, too?

I think so. He’s easy for me to read.

Which is why I know that I hurt him a million times over during the after stages of my S.A. grief. He’ll say it’s fine, but I disagree. He’s saved me over and over again.

Knox is built to comfort hurt people. His dad was the first. That man’s PTSD is never predictable, yet Knox can usually somehow sense when it’s coming.

And just like when I kicked and screamed the day he found me on the bathroom floor, he also would run to his dad to hold him back from doing more harm.

Knox’s love is unconditional to a fault.

It nearly got him killed once when his father held a gun in his mouth. My gun…

It's another bad night and I need safety. Running in the pouring rain, I cut across the tracks and into Knox’s neighborhood. He hasn’t answered my texts in weeks. Is he still mad at me for trying to kill myself?

If he hadn’t found me when he did, I would have eaten that fucking bullet and put us both out of our misery.

But he came. Right on time. Said his Spidey senses knew something was off, and he got worried and kicked down the goddamn door when I didn’t answer it.

I heard his footsteps pound the stairs and Vault A sat there with dead eyes while Vault B screamed for help.

Those soundproof walls meant Knox didn’t hear a fucking thing, though.

My parents don’t either.

The teacher who raped me died in a fire last week at the campsite I volunteered at all the time. The reports and rumors said there was a gas leak in the kitchen, which exploded while he was in there. The cabin went down in flames, taking him with it.

Boom. Quick death.

He deserved worse, and I couldn’t get out of my head about it. Him dying meant he could never touch me again. I’d never run into him again. He’d never be able to do what he did to me to anyone else ever again.

But I wasn’t fixed. I was furious.

At the end of my frayed rope, sick of being trapped in my soundproof walls, I decided to let myself out a different way.

A more permanent one.

But good old Knox was faster than my cowardly ass could pull the trigger.

He barreled into my room, saw the gun at my temple, and stopped me from taking my life.

I cried as hard as I did the day he found me at my worst. His scrawny arms wrapped around me as we laid in my bed and he said, “You just have to make it to sunrise. I’ll sit with you in the dark until the sun comes up.

You can make it another day. We can all make it one more fucking day. ”

It wasn’t a day; it was a moment. My darkness comes and goes, and he’s the only sunrise I have. He hasn’t talked to me since he left my house the next morning with my dad’s gun tucked under his shirt.

I need him back.

I can’t sleep. Can’t eat. I know he hasn’t either. Ryker told me he’s been popping mollies left and right and didn’t know why. It’s been rough for all of us lately and the sun still won’t rise.

If it doesn’t, we’re all doomed.

Thunder booms overhead, and I instinctively duck down. The sky roars like I do in my head. It’s loud and terrifying and yet everyone ignores it.

Knox doesn’t though. He hears me even when I can’t speak.

I need him.

Why won’t he answer my calls or texts?

Lightning streaks through the sky and thunder follows two seconds later. My feet splash in the puddles, kicking water up onto my jeans. I’m drenched, screaming as I run as fast as my legs can carry me to his house.

“Knox!” I bang on his bedroom window. The lights are on in the hallway, but I can’t see him in his room. “Knox!” I try the front door. It’s locked. I run around back and—

Knox is on the back porch, his hands clasped over his head, tears streaming down his fucking face while his father has my gun in his mouth, screaming words I don’t understand. Knox trembles, mumbling and crying around the barrel stuffed between his teeth.

Oh my god.

There’s no reasoning with his dad when he’s in this headspace.

And he’s got the strength of ten elephants.

He yells at Knox about something, calling him Soldier and screaming about things that make no sense.

Knox doesn’t move an inch. If I call 9-1-1 and he hears the sirens, what happens? I can’t risk Knox to find out.

He’s my ride or die.

My sunrise.

So I make myself his dad’s new target…

“What is it?” Knox pulls back and runs his thumb across my lips. “I can hear you screaming in there.” He leans in and kisses my forehead. “Loudly.”

I’ve never felt more seen in my life than when I’m with Knox. “I was thinking about when I almost lost you.”

He smiles sardonically. “Which time?”

“When your pops had my gun.”

His humor drops instantly. “I still have nightmares about that one.” Knox turns the water off and steps back as if needing space from me.

“He got better, though.” That means there’s still hope for me too, right?

“He just traded drugs and booze for gambling and strippers. That’s not getting better.”

“But his PTSD,” I say, following him out of the shower. “That’s better, right?”

“Oh, for sure. That night was definitely his rock bottom.”

I’m glad I was able to save Knox at least once in our life.

It just cost me a bullet graze to the shoulder, which Dmitri sewed up in a decently straight line.

My parents never paid much attention to me.

As long as I smiled, they thought I was happy.

And as long as I had my boys, I was smiling.

Guess they weren’t completely off base, huh?

The only time they got in my business was if a grade slipped, so I made sure not to let that happen either.

Even if I had to hack into my school’s system to change a B to a fucking A.

“The thunderstorm got to him that night,” Knox says like it was no big deal. “And I knew better than to bring a gun into the house. I still don’t know how he found it, but that episode was all my fault. I should have taken better precautions, both with the weather and the weapon.”

His father checked himself into a facility the next day and was in heavy therapy for many years afterwards.

We ended up staying over at Ryker’s that night and I held Knox on the living room floor until sunrise.

We didn’t say a word to each other and when daylight hit, we pretended like everything was good.

He hands me a towel and then looks down at my shoes. “Damn, you’re more soaked than we made Sophie.”

We both laugh. It feels so damn good.

My shoes squish as I step back into the shower and strip. Knox wrings out my clothes for me and hangs them on the towel racks to dry.

“I got spare clothing in my office,” I say, wrapping a towel around my waist. He’s got one around him already, but his dick’s chubby under the terrycloth and I stare at it a little too long.

Hard-ons can be contagious.

“We need to check on her,” he says, opening the door.

Ryker and Sophie are sitting on the couch. She’s been crying and Ryker looks ready to murder someone. They both relax when they see us coming.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” I say to Ry. “Much better. Sorry.”

“There’s no I’m sorries, remember?” Knox heads to Sophie. “You okay, sweetheart?”

“Are you two?” Her gaze bounces from me to Knox.

“Yeah,” we say in unison.

“Jesus, I’m getting flashbacks already.” Ryker steps around me and heads for the door. “I nearly forgot how you two can sometimes share a brain cell.”

“It’s like the only functioning one I have left,” Knox jokes.

“True.” Ryker opens the door to leave us but turns to me at the last second and says, “Remember, baby steps.”

The door clicks shut behind him and I look up at the camera. Dmitri’s watching. He’s the only one left who’s allowed to, and this room is never not under surveillance.

“Come here.” I gather Sophie in my arms and carry her to bed. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”

“I’m sorry I pushed you too far. I thought I read the situation so well, and I failed you both.”

“You didn’t fail shit.” Knox climbs into bed with us. We sandwich her and face each other.

If we’re going to move forward as a unit, I’ll have to explain what set me off.

Once I share why Knox not kissing me back fucked me up, she exhales and covers her face with her hands again.

Funny how back in the day, I was the one who didn’t kiss back, and today, being on the other side of that situation is what triggered me. Trauma is weird sometimes.

Knox swallows hard and won’t look at me as he traces lazy circles around her arm with his middle finger. “I think we all did really well for the first round.”

“Yeah.” I laugh. “Just one meltdown and a half dozen orgasms. Not a bad ratio, really. ”

“Do you want a round two?” Sophie asks cautiously. “Not tonight, but… soon? I don’t want to put any pressure on either of you, it’s just—”

“Yes,” we say together.

“Wow.” She shakes her head and huffs a laugh. “This is… different.”

“This is us .” Knox rolls in to kiss her neck. “Do you still want us?”

Sophie’s eyes lift to meet mine, her brow furrowing while Knox continues to nuzzle her neck. She presses her hand against the back of my head and brings me in for a kiss. I’m light as a feather when I say, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Most definitely,” she purrs against my mouth.

Knox pulls his towel off and tosses it onto the floor.