Hellraiser (The Devil's Own #2) (22 page)

“Club shit? No, you can’t know club shit. But this weekend wasn’t about the club,” he answers, his eyes trained onto mine like he’s fighting some internal battle about what he should say next. “It was Eddy Woolbrock.”

My heart stops that very moment. Taking my eyes off the still water, I look at him. “What?!”

He nods, his eyebrows pinching together. “Felt fucking good, too.”

I stand from the log. “I can’t fucking believe you did that! You promised me you’d leave it alone, Brax!” My hand comes up to my forehead. “I can’t believe you fucking killed someone! This is on me! This is
my
fault!” My heart pounds through my ears and tears prick the corners of my eyes. I made peace with what they had done some time ago. I never wanted the dark cloud of death to hang over me. The tears stream over my cheeks. “He’s dead and it’s my fault! How could you?!”

He mutters, “Shit,” before standing to his feet. He walks towards me and I step back. His eyes narrow. “This isn’t on you, Melissa! You’re fucking kidding yourself if you think that I’d let someone walk free knowing what they had done to you! Frost took his wife out in the most theatrical way possible too, and you know what?” he says.

I squeeze my eyes shut before he can finish. “YOU FUCKING KILLED HIS WIFE TOO?!” I scream.

“Yeah.” He nods, his arm wrapping around my waist and pulling my body against his. “I regret fucking nothing, and you’re fucking lucky I don’t search down the rest of the fuckers who joined in.”

I push off his chest, but his grip tightens around my waist. “Let me go!” I scream again, beating his chest. My body is convulsing in terror—or revelation, maybe.

“Listen to me, baby.” He bends down to my ear and growls, “I need you in my life forever,” he begins, and my sobs come out stronger, my chest tightening. The trees that are surrounding us begin to blur and cave in on me. “I want you to be my old lady.”

“Fuck you!” I throw back at him so fast I barely have a chance to catch the words before they escape. He unlatches me from his grip instantly. Some sick and twisted part of me craves his embrace as soon as it goes. “I don’t want anything to do with you! I can’t! I can’t believe you fucking did this! Oh my God.”

I step away from him and he doesn’t follow me. He doesn’t call out to me as I stomp back over the grass and into the house. He sits back onto the log, running his hands over his head.

He asked me to be his old lady. That was huge, but right now, I don’t care. All I care about is that not one, but
two
people lost their lives because of his careless actions, and maybe there was a part of me that knew he would be making them pay for that one day, but he went against his promise to me as well. He shit all over my trust. I’ll never be able to confide in him about anything because I’ll be too scared he’d just “86” anyone else in my life who hurt me, too. When he said he’d kill anyone that so much as batted an eye at me, I didn’t think he meant literally.

People are dead because of
me
.

I dial Jada’s number and she picks up straight away. “Hey—“

“I need you to drop what you’re doing right now and come pick me up.”

“What? Are you okay? I’ll be two minutes.”

“Just hurry.”

I hang up the phone and pace around the room, after I’ve packed all my stuff, for exactly two minutes, watching the time tick by on the alarm clock. As soon as I hear the gravel crunch under a car, I shoot out of the room, run down the stairs I had once been carried up over Hella’s shoulders, tears blurring my vision, and out the front door. Swinging the passenger door open and taking a seat, I chance one more look at Hella, who still sits on the log looking out over the water.

With a heavy heart, I turn to Jada. “Just go.”

Melissa

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Jada asks on our drive back to her house.

“I don’t know.” I wipe the flow of tears that won’t stop streaming down my face. “Jesus!” I let out a frustrated growl. “Why the fuck can’t I stop crying??”

“Because you’re in love with him, Melissa.”

My eyes shut at her words, my heart sinking deeper into its own sorrow.

“I’m not ready to talk about it. I think I just want to go home, go away from it all.” We pull into Jada’s driveway where Millie and Garret are tossing a rugby ball between each other. My chest tightens again, not because I love Garret—though I do—but because he reminds me so much of Hella.

She pulls up the emergency brake. “What about the wedding?”

“I’ll come back for that.”

She sighs, pulling the keys from the ignition. “And you’re absolutely positive you want to do this? What happened? Why didn’t he chase you?”

The hurt look that glazed over his eyes invades my brain and more tears flow out. “He didn’t chase me because… he asked me to be his old lady and my reply was ‘Fuck you’.”

Jada sucks in a breath before exhaling. “I love you, you know that, but this is huge for him. He’d be wounded and hurting, no doubt, because he put himself out there for the first time
ever
.” She accentuates the word “ever” and I know where she’s coming from. I also know that, all in all, her loyalty will come to Hella because of their history, and I respect that.

“That’s not what our fight was about.” Millie starts walking towards the parked car. When she sees my face, her walking speeds up. “Look, I just really need to leave, today.”

“I can take you.” Jada swings open her door just as Millie reaches mine.

“Hey,” Millie says, searching my tear-stricken face. “What’s happened?” A look flashes over her for a brief second before it’s gone.

“I’m going back to Westbeach. I’ll be back for the wedding, though. Do you want to stay or come?”

“I can come if you need me to, no problem, but someone should probably tell mom. She’s been staying with Meadow.”

“Mom will be fine,” I answer dryly.

“Okay, I’ll come.” Millie reaches for my hand and I flinch away from her.

“Hang on,” Jada steps in. “It’s still dangerous out there for Millie. Maybe she should stay here for her own safety.”

Millie’s eyes soften. “Aren’t you getting sick of me? At least this way you can have your casual flings without me cramping your style.”

Jada laughs. “Who? Willis? He’s just easy, nothing big.”

Millie smiles before looking back towards me. “Honestly, I can come.”

Jada continues, “I also don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be out there alone though, Melissa.”

“No,” I interrupt. “No, you should stay here. Jada is right, and I’ll be fine. Kurr hasn’t made any moves and he won’t; I’m nothing to him.” I step aside from her and walk towards Garret. “Hey, bud! How’s things?”

He looks into my eyes. “You’re sad. What’s wrong?”

I laugh softly. “Nothing I can’t handle, and if that fails, I have cookies.”

He smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I ate all the cake.”

My eyes pop open. “Really?”

“Well…” he starts, tossing the ball in the air casually. “Mom’s boyfriend ate some, too.”

I laugh, bending down to face him. “I’m going back to Westbeach, but I’ll see you in two weeks for the wedding.”

He throws his arms around my neck. “Whatever Uncle Brax did to make you sad, he didn’t mean to! He loves you.” My body stills. Kids can be so intuitive at the most inconvenient of times. I stand back to my feet and ruffle my hand through his hair. “I’ll see you later, bud.”

A look of sadness weighs down on him and I almost break all over again. “Bye.”

He waves at me as I walk back to the car where Jada and Millie are watching me nervously.

I swallow past the rock that has formed in my throat, fresh tears threatening to resurface. “Come on.”

We both get back into the car as Millie returns to Garret. They both wave at me as we reverse out of the driveway and, what feels like, out of my life.

Walking back into my apartment feels surreal, like the past two weeks didn’t just happen. Like I didn’t just walk away from the one man I have ever felt anything for. I drop my bag onto my kitchen table and walk towards the fridge. Taking out a bottle of water, I walk into my bedroom and flop onto my bed where all the frustration, hurt, and pain comes pouring out of me. A few hours later, I wake in the same position, the room filled with the thick darkness of the night. I sit up, crawling up the bed and resting my back against my headboard. I look out the window, the curtain waving from the light breeze blowing in from the silent night. I reach over to my water and take a sip before looking at the time on my clock that sits on my bedside table. Four a.m. Great. Pushing off my bed, I flick my bedside lamp on before walking down to my bathroom and filling up the tub.

I take a seat on the edge of the tub, my eyes fixed onto the ground while I think over the memories I had made with Hella. My heart tenses in my chest with the sound of the gushing water overtaking the silence. I’m in love with him, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Even if I did begin to start second-guessing my impulsive actions, there’s no way he’d take me back now. I had turned him down. It would have taken him a ton of courage to ask me that, and I shoved it back in his face.

Now, my heart breaks for other reasons. Now, I’m not crying for the two people he had killed; I’m crying because I was uncontrollably and irrevocably in love, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to take away the hurt I had inflicted on him. His cheeky smile begins to weigh down on me and I slowly begin to realize just how much he had changed for me over that space of time. In those small two weeks that I was back there, he was nothing but sweet to me. We went from enemies to lovers and he changed that. He did that for me.

A sob escapes me again and I run my hands over arms, wishing it was his rough, calloused palms gliding over me and not my soft ones. I’m all alone with a huge gaping hole weeping inside my chest and it’s all my fucking fault.

Turning off the water, I rip my clothes off and sink into the hot water, the pinching sensation sidetracking my pain away from my broken heart. Dropping down, I sit in the water until it turns prickling cold and the morning sunrise streams through the window. Stepping out of the tub, I wrap a towel around my body before walking back down to my bedroom.

Taking a seat on my queen-size bed, I look over to my bag before bending over to take my phone out of the side pocket. When it lights up, I see a whole bunch of missed calls, texts, and voice messages. Sighing, I swipe it unlocked before opening up the message icon, secretly hoping Hella had messaged me. No such luck. Not one single text or call is from him; they’re all from Meadow. I’m not ready to talk with her yet, or anyone that was still there, so I type out a new message saying that I’m fine before walking into my closet and pulling out some comfortable clothes I can work in. Since I’m back, I may as well use my time at work, keep my mind busy. After I’m changed, I walk out the door and down to the underground parking where my car’s parked before driving to work.

Hella

The amber liquid trapped in the heavy glass bottle that hangs from my grip isn’t going down me fast enough. Everything in my line of vision starts to become unfocused.

Beast walks up to me, his grip around my shoulder tensing as he takes a seat beside me.

“Wanna tell me why Meadow is trying to get a hold of Melissa frantically? Or why you look like shit?”

I bring the rim of the bottle to my lips, swallowing the burn that the whiskey delivers each time. “Yeah, I asked her to be my old lady and she was too caught up in the fact that I killed those two motherfuckers that she
left
. Brother, she
left
.”

His eyes search mine, his bottom lip pulling into his mouth as his eyebrows pinch together.

“She didn’t take it well, huh?” he asks, diverting his eyes away from mine.

I look to him, my eyes not hiding my annoyance. “No, she didn’t.”

Jessie, the new club whore, comes up to me. Her dress hugs her tightly, her big tits sprawl out everywhere, and her platinum blonde hair hangs long, around the same length as Melissa’s. Only, I bet if I pulled that shit hard enough, I know it’d all come out. Where Melissa is a natural blonde and her hair is naturally long, this slut’s hair is bottle dyed and the hair’s only that long because some poor horse had its tail chopped and dyed. I sink into my seat more, my cap shading over my eyes and my legs stretched wide. She swings one of her legs over my waist so she’s straddling my hips. Her hands come up to the back of my neck. “Can I do anything to help you, baby?” she purrs, and I bet she’s aiming for sexy, but all it comes out as is desperate.

“Yeah,” I lift my hips up to hers, my cock thrusting against her pussy that rests over me. My hand trails up to the back of her neck before I pull her ear down to my lips. “You can get your fucking shit off me and stay the fuck away,” I growl softly, my grip around her neck tightening before throwing her onto the ground effortlessly.

Beast sits opposite me, his index finger running over his top lip and his eyes studying mine. I bring my drink back to my lips before looking down at the shocked little whore on the floor. Her hand brushes the stray strands of her hair down onto her head, or checking to make sure no one can see her weave.

“Fuck off,” I say, dismissing her.

She rushes to her feet before quickly walking out of the clubhouse.

Beast chuckles. “You gonna scare off all our club whores? The brothers won’t be happy about that.”

“The ones that try shit with me, yeah, and I don’t give a fuck about their cocks.”

Melissa

It was almost five p.m., which is time for us to hang the “closed” sign on the door and begin cleaning up from the day. My little boutique bakery is something I’m proud of. I may not be a doctor like I was hoping for, but I love this little place. The walls and furniture are all designed in a vintage, rustic way with a modern twist. The walls are layered in a silky off-white tint with a feature wall that is patterned black and white with light splashes of pink woven through it. The serving counter is all glossy white along with the full glass display cabinet, which proudly showcases all our creations. The tables and seats are purple, black, and white, and the floor is white and black marble epoxy. The store name “Eat Me” hangs behind the counter in gold cursive writing with swirls surrounding it, and the kitchen is all open towards the back so the customers can see how carefully we prepare the food. Working here was always my life, but now it’s going to be my getaway—at least until after the wedding. I ignore the empty hole that appears when I think of never seeing Hella again before I continue wiping down the counter.

“Carrie? Can you flip the sign, please?” I ask, kneeling down under the cash register to pull out the cleaning spray and fresh dishcloths. A professional cleaner comes in every night after we close to do the floors, thankfully.

“Melissa? You have a visitor!” Carrie yells from the front door.

I pause, placing the spray back and attempting to calm my breathing. Maybe he came. Maybe he could forgive me for flipping out.

I stand, my eyes going straight to the front door, and my smile falters when I see it’s Chase. “Oh, hey, come in.” I wave him inside, trying to hide my disappointment.

Carrie lets him in before she shuts the door and flips the closed sign. He walks toward the counter, his hands deep in this dark jeans that hug him nicely, though they don’t have the same swagger as Hella’s does. He smiles his boyish grin and I can’t help but return it.

“How’ve you been?” His chirpy voice lifts my mood a little.

“Me?” I question, ducking back down to collect the spray before standing again. “Great, good. I’ve been…”

“Shit,” he answers for me.

I exhale a shaky breath, the back of my hand running across my forehead. “Yeah, shit,” I confess, my shoulders dropping.

Chase is a good lay, but I hope he’s not wanting to pick anything up where we left it because he’d be disappointed with my answer.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asks, his eyes twinkling at me.