“No!” he snaps, trying to break free from them. I can tell he’s shifting into fight mode, ready to claw and punch his way out of their hold so he can get back to me.
“Oscar, you have to,” Sloan says firmly.
Dad opens his mouth to argue, but before he can, one of the two men holding him clamps a cloth over his face. I’ve seen enough movies to know that when Dad stops fighting, it’s because they’ve knocked him out with something on the cloth, and he sags in their grip, limp and out of it.
Sloan just stands there, unyielding. “Take him out of here,” he says, and the two men nod.
The rest of the Black Roses follow them out, and I run after them, stopping at the back door as I watch them carry my dad out.
I’m shaking, and there are tears in my eyes again. All those warm, soft feelings I had toward Sloan just a few minutes ago have evaporated, chased away by the vision of my father being hauled away.
It’s not as bad as seeing him get shot in that abandoned lot, but it still rips a hole in my heart, making it hard to breathe and hard to think about anything else other than the fact that I have no idea when I’m going to see my father again.
My breathing is loud in my ears, and I have to turn away when they put Dad in a car and then start it up.
It looks too much like it did when his limp body was dumped in Sloan’s trunk, and I have to remind myself that this is different. He’s alive, not dead, and I can see him again.
One day.
Hopefully.
It helps a little, but all the same, as Sloan and I stand there in the now otherwise empty house, listening to the car drive off with my dad in it, I feel like a piece of my heart goes with it.
9
It’s a silent drive back to the house, and as soon as we get there, I shove open my car door and get out, slamming it behind me. I don’t even wait for Sloan to cut the engine as I let myself into the house and march up the stairs. A car door slams, and then Sloan’s footsteps are heavy behind me. I want to turn around and tell him to fuck off and stop following me, but I don’t. I don’t have anything to say to him right now.
Once I reach the second floor, I turn down the hallway to go to my room, ready to slam that door too and put some space between us, but instead of letting me, he grabs my arm and yanks me into his room.
He gets the satisfaction of slamming the door, and before I can say anything, he shoves me up against it. My back hits the wood, and I gasp for a second, looking up at him while he looms over me, invading my personal space the way he’s clearly so fucking fond of doing when he’s pissed off.
Well, he’s not the only one who’s pissed.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he demands, eyes intent as he looks down at me.
I scoff, disbelief all over my face when I look up at him. “Are you kidding? You’re really asking me that now?”
“I want a fucking answer.”
“Fine. I’m pissed because I just had to stand there while you had my dad fucking drugged and dragged away in front of me.”
“I was protecting him!” Sloan snaps. “Like I’ve done this whole goddamned time! Ever since we faked his death.”
I just glare at him, unmoved. I’m still so fucking angry, and I can tell he is too. The tension that usually exists between us is there again, filling the room and making our emotions boil over as we face off.
“What the fuck does it take?” he demands, breathing hard.
His eyes are bright with his anger, and when he rears back, I flinch slightly, my hands balling into fists as my body goes into fight mode. But instead of lashing out at me, he punches the wall to the side of the door, his fist connecting with the plaster. It’s not hard enough to do much damage to the wall, but I can feel the frustration pouring out of him.
“I showed you he’s alive,” he growls. “So you can’t fucking doubt me this time. I let you say goodbye instead of just moving him in secret, which is what I should’ve done in the first fucking place. But it’s still not good enough. Why do you always think the worst of me?”
“Because you lied to me!” I yell, telling him the unfiltered truth as the words come pouring out of me. “Because you always act like you’ll do the worst thing. You act like a fucking asshole, like someone who doesn’t give a single shit about me. So you can’t blame me for taking you at your word.”
We’re both breathing hard now, caught up in this argument. Whenever we fight, it’s all-consuming. Nothing else matters but us shouting at each other, both of us trying to get the other one to see things from our side of it while grappling with the anger that we bring out in each other.
Sloan’s face is a mask of fury, which is the only emotion he ever really reliably shows me. I can tell he’s pissed about more than just my reaction to him taking my dad away, but I don’t know what it is. And he’s sure as fuck not gonna tell me.
That’s another thing that makes me even madder.
He’s always hiding his emotions. Always trying to pretend he doesn’t care or isn’t bothered. But then when it comes down to shit like this, I’m just supposed to trust him? When he’s never open with me and has only just started being honest?
There’s just so much between us. So many feelings we’re both clearly fighting. I hate it.
“You don’t know anything about me or why I do the things I do,” he says, his voice hard.
“And whose fucking fault is that?” I snap back.
“You—” He cuts himself off and shakes his head, fingers clenched into fists at his sides.
“What?” I retort. “What? You want to blame it on me? Are you going to stand there and make this my fault? Yeah, I’ve fucked up, but you can’t blame me for thinking you do bad shit, when I watch you do it and then you don’t say anything. For weeks. You’re a fucking closed book, Sloan! You’re an island, and you can’t expect—”
“Shut up,” he snaps, his voice cutting through the air and making me swallow the rest of my sentence. “Just—”
He makes a noise of frustration as he breaks off. I don’t know if he ran out of words or is just too fucking furious to speak, but for a long moment, we just stare at each other as the temperature in the room seems to skyrocket.
It’s as if flames are licking at the walls around us, stealing all the oxygen from the space, making the air too thick and hard to breathe.
Anger churns between us, but it’s not the only thing I feel. Whenever we argue, there’s always something more there. Always a thread of the desire we feel for each other that comes to light whenever we’re this close and in the middle of a screaming match.
My chest heaves as I stare at Sloan, my jaw clenched and my lips pressed together.
That thing between us builds higher and higher until it all boils over, snapping the tension like a wire.
I’m not sure which one of us moves first, but we collide like two trains speeding toward each other down the same track.
Sloan’s hands end up in a bruising grip on my upper arms, and he presses me back against the door harder. I get two fistfuls of his shirt and drag him against me, arching up to meet him halfway when his mouth crashes down on mine.
I’m still fucking pissed, and it’s clear in the way we kiss, almost as harsh and bruising as it was in the woods yesterday.