It wasn’t, but I appreciated the desire all the same. “We’ll figure this out,” I told him. “We will deal with the assholes trying to destroy us, and then we can finally have some time together.”
“The assholes who killed Flo,” he rasped. “We can’t rest until they’re ended.”
The heat behind my eyes burned stronger, and I pressed the heels of my palms against them. “I’ve been trying really hard not to think about it,” I confessed. “I know that makes me a shitty human, but… seeing her face when they grabbed her, it’s haunting me, and I won’t make it through the next days if I keep reliving it.”
Rhett nodded. “I understand. There will be time to mourn her soon, but if we fall apart now, we will end up in the same situation. It’s survival mode, and once we’re safe, then we’ll deal with the emotional fallout.”
The matter-of-fact way he said that told me this wasn’t his first death. Nor the first person he’d mourned. Rhett’s scars weren’t as visible as mine, but they were as deep.
We all had cuts, bruises, breaks, and losses in our past, and it appeared that the darkness wasn’t quite done with us yet. It had already cost us one friend and their band sister.
I just had to hope that there were no more losses. Rhett, Jace, Grayson… and even Angelo, to some degree, were parts of my past, owning sections of my heart and soul, and if I lost one of them… I wouldn’t survive it.
twenty-four
BILLIE
There was one small hurdle in our way when we agreed to get in contact with Brenda. None of us had our phones, and the landline for the house was disconnected. The only logical ideas we could come up with were that we should either walk out to the main road and hope a passing driver would lend us their phone… or return to Brenda’s farmhouse.
I was firmly against going back to the farmhouse, and for once, Jace was in agreement with me. With that decided, the boys outvoted me on who should venture out to seek help. Eventually, Jace left the house just after lunch, and Rhett turned to me with a lopsided smile.
“Just you and me, Thorn. What do you wanna do with our time alone?” His suggestive eyebrow waggle told me he was joking, but shit, it was tempting. So freaking tempting. I wanted nothing more than to mend the broken bridges between us and reassure Rhett that I’d never stopped caring about him.
Or maybe I wanted him to reassure me.
But the dark cloud of trauma and danger loomed over us, so I just shrugged and headed for the kitchen. Maybe there was a tin of instant coffee stashed somewhere, even if we had to drink it black.
Rhett seemed to follow my train of thought, hunting through the cabinets and coming up with a stove-top kettle and a wide grin.
“Nice,” I commented, smiling back weakly. “Rinse it first. Who knows how long the owners have been gone.” The fridge was empty and turned off, so it must have been a while.
Now that it was daytime, I felt more confident in flicking on a light to help search the pantry. To my intense relief, I found not only a sealed tin of instant coffee, but also a bag of sugar and some powdered milk packets.
“It’s like Christmas,” Rhett remarked as I showed him my prizes. He had the kettle already on the stove, heating our water, so he just leaned against the counter and crossed his ankles. “So… not pregnant.”
Ah, we were back on that subject. I shook my head. “Nope. Not even a little bit.”
His lips tugged in a lopsided smile. “That’s not a thing, but okay. Good. I mean…”
“I know what you mean.” I saved him before he could dig himself a verbal hole. Babies were lovely and all, but being the mother to a Ricci mafia heir, tied to Angelo’s family for the rest of my life and forced to live as the “mistress,” wasn’t in my life plan. Not that I had a plan, but if I did, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the Riccis.
I wrapped my arms around myself, thankful for the soft flannel shirt Jace had found for me to wear. It was cozy and warm and covered up all my scars.
“You want to talk about… it?” Rhett asked after several moments of awkward silence.
“It?” I echoed, then shook my head. “No. None of it.” Not Angelo or my fake baby or the torture or leaving him or fucking Jace or fucking Jace. Or Flo. Shit. Flo was dead. “Do you? Want to talk…?”
He stared at me for a long moment, tugging on his lip ring with his teeth. Then he released it with a sigh. “About some things… no. Other things, yes.”
I swallowed my nerves. Why was I so damn nervous? This was my Zepp, bad boy rocker with a heart of pure gold. He’d never hurt me. Even when he’d believed I was carrying Angelo’s child, he’d been thinking about winning me back. How could I ever feel anything but totally safe in his presence?
“Okay, sure. That’s fair. So, um, what—”
“Did something happen between you and Jace?” he asked, knocking me completely off balance.
My mouth opened and closed like a fish. Then I responded with the full strength of my intellect and wit. “Huh?”
Rhett’s eyes narrowed. “You and Jace. This morning it seemed like… I don’t even know. Like you both hate each other a hundred times more than before. I’d have thought after everything last night, you guys might have become closer, but it’s the opposite. He couldn’t have been more eager to head out on a solo mission, and it seemed a whole lot like he was trying to put space between you two.”
I wet my lips. “Um…”
The whistle of the kettle saved me, announcing that the water was boiling, and I set about finding some mugs for our coffee. Rhett seemed content to let the Jace question drop, and I went back to the pantry to see if there was anything to eat that hadn’t expired.
Sadly, my luck had run out with the coffee. The best I could produce for eating was a couple of tins of tuna in spring water. With a sigh, I showed Rhett, and he screwed up his face in disgust.
“I think I’ll wait it out,” he muttered, sipping his hot coffee. “Hopefully, Jace can get in touch with Brenda and we won’t be here for that long.”
I shrugged, grabbing a fork from the drawer. “Suit yourself.” It wasn’t my favorite food by any means, but it was food. Not that it’d been that long since we ate last night, but who knew what the day would bring. What if whoever had attacked the farmhouse—and murdered Flo—was coming after us here? What if they’d already caught Jace and slit his throat too? What if—
“Hey, Thorn baby, are you okay?” Rhett had moved from the other side of the kitchen and put his hands on either side of my face, his eyes locked on mine. “Hey, take a breath. Stick with me, babe. You’re having a panic attack, okay? Let’s just sit down.”
He gently pulled me down to the floor, getting me seated with my back against the cabinets, and guided my head down to my knees.
“Deep breaths, baby, nice and slow, that’s it.” He rubbed soothing circles on my back as I attempted to get a grip. Eventually that choking panic subsided, and I raised my head back up to give him an apologetic look.
“Sorry,” I croaked. “I got caught in my own head.”