Chapter 24

24

Abel

For eight long years, my plan has been simple. Survive. Return to take my rightful place as faction leader. Make Eli pay for all the pain and suffering he’s caused me and mine. There is absolutely no reason that last night should have changed anything. Sex is sex is sex. Yeah, we put aside our fucked up past to take care of Harlow, but that’s the only reason we were on the same page, and even then it didn’t last past the moment we all felt into an exhausted pile and slipped into sleep.

The first thing Harlow did upon waking was flee.

The first thing Eli did was chase her.

Both expected things, as long as I don’t fall into the trap of assuming that all the orgasms and pleasure meant something. It obviously didn’t to them. It shouldn’t have to me, either.

But then, my rules have always been frustratingly flexible when it comes to Eli. Why should heartbreak, betrayal, and eight years of grief change that? It pisses me off so much, I can barely breathe past the rage. Last night is a glimpse of what we could have been. A future that he set on fire right along with my childhood home.

The bathroom door opens, and Harlow strides out, stopping short when she sees me awake. She looks frazzled. She hasn’t taken the time to dry her hair, and she’s got that too-wide look around her eyes that says she and Eli had another altercation.

I sit up. “Hey.”

She glances back at the bathroom and lowers her voice. “I’m going to change and then go check on a few things. I…” Harlow takes a deep breath and marches to the bed. She hesitates and then reaches out and takes my hand. “Abel, could you talk to him? Actually talk, not just posture and threaten and end up with his mouth around your cock again?”

I have to fight for an arrogant grin. “Why bother, when I love him sucking me off so much?” Despite my best efforts, the words fall flat.

“Abel…” She gives me a small smile, though her eyes are sad. “If you two ever managed to work together, you’d be unstoppable.” She frames my face with her hands, leans down, and presses a light kiss to my lips. The casual intimacy shocks me as much as her words.

I capture her wrists in a loose grip, holding her touch to me. “You’re asking for the moon, sweetheart. No matter if it would be a good thing or not.”

Another of those achingly sweet kisses. “If anyone can get me the moon, it’s you. At least think about it. Please?”

It’s not as if part of me has already been considering future possibilities. Not forgiveness. I don’t know if it’s in me to forgive Eli, and he obviously doesn’t crave that from me. But I haven’t been able to get what Harlow said yesterday out of my head. The policies Eli’s put in place, the very same fucking ones that we planned together all those years ago.

I want to know why, if his goals were always the same as mine, he did what he did. I want fucking answers. I don’t know what I’ll do with them, having spent eight years telling myself that they don’t matter because I’m going to set the scales right. But I want them all the same.

Am I actually considering this?

I finally release Harlow. “I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you.” She turns away and walks to the closet, disappearing inside. A few short minutes later, she returns. She’s wearing jeans and a tank top and has pulled her hair back into a ponytail. It strikes me that she still has clothes in this room even if she’s moved most of her stuff down the hall. She gives me a faint smile. “Is there anything specific you need from me today?”

No, but I don’t like the thought of not seeing her until tonight. “Check in on Fallon and Monroe.”

“That’s where I’m headed now.” She makes a face. “How are you going to play things in the long run with them? They both have jobs and responsibilities in their respective factions.”

A reality I was hoping to put off for a bit longer. “After you talk to them, we’ll figure it out. Feel free to negotiate on my behalf.”

Surprise flares in her eyes, quickly followed by a warmth that I crave the same way I crave dawn’s light after a particularly brutal night. “You trust me enough to give me that power?”

“I trust that you and I are in line with wanting the best for the faction.” Which isn’t quite the same thing as trusting her entirely. But it’s still a huge admission. “Do what you need to do.”

Harlow opens her mouth, seems to consider what she’s about to say, and finally nods. “Thank you.” She reaches for the door. “See you tonight?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. I’ll see you tonight.” I don’t imagine the pleased look on her face as she leaves the room.

I don’t get a chance to enjoy the knowledge that I pulled Harlow out of her head, because Eli chooses that moment to pad naked into the room. His skin is still damp from the shower, and he’s slicked his hair back from his face. Without the pretty-boy blond waves, his features are almost too perfect. He looks like a sculptor crafted the high arch of his cheekbones, the strong line of his jaw, the sensual curve of his lips. It pisses me the fuck off.

He sees me and stops. “Last night changes nothing.”

“Agreed.” But I can’t get Harlow’s request out of my head. I can’t imagine a future where I trust Eli at my back the way I once did, but there are questions still churning in my gut that only he has the answers to. I almost snort. Turns out Harlow is right, after all. We do need to talk.

I shove the sheet off and climb to my feet. “Let’s find some coffee. It’s about time we had a conversation.”

Eli disappears into the closet and returns a few minutes later with jeans and a white T-shirt. The simplicity of the clothes does nothing to detract from his attractiveness. Or maybe I’m just getting sidelined because now I know how he tastes. A distraction I can’t afford, but a necessary one. The only real way to neutralize Eli would be to kill him, and I’m not ready to take that step.

The longer we spend together,the clearer it becomes that I’ll never be ready to take that step.

We stop in Harlow’s room so I can change clothes and then head down to the kitchen. I checked it out the first day here, and I’m reluctantly impressed all over again by how well outfitted it is. It’s commercial grade and commercial size. There was a chef and with two assistants on staff to take care of all the meals for everyone in the house—and another team that handled only the barracks—but we haven’t replaced them yet. Poison would be a great way to remove the threat we represent, and my people are the only ones I trust.

Wehaven’t had the luxury of keeping a chef on staff, not when we’ve been more or less on the move since we left Sabine Valley. We’d settle for a few months, or even a year, but something always happened, and we always had to move again. Even if we’d landed in one place, it wouldn’t be home the way Sabine Valley is.

There’s coffee made, but from the thickness of the liquid, either it’s been there overnight or that someone let Donovan brew it. I shake my head and dump it down the sink, pause to wash the pot, and then start the process for a new round of coffee.

Once it begins dripping, I turn to face Eli. He’s got his carefully neutral expression in place, and he leans against the counter across from me. “I see Harlow got to you.”

I shrug. “She’s tired of being the bone between us. Or the bridge. No matter which way you spin it, it’s not fair to her.”

“Agreed.”

I wait, but he doesn’t seem inclined to continue. Fine. The agreement, the fact that he’s here—it will have to be enough. I take a moment to look around the kitchen. All the stainless steel surfaces shine, the tile below our feet barely scuffed by so much foot traffic. It’s like the rest of the house. High-end and yet comfortable and practical. “You know, when we were younger, we talked a lot about how we’d fortify a place.”

Eli’s expression goes perfectly blank. “Did we?”

“Did you think I’d forget?” Honestly, I had. Our plans for the faction always took the forefront in my mind. We went over them time and time again, finessing them to the smallest detail, considering different paths to get to the same result.

Talking about the home we’d someday build for our people was more of a footnote. One I forgot until yesterday, when the mystery of how Eli managed to upset Harlow had the memory flickering in the back of my mind.

I walk from one end of the kitchen to the other, measuring it with my steps. “Especially when so many of these rooms don’t line up the way they should.” He’s not reacting, but that’s as much as an admission when it comes to Eli. “It’s not mapped out the way we planned, but the basic details are the same.”

“There isn’t a question in there.”

“No, there isn’t.” I already know he won’t show me any of the entrances to the passageways, but that’s fine. I’ll figure them out on my own. It’s more the fact they exist at all that fucks with my head. “Harlow lined out the things she won’t compromise on yesterday.” He doesn’t respond, but I don’t need him to, not when I’m watching him so closely. “A food program so no one goes hungry. A concentrated effort to shut down violent crime against people who can’t defend themselves. Imagine my surprise at how familiar that shit sounded.”

Still his expression doesn’t change. “You have a point.”

“Yeah, I have a fucking point.” The sudden desire to cut through all the bullshit and find out the truth nearly overwhelms me. I cross my arms over my chest and stare. “I doubted the intel I had on you. It doesn’t make any fucking sense. We had plans together for this faction, for how to change things. When you betrayed me, I figured it was all bullshit, that you just wanted the power for yourself. But then I find out that you went ahead and implemented most of them. Why the fuck would you do that? Why would you do any of it?”

Eli sighs and looks away. “They were good plans.”

“Yeah, they were.” It feels like there’s a knife in my heart, the blade scraping against muscle and rib bones with every word. “Did you really think I had to be dead to make them happen?”

“I…” He scrubs a hand over his face. “The past is the past. We both have plenty of sins to lay at our feet. What the hell does rehashing this accomplish?”

I don’t know, but the fact he’s dodging this question means I need to hear the answer. “Indulge me.”

“Nothing I can say will make a difference, Abel. Not a single damn thing. If I tell you that I had no idea my father was going to set fire to the house, you won’t believe me. If I tell you that I lost no sleep over your father’s death but that I’m still haunted by those forty people, you’ll call me a liar.”

My chest feels too tight. For the first time since I walked back into his life, the polished edge of his voice is gone and there’s only raw pain there. The side of Eli that only I ever saw, the ragged edges and harsh truth. I don’t know if I can trust it, but fuck, I want to. “Is it the truth?”

“Would you believe it if I said it was?”

I don’t know. I’ve spent eight years being driven by Eli’s betrayal. His old man didn’t surprise me; Deacon Walsh always was a mean son of a bitch, and he and my father never saw eye to eye on anything for all that Deacon was his second-in-command. That betrayal stung, but nowhere near as much as Eli’s. It’s not like we were kids. He was twenty-fucking-eight when this shit went down.

I didn’t expect to miss him so much. I sure as fuck didn’t expect for that feeling to get stronger now that he’s back in my life. We’re different people than we were eight years ago, but somehow we still fit. It doesn’t make any damn sense to me. I should want to string him up and leave him for dead for what he did, but I can’t help wondering if Harlow is right.

If there’s some way to salvage this.

Love or hate, trust or not, I’ve never been able to claw out the part of me that cares far too much for Eli Walsh.

To buy myself time, I grab two mugs and pour us each one before I pass his over. I burn my tongue on the hot coffee, but the sting settles me a little. “Tell me what happened, and I’ll decide what to believe from there.”