Chapter 21

TWENTY-ONE

MILES

W hen I finally gained the nerve to go down to the basement, I walked in on Aella packing a bag I knew belonged to my brother. She's stuffing clothes inside it while he snores in soft bursts.

She spies me and wipes a tear from her face before she hefts the bag over her shoulder and heads past me, up the stairs, and out of the door at the top.

I run my eyes over my brother for a moment. His face is the picture of bliss. I have to wonder what happened down here with them. I know what I told her to do, but I don't know the details.

I saw his bike last night and the shambles it was in. I thought about fixing it, but he won't want me to. He'll want to do it himself. As a visual thinker, I know he's already forming a plan in his brain for where he wants to start. Doing a thing for him at this point will dis-regulate him even further than he already is.

I turn and leave my brother's room, shutting off the stair light Aella had been using to pack up her meager bag. I'm unsure of where she thinks she's off to, but I know she won't get far without the keys to her Lexus that I have tucked away in my safe.

"Aella?" I ask once I reach the kitchen at the top of the stairs, silently closing the door to let Braxton sleep.

She's pacing in front of the counters, hands in her hair. By the sound of her breathing, she's headed right towards a panic attack. I've seen Braxton have them enough to know she's the next one who'll need grounding.

"Talk to me. What's happening?" I step in front of her, pulling her hands out of her hair and firmly gripping her shoulders.

She looks at me, eyes full of frantic energy. "I have to do this now. I have to go back, and it has to be now."

I narrow my eyes. "Well, I don't know if that's a good idea until we have a solid plan. Having a plan means including Brax on this. If he wakes up and finds you gone…"

"I'm too close. It's too much. I need to do this now, Miles. Or I'll never leave."

Her admission hits me in the gut like a strike of fucking lightning.

"Why?" I know why, though. I can see the building clouds of sadness in her eyes. She's falling for him. It makes me wonder if the moment we three had shared in the basement had been just that—only a moment. Logic tells me that what we shared in the boutique and the slight touches in the truck were authentic .

Whatever happened between them last night has her wanting to bolt.

A sudden idea bursts into my brain, and I grip her shoulders harder. "You're running from him. From who he is."

Anger replaces her panic, and her lip pulls up as she says, "No, the fuck, I am not! I'd never run from him. I can't say goodbye to him, Miles."

"But you can say goodbye to me?" I hadn't meant for it to get out, but it had. Now, it's floating heavy between us.

Her eyes instantly soften as a tear crests over her bottom lid. "No. I hadn't planned for you to come down and walk in on me. You were an unforeseen interruption." She moves forward and lays her head on my chest.

"I don't want to say goodbye to either of you, but we need to do this. We need to find out what happened to your mom, and I need to know who my father is and what my legacy is. Then we can turn the page on this awful chapter."

I swallow against her words, closing my arms around her as she snuggles into me.

"What will be in the next chapter?" I whisper.

She sniffles. "I don't know. Something beautiful, I hope."

When she picks her head up to look at me, her blue eyes glaze with emotion, the world disappearing in a second. I lower my face to hers, hovering there, imprinting the feel of the moment with her into my brain to relive while she's away .

"Something beautiful already occurred in this chapter, Aella." My lips meet hers, softly at first, then it turns frantic when my tongue parts her lips and dances with hers. I turn her, her back hitting the counter before I lift her and set her down atop it.

She pulls back, hands cupping my face tenderly. "A lot of dark happened in this chapter, too."

I nod. "You can't have the beauty without the dark, though. Only when you've seen the dark, dealing with the tragic side of life, can you appreciate the beauty."

She shakes her head at me. "Covered in leather, yet hiding such depth beneath it," she jokes, smiling brightly at me.

I roll my eyes.

"I don't know what the next chapter will have, but I need to tell you I told Braxton I'd help him get a diagnosis. I know your mom never wanted that for him, and I don't know how you feel about it, but he wants it. I want to be there for him through this journey."

My heart pumps away, seeming a little louder through the news. "He does?" He'd never mentioned it before, and I feel a little defeated in how I've been there for him because I didn't notice that he was struggling with himself in this way.

She nods. "I don't know if he's always wanted it or if last night was the breaking point where he just decided he needed answers about himself. But I think we'll have to be there for him, beside him, and support him through it. I didn't want you to be blindsided by it."

I nod. "Of course, I'll be there for him. It's what I've done his entire life. "

She swallows, and a question is forthcoming, but by the look in her eyes, I don't know if I'm ready for it.

"Were they always that bad?" she finally asks.

I lick my lips, thinking about when we were younger and the slightest thing would set him off.

I nod. "If not worse."

Her eyes cast downward, as I'm sure she's fighting another tear.

"Once, Mom told us we were going to the zoo before she tucked us into bed. She told us about all the things we were going to see and do the next day. But the next day came, and it was storming so badly that we couldn't go. Braxton didn't understand because she already told him it would happen. He couldn't rationalize that there was a change in the day's schedule. No matter what she said or did, he wouldn't calm down. It lasted all day, and she held and rocked him and kept him from scratching at himself… She loved him so much, and I struggled to show him the same amount of attention. I'm not good with it like she was, you know?"

Aella nods, her eyes wide as she likely thinks of Braxton in whatever state she'd dealt with him last night.

"So, you're going to do this?" I ask, and she bites her lip and nods.

"I need to know for myself as much as I want to find out for you two. I've been turning a blind eye for far too long."

Even though she seems genuine, I still don't understand why she'd go undercover and help us with anything. People are shit when it comes down to it, and I expect nothing but that from anyone .

"Well, I've already told you you can't come back, princess. I'll get you a burner phone to call me from, and you tell me if you feel at any point you're in danger, do you understand me? Even if you think you're being paranoid."

She nods. "What'll you do?"

I smirk. "Send Sully, of course."

She laughs. "Sully? He's like the nicest of all of you."

The hard lines of my face stay intact, and her smirk fades. "He's really not."

She takes a sharp breath. "What leads do you have on your mother's disappearance? Anything for me to go off of? A starting point?"

I sigh. Sharing this information with her, which is so sensitive to our core mission of finding our mom's body, feels wrong. It feels like I'm fucking up. She's an outsider.

But then, she's not, is she?

I lift her shirt to inspect her fresh tattoo. The surrounding wrapping has been removed, and the scabbing process of healing has begun. I stare at it, and she lets me. It's a reminder that she's one of us now.

She's a Cobra.

"She told a friend who used to work her shift that she found something in the labs of your father's business. Where some parts are tested and created."

Her father's business is in travel. More importantly, airplane travel. He owns one of the leading airplane part manufacturing companies in the United States. As such, that comes with the power he uses to cover up a lot.

One can only speculate that he'd also stick his greedy fingers into something seedy.

"What the hell could she have found?" Aella says absently.

I shrug. "We've never been able to get close enough to figure it out. He knows us both from her funeral. He showed his face, and my father threatened to murder him where he stood. We had nobody. We'd just given up hope and needed somewhere to grieve."

She strokes my face, and I close my eyes.

"You're going to have to tread lightly. If we lost you, too… I know we haven't known you long, Aella, but…"

She shushes me. "I know, Miles. I know."

Her lips cut off any further words. "I'll be careful. I'm going to solve this for both of us. If it's the only thing I ever accomplish in my pitiful life."

My eyes snap open. "Pitiful? You're nothing of the fucking sort." Irrational anger builds in me. "Don't say that shit again."

She smiles. "Yes, sir."

I growl from somewhere deep in my chest. She squeaks when I grab her ass and tug her closer. Her legs wrap around my back, and I drop my teeth into the flesh of her neck.

"You know what that does to us, right? I can't explain why. Maybe it's some selfish need to dominate, but fuck, it's hot," I admit, nipping the shell of her ear.

"I noticed," she whispers, tipping her head to the side and letting me devour her slowly .

"You'd better come back," I tell her, skimming my lips across her jawline.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because women don't remain in the quiver."

"Whitney seems just fine," she counters, teeth tugging on my bottom lip when I hover instead of kissing her.

I laugh darkly. "Whitney is a brand of crazy that might even be more unhinged than Kylo."

Her tongue slips over my bottom lip. "Who's saying I'm not the same?"

When I close the small space between us, I swallow her moan, my hands gripping her ass cheeks and squeezing.

It's pure heat between us, especially when I let my hand find her center. She's in tiny shorts she'd picked out at the boutique to sleep in. It would be all too easy to slip beneath them and fuck her with two fingers and make her scream.

But I know I shouldn't.

Instead, I rub her over them, letting her moan as loudly as she wants as I break our kiss to watch her.

"What are you doing?" she asks breathlessly.

"Giving you something to remember me by, of course."

"Miles, I could never forget you," she admits with a crackled groan.

I shrug, picking up the pace as I feel her shorts dampen at the point where they've slipped into her heated junction.

"Call it a parting gift, then, yeah? "

She nods, frantically grinding herself against me as she seeks orgasm.

"Once you scream for me, princess, I'll let you go. But don't you stay gone long, hm? If I have to come find you, you'll regret it."

"Miles!"

She's in her Lexus, and the engine is purring. I'm leaning against her door, head in the open window. Our lips move together in an unspoken goodbye as her tears lubricate them.

I slip my hand in and give her the burner to contact me. She takes it and then shoves it into the cup holder.

"I'll contact you as soon as possible," she says.

I nod. "Be safe, princess."

"I will. And, Miles?"

I lift my brows in question.

"Don't let him stay too angry with me for leaving like this. Explain it to him, yeah?"

I nod. I'm still a little jealous that she's all right in saying goodbye to me, but I can't bear to say goodbye to him. I know it's because I caught her leaving.

It had been just as hard.

"I meant what I said, princess. Don't make me drag you back here."

Don't let us down.

I keep the final thought to myself as she punches an address into the navigation and puts her car in drive.

"I might just make you. For the thrill." She smirks, and gravel flies as she drives toward the property exit .

She just might be as wild as Whitney.

My gut churns with the idea I've made the wrong decision to let her go.

Only time will tell, though.