Dirty Rogue: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance(46)
I’m about to unlock the screen of my phone when something on a nearby shelf catches my eye. It’s a journal like the other ones I saw at the Cottage—exactly the same, but it’s all by itself.
I bite my lip. I shouldn’t snoop. Absolutely not. And if I do, I’ll feel compelled to admit it to him later.
It’s probably just an archive of teenage angst in written form.
I pull the journal down from the shelf and start to flip through it.
There are pages and pages of neat handwriting, so neat that it actually makes me want to put it back. This kind of writing doesn’t seem like it would be something the party animal Christian that I know would write, and suddenly I’m struck by my actions, and what a f*cking terrible invasion of privacy this is.
I turn the journal over in my hands to close it, but my nail catches on the back cover, revealing the very last page.
There, scratched in a panicked scrawl, the writing appearing so different from that which has been written throughout the rest of the book, are words that make my heart thud with anxious fear.
WHAT HAVE I DONE
I HAVE TO BE HIM
FOREVER
FOREVER
FOREVER
My stomach lurches and churns as my mind spins into overdrive. This is some kind of joke, right? Or some kind of teenage outburst? The hairs prickling up on the back of my neck tell me I’m wrong. This is something I was never supposed to see. Something nobody was ever supposed to see.
I’m flashing back, reflecting and piecing together one memory after the other, of all the things I’ve seen Christian do since we met on that rainy day on the sidewalk. Then I remember the way he froze up when I asked about memorials during our very first meeting. The way it pissed him off when I said he was like a different person at the Bowery Mission. The way his face went white as a ghost when that man, Matthews, called him by his brother’s name.
His brother’s name.
Elijah.
Then the final piece clicks into place, and I clap my own hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.
Christian’s tattoo.
My eyes lingered on it that afternoon at the Cottage, tracing the lines, trying to make sense of each of the sections.
Carolyn’s voice haunts my thoughts. They got matching tattoos the same week that he died.
In one of those sections of the tattoos, between the silhouettes of various predatory animals, is an intricate design. If you look at it for long enough, it resolves into a letter.
But the letter on Christian’s chest isn’t a C.
It’s an E.
Chapter 36
Christian
When I wake up, I instinctively reach for Quinn.
The spot in the bed next to me is empty.
Groggily, I sit up and rub at my eyes. What that hell? What time is it? Did I really pass out that hard after we had sex?
The only light evident in the room is the ambient glow of New York City’s lights. It’s late.
Did she leave?
I stretch my arms over my head, working out the kinks, then throw my legs over the side of the bed.
Now that my eyes have adjusted, I can see that there’s some light escaping from the door to the den, and a smile plays across my face. She’s probably in there with her head tilted to the side, reading all the book titles. Just picturing it makes my chest warm. Quinn doesn’t talk about books much, but the respectful way she touches them tells me that when the mood strikes her, she loves to find a good one and disappear inside its pages.
First things first. I move quickly to the walk-in closet and pull a fresh pair of boxers and a t-shirt from a drawer, sliding them up and on, tugging the shirt over my head. I’m sure we’ll be going back to bed shortly, but just in case Quinn isn’t in the mood for more sex—
I laugh softly to myself. If I know her—and after the time we’ve spent together lately, I think I know her pretty well—she’ll be in the mood as soon as she sees me walk through the door.
I brush my teeth in the master bathroom, then flick off the light and head back down toward the den.
Pausing outside the door, I listen for any sound of movement inside. It doesn’t seem like she’s moving around or about to open the door. My heart rate picks up. Ever since my brother died, it makes me nervous as f*ck to go into a silent room at night.
But I’m not going to stand out here forever, wondering what’s going on inside my own den.
It’s just my girlfriend, likely reading a book, maybe fast asleep in one of my plush as hell armchairs.
I swing the door open.
There’s Quinn, in the armchair, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and horrified, locked on me, frozen.
I register several things at once.
The first is that she’s holding the one and only journal I kept in this house on her lap, and it’s open to the very last page.
The second thing I notice is a photo of my brother and me that had been taken the week he died, our arms thrown around each other, laughing in the city sun. It’s staring at me from where it’s positioned on the shelf just behind her head, nestled amongst a collection of Hardy Boys books that my mother bought us.
The third thing I realize? She knows.
My heart plummets. It’s like an icy knife has slipped down the length of my spine; it’s painful and sickening all at once.