Shattered Dreams (Boys of Bellerose, #3)(63)

“When I got there the door was locked, so I picked the lock and let myself in.”

“It was locked when I tried to get out,” I breathed.

He nodded. “Yeah, I always left the scene—”

The rest of his sentence was cut off by a door slamming open and Rhett hurrying out. A beat later, Jace appeared from the opposite room, and Vee and Angelo arrived from the floor below. “You got the text from Hannah?” Jace said in a rush. “We’re fucking late, and if we don’t move our asses, we’re in for a huge fine.”

Fucking hell. Grayson didn’t move, despite the urgency in those around him. “You go on ahead without me,” he said stiffly. “I need to talk to Billie.”

“Not a fucking chance,” Jace said, shooting me a dark look. “Your shit can wait. Apparently, we need to be inside the venue by 5:00PM or we will be locked out completely with the roadblocks going up around it. This is literally our last chance.”

Motherfucker. I still had no real answers about what role Gray had played in the death of my parents and the fire. My memories weren’t accurate; I’d already sensed that. Dr. Candace had also warned me that repressed memories didn’t always return accurately and that it was very likely I pictured events and their timing incorrectly.

But these things wouldn’t be cleared up until I found another moment alone with Grayson.

“Get dressed, Billie,” Jace bit out. “You’ll be at the concert tonight so we can keep an eye on you and ensure that you’ve got enough security.”

“What about me?” Vee asked. She’d been in the club last night, so it stood to reason we weren’t hiding her any longer.

“You can come too. But you literally have five minutes to dress and whatever othershit you need to do.”

Jace waved us off, and I was up and off the couch in seconds, racing toward the room with my makeup and clothes in it. Three minutes later I wore black jeans and a black band tee of Rhett’s, and my hair was brushed and wavy down my back. Some slapped-on makeup completed the look.

This was the best they were getting on such short notice.

When I entered the living room again, Angelo and a couple of security guards were all that remained. “I’m here to make sure you get to the cars safely,” Angel said, holding out his hand to me.

I took it without hesitation, enjoying the feel of his strength encasing my fingers. “Thank you,” I said with a smile, thinking about our kiss last night on the dance floor. It had been on my mind more than I’d like to admit, even with all the other drama and trauma going on.

“I’m in love with you, Bella.”

We had just stepped into the elevator, the security fanning out around us, and I made a comical gasp before he’d even finished that sentence.

“I’ve never stopped,” he continued. “Never. You are part of my soul, and even though I was forced to marry Vee, I always wanted it to be you. It has always been you.”

“You walked away from me,” I whispered.

He shook his head before leaning down so he was whispering right near my ear. All our security guards signed NDAs, the sort that bankrupted you and your kids if you broke them, but I still understood his need to keep this private. “I had to protect you from my family. They would have had you killed without a fucking moment’s hesitation, and I was too young to protect you in any other way.”

My soul hurt at the pain all my boys had had to live through thanks to fucked up families.

“Vee was a gift, you know,” he continued in that same whisper. “A woman who needed the same sort of relationship as me. A fake one. Because we were both in love with another.”

I was gripping his hand so hard that it had to be hurting him, but he never made a sound.

“You know that it’s different now, right?” I whispered back.

He shifted his head so I could see the slow smile on his full lips. Lips that I really wanted to kiss again, lest they stop haunting my dreams. “I was always good at sharing, Bella. To a certain extent. If you have your chosen harem of men, then I’m just hoping there’s a place for me in it.”

Fuck. Harem.

That word freaked me right out, so I chose not to focus on it at all.

“You have a place in my world,” I told him. “You always have.”

He gave me exactly what I needed when his lips met mine, tongue sweeping out lazily to brush along my own, and I barely managed to swallow my groan.

The elevator dinged a second later, and we had to pull apart and head for the cars. The others were already inside, from what I could see, waiting for us.

“Will you go on a date with me, Bella?” Angelo asked when we were nearing the SUVs. “Let’s do this properly this time.”

A date? Had I ever been on a proper date?

“I’d love that,” I told him, tendrils of joy pushing through the heavy clouds that had been hanging over me for days. Clouds that wouldn’t go anywhere until this Grayson uncertainty was put to rest, one way or another. But at least there were small moments of light.

At times, these lighter moments were all that got me through.





twenty-eight





GRAYSON


So close. I’d been so fucking close to telling Billie everything that’d happened that night… the night of the fire, the night that she’d lost her parents and her baby. Fucking hell, the guilt over her losses weighed on me like a lead jacket, but I couldn’t turn back the clock.