CAPTOR (The Alpha Brotherhood) (Standalone Dark Billionaire New Adult Romance) (15 page)

“Well, I guess we can leave now,” I murmur. I don’t want to be here. It doesn’t feel like my house anymore.

“Don’t you want anything?” Shane looks so surprised. “Are there any mementos, jewelry, pictures? Things like that hidden somewhere? I looked around for something that might be meaningful to you, but I found nothing.”

“That’s because there’s nothing here.” It isn’t anywhere, it doesn’t exist. “I’m not very sentimental.”

“I will have this all cleaned up soon. I would have already, but I wanted you to see it.”

“Thank you. It will be nice to have a blank slate.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to save anything?”

“There’s nothing to save,” I explain. Shane looks at me with pity.  No, not pity.  Understanding.  Maybe both. His house is pretty bare too, after all. “I just want the pottery. Even the shards.”

“I can probably salvage the information that was on your laptop.”

“Okay. The kitchen stuff too, I guess. And anything else practical so I don’t have to buy it again.” I don’t even look over my shoulder to take one last glance at my home. There’s no point. It’s gone, it barely counted as a home to begin with. Just a place to sleep and eat. It won’t take much to get it back to that.

Zoey

I’m numb as we get in the car. I really should move out. I won’t feel safe there after everything that happened, but it’s just too much to think about now.

“You took that well,” Shane says, glancing at me as we drive away. “Too well.”

“Would you have preferred it if I freaked out?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because… You handle me too well. You’ve coped with this entire ordeal so calmly. You’re accustomed to getting pushed around, having everything taken from you.”

“I stand up for myself,” I remind him.

“Oh, I noticed,” he chuckles. “I very much admire your strength and resilience, Zoey. We have that in common.”

“Then why are you feeling sorry for me right now?”

“Isn’t it obvious how much I care about you?” One of his hands leaves the steering wheel to rest on my knee.

“Care about me, pity me, or want to fuck me, Shane?”

“Are those mutually exclusive?”

I don’t really have any way to answer that. When it gets right down to it, I feel the same way about him. “Where are we going now?”

“Indiana.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. I inherited a piece of property in the middle of nowhere. I haven’t been there since I was a kid.”

“Foster kids don’t usually inherit anything.”

“They don’t typically end up business mogul billionaires, either. I do in fact realize how fortunate I am, Z.”

“Shane, I didn’t mean… Look, I heard you this morning, talking to your brother Adam,” I tell him. “It didn’t sound all that fortunate.”

His lips part and he pulls his hand away. “I’m surprised you admitted that to me,” he replies coldly.

“Well, you are driving down a highway and can’t really flip out.”

He lets out a frustrated sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. “I suppose I should appreciate the honesty.”

“I couldn’t help it, you were kind of yelling. Plus, you know everything about me, it’s not fair.”

“Not everything. I don’t know why you were adopted for eight years and got thrown back into the system. There’s no way I can tell how bad it was for you at the group homes you wound up in as a teenager.”

“I can’t believe you just said that,” I snap, my body tensing up as I lean as far away from him as I can. “You can be such a jerk.”

“That really shouldn’t shock you at this point.”

“No, I guess it shouldn’t.”

“You have one of my horror stories, I want one of yours. How’d you break your wrist? Why are you still a virgin?”

“Oh, my God… Fuck you, Shane.”

“We will get to that later tonight,” he laughs at my poor choice of words. “My point is, I don’t know as much as you think I do. And I’d like to hear it all in your words anyway.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want to talk about it?”

“No, that has never occurred to me. I have no idea what that’s like at all.” He snorts out a laugh and shakes his head. “And I’m sure it has nothing to do with how we ended up alone.”

My throat tightens as my lips start quivering. Then a stupid tear runs down my face and I have to wipe my nose. What a dick. I can’t believe he made me cry. I choke out a sob and cover my face, bringing my knees to my chest as I completely break down.

I stay busy all the time for a reason. I don’t like to think about this stuff, it can stay in my nightmares where it belongs. But it keeps coming up, that’s the way people relate to each other. You meet someone, you talk about your job, your hobbies, and then all of the sudden they mention their sister’s birthday party next weekend or getting in a fight with their mom. Eventually, you get to the big reveal. I’ve got nobody to talk about and I never did. It’s all just a big sad story that makes people feel sorry for you. And they never look at you the same again.

It was a lot easier to make friends before I turned 18 because we all had sad stories, but I still kept to myself. In retrospect, that was an awful idea because that was my chance, my one chance, to make a surrogate family. Now at work, at school… It’s just so obvious how different I am. My only options are TMI because everything is an overshare when your life was such a shit show, or keep up the ice queen routine by not saying anything at all, which translates to never bonding with anyone. It fucking sucks, and I’m so tired of it.

I jerk when Shane’s hand runs down my back, stroking my hair. The comforting gesture just makes me cry harder and I hate crying because once I start it’s so hard to stop.

“Zoey… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone there.”

“You wanted proof that it fucked me up? Here it is,” I reply, my tone sharp and bitter. “I actually do have emotions beyond anger and fear.”

“Of course you do.” Shane puts his turn signal on and switches lanes as soon as he sees a sign for a rest stop.

“Don’t bother,” I snap. “Just keep driving to the mystery house and then drag me back to yours. Which yes, I am really grateful for because I’d be a chalk outline in mine right now if it wasn’t for your twisted obsession with getting in my pants.”

“That is not why I kept you, Z,” he says, slowing down as he drives up the ramp.

“That is literally, exactly what you told me before you forced me to give you a handjob so…”

“Yeah, well, it’s just something I fucking said to cover up the twisted obsession I have with the rest of you.”

He looks over at me as he parks the car, but I won’t turn my head, refusing to meet his gaze because I’d rather stare at the happy retired couple over at the vending machines. They’re still so affectionate, holding hands as they walk back to their car filled with three bickering grandkids.

My tears are nowhere to be found and I don’t need his fucking pity. “Just get back on the highway, Shane,” I whisper.

“No.”

“Then I have to pee.”

He hits the child lock button to keep me from opening the door a second too late. I’m already walking away from the car. “Zoey!” he shouts, catching up to me quickly. I brace myself to feel his fingers wrap around my forearm when I realize that he wouldn’t dare.

His ridiculously expensive car was already drawing a lot of attention. Everyone here keeps looking our way. I could start screaming about the madman holding me captive right now, but I won’t, because I have nowhere else to fucking go. Instead I completely ignore him and make a run for the women’s bathroom.

I stay in there for a long time, just to make him squirm. Shane’s pacing around in the travel center when I emerge, but his face is filled with relief instead of the rage I’m expecting. He rushes over, startling me when his hands cover the sides of my face to lift it to his.

“I said I was sorry.” His lips press against mine over and over, no tongue, no feverish groping. Then he pulls me against his chest, clutching the back of my head while he inhales deeply against my hair. My arms wrap around his waist and I sink into our embrace, holding on even longer than he does.

He opens the door for me when we get back to the car, but neither of us says anything for miles. Then my stomach starts to burn and my chest tightens up because I can’t keep it inside anymore. I don’t want to. I don’t have to worry about looking like a pathetic freak, because he’s one too.

“I broke my wrist when I was roller skating,” I say softly. “The foster home had like 7 kids. It was one of those places where nobody really cared what we were doing and we ate rice and beans every night because we were all just little paychecks to them. They were so mad at me, I’d just gotten there. The guy was a medic in the army, he just wrapped it up real tight in an ace bandage because they were afraid if they took me to the hospital there’d be an investigation. The lady backhanded me and told me I was lucky it was summertime. School would have noticed. I stayed there for six months until I bounced to somewhere else, which was even worse.”

“That had to be horrible.”

“No, the horrible part is that I grew up and wanted to work with my hands, but one of them is fucked up and gets tired out or won’t move certain ways. I’ll never be the artist that I might have been. There’s no point pursuing it, but I still do. And I have ugly handwriting.”

“No, you don’t,” he assures me.

“All the cute little notes and shopping lists laying around the house were Daniela’s. My only friend that I’ll never see again and she was a really shitty, bitchy friend. But I still miss her. And I’m crazy worried because she’s fucking pregnant.”

“Do you want me to look for her?”

“I’m not sure I want to know. I panicked and told Ricky she ran off to Mexico, which she most likely did and he probably tracked her down.”

“He didn’t leave the country.”

“All that bastard had to do was make a phone call. I really can’t handle finding out that I got her killed, Shane. Just let it go.”

We drive for a few minutes, but there’s something on the tip of his tongue. “Thanks for opening up, Z.”

“Thanks for making sure I didn’t end up dead, too.”

“Anytime.”

Our eyes meet as we chuckle at the sick joke, lightening the mood a little. But instead of opening up to me like I’m hoping, he flips on the radio. There’s nothing but wind turbines in farm fields for the next hour. They’ve all been harvested, leaving only bare dirt and the remnants of cornstalks to watch as we drive.

Shane’s hands grip the steering wheel tighter the closer we get to our destination. His brow pinches together and he takes a deep breath as we turn down a dirt road. The radio turned to the white noise of static a long time ago, but he left it on as if he didn’t notice.

Orange light of the setting sun filters through the bare trees. A deer runs across the road up ahead and Shane slows down for the antlered buck chasing quickly behind it. It’s quite picturesque, but I am a city slicker and all this nature is going to be a lot more intimidating in the dark.

Shane slams on the brakes and throws the car into reverse, hesitating at the end of an overgrown driveway. There’s a rusty metal pole sticking out of the ground at a steep angle. He gets out of the car, crouching down next to it and searching through the grass until he finds a battered old mailbox.

He really should have driven a fancy SUV out here. The driveway is pitted and filled with sticks that catch on the bottom of the car as the underbrush of the forest scrapes against the perfect silver paintjob. The road bends to reveal a dilapidated farmhouse. It’s probably white, but now it’s stained blue from the twilight closing in around us.

Shane cuts off the engine and stares forward. “I grew up here,” he says flatly.

Zoey

“Here?”

“Until I was eight.”

“This is a long way from Chicago.”

“Yeah, it sure is,” he whispers. “I absolutely despised the city when we first moved back. I swore I’d come back here the first chance I got.”

This place is totally abandoned. He obviously didn’t keep his promise to himself. “Why did you have to leave?” I ask.

“My grandmother got sick. They wanted to be closer to the hospitals, to her friends back in the old neighborhood. And closer to her daughter’s grave.”

Should I ask? My breath catches in my throat. Before I get a chance, he gets out of the car. I’m compelled to follow even though I can’t tell whether or not I’m welcome. It’s a good thing I wore boots, the dry grass is up to our knees. I don’t even want to think about what might be crawling in it.

“Don’t come on the porch,” he says, testing the first stair to see if it can hold his weight.

“Is there a phone in the car I can use if you fall through and impale yourself?”

He looks back at me over his shoulder right before he takes the first step. “That’s a prudent thought. I knew I brought you for a reason.”

“Well, I’m no girl scout, but a flashlight probably wouldn’t hurt either.”

Shane breathes out a hint of a laugh and turns, tossing me the keys. “There’s one in the trunk.”

“How do you know I won’t drive off and leave you here?”

“Because now you’re too curious.” He smirks at me and I roll my eyes at him, inwardly cringing as he starts up the rickety stairs.

The flashlight isn’t difficult to find and I must say, I didn’t expect such practical gear in the trunk of such an ostentatious vehicle. He’s already inside by the time I get back up to the house and hold my breath as I try my luck with this broke ass porch.

It smells so musty in here. I hand Shane the flashlight and he heads to the kitchen. I’m tempted to follow him when I spot a stack of newspapers next to the door. I glance at the date while his back is toward me. 2006. There’s an empty bottle of Jack Daniels next to a battered leather armchair facing a large flat screen TV on the wall that looks so out of place.

Shane’s standing by the sink, looking out the window. I cough softly as I approach so I don’t startle him. The counters are grimy and there’s a microwave in the corner that’s probably older than I am. The fridge is a relic, too.

“It’s so much smaller than I remember,” he says, the floor creaking as he turns.

“It’s a cute house. Ever think about fixing it up?”

“No.” His eyes harden as he looks around the room. “It can fucking rot.” Shane starts opening all the cabinets, pulling out old canisters and feeling along the sides, searching for something that he doesn’t find.

“Do you want any help?” I ask.

“No. I’m going to look upstairs. Stay down here.”

Great. He’s taking the only source of light with him. “Try to walk on the studs so you don’t crash through the ceiling,” I suggest as I move over to the open door so I’m not left in darkness.

“Have you done this before?” he calls down.

“Yeah. You never know what you can find in an abandoned house. Except heroin needles. Those are pretty much standard.”

Dust falls down to the floor with every step he takes above me, making it easy to trace his path. He isn’t up there for long, and his expression is almost cheerful as he comes down the stairs even though there’s nothing in his hands.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yeah. I think I did.” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear and kisses my forehead. “Let’s go.”

“That’s it? We drove all the way out here to stay for like ten minutes? Don’t you want to like, I don’t know… come to terms with something?”

“I didn’t come here to sit on the porch and cry, Z,” he laughs.

“Okay.”

Geez his mood is unpredictable today. At least he’s on an upswing at the moment. We exit the house one at a time so as to not overwhelm the porch. Shane reaches over and grabs my hand before I’m even off the last step. Our eyes meet and he grins playfully, like I’m in for a surprise.

He doesn’t lead me to the car, instead walking around the old homestead to the back. That porch is totally collapsed. There’s a quaint fenced in garden with an adorable little gate. Shane’s smile drops a little and his lips roll together as he pulls up the latch and steps inside. It’s overgrown, but the small stone paths that section it into pieces are still visible.

Shane dips down to the ground and picks up a pebble, putting it in his pocket. “I’m relatively sure my grandmother’s ashes were scattered here. That’s what she wanted.”

There’s a tree in one of the corners. Most of the fruit has fallen to the ground to rot, but quite a few beautiful red apples still hang on the branches.

“Wow,” he breathes. “I can’t believe…” His face contorts, his eyes watering. “She planted this the year I was born. We made applesauce together every year.”

Shane walks over and pulls off an apple, wiping it clean with the sleeve of his fine suit and bringing it to his nose to smell before he takes a bite. Closing his eyes while he savors it, he stretches his arm out and offers it to me.

The crisp flesh breaks beneath my teeth and a line of juice runs down my chin. This is a lot different than the apples you get in a grocery store. I didn’t know fruit could taste like this, it’s better than candy. I open my eyes and see him enjoying another one with such a tranquil expression.

“We have to take some of these with us,” he says.

“Right? I’ve never had anything like this.”

“Country life has its perks. Ever had corn on the cob that was picked that day?”

“No.”

“The starches break down quickly and it tastes completely different by the time it gets to the store.”

“I would have never thought you were a gardener, Shane.”

“It was another life. Now I’m just a farmer’s market addict.”

“You go to farmer’s markets?”

“I do. Well, I did, back in California. I’ve been redefining the term workaholic since I got here. Thankfully there’s a few great farm to table restaurants around.” He rests his hands on the fence, staring back at the house. “Maybe you’re right. I could fix it up, put it back to what it was.”

“You were happy here, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” he whispers. “It seems wrong to let it go to waste. Perhaps I could sell it and someone else could be happy here, too.”

He drags his foot along the ground until it hits something. I cringe as he bends forward and just plunges his hands into all that tall grass, expecting them to emerge with a snake clamped on his fingers or giant spiders running up his arms. But all he comes up with is a rusty wire basket.

“Let’s get to pickin’,” he says, plucking a blade of dry grass and sticking it in the corner his mouth, winking at me.

I never thought he could be such a goofball. We grab the low hanging fruit first, but the prettiest apples are out of reach. “Do you think there’s a ladder around somewhere?” I ask.

“Sure do.” His eyes travel up and down the length of my body. “Turn around and spread your legs.”

“Excuse me?” I laugh.

“You really ought to get used to taking orders like that, Z,” Shane replies, approaching.

His tone got a too little serious. He grabs my shoulders and spins me around before sliding his hands down to my hips and pulls my ass into his groin. I gasp when I feel how hard he is. His hands travel lower and wrap around one of my knees, jerking it out away from my other leg. I stumble, falling forward, but he catches me and kisses the back of my neck.

“What are you doing?” I murmur, my heart pounding.

“Being your ladder.” He smacks my ass lightly before stooping down behind me. His shoulders hit the back of my thighs as I look down to see his head poking out between my knees.

“Shane!” I squeal as he lifts me into the air.

He reaches up to wrap his fingers around my wrists, steadying me with more pressure on the good side as he adjusts his grip on the bad one. My heart skips a beat. Nobody else knows about that injury. He never forgets. Even when he gets pissed off and drags me around, he only ever reaches for the right arm.

I’ve never ridden on a guy’s shoulders before. It’s as fun as it looks in the magazines. His head leans back, pressing into the warmth between my legs as he gazes up at me. “You alright?” he asks, grinning.

“Yes.”

“Alright then. Pick.” He walks me over to the side of the tree with the most apples.

I hand a few of them down to him, wavering as we figure out the best way to get them into his hands and then into the basket without me toppling off.

“Spider!” I screech. Right when we’ve got it down, I jerk backwards and he locks his arms around my legs to keep me steady. “Ew!”

“Don’t be a wimp. The basket’s almost full.”

“It crawled on my hand.”

He lets out a laugh, turning his head and kissing the inside of my thigh. “I am definitely taking you camping one day.”

“No you’re not,” I retort, increasing my apple picking speed.

We fill up the basket quickly and he bends forward. I’m relieved when my feet are firmly planted on the ground, but the whole thing just made me crave more physical contact. I make sure to brush my fingers against his as we arrange the apples in the bushel so they won’t roll out. He notices, his eyes flicking to mine.

It’s going to be such a long drive back. I’m afraid I’ll be too tired to… My stomach flutters in anticipation, lifting the corners of my mouth into an excited smile that he totally sees. A strange sound off in the distance catches my attention. It sort of sounds like a lawnmower at first, but then it gets way too loud. I lift my gaze in its direction and can’t believe my eyes.

“Is that a helicopter?” I ask.

“I don’t feel like driving anymore today, do you?”

“Well, no, but…” I stare in astonishment as it touches down in the field behind the house. The field where the grass comes up to my waist. Our ride is at least a hundred feet away. Ugh.

Shane carries the big basket of apples out through the rear gate of the garden, looking over his shoulder at me. “Come on.”

“Okay…” I grumble.

Shaking his head, he laughs and sets the bushel on the ground. “You practically live in a ghetto, and you’re afraid of a field of tall grass?”

“There’s probably creatures in there.”

“I must say, this side of you is rather endearing. But I will find a way to cure you of this irrational fear one day.”

His choice of words echoes in my ears as he scoops me into his arms. One day. Like, one day in the future. I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but it’s pretty difficult when I’m tucking my head under his chin as he runs me toward such an extravagant ride home.

Shane tells the pilot to go retrieve our apples as he buckles me into the seat. He sits next to me, holding my hand as we lift into the air. “Ever done this before?” he shouts.

“No.”