Alexis’ gaze flickers to him; she nods her head, the robotic movements of someone completely at a loss for words.
“Good. I’m glad you’re okay,” he says carefully. “Babe, remember when we got married? And you said it would have been the most perfect day if only your sister could have been there? Well, about that…”
Alexis tries to pull her hand away, but Rebel’s got a decent if cautious grip on her. “I’m sorry, baby,” she says. “I just…I didn’t...” There are tears welling in her eyes. Alexis was always one for crocodile tears when she wasn’t getting her own way, but these look genuine enough. She’s shaking. “I swear I didn’t mean to lie to you. And I swear I’ll tell you everything. But…can I just have a moment with her?” With her? Alexis sees how black my mood is becoming and amends her words. “ I need a moment with my sister.”
Rebel grunts, stands and then places a kiss on the top of her head. “Be careful,” he says to her. “Dr Romera attacks when provoked.”
He leaves the room, winking at me as he goes. I think about Zeth and how he would react to something like; probably smash his head through the observation window. If only I had Zeth’s body mass.
“You can stop looking at him like that.”
Alexis’ voice is a little stronger now, but still a shaken. “How the hell should I be looking at him, Lex? Should I be warmly embracing my new brother in law, the human trafficker?”
“Yes. No, wait. He’s not…he’s not what you think, Sloane.”
I can barely believe my own ears. He has brainwashed her. She has Stockholm’s or something. “So you weren’t kidnapped from outside college? And this guy didn’t force you to marry him?”
Alexis sighs, and then scrubs her hands over her face. The tears are falling now. “Yes, I was taken. But it wasn’t by him. He helped me,” she tells me though her hands. When she removes them, there’s a fierce set to her jaw. “And he didn’t force me to marry him, Sloane. You have to believe that.”
“Then why on earth did you marry the president of a bike gang? Because I’m really struggling to understand any of this.”
She sniffs, swatting the tears from her cheeks. “I married him because he’s the other half of me, Sloane. The slightly grumpy, slightly scary, and deeply wonderful other half of me. I married him because I love him.”
This is all just far too much for me to take. So it’s all true. She told Rebel that I didn’t care about her. That I couldn’t be bothered coming to her wedding. I need to know why, but right now I have a more pressing need, and that is to get away. After all this worrying, all of the nightmares about my poor baby sister being used and abused, she’s blissfully happy. And married. Fucking married. I can’t breathe. I need time to think. To process all of this properly.
I turn, and I walk away, and I don’t look back.
I make it down to the ground floor, back to where we were waiting earlier before—
“Hey, Sloane!”
It’s him, the tattooed bastard, following me down the corridor. I try to power-walk away from him, but he grabs hold of my arm. I spin on my heel, ready to lay into him again, but he lets go of me, holding his hands in the air.
“Don’t be mad at her, babe. She’s been through hell and back.”
“And was it you who put her through it?”
He clenches his jaw, eyes narrowing—I barely took notice before, but the color of his eyes is so blue that they look like flints of ice. “No.”
“Then how the hell did she end up with you?”
“Maybe that’s something she should tell you. I think you could probably hazard an educated guess, though.” Pulling on his leather jacket and wearing an infuriating smirk on his face, Rebel jerks his head down the hallway.
Toward Zeth.
He’s watching us; his silhouette is that of an imposing monolith, carved out of rock. Rebel breaks out in a grin. “You both have similar taste in men, after all, sweetheart. You both like us dark and dangerous.”
A
STANDALONE STORY
COMING SOON
About The Author
Callie Hart is a bagel eating, coffee drinking, romance addict. She can recite lines from the Notebook by heart. She lives on a ridiculously high floor in a way-too expensive building with her fiancé and their pet goldfish, Neptune. Burn is the third instalment in her Blood and Roses series. The next instalment, as yet untitled will be release in July 2014.
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