“Guess that makes you the horse,” Dominic adds tightly, his eyes on me. But his true irritation tonight is due to our earlier fight and my refusal to let him return to France with me. He’s been begging for months, insisting he can follow in my footsteps at prep and finally join me there. I’d take him with me in a heartbeat if it weren’t for Antoine. I want my brother nowhere within reach.
“No, little brother,” I say, as flashes of my own blueprints flit through my mind, and I reveal the true reason as to why he’s needed here. “You’re the horse. And,” I give them all a pointed look, “as of this moment, I no longer exist.”
The three of them look back at me with unguarded surprise. But beneath the layers of resentment and mild confusion, all I see is blind trust. “From this point on, not one new recruit will know who the major players are. You can give them an impression, but our goal is to confuse them.”
“We’re going to confuse the men working with us?” Sean asks, unable to see the logic.
“It’s the only way,” I insist and glance back at the construction as the sky goes dark. “Leave Roman to me. With him, we’re going to have to bide our time, and you’re going to have to trust me.”
“What about Helen?” Dom asks, joining me where I stand. We stare off for lingering seconds.
“We’re leaving Helen out of it.”
But we didn’t leave her out of it, and it played out as I expected it would once she was brought in. Complete and utter fucking disaster. Despite my role of protecting her, Helen hasn’t stopped punishing me for it.
Eleven days.
Eleven fucking days of flannel pajamas.
And just to pour salt into my weeping dick, she leaves the door open when she showers, when she changes, and when she slathers her insanely toned body in a scent so alluring to me, I get hard when she breezes by.
Well played, queen.
Most days, I wake up alone, and for the majority of them, I’m left hanging in the wind without direction—without any indication of how this will play out between us. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been stuck in a place of reflection, reflection I once managed to suppress with the constant aftermath over the years.
Now, in this silent place, without plans to make and orders to pass out, I’m helpless to the constant surfacing of all I’ve compartmentalized. Especially the most recent years, the agonizing years I forced myself to exist without her.
She wasn’t wrong, but boredom isn’t a word I’d use to describe my current state. It’s more a combination of restlessness edging toward paranoia with every day I willingly forgo being in the know to sort out my relationship with her. She tried to tell me she’s okay with me going back in, but I know that I can’t do it halfway.
I’m an all or nothing man, and I don’t know how to be any other way.
I keep hoping for her emotions to kick in and take over to help bridge the gap, but her sensibilities seem to be winning over her feelings. A skill I taught her—that emotions have no place for an objective player—a lesson she’s clearly taken to heart and has turned against me. There’s a hard edge to her that wasn’t there before, in her scrutiny, in her voice, just throughout her that makes her even more alluring—but that much harder to reach.
When I do manage to catch her before she flees for the café and pin her with my lips, she’s receptive, sometimes playful, but the look of fear I despise is still there. The look that lets me know she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Apparently, assuring her that we’ll be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives isn’t enough.
And I admire and respect her so much for it considering the carnage she witnessed after living a mostly sheltered life.
Over the years, as I resurrected myself and what was left of my army, she’s reinvented herself as an army of one—armed to the teeth. But I don’t want her smoking gun anywhere near me. What I need is a long drink of her strength, of her love, and a little submission.