I get it. The doctor said it could take up to six weeks for my body to completely heal from the ordeal, but it’s not as though I had surgery or anything like that. My bruises are basically a road map across my body, telling him where he can and cannot touch, but for the most part, they’re gone now. I am more than okay to be thrown around again. In fact, I demand it. It’s an integral part of my survival, because if I don’t get to feel him inside of me soon, I think I might actually die.
My whole mood has shifted, and as I get back to work, I hear Zeph on the phone in the living room. I try to tune him out, butI quickly realize he’s talking about Jordan, and I get back to my feet before hovering in my bedroom doorway.
“Who’s he talking to?” I ask Chloe, my gaze shifting between the two.
“It’s the hospital,” she tells me.
“Shit.”
I suck in a breath and watch as Zeph collapses onto the destroyed couch, the phone braced against his ear as his elbow drops to his knees. “Right, thanks for the update,” he says before ending the call.
His head immediately drops low between his shoulders, his phone falling away from his ear. He takes a deep breath, and as Chloe crosses the room and sits down beside him, he glances up, locking his haunted stare on mine. Zeph shakes his head, looking torn. “He didn’t make it,” he says, his voice cracking. “Jordan’s dead.”
“Fuck.”
I drop to my knees in my bedroom doorway, unsure how to feel.
He was a complete psychopath and needed to be dealt with, but I was hoping he would wake up and be sentenced to life behind bars, not handed a death sentence. But this is what I pushed for. His death is on my shoulders. Caesar might have been the one delivering the hits, but if it hadn’t been for me pushing him, Caesar would have held back. He didn’t want to kill him. He didn’t want to risk everything he’d worked for, for the life that he’d built. And now . . .
Since the day I met him, he told me he wasn’t a good man, that I deserve someone better. That I should run from him. But perhaps it’s the other way around. Perhaps he should be running from me.
Letting out a shaky breath, I lift my gaze back to Zeph. He’s completely shattered, and it hits me just how selfish I’m being.Here I am worrying about my own guilt when Zeph has just lost the man he called his best friend for thirteen years. I know things have changed a lot over the past few weeks, but that doesn’t take away the years they had together. That can’t just be stripped away.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, getting back to my feet and crossing the apartment, sitting down on his other side. “This isn’t the outcome I was hoping for.”
“Don’t be sorry, Tilly,” he tells me, dropping his hand to my thigh and giving a gentle squeeze before removing it. “After what he did to you, you should want him dead. Hell, I did. I wanted to fucking kill him myself. I just . . . Now that he is, I don’t know how to feel about it. But this is right. If Dad didn’t find you in that cellar, he would have killed you. This is for the best.”
My lips press into a hard line. It’s clear that he’s very torn on how to feel, which is only natural, but luckily for him, Chloe loves to talk through her feelings. Once they’re alone, I don’t doubt that she’ll deep dive into that shit until he’s a sobbing mess, rocking in the corner of the room. But then she’ll put him right back together until he’s almost brand new.
I nod, desperately wanting to lighten the mood. “I, uhhhh . . . bought a new shirt.”
Zeph groans as Chloe fights a smile. “Do I even want to know?”
“Oh yeah,” I say, getting up and finding my bag that I dropped somewhere among the wreckage. “This is a good one.”
Grabbing it off the floor, I dump the bag on the table that’s now the right way up. I search through the endless piles of crap inside before finding the little package that arrived in the mail yesterday.
A wicked grin stretches across my face, and I tear into the package before pulling out the new slogan shirt. I hold it up and grin to myself as I check it out. It’s absolutely perfect. Probably my favorite overall.
I pull the shirt over my head, making sure it fits properly before finally turning around and showing it off. “Whatdoyathink?” I rush out.
Chloe snorts a laugh, slapping a hand over her face as Zeph narrows his gaze, reading the shirt out loud. “I’m chunky because every time I—” He gives me a hard stare, clearly not impressed. “Get fucked.”
“Don’t even think about it, Zephyr Di Rozé. As your daddy has more than taught you, if you’re going to do something, then do it right. Finish what you started. Read the whole thing.”
Zeph glares at Chloe as she struggles to maintain composure, and seeing that I’m not about to give in, he lets out a loud huff. “You know I hate you, right?”
“Read the shirt, Zephyr.”
His shoulders slump, but nonetheless, his eyes start to sparkle with silent laughter, and he starts reading right from the beginning. “I’m chunky because every time I fuck your dad, he makes me a sandwich.”
“Mmmmm,” I say as he continues to glare. “It’s like music to my ears.”
Then, not wanting Caesar to miss out on the big reveal, I turn myself toward the secret camera hidden high in the apartment, overlooking both the kitchen and living room, before pulling out my phone and shooting off a quick message.
Tilly: Hey, you big pervert. Stop jerking off and check the cameras. I’ve got a surprise for you.
30
