the roof terrace, standing by the stone railing, staring out over the estate’s main driveway. The muscles in his broad shoulders are tense, taut, and solid beneath his black t-shirt. He would have seen me stomping up to the main house. He could have come down to let me in. But he didn’t.
He really doesn’t want to see me.
My step falters, and some of the raging fire that’s burning low in my gut eases in its intensity at the sight of him.
He looks… broken. He’s still the same tall tower of dark clothed intensity he’s always been. But there’s something else there now. It’s like something has shifted in the energy around him. He always exuded strength, control… passion. Now the only waves I sense coming off him are impregnated with regret.
Regret over us?
“Dax?” My voice betrays me, pitching unnaturally. I came here prepped for a fight. Ready to scream and shout my hurt and confusion at him for pushing me away for the past two days. But just seeing him again… despite being so hurt and angry over what he’s done, all I want to do is run to him and feel his arms wrap around me. Hear his breath as he inhales with his nose pressed to my hair, the way that he does. And feel his lips against my forehead.
“You shouldn’t be here, Rose.”
Rose. He calls me Rose a lot. But somehow, in this moment, it cuts deep, like a stake through my heart. He could have used Sunbeam. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the cops took him away… he should have used Sunbeam.
“My contract’s over, then? Just like that? Were you even going to have the decency to come and tell me why?” My hurt morphs into anger, and I welcome it. Anger is better than this gut-wrenching pain that’s threatening to consume me if I let it.
Dax drops his head, inhaling deeply, causing his entire back to widen and fill out. He really is a sight to behold. Dressed entirely in black, his inked forearms solid as he holds onto the guard rail with a fierce grip.
Silence.
“Two fucking days, Dax,” I hiss at his back. “That’s how long I’ve been waiting to see you. To know that you’re all right. And then you send Logan to do your shit for you.”
My words hit his back like missiles. But they just seem to roll off as he remains impassive.
“At least look at me, you selfish asshole!”
His head snaps to the side and our eyes connect for the briefest moment, his flashing with something. Then he moves faster than I can blink, strides over and wraps a hand around my neck, his eyes almost black as he glares at me. I blink up at him, licking my lips, hope blossoming in my wrung-out heart.
He’s still in there.
My passionate, broken man is still in there somewhere. He didn’t leave me that night he was taken away. Whatever James said to him that made him stop fighting and get into the squad car, it didn’t change the way he feels about me. It’s running through his skin into mine, buzzing like static electricity.
“You have no idea who you’re talking to,” he growls, his eyes raking over my face and pausing on my lips before he rips them away.
“Don’t I? You don’t think after everything we’ve talked about and done together that I don’t know the real you? That I haven’t seen who you really are inside?”
Dax sucks in a breath through his nose, his wild eyes meeting mine once more. “I’m his son,” he spits out the word like it’s poison. “His fucking blood runs in my veins. And you want to be near that? You want to be near someone who has the blood in him from a man who was going to rape you over the hood of his car and then probably shoot you like an animal? Throw your body away like it’s trash?”
“You’re not him.” I struggle to speak. Dax’s grip is tight on my throat. Tighter than he’s ever held me before.
His haunted eyes search mine, then he screws his face up and crushes his lips to mine, kissing me forcefully. I wrap my arms around his neck, kissing him back with desperation for the precious few seconds it lasts.
Then he takes his hand back and wrenches himself from my grip, leaving me gasping as he steps back, away from me.
I rub the tender skin on my neck as I take a deep breath, my lungs burning. “Dax?”
“You need to leave.” He takes another step away from me, his face closing off, as he avoids looking into my eyes.
“I’m not leaving. You’re being ridiculous. You’re nothing like him. You have to know that. Dax?” I step toward him, but he pulls an envelope from the back pocket of his jeans and thrusts it into my hand. “What’s this?”
“Your plane ticket. You’re going back to New York.”
“What? I am not!” The paper burns into my palm as he looks away. I rip it into tiny shreds without even opening it and hurl it at him. It flutters over his t-shirt like confetti. “Fuck you! You can act like a prick all you want. But I am not leaving you.”
“It was all fake.”
It’s not his words that make me freeze on the spot. It’s his eyes. It’s the way they’ve finally met mine again, but they’re full of… nothing.
Whenever Dax looks at me, even when we first met, there was always something there. Always some fire, some light. Something that told me he felt something.
Now there’s nothing.
Empty, emotionless dark brown meets heartbroken blue.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Believe me.” His lips curl down and a muscle in his neck twitches, drawing my attention to the tiny, delicate bird on his neck.
“I can’t,” I croak. “I know you.”
“You don’t know shit.”
I snap my eyes back to his, and the darkness in them has me choking back a sob. He’s looking at me like it was all one big act. He’s detached. He doesn’t even look like Dax anymore.
“I’ve been lying to everyone for nine months. My own sister didn’t even see through it. And you think you can? Some girl who only arrived a few months ago? You don’t know me. I wanted one thing… revenge for what he took from me. I wanted to watch Julian Young get locked up, lose a part of his life like I lost mine. It’s all I ever wanted. You were just a pretty distraction along for the ride.”
I drag in a broken breath, and it’s like breathing in jagged shards of glass, each one ripping me apart more. “Don’t say that. Don’t make out like it meant nothing. Don’t lie to me, Dax.”
My body swirls with a combination of hurt, anger and pain. I’d rather him be a stone-cold murdering criminal who really was working for Julian Young than lie to me.
I can’t take anyone else lying to me.
“Don’t lie to me,” I repeat, my voice sounding strong, considering the surge of vomit I’m only just managing to keep at bay. “Anything else… anything. But don’t lie.”
Dax screws his eyes shut, a vein in his neck bulging and pulsating.
I take a step toward him, and he opens his eyes and stares at me, regret filling them once again.
Please don’t lie.
“It wasn’t an act. Don’t ruin what we had, don’t make out I’m stupid. You might have fooled Young’s gang, but you can’t fool me. I know you.”
I take another step toward him.
I just need to make him understand that I’m here for him. Finding out about Julian was a shock, I get it. He’s hurt. I can help him like he helped me.
“You don’t, Rose.”
“Stop saying that.”
Another step.
“I do know you, Dax. You’re a good person. You knew someone needed to stop Julian. But you weren’t really involved in what he did. You were just getting evidence against him. You never smuggled anything, like the cops said.”
“What?” His eyes go round, and I drop the foot I’m about to take another step with back to the floor.
“They asked me loads of questions about New York. About your baggage.”
I pause, searching his face for a clue. I’ve been thinking about it ever since the cops interviewed me. I wondered if there was any truth to it. But then, it just didn’t make any sense. Dax isn’t a criminal. He was trying to take Julian down. The cops know that now. They let him go free without charge. It was just part of their questioning. They were just doing their job.
“They probably thought if you were guilty of something that I would give you up accidentally if they probed deep enough.”
“It’s true.”
“Exactly. It’s how they always play these things. Ask lots of quest—”
“No, Rose. It’s true.”
Now it’s my turn for my eyes to widen as I gape at him. “What is?”
He pauses, his eyes raking over my face and then pinching at the corners as though he’s mentally preparing to deliver the kill shot.
“I did use you. I gave you my bags to take because I thought you were less likely to be searched. I told you to smile at the customs guy because I knew he’d be too busy looking at your beautiful face to even consider you might be carrying something you shouldn’t.”
“No. You…” I snap my head back. “You wouldn’t do that.”
He watches me as sourness settles in the pit of my stomach and the sound of my own heartbeat racing echoes in my ears.
“I used you to get things into the country illegally. You know I’m not lying now. Look at me.” Dax nods slowly as I search his eyes, and I suck in a sharp breath.
He’s telling the truth. I can tell. He was lying before about it all being an act with me. I can tell that from his eyes, even if he won’t admit it. But this? He’s not lying about this.
He lied to me when we went to New York. He used me.
“You said you were going for work, to visit the Andersons in California, and that I should visit my family.”
“Sounds a lot better than telling you I needed to move something out of the country, doesn’t it?”
I stare at him, my brain firing out explanations one after the other, desperately searching for one that will make this all stop.
None make any sense.
Except one.
That it’s the truth.
“You wouldn’t put me in danger like that. If I’d been caught with drugs, then I would have been arrested, I could have gone to jail.”
He flinches, then recovers himself, his face closing down as he holds my eyes.
“You need to let the sun set on any romantic notions you had of us. Because I’m not that man. I never will be. Go back to New York, Rose.” He drops his head and begins to turn away.
“What? Go back and call up Gareth? Tell him I’ll go for dinner with him after all?”
I’m shaking with anger, but I don’t miss the sudden flex of Dax’s jaw as he brings his eyes back to mine.
“Is that what you really want? For me to go back there and be with someone like him? When you’re the only one I want?”
The thick muscles in his neck contract, making the bird tattoo on his neck move in a way that makes it look like it’s waving with its wing.
Waving goodbye.
“You’re free. Do whatever the hell you want. Just do it back in New York.” His voice is low, quiet. But each syllable is said with precision. And each one is like a bullet in my chest.
“Don’t do this.” My eyes sting, and I blink rapidly as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps something into it.
My own phone vibrates in my hoodie, and I pull it out and open the email from him. It’s a copy of a plane ticket to New York. Just one ticket. With one name on it.
Mine.
He walks past me, his arm brushing mine and forcing a sob from me that I claw back in before it fills the surrounding air on the roof terrace.
“Don’t come crawling back to me when you’ve finished your pity party for one!” I spin and scream at his back as he walks to the stairway door. “Whatever shitty denial you’re living in right now is your own fault. I am here, Dax. I am here. For you.” My chest heaves as I gasp in air before screaming again. “You don’t fucking deserve me right now. But I am here, like you have been for me. But if you walk down those stairs and shut me out, then that’s it!”
He stops, his hand wrapped around the door handle.
My heart lifts, and I take a step toward him. Ready to run to him. Because even though this is fucked up, it’s Dax. He is Dax. I know him. There has to be a reason he would take drugs to New York. He isn’t a criminal. He’s good. He has a huge heart. Just like Jasmin told me.
She isn’t wrong about her own brother.
I can’t be wrong about him.
I can’t.
He inclines his chin over his shoulder, but not far enough for our eyes to meet.
“You need to forget about me, Sunbeam.”
Sunbeam.
“Your flight leaves at nine.”
Then he walks through the open door.
I stand in shock for a few minutes, until the sound of an engine roaring into life snaps me from my trance and I rush to the edge of the roof.
Dax’s Range Rover tears down the main driveway, leaving me alone on the roof terrace.
I grip the stone railing until my palms sting. The view reaches far across the estate up here. It’s almost like being up in the clouds, looking down at everything like this. I used to love being up high. Walking up that hill with Dad. He’d say our troubles were far below us.
But what if the cause of my trouble was up here with me until just a few minutes ago? What if that trouble was the thing that was stopping me from crashing all this time? Holding me up?
And now it’s gone.
