Page 110 of One Last Rainy Day
A fact I cannot turn my back on. A fact that hammered that guilt nail in, cementing me here to serve my time and rectify the situation.
Julien is key.
Because he’s not at all on Tobias’s radar—a grunt on the bottom of the bird chain—Julien can slip out at any time unnoticed. We don’t work like other organizations with death threats until the ink dries. Even then, it’s not a blood-out situation. With Julien and me diligently working to put a plan in place, as of today, we cemented a long-term strategy to get my brother out of Antoine’s clutches and bring him down while taking over the army Tobias himself built.
In a matter of a year or two, Julien will be the first undercover raven to infiltrate Antoine’s army. Once established there, he’ll start the recruitment process to lure in other ravens to create an effective sleeping giant. When awoken at the most optimal time—sadly for Antoine—it will be game over. This giant to serve the same purpose and be just as effective if executed properly. It will take time, but it will work.
Sean’s aware of it, and as soon as I can safely brief Tyler, he’ll be the only other to know.
But the sadder truth of discovering the flipside of my brother’s world is the condition in which he lives. A soldier without a true home, with absolutely nothing but the moves he makes and the hands he continually plays. I full-on fucking cried when I realized what lengths he’s taken to get us to where we are—along with the depth of his perpetual loneliness. That the luxuries he claims to love might be a mirage or an attempt to mask the isolation he must feel.
A hobby that came out of necessity to bide what little time he doesn’t spend taxing himself with keeping Antoine happy and our noses clean back in the States. Though Tobias’s warmth isn’t perceptible to any naked eye, its existence is far more prevalent than mine—and these people he surrounds himself witharen’this fucking people.
His heart is useless because it’s only his mind he fuels.
Fourteen months ago, that was me.
I hate every facet of his world here, and I’m convinced he does too—suffering in silence and trapped with no sanctuary.
No comfort in a sound like the scratch and flip of a new page. No cloud to immerse in—limbs tangled in damp skin, hair tickling my nose, fingernails raking my chest, and soothing murmured words. He’s never had the escape of getting lost in love’s deep blues, in sinful lips, in a scent so addictive, it immediately gets him hard, or the gift of how breathy moans that reek of praise make a man feel invincible. If he only knew what it felt like to be looked at the way she fucking looks at me. Her dark-blue eyes searing through flesh and bone as if she could see every part inside andappreciate each one—no matter how well some of it works and some doesn’t.
Of having a woman who fucking understands him and refuses to let him back down from who he truly is, of freeing him.
She sought me out, fed my starving heart, and resurrected it. She dragged the weakening organ out, kicking and screaming...but it’s out, and it steadily beats for her.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
There’s no going back. This shit’s not reversible.
You can’t unlove someone because you’re ordered to. His belief that it’s possible shows how immature his heart is.
He may have posed the decision, but my heart had already made the fucking choice before I began serving a minute here.
I chose my brother the night he sentenced us—and every day since, the guttural burn that I carry keeps telling me it was a mistake.
You chose wrong.
Hell’s true definition is living out the wrong decision.
My jaw clenches with the realization as I stare up at the black-molded ceiling of my prison.
My shackles invisible but there.
If I walk out of this hostel, I’m free. But if I do, I’ll never be let in again.
It’s a mindfuck, and one I no longer want to participate in.
Hurting him that way broke something inside of me, too. Something between us we may never be able to get back. And that’s on me, so I’ve done what I can to fix it, but he’s tearing me apart in seeking satisfaction.
Because he doesn’t have a fucking clue what it’s like to feel it, so he doesn’t understand his current demand.
Cecelia would never let me forsake my relationship with my brother. Her heart is far too evolved. But sadly, Tobias’s isn’t.
Lightning flickers through the shadows, and I rip my earbuds out, listening for the thunder. It inevitably sounds a few beats later, rumbling throughout the room as the faint stream of David Bowie playing between my fingers reminds me of a time I lay beneath a starlight sky with the woman haunting me.
With our silence, has she washed her hands of us altogether?
Quietly dressing, I slip into my boots, grabbing Julien’s burner, which he now leaves for me every night.
