Rebel’s shoulders hitch up and down as he laughs quietly. “I can’t get used to hearing that,” he says. Turning to my sister, he plants a firm kiss on the top of her head. “Lexi. It’ll never be your name.”
A part of me wants to kick him in the back of the leg for that. The possessive part that still thinks Alexis belongs to me and my parents, and not him. But I don’t because I can see the truth. She really isn’t Alexis anymore.
She is Sophia, and she does belong to Rebel. All I need to do to confirm that is to look at her and see the love pouring out of her. Alexis was the sister I lost. The woman in front of me is a different person. She is Sophia. And she is still my sister—a new sister who I will love just as much as I loved the old one.
******
I look at Cade’s leg—so much metal inside, it will take serious work to ever function properly again—and then I get on the road. Staying the night would be the smart move, but I just…I can’t. I need to go home. I need to see Zeth.
It takes me just a day and a half to arrive back in Seattle—half the time it took me to get my ass out to see Sophia. Without the apprehension of facing something unpleasant holding me back, I break countless speed limits in my haste.
When I burn back into the city, my man is exactly where I expect him to be. The gym is still empty and will be for some time yet. There’s so much work to do, refitting the place from top to bottom. Every time Zeth comes close to finishing the place off, he suddenly finds another reason to push back the opening date. The floors need replacing. A wall needs to be knocked down. A cage needs to be installed. The repairs and construction would go a hell of a lot quicker if he had more than himself and Michael working on the project, but I get the feeling time isn’t a factor here. The gym will be opened when Zeth’s good and ready and not a moment before.
He’s stripped to the waist when I enter the building, even though it’s just as freezing inside as it is outside. He has sweat pouring down his back, though—the lump hammer he swings repeatedly at a dividing wall between one side of the gym and another—I swear he only just put up that wall—reminds me of doing the very same thing myself. Only that time it was in his basement, and there was money involved. An awful lot of money.
“You’re early,” Zeth grunts out. How he’s heard my light-footed entrance over the steady swing and crash of his hammer is beyond me. He just knows…
“I did what I set out to do, and then I came home.” I place both my hands palm-down on his back, wanting to feel the twist and stretch of all that muscle as it works. Zeth tenses at the touch, stopping what he’s doing. He’s smiling when he turns around.
“You missed me, right?”
“Maybe.”
He snakes his arms around my waist, crushing me to him. Some girls might shrink away from all that sweat, but not me. I revel in it. I lean into him and I breathe him in. He returns the favor, and for a moment we just stand there, wrapped around one another.
“You’ve ruined my plans,” Zeth whispers lightly into my ear.
“And what plans might those be?”
“You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”
“Tell me.”
He shakes his head, pulling back to grin down at me. “Oh. There she is. My angry girl. Been a while,” he laughs. I’m getting used to this now—having a boyfriend who laughs sometimes. It’s the most delicious feeling.
“No more surprises, Zeth,” I grumble, though I can’t even pretend to be pissed for long.
He is immoveable, as ever. “I’m not telling. How about I show you instead?”
“Now? I thought I was early?”
Zeth shrugs. “Fuck it.” He pulls on his T-shirt—more muscles moving and shifting, sending warm spirals of want through my body—and then he’s taking me by the hand and guiding us to the Camaro he has parked two streets away. The Camaro. I never thought he’d get it back, and yet somehow he did. He just came home with it one day and I didn’t ask questions.
I have plenty of questions as Zeth drives us out of the city, though. Once we’ve left Seattle’s limits, he pulls over onto the side of the road and pulls a length of silk out of the glove box. It’s the same length of silk he used to blindfold me when he introduced me to the cane.
“Oh?” I ask.
“Uhuh.” He reaches across and ties the strip of material around my head, and I let him.
“Am I going to need to grade my pain in a moment?” My breath catches in my throat.
Zeth’s laugh is a deep rumble in his chest. “Wait and see.”