Broken Wings (Dark Legacy #1)

Tears actually sprang to my eyes as they flew open. This could not be happening. I needed to sleep, it was one of my favorite things to do, and having dead people appear every single time I closed my eyes, was really going to impact my life.

There was only one other time I remembered having insomnia. When I was ten my childhood best friend, Jessie Mcglee, moved away. Outside of Dante—and now Eddy—she was the only true friend I’d ever had, and I’d missed her so much. My mom had to sleep in my room with me for three weeks before I could finally relax my brain to sleep alone. This time though, I had no mom…

My chest got tight and I tried not to break, despite the pressure in my throat and behind my eyes. Scrambling out of bed, I was sucking air in and out, trying to get myself under control.

Without thought, I was pulling on my dressing gown and Uggs again, stumbling downstairs, and throwing myself into the golf cart. The codes were memorized now and I barely even stopped at the gate before I was flying down the road between my house and Becks.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

I needed to do anything except think about my dead parents. The dead pilot. The dead assassins. Or even the alive assassins who were still trying to kill me.

What if he’s not alone?

My foot lifted from the gas, and I let the cart slowly idle forward. I wasn’t quite at the front of his house, and I slammed my hands on the wheel, hating myself for this fucking weakness.

Dropping my head forward, I let the tears finally fall, dripping down my cheeks in hot torrents of pain. Tonight I wished that I wasn’t so alone.

He appeared soundlessly, which was always his way, and wrapped me up in his arms. I didn’t fight him, letting him lift me from the cart before he jumped in to drive. He never let me go the entire drive back to his place.

I expected him to take me straight to that generic bedroom again and fuck me, use my body because that’s all it was good for. I would have even welcomed it, in my current state of mind. But when I finally lifted my head from his hard chest, I realized that we were in a completely different section of the house.

Beck dropped me gently into a large chair, one with a reclining footrest. We were in a cinema room. One which had like twenty luxury seats and the biggest screen I’d ever seen.

“What … why?” I asked, my voice husky.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, brushing a thumb across my cheek, collecting stray tears. “Pick a movie.”

He dropped a complicated looking remote in my hand, and then strode toward a bar at the back of the room. It took me a few failed attempts but I finally figured out how to get the files open, and then I scrolled straight to Fast and Furious 4. Might as well pick up where I left off.

When Beck returned, he had two heavy glasses, filled with ice and an amber liquid.

He handed me one before settling in at my side, his muscled thigh and arm pressing right down my body.

Everywhere he was touching was on fire, and I gulped down a mouthful of the alcohol, recognizing the flavor from the last time I was there. The fancy old scotch that I’d been too unrefined to appreciate. “Nice choice,” he said, and I had no idea what he was talking about, until his eyes shifted to the screen.

I laughed. “Yeah, I was half way through a marathon tonight. They’re classics.”

He didn’t ask me why I was crying. Why I was sitting in a cart in front of his house again. He didn’t ask me one thing as we sat together, watching the screen, sipping on our alcohol.

“Where are your parents?”

The question slipped out, and I expected him to do his usual evasive half-answer bullshit. The silence felt heavy, but surprisingly he answered. “My mother is in France, living with her lover. The secret everyone knows. I haven’t talked to her in five years. My father’s in New York. He basically lives in the office there, doing … business.”

“Are they divorced?” I asked, trying to understand.

Beck snorted. “Delta doesn’t do divorce. We keep it all in the family and the ’til death do you part is literal.”

Knowing everything I did about them, I wasn’t surprised. “How long has it been since you’ve lived under the same roof as them?”

Beck took a drink, finishing it in one long swallow. “I’ve been on my own, off and on, since I was ten.”

Ten? What the actual fuck. What sort of monsters would leave a child alone? Oh, right, Delta sort of monsters.

He must have read my expression in the flashing lights of the movies, because his lips tilted into a cynical smirk. “It was for the best. They’re a fucking mess, and whenever I was in the middle of their fights, I had to watch my father beat the shit out of my mother. Lucky they took off before I was old enough to fight back, because I probably would have killed Dad.”

Fuck. Fucking fuck.

“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think of what else to say.

He didn’t reply, and at that moment, his jaw was like cut glass. Rigid and sharp. I fought against the urge to trace my fingers along those perfect, dark planes of his face. He’d shut off from me again, so I focused on the movie. Enjoying the thrum of cars as they raced at stupid speed, doing impossible things, and yet somehow still making it work.

Neither of us spoke again, but the silence between us wasn’t uncomfortable. This Beck ... the one who found me crying outside his house in the middle of the night and offered me comfort ... this wasn’t the infuriating king shit of Ducis Academy. He wasn’t whiplashing my emotions, pushing and pulling me until I felt like an old piece of elastic.

That Beck was sexy, dangerous, enticing and terrifying. But this one? This was the kind of guy I could easily fall in love with—and that scared the shit out of me.

Clearing my throat, I awkwardly shifted away from him in a lame attempt to distance us. But it wasn’t our physical closeness that was making my skin crawl with fear and anxiety. It was our emotional closeness and that wasn’t something I could easily run from.

“What are you doing, Butterfly?” he rumbled, not taking his eyes from the movie screen. His fingers curled a little tighter around my hip and tugged me back into the gap I’d created.

Licking my lips, I desperately resisted the magnetic pull of him. “I should, uh, I should go home.”

This made him shift slightly, turning his attention from the screen to peer at me with those intense gray eyes. “Why?”

Bullshit excuses flitted across my mind, but none made it past my lips. Eventually, I let out a frustrated sigh and opted for the truth. “Because I just accused you of sending crazy mixed messages and yet here I am in your house in the middle of the night. Again.” I shook my head, breaking eye contact with him and fidgeting with my robe.

There was a long pause before Beck replied. Long enough that I was bracing myself, ready to run from the thick tension between us. “I like you being here,” he finally admitted in a soft whisper. His hand picked mine up from where I was twisting my robe and tangled our fingers together. “I keep pushing you away, hoping you’d hate me. That you’d stay away, because being near me is a death sentence.” He paused, and I was too much of a coward to look up at him, even though the heat of his gaze was setting me on fire. “But you’re a part of this, whether we like it or not. So, maybe instead of pushing you away, I should hold you tighter.”

The air all rushed out of me from a breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding. “What are you saying, Beck?” I asked, my voice holding an edge of pleading. “This shit between us is exhausting.”

He shook his head, looking down at our linked hands. “I don’t know, Riley. But I don’t want you to go.”