Page 62 of Blind Sin

He turns and his gaze is dark. Dangerous. I hate him in ways I can’t define or express. Joshua Nix was supposed to be my everything, not my downfall.

I ignore him and turn back to Lauren. “We need to get out of here. Lauren. Remember what we talked about yesterday?”

She shakes her head and holds her ground and I suddenly feel like I’m an outsider. My whole world comes crushing in as I realize I’ve lost her.

Anger surges through my veins, but I can’t fight them. I also can’t go back inside, but it’s not like there’s anywhere to hide on a desert island. Even the staff quarters have been invaded by them...by Josh.

Instead of trying to push past them, I turn and stalk over to where the boat is docked. I climb aboard and head inside. As I slam the door shut, the boat rocks with the force of the impact. The sound reverberates through the small space, drowning out the noise of the waves lapping against the hull.

I lean my back against the door, my breaths coming in short, ragged gasps. The tears that I've been holding back finally spill over, cascading down my cheeks and soaking into my shirt.

42

DACRE

“Damn it.” I clench my fists at my sides even though I know this is all our faults. We should have known we couldn’t keep this secret forever, and it’s hardly as though we were being subtle. We’ve fucked Lauren all over the island. It’s a miracle Lucinda didn’t find out earlier.

Mercier takes the weight of Lauren as she slumps against him. I'm at a loss, standing there without a clue of what to do. I fucking hate how utterly terrified I feel. I’ve known the feeling of being scared before. When we kidnapped Lauren the first time, when we basically stole my parent’s yacht to come to this island, when I used their credit card to pay for Lauren’s operation, but none of that compares one iota to how I feel now. Because now, there’s the very real probability we are going to lose Lauren. I would fight my parents, the police, and the media. I’d fucking knock Peter Waldgrave’s head from his shoulders to protect her, but the second any of us steps between Lauren and Lucy is the moment she’s gone for good. She won’t even need to step on the boat, for her to be gone. It will be intrinsic the way she pulls away from us. I mentally curse out Josh for disappearing inside and leaving this to us. One look at Mercier shows he’s just as scared as I am and that’s enough to put the fear of god in me, because I’ve never seen him scared in his life. I thought he just didn’t feel fear, but now I see it’s because he’s never had anything he loved before that he was going to lose.

I watch helplessly as he strokes Lauren’s hair, whispering soothing words into her ear. The top of his head has a lump from where Lucinda bashed him with her elbow as he was dragging her off Nix, but he’s throwing all his attention at Lauren. It’s going to hurt like a motherfucker when this all dies down. My own shoulder hurts, but it’s nothing compared to the pain in my chest. There’s a primal need to protect Lauren, almost feral, but I can’t protect her without hurting her more. There’s no winning in this situation. As if things aren’t shit enough, the motor on the boat suddenly cranks into life.

Fuck no. I take a step toward the boat, but it’s too late. Josh has already barreled past me. He races down the pathway, his feet thudding on the sun weathered wood of the jetty. As the boat pulls away from the dock, he leaps like a motherfucking stunt man, grabbing onto the outside of the rails and hanging off the side.

Lauren gasps as Mercier shares a look with me that it doesn’t take a genius to decipher. This isn’t going to end well.

Either Lauren will decide she doesn’t want to hurt Lucinda and leave us, or she chooses us and in time grows to resent us for coming between the only fucking family she has that hasn’t kept her prisoner her whole life.

Mercier picks her up and for a second I think he’s going to take her inside, but instead he sits down, his back to the outer wall of the house, Lauren on his knees. She hastily pulled her dress back on when Lucinda found us, and it’s in stark contrast to Mercier’s naked chest. She’s trembling slightly in his arms. I cringe at the marks we’ve made on her that I guess she’s been covering up, the redness around her wrists, the bite mark on her tit that I did days ago. No fucking wonder Lucinda lost her shit. “It’s okay, baby,” I say as the boat sails off. “Josh’ll talk to her.”

She shifts her focus to me, her eyes still sparkling with tears. I want to take those tears from her so badly, as though siphoning them off will take away all the trauma... trauma that we were supposed to be lessening, not adding to. If I was anyone else on this planet I’d hunt me down and make me pay for the sadness on her face, but the pain clearly etched there is enough punishment.

“She hates Josh.”

I’m not sure that’s true, not anymore, but I’m not about to contradict her. Instead. I slump down next to them, pulling Lauren’s legs on top of my own. She gives me a soft sigh as I run my fingers up and down her shin, making sure I don’t venture higher. Mercier strokes her hair as I massage her feet and finally her body loses some of the tenseness.

I never expected for Mercier and I to be so in tune with each other when it came to sex with Lauren, but we’ve developed our own kind of rhythm which is now translating nicely to soothing our girl.

This works, I realize. It just does. We’re like a family that Josh was just beginning to come around to. So if the four of us are family, what does that make Lucinda?

None of us want her the way we want Lauren, that’s for sure... with maybe the exception of Josh. He’s not been himself since that first day it came on the news that Lucinda was kidnapped. He’s fit into whatever Mercier, Lauren and I have, but I don’t know if he’s completely over Lucinda yet and I don’t know if she’s over him.

It’s way too complicated to think of all the variables, and truth be told, I don’t want variables. I want Lauren and I want Mercier and Josh with us too. If I’m totally honest, I want Lucinda in my life, but I don’t have the first clue where she fits in, and that, I think, is our biggest problem.

“I should have gone with her,” Lauren says, lifting her head to me. Her eyes are red and swollen and at first I think that it’s from her tears, but as she holds my gaze, something hits me.

“You’ve taken the gauze off.”

She nods.

“You can see me?”

A small smile cuts through the misery and then she lowers her eyes. “This is the first time in my whole life I’ve been able to see Lucy and she was angry with me. She didn’t even notice.”

Something indefinable swells in my chest, mixing with the pain. I lean towards her and kiss the tears from her eyes. “The next time you see her she’ll be smiling,” I say. Mercier shoots me an incredulous look, but what else am I supposed to say to her?

“Nix will bring her back.” He has to.

Nix

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