SCARLET
Present Day
“Hey, sweet cheeks,” Seb said as he gingerly sat in the back seat with me and lifted my head onto his lap. The car smelled like all three of my boys, clean with a hint of their spicy cologne. It was so comforting that I had fallen asleep the moment Tristan had laid me down.
“Hey, handsome.” My voice came out scratchy and quiet. I looked up at him and admired his dark eyes. Their usual playfulness was gone, replaced by worry and fatigue. My cinnamon roll was exhausted. He looked hollow and pained.
“We’re taking you to a new safe house, okay? It’s going to be a long drive, and I know you probably feel gross, but we don’t want to take the chance of being seen.” His hands soothed through my tangled hair, and I winced as it pulled at my scalp. “Sorry,” he said as he recoiled like I had bitten him.
“Hey,” I said, moving slowly to take his hand in my own. I kissed the palm and breathed him in. Even the scent of blood on his hands comforted me. My boys had finally found me. Seb had killed people to get to me, but he was being so gentle with me it made my heart ache. I wasn’t used to this sad, quiet side of him.
“I’m sorry, Scarlet,” he admitted, brushing his thumb over my lips.
“We all are, princess,” Tristan said from the front seat. “We were fighting every single day to get back to you.”
“It tore us apart,” Seb whispered.
“It’s okay,” I assured them both as I kissed Seb’s palm again. “I’m with you guys now. Better than being dead, right?” I tried to laugh it off, but Seb’s face was bleak. “Where are we going?” I asked to change the subject.
“North,” Elliot answered as he got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. I winced at the noise, my head already pounding.
“A little fucking tact, Elliot,” Sebastian growled.
“I’ll have a little fucking tact when my balls stop aching.”
Sebastian laughed, and I saw Tristan turn around to look at him out of the corner of my eye. Seb shrugged and looked back down at me, brushing my hair out of my face and playing with it in a way that wouldn’t cause it to pull against my scalp.
“So I have to wait until we get to this safe house before I can bathe?” I yawned and closed my eyes, relishing the fact that I could do that without being terrified that someone was going to sneak up on me for the first time in weeks. I always felt safer, even from my own nightmares, when Seb was sleeping with me, but it felt even more important now for one of them to always be with me, just in case.
And I wasn’t going to let my pride get in the way of that.
“Unfortunately,” Elliot mumbled as he started the car.
“Your balls won’t be the only thing aching if you don’t watch your mouth,” Tristan told him.
“Yes, baby,” Seb cooed down at me. “I know you must feel dirty, but we just can’t risk stopping, okay?”
I nodded and fought back the tears. I didn’t really know why I wanted to cry again. It could’ve been the relief I felt at finally being safe, or it could’ve been the way Elliot was talking to me again, like I was as annoying as gum on the bottom of his shoe.
I thought we had made a little bit of progress, but the way he was acting made me think maybe we hadn’t. I dreaded the thought of starting all over again with him. Seb wiped the tears away from my face that had escaped, and I looked up at his soft smile.
“We will help you take a shower the moment we get there, okay, princess?” Tristan turned around and asked.
All I could manage was a small nod.
“Baby,” Seb said in a soft voice. “Something else happened the night you were taken, and it doesn’t feel right to hide it from you.”
“Sebastian!” Tristan yelled, causing me to jump and bump my broken ribs. I groaned and shuffled further into Seb. “We talked about this!”
“You talked. I didn’t listen.”
“Just fucking tell her and get it over with,” Elliot grumbled. “She may as well know about the destruction she left in her wake.”
“It was not her fucking fault,” Seb growled back, cradling my head against his abs like he could protect my ears like a small child. “We talked about this. We talked about you not being a cunt and getting your head out of your ass.”
“You talked. I didn’t listen,” Elliot shot back.
“Oh, you know what, Elliot? Get fucked. Pull this fucking car over and let me show you how badly I can make those tiny shriveled ba—”
“Seb!” I interrupted, seeing as Tristan obviously had stopped playing referee since I got taken. Jesus, was everything between them fucked? “Just fucking tell me what happened!”
He sighed and looked down at me. “So the reason I left you that night was because we got a call that there was some shit going down at the loft,” Seb said. “Turns out, it was just a diversion to get us all out of the house so that you were left vulnerable. But they did actually destroy the loft and…” He trailed off. Even in the dim light of the car, I could see his eyes were wet. I gingerly reached up and stroked his cheek.
I might have been going through hell, but clearly something had happened to my boys as well.
“What happened, love?” I asked him.