Badly Behaved

“Ransom—”

“I love you. For real love you.” He fists my hair, a heart-wrenching tenderness written across him. “Bottom of the fucking ocean, love you, Trouble, and you’re not going to say it back, but I don’t need you to. I already know.”

I swallow, shaking my head. “Ransom...”

“You don’t know what it means to love, you don’t understand it, but I fucking feel it. When you look at me, when you touch me.”

“We can’t do this,” I breathe brokenly.

“Let him catch us,” he rasps, his hips shifting beneath me. “I can’t stop needing you. I fucking want you, always.”

“That’s not what I mean.” My throat aches with loss and he’s still beneath me. I can’t imagine the pain that follows.

“I mean this.” I try to pull back, but his hands fly to my hips and hold.

“This,” he deadpans.

“Us.”

His muscles grow tense, eyes tightening. It takes him several seconds to speak and when he does, it’s heartbreaking. “There is no ‘doing this.’ It’s done.”

He adjusts, leaning forward with his brows raised high.

Footsteps fall in the distance, and Ransom’s eyes snap over my shoulder.

I quickly jump up, backing away as I fix my dress, and with a pointed expression, he does the same.

With slow, predatory steps, he advances on me. “If you think I’ll let you walk away, you’re wrong.”

Acid coats my tongue, but in this moment, my mother would be proud.

I lift my chin, a cold, callousness washing over me, making me appear numb and indifferent when really my body is on fire. Everything inside me is burning.

“If you think you can stop me, you’re wrong.”

His eyes flash, his chest heaving, but he gives a curt nod, walks past, and stops two feet from his brother.

“You can have everything that’s rightfully mine, it means nothing to me, but try to take her, and I will kill you.” Ransom’s promise sends a tremor down my spine.

Anthony, the bastard, laughs, sticks his hands in his pockets, and cocks his head. “If you do, make sure you’re successful this time because it will be your ass if you are not. I won’t stick my neck out for you again.”

“Fuck. You.” Anger courses through Ransom’s very being and his body vibrates where it stands.

His eyes slice to mine, holding as he slams his shoulder into his brother as he passes. He charges down the stairs and out the front door.

The hinges rattle and it shakes the vessels to my heart, threatening to tear them from the heavy beating organ and ending me right here, or at least that’s the way it feels.

But then I realize what he’s just said...

Again.

Subconsciously, my eyes fly along the floor, at the mess made during their spat. Pieces of the iridescent vase gleam around the room, the one that caught my attention the day Anthony brought me here, taunting me without my knowledge with what he knew was coming.

“Ah, yes, the pearls.” Anthony rounds where I stand, using the bottom of his shoe to send several rolling out of his path.

He pours himself a scotch, swirling it in his cup with a small, vile smile.

“See,” he begins. “Sienna loved the ocean. Our family knew this man who worked near the pier, owned this little shop. You go in, pick an oyster, and hope something worthy is inside. She would walk there every day after school, buy herself a bundle, come home and add whatever she found to that exact vase. I guess you could call it her... life’s work.” He grins and horror crosses my face.

“She never found one worth a damn,” he adds. “But she kept going and going, hoping. It’s in our blood, gambling.” He shakes his head. “All she wanted was one perfect pearl, but she never got it.”

My temples throb, and he looks to me.

“The yacht.”

“The yacht, the imperfection hidden under your makeup.” He lifts his glass to his lips, taking a small sip.

Ransom blew up the yacht, set it aflame, as he did my car, the Bonzi tree Cali told me about, Scott’s grapevines...

“He’s unstable, of course you would be too if you were the reason your sister was dead, but alive.”

A chill runs through me, and I pale, my eyes snapping to his.

He squints, and a low chuckle leaves him. “Oh, you didn’t know?” He walks closer, fully entertaining himself, and with every step he takes, my lungs shrivel a little more. “Why do you think he doesn’t drive?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t drink?”

“Stop.”

“It’s because he climbed behind the wheel with his precious baby sister in the passenger seat.”

My palm flattens on my stomach. “I said stop.”

“And when he took a corner, he took it wide. Flew right over the center median. Right into oncoming traffic.”

Oh my god, this is how it happened.

She wasn’t hit by a drunk driver; she was in the car with one.

But it wasn’t Ransom, I know this, because Ransom would never leave his sister after a moment like that, and he was with Amy just after it happened.