Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2) (40 page)

“As much as he needs.” I bite my lip, uncertain if it’s the right thing to say now, but sure of my feelings. “I know you’ve never trusted me, and I get it. He’s rich and famous, and I was a nobody from nowhere who out of the blue was all of a sudden your brother’s girlfriend. I understand why you’d assume I wanted something from him.”

“That about sums it up,” she mutters.

“But I love him.” I swallow my tears because Bristol doesn’t strike me as a girl who respects any sign of weakness. “And he loves me. I have to believe that will be enough. That the way we love each other will be enough.”

“Do you have any idea how special he is?” Her voice is quiet, her eyes probing mine.

“Of course I do. He’s a genius.”

“Not that shit. He’s a good guy. With all he’s been given, somehow he’s managed to be a good guy.” She shrugs her slender shoulders. “Probably Uncle Grady’s doing.”

“Yeah. He’s a good guy.” I twist my lips. “A great guy.”

My guy.

“Don’t hurt him again.” Bristol lifts her lashes, her eyes a blunt warning. “Look, I want to trust you, but then I find out you fucked the guy who hates Rhys more than anyone, and that you hid a sex tape for three months. Not exactly endearing.”

“I know it was bad judgment, not telling Rhyson.”

“It was bad judgment fucking Drex.”

She’s not saying anything I haven’t told myself a million times, but it still feels like she’s a sword that just drew first blood.

“Yes, it was,” I agree. “But Rhyson and I hadn’t even met when that happened. The thing I most regret that I
could
have changed is keeping this from him for weeks. I never wanted him to see that tape.”

I pause, studying the marble floor and gulping back shame.

“I know you didn’t watch, but you know what’s on it. Can you understand how desperate I was for the man I love to never see me that way?”

“But he has, right?” Bristol asks. “He watched it?”

“Yes.” I look her right in the eye. “He saw it.”

“And yet he’s still racing off to handle this for you.” She licks her lips and lowers her eyes to the coffee in front of her. “He still loves you.”

“We love each other,” I say softly. “I don’t know how long it will take him to forgive me for lying to him. I don’t know how long it will take him to trust me again, but I’ll wait.”

“I can’t promise you that I’ll trust you anytime soon.” Bristol gives me frank eyes. “You may think I’m cold and that he’s just my job. Hell, sometimes he thinks that, too. But he’s my brother, Kai. I’ve seen that he’ll always choose you, protect you. I hope you understand that I’ll always choose him. That I’m here to protect him.”

And just like that I like her. I mean, we’re still from different worlds. She may never be the girl I grab a mani/pedi with, or tell my secrets to, but she loves Rhyson. Deeply. And that we have in common.

“Bristol, you say that Rhyson chooses me every time. I promise you that I’ll choose him every time, too.”

She stands to dump her remaining coffee in the sink and to grab her purse.

“You better.” She looks at me unsmilingly for an extra few moments, and though she doesn’t crack, her eyes soften just a little. Just enough. “Well, you heard him give me my marching orders. I’m gonna go. I have work to do.”

And she’s gone, eyes already glued to the phone that seems to hold the solution to any problem Rhyson ever has. She’s Rhyson’s fixer. Makes life smoother. I don’t think I appreciated before how very good she is at it. I want to ask if she can fix Rhyson and me, if there’s anything on that phone that will fix the mess I’ve made, but I know that’s something I’ll have to do myself.

What will it take to repair the damage I’ve done to our relationship? To our trust? Last night he wouldn’t stay with me, but this morning he asked me not to leave. This stasis, this space between his love, which I don’t doubt, and his anger, which I deserve, feels like a lifelong sentence, even though it’s only been a few hours. Rhyson lasted months with my anger and my silence.

I’ll give him no less.

IT’S NEVER BEEN THIS QUIET IN
the car when it’s just Marlon and me. We find something to talk about all the time, even if it’s just Madden high scores or our music. He knows how I feel about Kai and how much I hate Drex. So a sex tape featuring the girl I love and the man I despise . . . yeah, I’d be at a loss for words, too.

“So did you watch it?” He finally drops the question into this vat of boiling silence. “The tape, I mean.”

I’d rather have the quiet than this conversation.

“Uh, a little bit.” My grip tightens on the steering wheel. I almost smile when I think about the first time Kai sat where Marlon sits now and told me her name was like my Porsche.

Kai Anne. Like your car. Cayenne.

From the beginning, she always made me laugh. If I’m a safe, she cracked me day one, and we were friends before we were anything else. We were friends when I wasn’t sure that was all I could settle for. And we
trusted
each other with secrets we’d never shared with anyone else. How did that happen so quickly? So deeply? I want that back more than anything. She figured it out for me, and as much as the lies hurt, I’ll figure it out for her . . . eventually. But first I have to eliminate these threats.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do if it comes out?” Marlon asks.

“It won’t come out. That’s why we’re doing this now, so it doesn’t come out.”

“It’s possible, Rhys, that it will.” Marlon pauses before going on. “I’m just asking if you’ve thought about how you’ll feel if everyone sees Drex fucking your girl.”

I shoot him a dark look and take a deep breath, glad the curving road gives me something to focus on besides my fury. The thought of anyone seeing Kai like that takes a chainsaw to the lining of my stomach. I must be bleeding inside. There’s no way I can have pain like this without blood.

“If it was the girl I love,” he continues. “I would tell the whole world to go fuck themselves. Who cares what they think?”

“Yeah?” I divide a glance between him and the road. “Easy to say when it’s not you on the tape. I don’t care if people talk about me, but people talking about Kai? Seeing her like that? That I can’t take.”

I shake my head, my heart straining with every beat at the thought of her humiliated that way.

“I’ll do anything to keep that from happening.”

“So this isn’t to save your face? It’s for her?”

“It’s all for her.” I frown at the road ahead. “I don’t give two shits about anything else.”

I think that night I found out she’d been with Drex, I thought it might change things. Honestly, with all the acrimony between Drex and me, the thought of him, filthy, dirty
him
, having her was like a needle threading through my brain, but I underestimated myself. I underestimated my love for her. Even I didn’t know how deep it went. Though I’m disgusted by the video, nothing’s changed in my heart. Not for
her
. Did I plant the seeds of her insecurity? Or water the ones her Dad planted when he walked away? Maybe I left her thinking I couldn’t handle the truth because on some level, I wasn’t sure I could. But this love, even after my lies and hers, is immutable. Unmoving. Lodged in my heart. Stuck in my soul.

“Damn, this girl’s got you whupped.” Marlon laughs, banging the dashboard with his fist.

“Like you’re just now realizing that.” I pull myself out of my head, out of my thoughts, to respond to him. “I could wring her neck right now for keeping all of this from me, but we’ll work it out. She’s the one, so we have to.”

“How do you know?” His voice is softer somehow, and there’s more than idle curiosity in his eyes when I take a second to search them.

“Remember your Uncle Jamal, and how he always used to tell us about girls?”

“The OG!” Admiration tinges Marlon’s grin. “The man knows his pussy.”

“That he does.” I nod, sketching a quick grin of my own. Only Marlon would have me grinning when I’m on my way to pound Drex’s punk ass into next week, and could barely breathe past my anger twenty minutes ago. “Remember he told us there was—”

“Basic and magic.”

“Exactly. He said most girls think they’re magic, but they’re all basic until you meet that one.” I shake my head, recalling the day I met Kai in Grady’s studio. “I knew Kai was different the first time I saw her. I didn’t have to sleep with her, had never even kissed her, and I knew she was magic.”

I recognize how very whipped I sound, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

“It’s hard to explain,” I add.

“I think I get it.” Marlon shrugs, brushing a rough hand over the dreadlocks hanging past his shoulders. “I mean, that’s how I kinda felt the first time I met your sister.”

I nearly run off the road.

“Are you shitting me?” I swivel a glance his way. “Bristol? My sister Bristol?”

A heavy frown settles over his dark eyes.

“What? You think your sister’s basic?”

“I don’t exactly give it much thought with her being, you know, my sister.” I hesitate because Marlon isn’t serious about much other than his music. And I guess Bristol. “Are you for real? That’s how you felt the first time you saw Bris?”

“Your sister’s gorgeous.”

“Of course she is.” I shrug. “We’re twins.”

“And you’re both
really
modest, too,” Marlon deadpans. “She came to visit you and Grady on Spring Break her sophomore year from Columbia.”

I remember that rare trip. She had to ask Marlon’s name about five times.

“Man, she barely acknowledged your existence.”

“She’s playing hard to get.”

“For a decade?” I do a brow lift. “More like never gonna get it.”

“That joke will never get old, will it?”

“Sure, it will, if she ever goes out with you. So . . . probably not.”

“She’s driving me crazy.” He holds his head like he would squeeze her out if he could. “She brought this Qwest thing to me. She wants to manage me so bad.”

“Let her. You know she’ll do a great job.”

“Yeah, a
job
. I don’t want to be her job.”

“What do you want to be?” For once, I’m not going to tease him about my sister because I can tell he’s serious.

“I want her to be my girl.” He frowns at me. “You know that.”

“I mean, you still fuck everything that moves, so I didn’t think it was like
that
.”

“I’m not a monk.” He gives me a knowing look. “You telling me all those months Kai had you in the friend zone you didn’t get it somewhere else?”

I shake my head. His grin drops.

“Not even a little bit o’ pussy?”

“Not even a little bit.” I shrug. “She was it for me. I didn’t want anybody else. Haven’t since the day we met. It wasn’t like love at first sight or anything. I
grew
in love with her, but all the other girls just kind of disappeared.”

“And when Kai told you no and friend zoned you so hard, did you give up?” Marlon demands.

“Nope. Failure wasn’t an option.”

“Well, then you understand why I haven’t given up on Bristol yet.”

“Frankly, I don’t want you to get hurt.” I sigh. “And as much as I love my sister, she could roll over you like a speed bump and never even feel you under her tires.”

“I’ll take my chances. I think she’d be worth it.” His grin makes a brief appearance before fading. “Your girl’s worth it, right?”

“There’s not a chance I wouldn’t take for her.”

I slow down a few blocks from the address Bristol gave me when I see Gep’s truck pulled off to the side. Once we’re out of my truck and standing in front of him, I see the sober look on his face.

“What we got?” I demand. “He’s in the house?”

“Yeah, he’s there.” Gep puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know exactly what we’re walking into here, Rhys. It could be volatile. It’s not too late to contact the cops.”

“No cops.” I slam my frown into place. “The circle of people who know about this is already larger than it should be. I can’t risk exposing Kai like that. Some cop or clerk looking to make something on the side gets wind of this and sells to the highest bidder. No fucking way, Gep. We get to the bottom of this quickly and quietly.”

He looks like he’ll make another argument, and I’m braced to stand my ground.