Prohibited (Tulsa City Sinners #1)

21. Ryan

Chapter twenty-one

Ryan

Helplessness milked panic from Ryan’s bones as he leaned against the wall, chewing on his thumb nail. He would chew all of his fingers to bloody stumps by the time the night was through, that much was sure. He’d been pacing around the bedroom while Evelyn worked over Lindsay’s paler than usual body, but she’d snapped at him to cut it out because he was breaking her concentration.

Without question, Ryan obeyed. Perhaps in another state of mind, the sudden turn in who was giving the orders might have amused him. But all he could think about right now was the sheen of sweat on Lindsay’s face, the wrinkle of worry between Evelyn’s sleek brows, and the blood that stained everything crimson, so bright against the cool white of the room that Lindsay lay in.

Alex was perched by Lindsay’s side, eyes narrowed, watching every movement of Evelyn’s hands.

“Whisky,” she said to Alex softly as she’d done several times .

With a tenderness that Ryan didn’t believe was possible from Alex, he slipped one of his pale hands under Lindsay's red gold head and lifted it enough to wet his lips with whisky until he was able to open them enough to get some of the alcohol down.

“This is going to be a little uncomfortable,” she said. The calm command put Ryan at ease and made him have total confidence in what she was doing.

A Red Cross volunteer.

He wouldn’t have believed it of her, not for a second. With all of the panic concerning Lindsay’s injury, he hadn’t had time to process what this meant for her character. For what he thought about her.

He watched the shape of her, the way her dark short hair fell across her forehead while she very carefully stitched Lindsay’s wound closed, the very tip of her tongue between her teeth.

She had come back.

This fact echoed through him again and again. Now that they’d made it safely to Alex’s house and he had more time to process the whole event, he was stunned. Stunned. She could have run and he would have let her. He’d already relinquished her as lost, though he’d wanted to run after her.

Lindsay had needed him, though, and the terror that he could lose him just like he’d lost Tommy was more than he could handle.

But she’d come back .

And here she was, saving Lindsay’s life. She had chosen this over her freedom. Had Lindsay had that much of an effect on her? Or was this some sort of atonement? The memory of them together in the back of the truck twisted his stomach with jealousy, but he pushed it back.

Another complication thrown into the machine of what should have been a very straightforward hostage situation.

Finally, Evelyn sat back and swiped at her forehead with her wrist, hands sticky with blood. She let out a big breath.

“I think he’s going to be alright. If infection doesn’t set in. We must watch very carefully and keep his wound very clean.”

An almost imperceptible softening came over Alex’s body. The release of tension. He caressed Lindsay’s hair back from his forehead.

As if sensing Ryan’s gaze, he raised his eyes to meet Ryan’s. An unreadable expression lurked there. Gloating? Regret? Satisfaction? Impossible to say. Shame was beginning to slip through his veins, as deadly as a poison. He was furious. Disgusted. With Alex. But most of all with himself.

There was nowhere to hide now and no one else to blame. He had kissed Alex, not the other way around. Alex had only opened the door. Ryan was the blind fool who had stumbled through it, out onto the road of dark destruction. What had he been thinking? After all these years, he would never forgive himself for giving Alex that kind of satisfaction.

Well, the truth was he hadn’t been thinking at all. Not with anything except his cock. And even now, try as he might, he couldn’t keep it from stirring at the way the lightning had crackled between them. The look on Alex’s face. The moans unraveling between them. The feeling of his hands on Ryan’s cock. And the agonizing torture of being on the very brink of falling forward into a void that had called for him for too long–

Only for it to be yanked away from him by stark reality.

And somehow, he couldn’t help but feel like Lindsay’s brush with death was his fault. He’d been too busy stuffing his tongue down Alex’s throat and grabbing the hot thickness of Alex’s cock to make note of the threat that was engulfing them until it was well on its way.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He was going to get everyone he loved killed if he didn’t get his head on straight.

“I’ll need to wash up,” Evelyn said to no one in particular. She walked past Ryan, out onto the landing. The urge to follow her surged through him, the part of him that had taken her hostage. The need to control where she was and for how long. But he let go with a breath. Something had shifted. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know the magnitude of what had occurred, and he didn’t know the way forward.

All he knew is that, somehow, her decision to return to them had really fucked things up for him .

He met her eyes, dark and veiled. A haunted look. An exhausted look. A pleading look. But there was a spark there, something that leapt up between them that caused things to flutter inside his stomach.

The way the white collar opened at her throat put an ache into his chest that he simply couldn’t account for. Shame chased the ache through him, a jumbled confusion of feelings rooted in his desire for her and the beginning of regret for what he had forced her to endure for the sake of his vengeance.

He shoved it all down and looked away, wishing not for the first time in his life to simply disappear.

Then, she was gone, trailing the metallic scent of blood, the warm scent of her body, and the ghost of the smell of violets. Something pricked at the back of Ryan’s neck, causing him to raise his eyes from the polished wood floor.

Alex was watching him from where he sat at Lindsay’s side, looking as disheveled as he had ever seen him. His normally pristine hair was askew. He wore only his shirt sleeves, suspenders still dangling around his waist, one of the sleeves burned, the skin blistered and red beneath.

The air was thick between them. Not quite awkward, but heavy with many unsaid things. Some of them that needed to be discussed, and some of them that never needed to be revisited again.

The moment he had turned and saw Alex with his shirt on fire and a rare glimpse of raw fear and vulnerability on his face settled heavily over him. The realization that Alex could have died. Lindsay could have died. Evelyn could have died.

It could have been any of them. The thought coiled around him like a great snake, constricting tighter and tighter until he couldn’t breathe.

“A cigarette?” Alex said. He got to his feet and slowly crossed the floor, closing the gap between them one step at a time. More slowly than necessary, it seemed to Ryan. There was something infuriatingly charming about Alex looking out of order. “I left the mine at the candy shop.”

Wordlessly, Ryan took the pack from his pocket and handed them over, matches too. He looked away from Alex, feeling a door close inside of himself. These pricks of curiosity, these prurient interests needling through him needed to be smothered. Put to death for all time. The terror that the possibility of Alex's death caused in him was swallowed up.

His whole body tensed for what he knew would come. Alex wasted no time in lighting his cigarette and then stepping far too close to Ryan for the comfort of propriety. One of his hands floated up toward Ryan’s face.

Ryan caught his wrist so hard it made Alex gasp. His pale cheeks colored. Ryan tried not to look at him, but he couldn’t help himself. There was too much in that sound, shock and pleasure. A loss of control this small was not something he was accustomed to seeing on Alex. It stroked the predator inside of him that wanted to consume Alex like a small, delicate white rabbit. A vicious rabbit .

“You could have died,” Ryan said in a hoarse voice.

“You could have, too,” Alex said back, voice quiet. Expression unreadable. He lifted his other hand toward Ryan’s face, but Ryan turned away.

“Don’t,” Ryan said in a soft, sober voice. “It shouldn’t have happened. It won’t happen again.”

Alex studied him through lidded eyes, casually bringing the cigarette up to his mouth while Ryan’s whole body hummed with tension, temporarily paralyzing him.

They stared at each other, seconds ticking away that felt like years.

“You can run, Ryan,” said Alex in a soft voice like a caress. “But you can’t hide.”

And with that, he turned his back on Ryan and went back to Lindsay, where he sat, watching his pale face, a cloud of cigarette smoke rising above his head.

Outrage and a whole jumble of other feelings he did not care to analyze came careening through him. They stole his breath, paralyzed him for only another moment. And then he turned to flee the room.

“All fun and games aside, Ryan, we need to talk,” Alex said over his shoulder. He was all business now, any trace of desire having been scrubbed away from his voice and his look entirely.

“Yeah,” Ryan said, though it came out as a gasp. He turned away and pulled a cigarette out of his pack, lighting it carefully to buy himself time to regain control of the storm raging inside of him .

“Tomorrow we will find out how much damage was done,” Alex said, flatly. “I have no illusions that the candy shop was the only place they hit. I’ve been trying to ring over to the Crystal and I’m not getting any answer.” He took a long drag of his cigarette, still gazing down at Lindsay. “And once we’ve taken inventory, we need to figure out how we’re going to get back at Walter Fucking Stanley.”

Just the name of the bastard raised a black rage inside of Ryan so intense that he had to put a hand on the wall to steady himself. The shock of the situation, and Lindsay’s close call hadn’t yet allowed him to think about the bigger picture of what happened. It hit him like a ton of bricks.

“Evelyn’s out of the picture,” Ryan said, folding his arms.

Alex got up from the bed again, but instead of slinking toward Ryan, he started to pace the floor as he always did when he was scheming. He shook his head, eyes narrowing in disbelief. “This is why some people shouldn’t play with their food.” He made as if to say something else and then stopped himself. Then he turned around and gave Ryan a hard look. “She has been the keystone to this entire enterprise. She is why my little empire has probably been torched to the ground, why Lindsay is on death’s doorstep, and–need I remind you–why Tommy is dead.”

“An honorable act is an honorable act,” Ryan said, ignoring the way his body tightened at the way the cold fire snapped in his eyes. He swallowed and then reached into the pack of cigarettes he was still holding in his hand and drew one out. Took his time lighting it while Alex watched him impatiently. When he spoke again his voice was tired, sullen. “And Lindsay’s right. Tommy wouldn’t have wanted this.”

A ripple of rage went through Alex’s face, causing him to stop in his tracks, body stiff. “I’m getting very tired of hearing that.”

“Things have gotten complicated,” Ryan said, holding Alex’s hateful gaze.

“You’ve allowed them to get complicated,” Alex shot back. “When you assured me from the beginning that they wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t expect that things would take this turn,” Ryan said, spreading his hands and gesturing toward Lindsay. “She saved his life.”

Alex scoffed and turned away from Ryan, taking a deep draw on his cigarette and subtly shaking his head back and forth.

“Then what the fuck is the point of any of this,” Alex said finally, voice rising.

“I’m not saying just hand her over,” Ryan said, his voice taking an edge. Whether or not he wanted to, he was starting to get riled by Alex’s anger. “I’m saying that we are not going to fucking kill her. That’s not the deal anymore.”

“Well then, Mr. Mastermind,” Alex said, turning his body toward him and crossing his arms over his chest. “Please enlighten me: what would you like the deal to be? Because now Walter Fucking Stanley has added a number of punishable acts to the list of sins he has committed against us. Namely: arson and attempted murder. And god knows what else or who else has suffered as a casualty.”

“What the fuck did you think was going to happen?” Ryan said, his voice starting to rise. “There was always a chance he was going to find out.”

“Yes, and then I could have slit her throat and still had the satisfaction of knowing that no matter what he did, there was nothing he could do to undo it,” Alex said, voice dropping to a deadly low.

“It won’t bring him back,” Ryan said, heavily. Even as he said it, the reality of this really hit him.

“I’m not a fucking fool,” Alex snapped. “I’m well aware of that.”

“There are other ways to make Walter Stanley suffer,” Ryan said.

“By all means,” Alex waved his hands theatrically through the air. “Please share. I’m all ears, Mr. Lockwood.”

“He just torched all of our places,” Ryan said. “So we’ll torch his. We’ll dismantle his little fucking empire brick by brick. And then we’ll deal with him personally.”

“Death isn’t good enough for him,” Alex said, voice barely a whisper.

“No,” Ryan said, feeling the monster inside of him open its jaws and roar. “No, it isn’t.”