Chapter Twenty
Ezra Holmes

Raya downs her third shot of vodka like it was water, and not alcohol.

I feel a wave of déjà vu washing over me, watching her down all the shots. It made me think of that night when she was swaying her hips to the music. She would glance back at me with a smirk on her mouth as she downed the shots.

I know now that she was just trying to turn me on, and hell if it didn’t work.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, setting the shot glass down onto the counter with a thump. She notices me staring at her and raises her eyebrow questioningly at me. “Why are you looking at me like that, newcomer?”

The entire club was dimly lit, but I saw Raya clearly beside me. Her cheeks were covered in a light scattering of freckles, her cheeks pink from the amount of shots she has already downed. 

I shake my head, tipping my beer bottle over against my lips, taking a big swig out of it. I place my bottle on the coaster Geoffrey provided for me earlier and I look at Raya again, seeing her eyes already on me. “I was just thinking about the last time we were here. When GC opened.”

“You mean the first time I let you touch me?” She asks, not even bothering to lower her voice, but the smirk on her mouth told me that she was aiming for people to hear us so that she could attempt to embarrass me. “And when you got so hard for me—”

I clamp my hand around her mouth, shutting her up before anyone could hear her foul mouth.

I wasn’t slightly embarrassed about getting a hard on for her, but if she was going to keep talking like that, I might just get one again and I doubted that it would be easy to take care of this time.

She chuckles against my hand, pulling it off of her mouth.  “I wasn’t going to finish that sentence, newcomer. I just wanted to see what you would do.” She says, beckoning for one of the bartenders other than Geoffrey to refill her shot glass.

The bartender walks over to us, pouring a shot of vodka into the little shot glass until it reached the rim of the glass. Raya thanks him under her breath, taking the shot glass before she tips all of the contents into her parted mouth. I knew Raya long enough to know that there was something clearly bothering her, like I knew how upset she was when Bear gave her the cold shoulder. She didn’t take a shot of alcohol because she wanted to have fun, she was taking the shot to forget.

“So,” I change the subject, listening to the music playing in the background, “are you going to tell me what Archie did to upset you so much? And don’t tell me that it’s nothing, because it clearly isn’t nothing.”

She takes my beer bottle from my hand, playing with the beer label absentmindedly. That’s something Raya always did when she was upset. She always fiddles with something nearby: her nails, a thread from her pants, her hair, or in this case playing with the beer bottle’s label between her fingernails.

She thinks I don’t notice those things, but I do.

I shouldn’t notice those things, but I do.

When we were sitting around the meeting room table the other day, when Bear gave her the cold shoulder, I noticed that her hands kept clasping and unclasping each other, like she couldn’t sit still. Her leg would also keep bouncing up and down when something is bothering her, a lot.

“Did I ever tell you why Archie took me in, newcomer?” She asks, staring at the beer bottle in her hands, focusing on the droplets of condensation rolling down the bottle. “He saved me. Well,” she chuckles, “that’s what I thought, at least.”

Her shoulders droop, and I notice that her eyes started to water.

A frown of confusion appears on my face. “Saved you? From what, princess?”

She looks at me with her tear filled eyes. She was trying so hard to contain them, and seeing her so upset made my stomach harden. Whatever Archie said or did in his office really upset her. “My parents were murdered when I was fifteen.” She says, swallowing hard. She held onto the beer bottle so tightly, her knuckles actually started to turn white against it. “I was left to fend for myself on the streets for a while. He found me in an empty and wet alleyway with nothing but my pyjamas and a thin jacket a person gave me to shield myself from the wet and the coldness.”

My mouth falls open at her words.

I didn’t think that her parents were murdered.

I never, in a million years, would’ve thought that they were murdered.  I thought she was an orphan and Archie was the guy who adopted her. I had no fucking idea that her parents were murdered.

“Raya, I—”

“Save it, newcomer.” She says, sniffling away her sadness from a few seconds ago. “I came here to have a fun time. There’s no time for a pity party. And besides, I should be thankful I didn’t die too that night. I can finally find the bastards who killed my family and get revenge.”

I nod and say nothing else despite me wanting to find out more about her, like who murdered her family and how she at fifteen managed to escape the killers. I wanted to know what Archie did to upset her this morning. I wanted to know more about her, but the look on her face made me keep my questions at bay. The last thing I want to do is upset her even more than she already was, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know Archie’s part in everything, and why he upset her so much, and why she brought up her parents like that. Did he know what happened?

She gives me my beer back and I swill down the last of the beer in one go.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, feeling my phone vibrating in my pocket, and not long after, my JXDN ‘Lips’ ringtone started to play even through the loud laughs and conversation throughout the club.

“Answer it, newcomer.” She says, nudging me off my wooden bar stool. “I have to head to the bathroom anyways.”

I nod, looking at how she rose from her bar stool before she disappeared through the crowd of people to go to the bathroom. I fish my phone out of my pocket and I start to make a beeline to the exit of the club, passing drunk people on the way out.

I answer my phone, already knowing who it was and what they wanted.

A U T H O R’ S  N O T E

Hi loves, Dee here.

I just want to say thank you for the endless love you’re showing on this book.

I’m so excited to share this story with you, and I hope you guys will stick with me to the end, I promise it would be worth it.

But my question for you guys today is this: what do you guys think Ez is hiding?

Who keeps calling him?

Please comment your thoughts about it. I’d love to hear from you.