I gasped through another sob, my hands curling around his arms.

  “He told me about your stories, your drawings. He said you’re so talented. He said you weren’t a thing like her.”

  “Stop,” I choked. “Please stop.”

  “It’s okay to miss her, Low. But she doesn’t get this. She doesn’t get to keep you from me. I fucked up, I know I did. I had to get my head straight. But you’re mine now.” His clenched teeth bit into my ear as his chest heaved against my back. “I’m gonna keep you safe, and I’m gonna make you happy.”

  He turned my chin and kissed my wet lips. “No one’s gonna stop us–not Paulie, not the girls, not that shit your ma put in your head.” He dropped his face onto mine, his nose pushing against mine. “Not the shit I did to you.”

  “Jay.” I could die tomorrow. He could die tomorrow. Hell, the whole world could go to shit tomorrow. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  He kissed my nose, my lips. “I’m tellin’ you cause I’m not gonna wake up tomorrow to you second guessing this. Thinkin’ about what a bad bet I am.” He pushed my wet hair out of my face. “This isn’t nothin’ to me. I don’t want you lookin’ at me like I’m gonna snap at you. That fuckin’ kills me. But I bought that. I want your trust, Low,” he mumbled over my lips. “And when you’re ready, you’re gonna give me your love too.”

  I sucked in a shocked breath.

  He grinned against my mouth, and I just knew his eyes were sparkling in the dark. “Oh yeah, you’re gonna give me that.”

  “I am?” I scowled at him and his arrogance.

  He hummed against my mouth. “I saw how you watched me, Princess. You wanted this just as bad as me, for just as long as me. Maybe longer.”

  I pinched his nipple, hard.

  He chuckled and twisted mine, trapping my gasp in his mouth.

  “Sleep,” he rumbled.

  “I’m not tired now,” I growled. How the hell was I supposed to sleep after all that?

  He hummed into the back of my neck. “I can tire you out.” His hand drifted down and cupped me between my thighs. I slapped my knees together, trapping him.

  “Some of us are trying to sleep,” Dahlia rasped, irritated, from the other side of the room. “Some of us don’t have a stallion like Jason Howler to tire us out.”

  I coughed, flushing hotly.

  Billy groaned. “Shut it, Grams. Will, tell your boyfriend to spill his guts tomorrow when I don’t have to hear it.”

  My face was on fire. Jay’s chest shook against my back. I pinched the back of his hand between my thighs, but he just cupped me more firmly and squeezed.

  It took a long time for me to fall asleep, but not for Jay. He was a heavy warmth at my back that eventually lulled me into sleep.

  He and Olly were both gone in the morning.

  Chapter Seven

  Blue and I were out of the room before Dahlia woke the next morning. I wasn’t willing to linger and have her attack me about every little part the conversation she had eavesdropped on. To be fair, we had woken her. But the polite thing to do would be to pretend it didn’t happen. That just wasn’t Dahlia’s style, though. She would be giddy with the juicy gossip, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near her for a good long while.

  I managed to avoid her all day, seeing as Billy had grounded her for her injury. And she was drugged up on pain pills when I got back to the room that night. Blue fell asleep as I wiped him down with a wet rag. Jan, Ivy, Lucille, and the other kids managed to exhaust him every day, and I missed having him awake and playful.

  But I worked over fourteen hours now, and I didn’t get a day off. You’d think with the new people coming in we would get more help in the kitchen. But with more people, there were more mouths to feed, and the work seemed endless, especially now that we didn’t have a working stove.

  Billy was on the couch, and I felt terrible. His work was far more physical than mine, but then again, so was Jay’s, and he seemed to be getting even less sleep than any of us.

  When he came to bed that night, it was different than before. He woke me up. He didn’t pull me out to the bathroom, but he did kiss me—long and wet. He was hard against my back, and his lips were hungry, but he tucked me into his chest and was asleep seconds later.

  I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed.

  The next morning, Dahlia was up and waiting for me with a determined light in her eyes.

  She grinned wickedly at me as I got dressed.

  “Don’t say a thing,” I warned her.

  “Who? Me?” She pointed to herself. “Wasn’t me fooling around with the enemy.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Doll.”

  She scoffed. “I am drama, child.”

  “Truth,” I sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing, so don’t ask me.”

  “I know what you’re doing.” She grinned. “Or who.”

  I sat on the bed, watching Blue sleeping in the pen. The morning light came in through the window, bathing him.

  “Don’t look so down, Willoweed. I wouldn’t be able to hold onto my knickers if that man looked at me either.”

  “Dahlia! That’s so weird.”

  “No, what’s weird is you makin’ that boy work so hard.” She grinned again. “Well, he can work hard, just not at gettin’ you to stop pushin’ him away.”

  “Doll! Quit it,” I hissed. “And I’m not pushing him away.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Hogwash, you’ve been pushin’ him away for years.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s always hated me.”

  “He didn’t know you,” she said dryly. “Not that you made it easy on him.”

  “What has gotten into you?” I asked, shocked. She was always Team Jay-is-a-Bastard. A beautiful bastard, but still.

  “I’ll admit, I never did think he was good enough for my Willoweed. Not many are.” My chest warmed. She smiled gently at me—then she scowled. “But you have been keeping valuable information from me.”

  “What? No, I haven’t.” I shook my head, shoving my boots on.

  “You made it sound like he was attacking you at every corner, insulting you, torturing you. Of course I would scorn him and anything to do with him and my Willoweed.”

  “He did,” I said through my teeth. Maybe not torture me, but his dirty looks and scathing words sure felt a lot like torture.

  “How long now?”

  I looked up at her.

  “How long has it been since he said anything rude to you? And I don’t mean petty little things.”

  I sighed, “I don’t know, months, maybe more.”

  “I heard every word that night, honey,” she said gently. “That boy feels terrible for what he did to you.”

  “It wasn’t long ago that he ran me out of that festival,” I countered.

  “But what did he say?”

  I thought back. “I-I don’t know. Paulie and Mary were yelling at Rick. Jay just grabbed my arm and marched me to the car. He said something about leaving.”

  “Hmm.” she looked off to the wall. “Maybe he was saving you from the confrontation with Paulie. Now that is a man to hold a grudge toward. Not our Jason.”

  Our Jason?

  “He has not once tried to speak to you,” she continued, shaking her head. “Such a shame what’s happened to him.”

  “He did wait for Billy and me,” I told her, thinking of the night at the gate. Paulie didn’t have to. He could have left us behind.

  She waved her hand at me. “That was only because Jason was going to kill those men at the gate to get to you.”

  “What?” I sat up. “What did you say?”

  “Oh, they wouldn’t let him go back through the gate. Those delicious soldiers were going to handcuff him. Paulie had to step in. Montgomery and a few of the others had to drag him away.”

  “What?” I shook my head. How did I not know this?

  Her eyes gleamed. “Torn up, he was. So worried about his Princess.”

  I looked down at my hands. I hadn’t realized Jay was the reason Paulie stayed. I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me before.

  “That’s how many times Jason Howler’s come to your rescue now?” she asked, inspecting her chipped nails.

  I looked away. A lot–he had done that a lot recently.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said lazily. “I don’t think he came to the apartment because you answered the phone. Maybe he was on his way the whole time.”

  “What?” I scoffed. “No, he was calling Rick to go get his mom and Mary.”

  “I don’t think so,” she sang. “He went right to you.” She lowered her voice. “He could have gone to his mother’s, child. If he truly thought nothing for you, he would have gone for her first and then you.”

  I knew that. Deep down, I knew that. Jay wasn’t the kind of guy to abandon me while I was crying and terrified, but he could have gone to his mom’s house first. God, she could have lived if he had. Just a few minutes earlier, and he could have saved her.

  “I think that boy has seen my girl for a while now,” she whispered. “I think he was just fighting it inside him, caught between you and what his family expected.”

  “He could have saved her,” I whispered miserably.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Don’t put that on yourself, sweets. He came for you, and it was a sacrifice as much as it was a gift.”

  I nodded, numb.

  She cleared her throat. “So, how big is he?”

  I jumped, face flaming.

  “Doll! God! I’m not telling you that!” I lifted Blue’s sleeping body and stomped to the door.

  “Love you, Willoweed,” she called softly.

  I stopped, my eyes stinging. “Love you more, Doll.”

  Blue cried when I dropped him off that morning. It killed me. He hadn’t done that before. A lot of the kids were crying. Jan was running around so much she barely had time to grab Blue from me.

  “Something in the air,” Ivy said to herself as I walked past her.

  Indeed, there was. All day, people were crankier than usual. Demanding more food. Better food. More time to eat. Gary was especially crabby, yelling every time someone dropped something or burnt something, which, of course, made for more mistakes.

  Nina and the other kitchen staff were rushing around, harried and exhausted.

  I was on edge.

  That talk with Dahlia hadn’t helped. All day, I thought of Jay. Every word he ever spoke to me. Analyzing every look and word for the last three years, trying to spot the moment those looks and words changed.

  But I couldn’t pinpoint it.

  If I were honest, it had been gradual. If I really thought about it, I could see it. The nasty looks had slowly dwindled to ones of frustration. His nasty words had changed in tone, to almost teasing. He had been fighting more and more with Paulie and Mary the rare times I saw them all together.

  Over the past year, I had even seen more of him. He had seemed to be around everywhere.

  He would stop at the apartment to talk to Rick, or he would drive by the coffee shop—which was strange because he rarely did that when I first met him and had no real reason to be on that side of town so often.

  The touches, though. They were relatively new. Before, he wouldn’t get within a foot of me if he could help it. But the past year, he had touched my arm here or there. I thought it was to move me away from him, but when I really remembered it, it was always when Paulie was around. Like at the festival. He hadn’t been pushing me out. He had been escorting me to the car.

  I could almost still feel the gentle grip he had, the way his eyes had searched my face—in worry.

  All of this had been before Rick got drunk that night and Jay had brought him home. He had been changing before Rick had told him all that stuff about me.

  Why hadn’t I seen it?

  It didn’t matter right now, though. He wasn’t around for me to ask.

  I was standing outside by the fire at the back of the building as Gary slow-roasted some kind of meat that I had zero desire to ask about. Someone had been hunting recently, and I would rather not know what we were eating. Liam was tossing a ball around with two other boys, both a few years older than him, when he suddenly dropped the ball and darted off behind the building.

  I narrowed my eyes on the boys as they scowled and shouted his name.

  “I’ll be right back,” I mumbled to Gary, ignoring his shouted protest. If I jumped every time he said so, my feet would never touch the ground.

  The sun was going down, and my feet were already aching, but we still had dinner to serve.

  I squinted as I turned down the side of the building, the evening sun blinding me for a moment. When it cleared, I nearly tripped over my feet.

  “Liam!” I shouted, not taking another step.

  Liam looked over his shoulder at me and grinned.

  “Liam! Come here!” My chest was cramping, and I felt like I was sucking air through a straw.

  “What’s up?” He jogged over to me.

  “Stay away from that man,” I said quietly, scowling at Fin’s leer.

  Liam looked over his shoulder. “Who, Fin?”

  “Yeah,” I rasped. “Don’t go near him again.”

  Fin winked at me and spun on his heel, whistling.

  “Why?” Liam looked back at Fin as he strolled back out to the front of the building.

  “Just trust me, okay?” I grabbed his shoulder, pulling him behind me, back the other way. “He’s not a good man.”

  “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.”

  “Promise me, Liam.” I took both of his shoulders, looking into his confused eyes.

  “I-I promise,” he squeaked.

  I hugged him. “Okay, good.”

  He flushed as he backed away from me.

  “Liam,” I called as he jogged back over to the two older boys. He turned and faced me. “If you see him again, I want you to come and get me or one of the guys in the same vest Wiley was wearing, okay?”

  He nodded quickly. “I will, Willow, promise.”

  I nodded and looked back over my shoulder, shivering.

  How long had he been here? I hadn’t given him a second thought since the safe zone gate. How stupid was I? I should have expected him to show up here. I should have been looking for him.

  I would have seen him come through the meal line, but I hadn’t. Not once.

  He could be on wall duty–they got their meals delivered–but Billy would have said something. It was the same reason I knew he wasn’t out with the supply crew. Jay wouldn’t have left me alone if he knew Fin was here.

  And why was he talking to Liam?

  I shivered and ran back to Gary, barely hearing his reprimand.

  I barely made it twenty minutes before the worry and terror built too much to ignore.

  I begged off early, not able to stand in the kitchen another second with Blue so far from me. I checked on him and gave Jan a warning before rushing off to find someone, anyone, in the club that could help me.

  I felt like I had fire ants crawling under my skin. Somehow, I knew seeing him was bad. I felt like I was suddenly being hunted. Like a dark ominous cloud was staling me. I couldn’t explain it, but I wouldn’t ignore my gut.

  I ran into Hull and Cam, two members I hadn’t really ever spoken to, but they both grew alert as I rushed up to them, panicked.

  “What is it?” Cam was tall and thin, built like a swimmer, but he had a crazy air about him. There was something in his eyes—like he couldn’t sit still, always looking for a fight.

  “Fin,” I panted, bending over. “He’s here.”

  Cam looked around the courtyard we were in while Hull grabbed my arm and pulled me to his side. I was so relieved that they seemed to take the threat seriously. Fin had cornered me and put his hands on me, but he hadn’t hurt me. But there was something about him that I knew the whole club had felt as clearly as I had–something evil.

  “You check on Blue?” Cam asked, still looking around.

  I nodded, swallowing against my dry throat. “Yeah, before I found you. I told Jan.”

  “Wiley’s at the wall,” Hull mumbled, also scanning the people around us.

  “Take her to her room. I’ll get Blue and head your way.” Cam squinted at something in the distance.

  Hull nodded and gently pulled me behind him.

  “I might be overreacting,” I felt the need to say. But part of me knew that was a lie.

  Hull shook his head. “No, always trust your gut.”

  I nodded. My gut was screaming at me right now.

  We got all the way to my building when the screams started.

  Chapter Eight

  Hull stopped and looked around in the dwindling sunlight.

  Another scream came from a few yards away to my right, near the back of the property that butted up against the woods.

  I backed away, my hands shaking.

  Everyone around us froze, looking back.

  Even the soldiers froze.

  Then there was another scream, much closer–definitely a woman–and every hair on my arms stood on end.

  Then there were a series of gunshots.

  A pack of birds broke away from the trees.

  Everyone moved then. The soldiers ran for the back of the property, and the civilians began shouting and running for the nearest building.

  Hull moved back into motion and dragged me across the sidewalk.

  “Blue,” I gasped.

  “Cam’ll get him.” He tugged me harder, and then we were running.

  “I need to get Blue!” I shouted as a chorus of screams rent the air.

  “No time!” he shouted back.

  And there wasn’t time. A woman ran at us.

  And she wasn’t a normal woman.

  She was bloody, her mouth opened wide, dripping thick rivulets of blood.

  Hull pushed me aside as she lunged for me. I went down on the ground, nearly busting my chin. Rolling onto my knees, I jumped to my feet.

  Turning around, I saw Hull on the ground. The woman was sitting on his chest, and he was frantically shoving at her.

  I looked around, panicked. But there wasn’t a single thing for me to hit her with. So, I jumped onto her back and grabbed her around her forehead with my arms.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12