“If that money’s still here, I want it split between those five people. Let them keep their own fucking money.”
“Cobra.”
“I’m fine,” I snarled, the pressure in my chest building. It would erupt, and soon, but I curled my hands into fists and held it together. “It’s just—the same scent. But I’m fine.”
“Go keep watch outside with Devil. We’ll handle everything here. I’ll tell Tyb to personally make the fucker who ran this place suffer, for as long as possible.”
“I’m fine to stay—”
“Outside,” he insisted, heavy on the dominance.
I sighed. I could have fought him on it, but I didn’t want to stay. I just didn’t want to seem like a coward. “Thanks,” I muttered, and headed for the stairs. But even outside, bitter cherry chocolate invaded my senses. I couldn’t escape it.
My stomach roiled so badly I tasted bile and acid. Every time I blinked, I saw that room upstairs, and then the room where I’d been sold over and over until I couldn’t stand to have anyone touch me.
“The fuck are you looking at?” I snarled when I caught Devil glancing at me.
He held up his hands, palms out. “Just wondering if you want a smoke.”
He wasn’t. He could see me losing it, my hands shaking, my leg bouncing. He could probably smell it in my scent.
“Yeah,” I croaked, my voice rough, broken. I accepted the cigarette and lit the end, dragging poison into my lungs, closing my eyes as it burned away that bittersweet scent. It was why I started smoking in the first place.
I dragged a hand over my head, dug in my fingernails. For a few short months, I’d felt okay. Better than okay—I was good. Stable. Looking to the future instead of constantly trying to outrun my past.
Now, I was right back there, and I knew the truth. There was no outrunning it. It would always find me.
21
Lynn
It took me an hour to find Cobra when everyone got back from the raid, and the more places I found empty of him, the more worried I became. I’d had a bad feeling all day; I wasn’t superstitious but Iknewsomething was wrong. The Knights were acting differently now, expressions heavy and dark. Instead of cheers of celebration at catching their target, a silence hung over the rec room.
I was five minutes away from hunting down Devil to demand he tell me what happened when I poked my head out the back door on a hunch and spotted Cobra. He was hunched over in a chair at the round, iron table ChaCha, Jessia, and I usually drank coffee at in the mornings, listening to the former complain about whatever Sweetie had done to annoy her that morning, as if she didn’t love the bones of him.
I longed for an easy, carefree conversation. Something told me talking to Cobra now would be the opposite.
I scuffed my shoe on the patio as I walked towards him, letting him know I was here if he didn’t already. “Hey.”
He shook his head, an abrupt movement that drew my eye to the cut on his cheek. Shit. I hurried closer, scanning the rest of him. His knuckles were broken.
“Who did you fight?” I sighed, softening.
“Not today, Lynn,” he replied, each word bitten off.
I slowed my approach, hovering a few feet away. Something was severely wrong, and I didn’t know how to handle this. I was so used to being the one who needed handling. Should I leave him alone, or keep pressing because he clearly needed comfort?
“Whose face did you break?” I asked tentatively, taking another step.
He stared ahead at the garden, growing dark as the sun sank below the horizon. “I can’t talk to you right now.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You made me talk to you when I didn’t want to.”
“This is different.”
“How?”
“It just is,”he snapped, breathing hard, fast.
