Neve raises an eyebrow, slow and sharp. “Aw, Bridger. That almost sounded like jealousy.”
He snorts. “Please. I’m just preemptively judging your poor taste.”
Neve scoffs, but there’s color in her cheeks now, and she won’t look at Bridger. And he keeps clicking through tabs like he didn’t just throw a verbal grenade across the room.
I glance at Damian, and he’s already giving methatlook—the one that sayswhat the actual hell is happening between those two? I raise my brows in silent response. Whatever it is, it’s messy. And unfinished. And clearly not our business…but also very entertaining. Before I can say anything, Damian catches my hand—his fingers closing gently around and presses a soft kiss to my knuckles. Just once. Tenderly.
Then his phone buzzes. He sighs, pulls it from his pocket, and glances at the screen. “It’s Reese,” he mutters, then swipes to answer.
Reese’s face appears on the screen in a dark room, his jaw tight, his voice low and urgent. “Taylor’s at the bakery.”
Everything in me goes still. Taylor? A cold chill crawls zips up the back of my spine.
Across the room, Neve stiffens mid-bite, her hand frozen with an apple halfway to her mouth. Bridger slowly lowers the screen of his laptop and sets it aside. Even Cody—who’s been vibrating with rage since the Clay topic came up—goes quiet.
The whole room holds its breath.
Damian bolts up off the couch. He paces fast, one hand gripping the back of his neck. “What the fuck is she doing there? What the fuck does she want?”
On the other end of the call, I hear her. Taylor’s voice—high-pitched, sharp, frantic—cuts through the room. “Where’s Marlowe? Damian, is she there with you?Please,I need her!”
My stomach flips. I jump off the couch and crowd in close, shoulder pressed to Damian’s arm as I lean to see the phone screen. Reese is holding the camera at a weird angle, trying to keep it pointed at both himself and the girl pacing like a caged animal behind him. She looks like hell—no, worse than hell.
Her hair’s a tangled mess, sticking to her face with sweat. One side of her cheek is so swollen it nearly closes her eye. The bruises bloom in shades of violent purple and sickly yellow across her jaw and temple, and there’s a split in her lip that looks deep enough to need stitches. Damian’s gash and bruise suddenly look like paper cuts in comparison. She’s pale, trembling, arms wrapped around her ribs, hugging herself.
I hate how fast my heart responds. Because I’m still angry. I haven’t forgotten what she did. How she sold me out—left me dangling, clawing for my life, terrified while she slithered away like it wasn’t her problem.
But the terror in her voice—it’s real. She’s shaking. Begging. And she went to the one place that’s now a pile of charred wreckage. “Taylor,” I say, louder than I mean to.
Her head snaps toward the phone like she’s just heard a ghost. “Marlowe?” Her eyes fill instantly. “Oh thank God—please, I didn’t know what else to do. I had to find you. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to killallof us. He’s got Daddy.”
“Daddy?” I scoff, the word tasting like acid. “I don’t have a daddy. I have a sperm donor named Vick, who I couldn’t care less about.”
Taylor flinches like I slapped her through the screen. “I—I don’t know what to do. Clay told me to get you. To get to Damian.” She wipes at her face with the back of her hand, smearing dirt, mascara, or both. Her fingers shake. “He said if I didn’t bring you to him, he’d start cutting fingers off. He’s in some old school… it’s abandoned on Somers Point Road.”
My stomach turns. “That’s the Scullville School,” I say flatly. “Egg Harbor Township. It’s been vacant since the ‘90s.” That place was our unofficial high school after-hours playground. No lights, no rules, and no adults stupid enough to chase us out. I lost my virginity in the auditorium—back row, under a torn velvet curtain—with Jordan Ramirez. He swore he loved me—until Monday morning, when he didn’t. I got even by dating his older brother. Then his older, older brother.
I refocus on the screen. Taylor’s eyes are wide, lips trembling.
“I hitched a ride to get here,” she goes on, frantic, rambling. “I didn’t know what else to do. When I got here, the bakery—what happened? Why is it?—?”
“Oh,likeyou fucking care?” I cut in, my voice sharp. I laugh. It’s hollow and mean. “You should’ve called the cops, Taylor. Not us.The cops.Or you can let Clay cut off all his money grubbing fingers, I don’t care.”
She stares at me through the screen, breathing hard, eyes wild with something between guilt and desperation.
One of Damian’s hands drops to the small of my back, supporting me. Maybe trying to calm me down—but I’m already moving. I reach for the phone in his other hand. My thumb hovers for just a breath. And then I press the red button. Callended—just like that. The silence that follows is instant and deafening, like someone sucked all the air out of the room.
I’m still tense, still vibrating with the taste of old betrayal, when I feel Damian shift beside me. His hand slides up my spine, slow and possessive, until he’s cupping the back of my neck.
He leans in, his mouth brushing just below my ear, voice low enough that only I can hear it. “Fucking hell,” he murmurs, eyes burning into mine, “your mean streak turns me on.”
My heart stutters.
Heat shoots straight through me like lightning, and just for a second, the chaos fades into static. Because I might be seething, but he’s smirking.
And it’s taking everything in me not to climb back onto his lap and make a whole new kind of mess.
Chapter Twenty-Three
