The thought knocks me off balance every damn time it intrudes. The shame of reacting that way burns hotter than my jealousy. I have to shove the whole mess down fast before it can turn into anything I have to look at too closely.
A strand of hair falls loose and Max huffs it out of her eyes with a soft breath, completely unselfconscious.
She’s beautiful. Not the polished kind, but bright and improbable and lively in a way that makes everything else look muted and washed out in comparison. Violet eyes that still light up even after what she’s been through. A mouth so soft and so full—and so fucking sassy, I think with a small smile. I’ve known warriors with less fight in them.
And God help me, I don’t know what the plan is. Am I supposed to give her up forever because she and Wyatt clung to each other when they thought I was dead? Am I supposed to stand back and watch her drift toward him or Jake or Damian because I pushed her away? I don’t know. I only know that I can’t live without her, and I sure as hell don’t know how to live with the idea of losing her.
She reaches past Damian for a spoon and steadies herself with a hand on his back like his body is familiar terrain, and there it is again—complication, sharp as a blade.
She was with Damian, too. How did she react when he touched her? What did his hands and mouth draw out of her?
My tongue drags over my lip and I have to look away. Max as a sexual object is becoming binary for me in a way I don’t understand. Max’s touch and feel, her skin against mine, the squeeze of her pussy as I fuck her, deep inside…and Max as anerotic image instead of a sensation. Max with other men, and what it would be like to watch her.
It’s too much to think about. Too dangerous and twisted and fucked up. She belongs to all of us in her own way, and I clearly just don’t have a map for how that works.
I push back from the table and reach for my boots.
“I’m going to check the water system,” I say, lacing them up. “Make sure the overflow tank isn’t full after all that rain.”
I step outside, letting the door shut behind me, and breathe in the cold until my pulse steadies.
By the time I’m done with the water system and heading back toward the cabin, the rain has completely let up, and the sun is knifing through the trees in icy white streaks. The lake is hammered silver under the glare. The world feels rinsed clean and sharp.
Inside, Jake is still bent over the diagnostics tablet.
“Hey.” He looks up as I walk in, picking up as if we’re mid-conversation. “So…I’ve been banging my head against this stupid rig all morning, and then I thought, hey, maybe check if there’s any news of the senator.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, untying my boots and kicking them off. “And?”
Jake holds up the tablet and reads from it: “State v. Jack Hargrove, Motion to Dismiss Granted on Procedural Grounds. Defendant released pending refiling.”
Ah. Fuck.
Wyatt walks in from the kitchen and leans against the doorframe. “When was he released?”
“Yesterday,” answers Jake.
“Well, shit,” Damian calls from the bedroom, where he’s lying down but clearly listening. A moment later he walks into the room and sinks onto the couch beside Jake.
Max comes up beside Wyatt. She doesn’t say anything, but when I lift my eyes to hers, she’s looking right back at me, violet gaze holding mine steady.
Billy made me bring him drugs and cash at a hotel, she had said yesterday.I was supposed to be—pause—a gift.
This time the thing twisting me up isn’t jealousy. It’s rage. Hot, clean, and aimed straight at a man I’d like to put in the ground.
“Out on a technicality,” Jake elaborates. “Case got tossed. They can refile, I guess, but let’s be real. He’s probably nuking every scrap of evidence.”
My vision narrows, tunneled in on Max’s small, controlled inhale.
Of course he walks. Men like that always do. Senators, club presidents, assholes with shiny bikes and dead girls behind them. The uniforms may change, but the patterns don’t.
“So he’ll wipe everything,” I hear myself say.
Wyatt frowns. “I’m sure he’s already got people tearing through shell companies and burner accounts. Cleaners. They’ll be scrubbing financial trails and clearing out whatever’s in the clubhouse, making sure nothing points back to him.”
Jake looks at me, the expression on his face an appeal. “After the handshake from Silas’s tablet, our location probably isn’t exactly a fucking secret, by the way.”
A cold thread winds down my spine. If someone wanted to clean house, they’d start with the people Silas kept tabs on.
