I turned to square off with him this time. “The fuck you can’t and haven’t. Do not—youhave, Owen. When you thought I was Arcadia and in trouble with that asshat club owner and his guys? When I was dragged toISLEand you had no idea? You wouldn’t leave me, willing to risk yourself. You are fuckingamazing.”
“Well, I am when you tell it,” he chuckled softly and brought my hand to his lips. The heat in his eyes that I saw that much of him was unreal and made me shiver. “Thank you for not judging me.”
“There is nothing anyone should have for you but praise, Owen,” I promised him. “You guys talk and for real for once. Decide what you want. Decide foryourselfwhat you really want and stop living for each other.” I grabbed both his hands andbrought them to my lips this time. “And stop trying to pay back wrongs of the past.”
“I don’t know how,” he rasped.
“Stop making the same mistakes is a good start. It’s the one I’m working on as well,” I told him to take the sting out of my words. “Talk to your twin and tell him what you really want after you think…”
I trailed off because his desires swarmed me when we were this close and that wasn’t how it went with elves. They were muted to me. It wasn’t much normally, but glimpses. This was afireand that said a lot.
Not just about our closeness but also how much he clearly wanted it.
“I see,” I whispered, staring up into his pretty Egyptian blue eyes. “I would more than support that, and Kyria could definitely use the help. Good help. But… I won’t make the call or handle it. That wouldn’t be fair, and there’s already a lot in place.”
“No, that wouldn’t be fair,” he agreed, his eyes flashing shock. “And honestly, I would—I like—I’ll think on it more. I don’t think it would even be under Kyria.”
No, it wouldn’t. He wanted to be under Joshua with handling the inside of clubs and the restaurant aspects. He liked handling the distributors and more.
Better him than me. Either way, he now knew what was really going on and could handle it between himself and Evan. I could let them deal with their own everything and stop carrying the guilt around about knowing they were struggling.
Hopefully.
I had enough to carry already anyways.
2
There was an update I wanted to get from Kyle and to discuss a few things with his team, so after I left Owen, I set the portal to the home base we were leaving in Atlanta for now.
Fine, only after an excessive number of kisses from MudbugandOwen did I do it. I really did want to just hang with them all day, but there was too much going on.
I froze when I heard an inhuman noise, dread filling me as images of my fight with Lucifer pounded my brain. I dropped what was in my hands and searched for something sharp to start slicing through my dampeners when I heard Kyle’s voice cut through my fear.
“Enough, you fucking morons!” he bellowed. “We’re all in deep shit—”
“We’ll fix it and Jasmine will never know,” someone snapped.
So clearly the guy had a death wish.
And now I was curious and annoyed that they’d scared me, so that wasn’t good. I scooped up what I’d brought and organized it on the way. I tripped over my feet as I found the living area of the house—my housefucking trashed.
“What the fuck happened here?” I demanded, my voice cold and deadly.
“Oh, we’re all fucked,” one of Kyle’s guys groaned.
“Yeah, we are,” Kyle sighed, blowing out a harsh breath and looking up at the ceiling before meeting my gaze. “We’ll take the punishment and—”
“I can’t fucking believe this fucking shit!” someone bellowed from the other room and I heard crashing thatabsolutelywas going to be costly.
Like ruined walls and probably flooring costly.
“Take it outside!” Kyle roared before trying to calm down.
And clearly failing miserably from the way he adjusted his neck.
“Oh, this should be good,” I drawled.
“I’m fucking pissed about it all too and fucking pissed wealllet—we were children,” he admitted, nodding when I couldn’t hide my shock. He pointed over to the destroyed kitchen island. “I did that.”
