“You left the damn house unlocked.” My voice comes out flat, and Jace’s guilty expression says that he’s the one responsible.
“That’s my bad. I changed the alarm code for Bailey, right before you stormed into the house like a caveman,” he says playfully, kissing a trail along my jaw before meeting my mouth. “I got distracted,” he adds, slipping his tongue past my lips as his arms wrap around my waist. He pulls me in closer to him, and I willingly follow.
“Oh my fucking God,”Colton gasps, and both Jace and my attention snap to him. “You bought me presents. Aweee, Babbbyy.”
Bailey disappeared into her bedroom, and that’s where she’s been since I came home this afternoon. I feel like the biggest cunt on the planet for not even bothering to check on her, but that’s not what we do. Bailey and I haven’t really talked since high school. Not since I said goodbye and went on one of my father’s trips to Banff. Which was all a fucking lie. The father and son bonding trip ended up being an initiationinto The Order, and I couldn’t even look at Bailey after what we had to do—what I had to do.
Before then, I had never taken a life, and if I had shown any signs of remorse or regret, my targets would get younger and younger, until the list of names bled into faces I’d grown up with, and it was only a matter of time before one of those faces was hers.
Emotion became a liability, and love? We could kiss the idea of that shit goodbye because that’s not how our lives were designed. But what they didn’t know was that of all the humanity they’d so methodically ripped from us, they could never take away the love that Jace, Colton, and I shared. We’ve learned to keep the things we love the most locked away and out of their reach, which is why Bailey being under our roof feels like The Order is taunting us.
We fucked up.
We should have never even touched her in the first place, if not for anything but to prevent this sickening paranoia. But God, she was perfect.
Everything about Bailey makes my body ache to have her close, to feel her in the spaces we didn’t know existed until she walked into our lives that first time.
What I feel for her is complicated, but the one thing that has always been clear to me is that I love her.
We all love her.
My stepsister.
One of the many reasons why being around her is aterrible idea. We’re just asking for trouble at this point. But I can’t help it.
No matter how much logic fucking screams at me, no matter how much I tell myself to stay the fuck away from her, my body, my mind, and my heart all betray me.
I stare up at my ceiling, needing space and time to think. Jace and Cole have been asleep for hours, so I decided to hide out in my room tonight so that I didn’t wake them with my bullshit.
I can’t sleep knowing that she’s under the same roof as us after everything that we did to her. Knowing that we hurt her so fucking badly over and over, and over again, and she still fucking manages to smile.
There is no shaking Bailey Asher.
She’s woven into the fabric of who we are, and to pretend she doesn’t exist is to tear ourselves open every single fucking day, and I don’t think I have the strength to stay away from her anymore.
Not when I know what it feels like to have her. Her taste, her lips… the sounds she makes when she comes are seared into my memory, and I’ll be forever branded by her.
I tried to do what was right. For three years now, I’ve tried to keep my distance because I thought that was the only way to keep her safe from our world, and all the pain and suffering that comes from being in this fucked up society.
We made an oath and wrote our names in the blood of our victims, swearing loyalty to The Order until our dying day. Every death, every single drop of blood, bound us tighter to this world, but I’ll be fucking damned if the Elders or anyone else thinks they can stop us from being together.
She’s ours.Sacred. And we’ll burn this whole fucking world down before we ever let them touch her.
I rise from my bed before I can talk myself out of it, and do the one thing I swore I’d never do. I open the drawer of my nightstand and reach for my Ghost face mask and knife.
If this is ever going to work, if we’re going to have a chance of surviving what’s coming, she needs to know the truth.
All of it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BAILEY
Steam curls around me as I step out of the shower, dragging the towel through my now faded pink hair, in desperate need of a re-dye.
Roman’s face keeps replaying in my mind from when he saw me with Colton and Jace on their couch earlier today. He didn’t even try to hide his disdain for me, like me simply existing was the biggest inconvenience he couldn’t wait to be rid of.
Wrapping the towel around my body, I press my palms to the edge of the vanity, watching droplets slide lazily down my skin.
