He didn’t even slow down as he approached me, and I saw his arm swing as if in slow motion, didn’t even try to dodge the hammer of his fist as it hit my jaw.
I deserved it.
My teeth snapped together and warm blood spilled onto my chin from my split lip.
Jagger and Vigo were on him before I realized what was happening, hauling Bram off me as Poe and Remy moved to join in.
Bram kept on coming, a freight train held back by a piece of dental floss.
I was preparing to take it, preparing to let him pummel me into dust, when Maeve stepped between us.
“Bram.” There was something surprisingly tender in the firmness of her voice. “Stop.”
He froze, his hands fisted at his sides.
She stepped toward him, took his face in her hands, and spoke softly. “This isn’t going to help Cassie.”
He tipped his forehead against hers and for a moment they stared into each other’s eyes, some kind of unspoken communication passing between them.
Then Bram straightened and looked at me. “You deserve worse.” He looked at Jagger and Vigo. “All of you.”
“We know,” Jagger said.
He shook his head. “Itrustedyou with her.”
“We fucking know,” Vigo said, his voice anguished.
Maeve glanced at the middle-aged couple, who’d edged to the far corners of the room like they were hoping for an exit. “Let’s sit down.”
We eyed each other warily, then arranged ourselves in the plastic chairs, Bram and his crew on one side, Jagger, Vigo, and me on the other, like warring factions sitting down to hammer out a cease fire.
“Start talking,” Bram growled.
“She went to see Daisy,” I said.
“And happened to go off the mountain?”
I remembered what Cassie had said when she’d told us about Travis Dorsey: that Bram had been in the car with their parents when it had gone off the road.
What was it doing to him to imagine Cassie going through the same thing?
I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to see Bram as human, but it was too late. I couldn’t un-know what I knew about him, that once upon a time, he’d been not a monster but a scared teenager trapped at the bottom of the mountain in a car with his dead parents.
“We went to Travis Dorsey’s house,” Vigo said.
I scowled at him but he just shrugged.
Bram froze, like he was having trouble processing the words Vigo had said.
“Why thefuckwould you do that?” he finally said.
“Cassie wanted to know who’d hired him,” Jagger said quietly.
Bram’s jaw tightened. “And you took it upon yourself to find out?”
I stared him down. “Who else was going to do it?”
He lunged at me but Maeve grabbed his arm and pulled him back into his chair before his fist could make contact with my face again.
