Page 217 of Stay Scared

He does.

Two fingers settle against the side of my throat. Owen closes his eyes briefly while he feels my pulse, counting.

Of course he is.

“You’re alive,” he says.

“I noticed.”

His eyes open.

Whatever is in them has been dragged raw.

“You disappeared off my cameras three times tonight.”

“That must have been traumatic.”

“It was.”

The honesty knocks the joke out of me.

Owen lowers his hand but stays close.

Ash reaches us before anyone decides what to do with that silence. An officer follows him too.

Apparently I have acquired a small police escort made entirely necessary by the men I am sleeping with.

Ash has been cleaned enough that I can see how bad he looks: fresh bandage above his brow, bruising along his jaw, one arm bound close to his body, blood still dried beneath his fingernails.

The founder key rests in his good hand.

Cade notices it immediately. “So you still have that.”

Ash looks at him. “Apparently I do.”

Owen looks at the key, then me.

Nobody stands politely in a row. Cade is at my left shoulder, Owen is too close on the other side, and Ash stops directly in front of me. The officer behind him looks deeply unhappy with the arrangement.

Ash lifts the key.

I expect another speech.

Instead, he takes my bandaged hand. The contact is firm enough that my fingers ache as he presses the cold steel into my palm and closes my hand around it.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re taking it.”

“We’ve done this before.”

His eyes sharpen. “Keep it anyway.”

I look at the key between my fingers. “Why?”

Ash glances toward Crimson Night, where police are carrying evidence through the entrance. Someone has removed the Decay Brigade sign from a wall and leaned it against a barricade.

When Ash looks back, his face is hard.