Page 42

So I grin. Let him see the fucking dimple in my cheek, the one I wield like a weapon, every damn day. “You know something I have learned, though? I’ve learned that I’m scrappy as fuck. You taught me that. And I’m thirsty. And I’ll do whatever—whatever—it takes. Always. Just like I did when you sold me out. When you left me locked in a safe.”

Do I register the faintest flick of fear in those baby blues? Or is it merely a trick of the fireworks bursting outside the window panes? Gotta keep pushing. “You left me for caught, but you know who got out anyway? This motherfucking lone wolf.”

He stutters back the barest fraction. I’m definitely getting somewhere—

Thump.

The next set of words freezes halfway off my tongue at the sound.

It comes again, a soft, fleshy thump from the hall beyond the bathroom door. It’s faint, indeterminate, but it pulls my attention from Nick’s hovering visage. Another thump—and I think I might have an inkling as to what it is.

Maybe.

Thump-thump. That one’s my heart, growing bold on late-blooming flowers of hope.

“And one last thing I learned?” I let my mouth relax into a natural grin, let my charm flow free, let myself be Jax fucking Winter, the man I was always meant to be. “I learned I’m really fucking good at playing people.”

“Sure.” Nick snorts, but his nerves telegraph too clearly in the way his eyes shift sideways, the way his fingers roll the knife, the way his other hand tightens on my collar.

Like maybe he’s wondering why I’m so goddamn confident when he’s the one holding the knife. “You’re really playing me here, Jax.”

“Am I not?” I murmur, low enough to track those faint thuds outside the door. Thump-thump-thud.

Been a while since I heard something like that, but you don’t forget the sound of fists hitting flesh.

Or the grunt-and-thud of a body hitting the wood floor. That, my friends, is definitely the sound of a fight. One that, by the sound of things, might be just about over.

I grin again. “Oh, no, sorry. You’re right. It’s not you. I played the other guy. The guy who—I think—might be better than your gorilla at fisticuffs.”

“What?” Nick’s red brows shoot into obscurity in his tangled roil of bangs. Bingo! Now he’s listening. And so am I—to how everything outside has gone very, very quiet . . .

“You maybe wanna run,” I say, grinning with all my teeth, like a feral hyena. “’Cause I think my new boy is here to say hi.”

Nick freezes for an instant. One more frozen moment where the world hasn’t quite made up its mind how to proceed—

The door cracks open.

Nick drops my collar, whips the knife away. And as that main bathroom entry swings wide, Nick plunges back into the darkened abyss. Out of sight—but I still hear the faint click of a door closing.

Relief courses through me, heady and intoxicating, as a dark, shadowed figure strides through the doorway.

I don’t need to see him, don’t need to study the girth of his shoulders or the dramatic V-cut of his frame, to know who he is; I feel him. Feel his gaze on me like a physical touch, a weight against my skin—a force of tangible intensity.

For a moment, we simply study each other, me with half my grin still tangled over my face—uncertain which grin it wants to be—and him with an unreadable expression that leaves only mystery for me to puzzle over.

“You,” he murmurs at last. He’s looking at me, and unfortunately, it’s not like he’s thinking of doing dirty things to me. Which is such a damn shame. “Are you hiding?”

“Hiding?” I can’t see his face under the mask, burrowed in the shadows beneath his hat, but my God, that mouth. And those shoulders—

Pivot, Jax. Pivot.

I flash him my best smile, a grin that unleashes the full power of the dimple. “No, I was not hiding. This is a bathroom; I was getting a blowie—a good one—like a proper dude at a party in a remote third-floor bathroom.”

I wonder if Nick’s still lingering, too absorbed in the show, in his own personal game to depart.

“What?” Blondie’s eyes go wide with shock because clearly, whatever he was expecting from me, that was not it. In this light, I can’t discern their color, or their shape, but I know they’re pretty and grey.

Makes it so much more fun to play. “You want a turn? Since you cost me the last one?”