Chapter 26
Twenty-six
HOPE
Ihaven’t ever seen Jax like this. Not even when he told me about Daisy. He leaned on me, opened for me.
I stroke through his hair, while hoping the bush we’re hidden behind is enough to keep us safe for the time being. I can’t lean too much on it considering half the leaves are gone, but I can watch the light flickering in the cabin as it plays through the windows.
I close my eyes and fold myself over Jax. Before he tries to push me away from him, I tilt his head up and kiss him. I don’t know what else to do. He starts to pull away, but I grab his hand when he pushes on my chest and put it over the mark they gave me. The mark Daisy never had.
Because I’m me, not her. “Listen to me, Jax. I need you. I’m yours to protect. I need you to be that man now. The one who will burn the world down for me, who will slaughter, who will defend. And I won’t leave your side.”
“I can’t,” he whimpers. “I just fail. I failed you so many times. I failed her. I fail again and again. My back—”
“Is okay,” I say softly. “It is. You’re my Jaxon. Good enough to protect me, good enough to protect us and everything we’ve built. You’re good enough.”
He stares at me for a long time, his eyes watery, almost glassy, but suddenly he yanks me forward.
I don’t know if he’s going to kiss me, to hurt me, but I squeeze my eyes shut because as much as I want him to ignore Daisy’s screams, it’s almost impossible to do when it’s so loud.
Always getting louder. Like it’s clawing into our minds.
I try to squeeze Jax but realize that I’m holding onto his shirt, that my head is against his sharp shoulder blade. I’m still on my knees. I crack one eye open, then another to find a flashlight beaming down on us, too intense for us to see anything… other than the gun.
“Knew you’d come back. It only works if you come back. All of you. Even her,” Gauge snarks.
The barrel of the gun trains on me, but Jaxon moves, hiding me from it.
It won’t make a difference. I know enough that bullets travel through bodies more often than not and they don’t stop. They can rip through two people.
“Jaxon,” I whisper.
“I warned you, Hope. I told you to untangle yourself, but you didn’t listen.
It’s like you want to be hurt. Just like Daisy did.
She was aching for agony just to feel alive.
It becomes an addiction. The only way you can tell you’re alive is by seeing what you can survive and hating every second of it.
Because trauma is better than apathy, right? ” Gauge continues.
“Don’t fucking to talk to her. And keep Daisy’s name out of your mouth,” Jaxon orders.
His voice is stronger, more him, but it’s shaky, just like the rest of him. I rub his side and wrap my arm around him, holding him tight as Gauge walks closer, the flashlight so blinding that I hide my face.
“Oh, Hope. I really wanted something better for you… well, as long as that better was caught on film. Shame I only got Daisy a few times on camera. But my audio recorder did a good job.”
“What did you do to her?” Jaxon hisses.
A sharp crack echoes and I wince, trying to tug Jaxon back. He lifts his head and I see red streaking down from his temple.
“It’s just a panic attack. Just her fighting with herself about self-harm and suicide, you know?
She was crazy. She was so depressed. She just couldn’t handle it anymore,” Gauge says, but there’s no sympathy in his voice.
“She wasn’t strong like Hope here. Is that why you chose her? To replace our poor, pathetic sister?”
“Jax,” I breathe. “Please. Please.”
The gun twists in my direction and I hear him cocking it. “You only need to open your mouth when you’re taking dick and I’m sure that’s what your lips are best for.”
All the times I just let it happen, all the times I refused to fight because it would be worse, it could always be worse.
I bury my face in Jaxon’s shoulder and whisper, just for him. “Buy time. Keep him talking. The guys will come back.”
They have to come back. They have to know something’s wrong. They always do.
But the barrel of the gun keeps glinting at me. From this angle, it looks like it’s growing, like its only purpose is to kill Jax and me. In Gauge’s hand, that’s exactly what it will do.
DIMITRI
I follow the sound of the noise with Knox at my side. We’re not taking chances. He’s ready to stab someone and break some bones. I’m ready to shoot and be done with this. In my opinion, the quicker this is over the better. Things don’t need to be drawn out.
All these problems have lasted long enough and last night proved that we’re better without problems on our plate. Hope deserves to smile. She deserves to laugh. And she deserves to fuck without feeling like her world is going to crumble around her.
Knox holds his hand up before we get to the kitchen.
I stare at his hand so I don’t replay what we last saw when we walked in here. Hope, terrified, half-naked, chained to the table, barely alive. Putting myself in that mindset will end all rational thought and I have to be rational.
I hear the recording pause and some heavy breathing, a whimper that’s too familiar. I see Knox’s body tense and feel his reaction like it’s my own. That’s Hope. Our Hope.
Knox curls his hands into fists, then reaches back. I put the gun in his hand without question. He wants to make up for not killing Hope’s dad, I’ll happily let him go for it.
“Alive,” I hiss just as he steps forward, gun drawn.
The frantic typing doesn’t stop even as the man looks up. He smirks slightly. “Look who it is.”
Knox’s hand doesn’t shake. He moves forward, the barrel aimed not at the guy’s head, but at his throat. Knox doesn’t blink. I don’t even know if he’s breathing.
“Come on, Knox. I saw plenty last time around. We all know you can’t take a shot,” the man chuckles before brushing his blonde hair away from his face, a scar running through his eyebrow.
“And me?” I ask as I wonder where I’ve seen him before.
He looks at me for a long moment as Knox passes me a knife. The man leans back, his false bravado showing in the way his lips twitch down for a second. And then, I remember. The therapist’s office, waiting room. He was there.
“What makes you think I’m alone?” he spits.
“What makes you think that’ll change the outcome, cum sock?” Knox snarls.
He laughs. “What, you going to beg me to take down the videos Coach Harbaugh made us a fortune on? No. They’re loved.
Hope is so…” He groans and licks his lips.
“God, that fight in her, then her total submission. The way she just bent to his will… you know it firsthand. It’s decadent.
It’s priceless… which means it earns plenty.
Take down the videos again and again. Make them scarce. It just drives prices up.”
Knox steps forward, not in range where the man can grab the gun before Knox can shoot, but close enough that the laugh dies on his tongue.
He sneers. “You don’t get how big this is. It’s not just me who wants this. All over the world, people love our little shattered Hope.”
“Say she’s yours again,” Knox growls.
“You didn’t have the balls to shoot Coach after what he did to the woman you love. What makes you think you can shoot me when you need m—”
The gunfire is shockingly loud, nearly blowing out my eardrum, but the bastard’s scream is louder. He stares at his shoulder. Then he slumps into it while blood ruins his white button-up.
“What the fuck?!” he demands.
Knox doesn’t react, doesn’t complain, doesn’t have a sassy line.
He just grabs the man’s injured arm and holds it behind his back, whispering in his ear.
“The fact I need you gives me more options. What next? Your foot? Your cock? Your thigh? Even your ear… I have plenty of options, plenty of ammo, and you’re going to spill everything I want to know before or after you start bleeding out. ”
I’ve never seen him like this, never seen him so raw.
“It’ll never be gone. We enabled downloading,” he breathes. “But I have a system that flags when her videos are posted. I can… I’ll show it to you. You can have it, just…”
Knox moves the barrel of the gun to the man’s cock. He whines and tries to twist away, but he gasps and pants at the slightest move of his shoulder.
“I want original files, I want the code to clock when something new is posted, I want the entire drive of IP addresses that you’ve noted downloads with,” I say, unable to match Knox’s lethal calm. “But, if you need more convincing…”
I grab his hair and bring my knee up, hitting him in the nose. “Blood for blood, fucker.”
The man whimpers. “Fuck. My phone and my—”
Knox shoots him in the hip, hitting bone for sure, and based on an echoing bang somewhere else in the room, the guy is lucky it’s not worse. The shock takes care of it though and he slumps to the side.
“Tie him up. Get the info. Our girl is ours. No one else’s,” Knox growls. “I’m going to check on them.”
“Jax?”
“Fuckface here said he’s not alone. One guess who had the audio of Daisy,” Knox says with that same calm that prickles my skin more than the bloodshed does.
Fuck… Gauge.
JAXON
My fury is working overtime to try to make sense of seeing Gauge here. “You did more than listen.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Did I?”
“I read her diary. You just loved Coach’s teachings, didn’t you? Ate it up,” I hiss.
His gun moves from Hope back to me, and he shakes his head.
“Coach was a good man. He understood the way the world works. You can’t ask for things nicely, cross your fingers, and hope you get them.
You have to take them… even if they scream a little.
Isn’t that right, Hope? You like it rough.
I think you’d love being fucked in your boyfriend’s blood. ”
I grit my teeth. He’s going to pay for every comment. I’m not letting him get away with a single fucking thing. I start to move, but he steps closer. I keep my hands on Hope. No matter what happens to me, nothing is going to happen to her. Even if it means she hides under my dead body.
“He was wrong!” Hope yells from behind me, her voice a squeak as she squeezes me against her, making my back ache, but it’s better knowing she’s there.
“Sweetheart, now—”
“No, let the whore talk. How exactly was daddy dearest wrong? He fucked your pretty mother. Who, by the way, loved the spotlight as much as you. Her videos were fucking delicious,” Gauge groans and rubs his cock. “Seriously, the final one…”
“He recorded that?” Hope whimpers. Despite her voice, her hold on me is firm.
“Of course he did. His disobedient wife finally getting what she deserved. Honestly, it was better when she was—”
“That’s my mother, you incestuous pig!” she yells. “But you being a pig explains plenty, doesn’t it? Why you get off to rape videos. Why you sent me my father’s hand. Why you wanted us here. It’s all because you can’t handle that Jaxon is better than you.”
Gauge’s laughter is gone. With the flashlight trained on Hope, I can see his face. He’s livid, pissed at the insinuation, ready to fire just to make sure she can’t say anything else.
“I believe I told you what your mouth was good for. Do I need to remind you the way your daddy did?” Gauge asks, taking another step closer.
I keep myself between him and Hope and the gun falls back on me.
“You’re shielding a whore. A disgusting whore that begged her daddy to fuck her.
Or is that what you like about her? That you can use her however you want?
That she’s too terrified to leave because she believes that your cock filling her is the same as love? At least Daisy wasn’t that stupid.”
“Why does this keep coming back to Daisy?” Hope presses.
I almost look at her. Why the hell is she digging in when he’s obviously one bad comment away from killing us both right here and now, then going inside to finish the job?
“Look in a mirror and tell me, princess,” he says.
Then I see movement, creeping closer. Big, lethal, poised… Knox.
She’s stalling for him.
“Did Coach Harbaugh hurt Daisy too?” Hope asks in a pathetic little whimper.
“Your dad? You can’t even say dad anymore?” He laughs once. “Ask him when you see him in—”
Everything happens too quickly. Knox tackles my brother, dropping the flashlight to the ground as they roll. I think Knox is actually biting the bastard, then the gun points in our direction. Hope tries to yell for Knox, tries to stand. I push her down, and a deafening boom rips through the night.
It echoes through my bones as a sense of wrong, a new dread I’ve never known, and the need to see Hope’s face fill me.
“Jaxon!” Hope’s scream sounds like a second gunshot, my vision darkens, and all I can think about are her beautiful blue eyes, the mark I never should have put on her skin, and all the ways I want to hold her.
But I’m cold, dizzy, and she’s slipping through my fingers again.