Chapter 13
“I’m not taking her.”
It’s said with bite, because, somehow, I’ve managed to avoid Blaze’s slutty little hostage for the best part of three weeks. She’s been passed from pillar to post, but only between the three of them. I’m not a fucking babysitter, and I’m not a fucking masochist. She walks around the flat with a lowered gaze, big sad eyes, and flinches every time she sees me.
The bruising on her face has gone now from where she ran into me in the cornfield. The purples and blues were only pale anyway, but on skin as white as hers, they showed up like bright violet and dark ink.
“You are. And you will,” Blaze says coolly, even though I know he wants to snap at me, but it’s controlled, always so fucking controlled, that’s why he’s the boss.
Back to him, I wash my hands in the kitchen sink. Methodically rubbing my fingers together, scrubbing my scarred palms over the backs of my hands, one and then the other. Cleaning each scarred knuckle, every warped, twisted, mangled piece of flesh. Staring down at the white, foamy suds, feeling the roughness of my dark brown skin, I focus on the rhythm of my heart. The steady thump, thump, thump, instead of focussing on whatever it is my boss and best friend, both, is saying.
“Cole!” Blaze finally snaps, just as I flick the tap off with the back of my wrist, reaching for the white and green chequered tea towel. “Are you even fucking listening to me?”
Slowly turning to face him, I take my time to finish drying my hands, leaning my arse back against the sink, chin dipped, I flick my gaze up onto his.
“I’m listening,” I tell him, folding the rough towel and placing it back down onto the kitchen counter. “But I’m still not taking her with me.”
Blaze huffs, shoving a tattooed hand through his dark brown, curly hair. His white t-shirt stretching tightly across his chest, black jeans on his bottom half, tucked into unlaced black boots. He sticks a cigarette between his lips, rummaging around in his pocket for a lighter, tobacco rolling papers drifting to the floor as he does.
“Why can’t you just do this one thing for me?” he mumbles, talking around his cigarette, thumbing his black lip ring before finally lighting up.
I laugh at that, but it isn’t a nice laugh.
One thing.
“Firstly, I don’t want to be near her. Secondly, I’m not being held responsible for when she runs off. And thirdly, you are out of your goddamn fuckin’ mind if you think any of this,” I gesture with my hand at the empty flat around us, Ember locked in Flint’s bedroom with the psychopath probably drooling all over her. “Is going to end well.”
In fact, I know it won’t. I can’t cope with an emotionally distressed woman in this house. Not one who looks like she’s ready to throw herself from the roof at any given moment. It’s too much of a reminder. Of how I felt.
How, sometimes, I still do.
Of what happened to her.
The fire.
The heat.
The screams.
The silence.
I shake it off.
Blaze eyes me, hands loose at his sides, cigarette hanging onto his bottom lip as he rolls it around with his tongue.
“No one’s looking for her,” Blaze tells me quietly, staring at his feet before his dark gaze lifts back to mine. “No one will.”
“Blaz-”
“Cole,” he interrupts, cutting me off. “I need you to do this for me,” he implores me with his eyes, almost black in colour, such a stark contrast to my own, yet hellfire burns within us both. “I know you don’t want her here,” Blaze lowers his voice, glancing to his right towards the hallway that leads to Flint and Phoenix’s room as though any of them could hear. He steps closer, only the kitchen peninsula between us, “But I need her here.” Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, he swallows hard, curling his fingers over the edge of the counter, glancing down at it as he squeezes the marble. “And tonight, I need you to take care of her for me.”
Expressionlessly, I stare back at him. There’s a tightness to his eyes, dark shadows beneath them, lips pinched harder than necessary around his cigarette. My best friend looks tired, and it’s so unusual for me to see him as anything but perfect that I feel a pang of concern knock me in the chest.
Phantom smoke fills my lungs, choking me as I think of the house, the smouldering ash.
Exhaling in a sigh, I run a hand over the top of my short curls, “Fuck me, fine. But just know,” I say, narrowing my eyes and crossing my arms over my chest. “That I’m not fucking happy about this, and I’m not doing it again. Ever. This is the one and only fucking time.”
Blaze looks at me with such intensity, I feel heat prick my skin, that familiar lick of anger bleeding through my flesh. Two alpha wolves, both unyielding.
“Okay,” he relents, sighing again and stabbing out his cigarette in the ashtray in the centre of the island.
Blaze turns towards the hallway, his back tense as I watch him walk away, and despite saying I don’t care, don’t want her here, I know this means something to him. She’s important and he doesn’t know how to handle that. He won’t tell me anything, and that, that is something I don’t understand. We’ve always been closer than anyone, best friends since we were nineteen years old. I’ve always been able to read him like an open book, until her.
“Blaze,” I call out, stopping him in his tracks, he turns his head, just enough that I can see the side of his face, but he doesn’t look at me. “Put her in some fucking trainers.”
He snorts, continuing on down the hall, “You got it, brother.”