Chapter 10
TEN
KANE
My twin walks into the kitchen. Our private nurse looks up then resumes cleaning my wound with antiseptic, her touch gentle but steady. I need her to hurry and finish so I can grab my keys and leave.
“Is it true Jessica stabbed you with a letter opener?” Cash asks, grabbing a shiny red apple from the fruit bowl on the table.
“Don’t sound so happy about it,” I mutter.
He tosses the apple into the air, catches it, and takes a crunchy bite. When he finishes chewing, he leans his hip against the table. “Come on, don’t be such a sourpuss. It’s funny. I guess you didn’t just kiss and make up. What the hell did you do to piss her off that badly?”
“Oh, I don’t know? Maybe she’s upset because she thinks I cheated on her with Cassidy.”
My voice is deadpan and laced with sarcasm.
Cash brings the apple to his mouth and takes another big bite. Juice coats his lips before he swallows. “So what now?” he asks.
The nurse begins stitching the wound, and I grit my teeth against the sharp sting, wiggling my knee as a trail of blood seeps from the cut.
Jessica will regret this. When I finally get my hands on her again, she’ll pay with her pussy. I’ll make sure of it.
In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best idea to fuck her on my father’s desk before we’d even had a chance to talk.
Still, it’s not my fault that I can’t help myself around her. She has that effect on me. I promised I would stay away to keep her safe, and I did, but then she came to me, into my territory.
If my father finds out what happened tonight, it won’t be me he punishes this time.
He’ll go after her, and I can’t let that happen.
“Now we scrub the surveillance footage.”
The needle glides through my brutalized skin again and I swallow a pained grunt, sweat beading on my forehead.
“Speaking of which,” Cash says. “It was definitely her, then, who stole the dagger?”
“Yes.” I grit my teeth, wincing as the thread slides through flesh, slick with blood. “It was her. Maverick was just in here showing me the footage of that night, before you decided to barge in and mock me.”
“I would never mock you.” He flashes another dimpled smile that hints he definitely would and brings the apple to his lips. His teeth puncture the flesh as I flip him off. The nurse snips the thread, discards the blood-stained materials, and disinfects the stitched wound.
After she tells me how to keep it clean and leaves the kitchen, I grab my shirt draped over the back of the chair and slip my arms into the sleeves. “I don’t think Jessica knowingly took the dagger.”
“No?” He lobs the half-eaten core into the trash can next to the chrome fridge.
I button my shirt. “She stole items that night at random to sell. There was no rhyme or reason. When I entered the room and caught her off guard, she dropped the bag. Most of the items fell out, but not the dagger. She probably didn’t even realize she had it until she got back home.
And even then, she wouldn’t have known its true value. ”
“The Society won’t see it that way.”
“Maybe they should question why the fuck our father left it out on the shelf for anyone to steal instead of locking it away in the safe.” I grab my phone and car keys, which I left on the counter earlier.
Cash frowns. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to teach her a damn lesson.”
“For what? Returning stolen goods? Doing the right thing?”
“I don’t appreciate the humor in your voice.”
As I turn to leave, Cash pulls me to a stop. “You’re not going to stay away from her, are you?”
I’m slow to turn around, a defiance in my squared shoulders as I meet his eyes, identical to mine. “Will you stop me if I tell you I can’t?”
“No.”
I scoff, slightly shaking my head, the bitter sound lacking any humor. Cash holds his ground as I move closer and say, “You should, because I’m about to throw her to the sharks.”
Fifteen minutes later, Cash drops me off a little down the road from Jessica’s house, if you can even call it that. ‘House’ is a pretty generous word for that tiny building.
“This is a bad idea,” Cash points out.
“You should have let me take my own car.”
“And park it where, exactly? Have you seen this neighborhood?”
“That didn’t stop me before.”
Cash ignores me as he studies the nearby properties lining the road. I want to say it looks better in the daylight, but that’d be a lie.
“Don’t wait for me,” I say as I exit his Dodge Viper.
“If you do this, there’s no turning back. You get that, right? It’s only a matter of time before it gets back to our dad.”
I shut the door in response, and Cash reluctantly drives away, turning the corner at the end of the street.
A few minutes later, I’m climbing up the trellis to Jessica’s window like some weird creep.
My arm is pulsing with a deep ache where the stitches strain.
I still can’t wrap my head around it. She stabbed me.
She grabbed the letter opener and drove it into my arm.
She didn’t even hesitate. My girl is a psycho, and fuck if that doesn’t get me hard.
I peek into her room. She’s not there, but she’ll be back eventually. Now, if I can just open the window and climb inside, I’ll wait for her to return. However, much to my dismay, the window is locked and won’t budge.
Dammit.
Next, I debate how the hell to climb up to Summer’s window. There’s no trellis or nearby tree, and nothing convenient I can use to haul myself up or climb onto the roof without breaking my neck.
After searching the side of the house, I find an old wooden ladder propped behind the garden shed, half-buried beneath a tangle of weeds.
Bingo. At least I won’t have to call Cash to drive me to Home Depot.
Once I’ve hauled it out and been stung by nettles, I climb up and peek inside Summer’s window, but it’s the same story.
The only one that’s not locked is their brother’s. Of course. Why am I even surprised?
This is the part where a normal person would give up and go back, but I’m not exactly in the most stable mindset right now.
After a quick look around to make sure no one is outside and the room is empty, I push open Chris’s window with some effort and climb inside, the stitches pulling from the strain.
Pain is for the weak. Our father made sure to teach us that.
That’s why I barely flinch when blood starts seeping through the sleeve again.
Call it the epitome of craziness, but nothing can keep me from Jessica.
She can stab me, shoot me, and gut me. I won’t stay away again.
For once, I know exactly what I want and I’m going after it, whether she agrees or not.
If she pushes me away again, I’ll fuck the defiance out of her. It doesn’t matter what it takes. I don’t care about the consequences.
My feet land with a soft thud. Chris’s room is cleaner than I expected. Blue walls. Posters of JDM classics. Gray bedding. And glossy chrome wheels mounted above the headboard.
I move toward the door, but before I can open it, loud footsteps sound outside.
It’s Chris. He’s talking to someone.
Shit.
I need to find somewhere to hide quickly, but where? It’s safe to say I’m in deep trouble right now. Once again, I didn’t think this through, and now it’s come back to bite me in the ass. I dash toward the closet, shutting it just as the door opens.
Chris steps inside, barefoot in grey joggers. And if that’s not bad enough, he’s also shirtless.
If he decides to grab a top or something from the closet, I’m screwed.
Hell, it’s better if it doesn’t come to that because Jessica would never forgive me if I killed her brother. And he already doesn’t like me much, so it’s best if he doesn’t find me hiding in the closet.
Chris is on the phone with someone, his hair wet from a recent shower.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he tells the person on the other end about an upcoming supply run. He looks exhausted as he rubs the space between his brows. At least until he gets another call and tells whoever’s on the phone that he needs to hang up.
And for a second, I think that’s it, that he’ll finally leave his room.
Instead, he answers the call and gets comfortable on the bed. Fucking great.
Two seconds later, it becomes clear that the caller is a girl, and when the dirty talk begins, I drag my hands down my face.
Please tell me this isn’t fucking happening.
I refuse to believe that I’m stuck here while he reaches into his joggers to stroke his dick.
It was too much to hope that I could just enter through his window and sneak into Jessica’s room without anyone noticing me or anything going wrong.
What did Snart say in the TV series Flash? Make the plan, execute the plan, expect the plan to go off the rails, throw away the plan.
I guess we’re throwing it away.
Well, at least Chris is distracted. That’s something, right? Looking on the bright side. It could be worse. At least he hasn’t discovered me yet.
But I have to admit, listening to my girl’s brother jerk off isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.
I don’t know how long it’s been when they finally hang up, but it’s long enough for me to count to one hundred three separate times, and then some.
Chris wipes his hand and chest on a piece of toilet paper he pulls from the bedside table.
Hurry the hell up.
When he finally leaves, I waste no time sneaking out. And when I escape into Jessica’s room and the door shuts behind me, I collapse on her bed and dig my fingers into my eyeballs.
The things I suffer through for this girl.
She drives me insane.
I’m not sure when I fell asleep, but I wake up later to a familiar click and pressure on my cock, and it takes me a moment to gather my bearings.
I push up onto my elbows and rub my sleep-crusted eyes.
“Good morning, sleepyhead. What are you doing here?” Jessica asks. “Don’t you have some rich bimbo to make out with on your hood?”