Chapter 15 #2
I could only think of one person. A big factor in my wanting a break from Wolf was my own insecurity, and Cassie was always an advocate for my “realizing my worth.” Surely she wouldn’t have done that, though…
But obviously, I lived with her, and I had probably given her my passcode to change music or something.
“Cassie?” It was plausible.
Monroe would never. If anything, she was pro-Wolf. I could see how Cassie might have thought she was helping…
“No. Sack-of-shit Brent.”
Frowning, I focused on a wrinkle on his T-shirt. “He didn’t know my passcode.” And I never let him have my phone because I didn’t want him to snoop through any of my pictures. All the ones of Wolf and me that I could never bring myself to delete.
“Your passcode is your birthday, Jade. Or at least, it was.”
I hadn’t changed it since I was fifteen. God, I was probably a hacker’s wet dream. Chompy95 was my password for pretty much everything—Chompy being my former pet hamster. And yeah, anything with numbers was always my birthday. “Yeah, well, I probably told you that sometime. I did not tell Brent.”
“You didn’t. I saw you type it in once.”
Well, that was sneaky. I didn’t think Brent would stoop that low. Sure, he was a cheating asshole, but I couldn’t see him doing that.
A loud bang came from the hallway. Squishy shot to the end of the bed, his fur sticking up like a porcupine as he growled.
“I can fucking hear it!” Rogue shouted before silence descended.
I listened intently for whatever supposed sound he could hear. Nothing came but the canned laughter from the laptop speakers.
“Has he finally lost it?” I whispered to Wolf.
Wolf sat up to pause the laptop, bringing me with him. “Fuck knows.”
“Listen,” Rogue’s voice floated through the door.
Even with the laptop off, I still couldn’t hear anything.
“You don’t hear that? It’s filthy little claws tap-tap-tapping.” Rogue sounded a full sandwich short of a picnic.
Another series of bangs followed. Wolf got out of bed and opened the door.
Light spilled in from the hallway where Rogue stood in a pair of pink boxers, holding a broom.
He looked like a crazy meth head, if meth heads had fancy tattoos and wore Dior underwear.
The worrying thing: it wasn’t all that alarming.
Apparently, I’d already acclimatized to the crazy.
“What the hell are you doing?” Wolf asked.
“There are rats in the attic.” Rogue banged the broomstick against the ceiling.
Cassie’s giggle drifted from the other end of the corridor.
“You’re going to bust a hole in the ceiling.”
He banged the broom again.
“Would you stop?” Wolf said, exasperation leaking from his tone. “We don’t have rats.”
Rogue whipped around to face him, pointing the broom handle at the ceiling and shaking it. “I can hear them!”
Wow. I snorted, keeping a hold of Squishy, whose ears had pricked at the word “rats.”
Rogue’s attention drifted past Wolf, landing on me, in Wolf’s bed. “I see you’re taking your little sister role very seriously.”
The implication that I’d crawled into Wolf’s bed like some kind of shameless slut hit a nerve. “I hope that rat crawls out of a vent and gets you in the night.”
The smirk on his face fell before he stomped off.
“He has a thing about rats like Hendrix has about bird shit…” Wolf closed the door and got back on the bed.
“Clearly.”
He unpaused the show. “Rich people problems.”
Because in Dayton, rats were a constant, and the least of anyone’s worries.
Wolf dropped his head onto the pillow. Only moments ago, lying with him had felt like the most natural thing in the world, but Rogue’s smirking implication had shattered the spell. For me, at least. Wolf clearly felt no awkwardness as he pulled the covers up and focused on the show.
I shifted to the edge of the mattress. He’d played an emotional support blanket enough tonight. “I should?—”
His fingers wrapped around my wrist, and he yanked me down onto the pillow beside him without a glance in my direction. “Watch the show, and go to sleep, Jade.” Apparently, he wasn’t ready for the spell to break, either.
The next morning, I woke to an empty bed, and the disappointment I felt over that was concerning.
I put the money he’d given me into the front pocket of my backpack, telling myself not to be stupid and take this as anything more than an old friend’s help.
Last night was emotional support. Clearly, nothing else.
Though I worried what taking Wolf’s help, which I badly needed, would cost me emotionally.
I shouldered my backpack and stepped out of the bedroom, freezing at the sight of Cassie on the attic ladder, her head poked through the hatch. “Cassie, what are you doing?”
A bang sounded, followed by, “Ow! Shit.” She descended the ladder with a bag clutched in her hand. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Because you’re worried about being caught?” I plucked the item from her grasp and read over the label. Rat food. “Really? That’s why you wanted to go to the pet shop? To get rats?”
She shrugged with a smirk. It was nothing short of demented, but I admired her commitment to the cause of making Rogue’s life a living hell.
Seeing as he was putting her in that auction, it was nothing less than he deserved.
Still, if laxatives had him auctioning her off, she was playing with fire.
Then again, it was Cassie. She’d burn herself alive if it meant taking him down with her.
“And you’re feeding them.”
She snatched the bag back. “I can’t just let them starve.” Then glanced past me to Wolf’s closed bedroom door. “Anyway, don’t think I didn’t hear that you were sleeping in Wolf’s room last night.”
God, Rogue was like a gossipy old woman. “Stop trying to deflect.”
“I’m not. So, clearly you no longer hate him.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Sure. Just remember, nothing’s changed. If anything, he’s more of an asshole than when you broke up. And he’s blackmailing you now…”
Her disapproval had suspicion niggling at the back of my mind. The past couldn’t be changed, but I needed to know…
“Look, I need to ask you something. I won’t be mad. I’d understand why you did it, but I just need to know.”
“Know what?”
“Did you change Wolf’s number in my phone after we broke up?”
Her brow furrowed. “What? No.”
Relief washed through me. I didn’t think I could handle her having been the one to hurt me like that.
“Why would you think that?”
“Someone changed Wolf’s number in my contacts and blocked his actual number.”
The attic ladder screeched when she shoved it back into place. “And you thought it was me? What the hell, Jade?”
“No! I just… Wolf thinks it’s Brent. I guess I’d just rather think it was you trying to protect me than…”
Realization washed over her face. “Brent might have set you up and manipulated you into dating his cheating ass.”
There it was. The stone-cold reality of what it meant if Brent was the one who’d fucked with my phone. That the “friend” who had supported me through my heartbreak had actually partially caused it. That the person I thought I’d developed feelings for had sabotaged his way into dating me. “Yeah.”
“Look, I don’t like Wolf. I think he was too wrapped up in himself to notice how bad you were struggling back then.
” That wasn’t entirely fair. “And he broke your heart when he fucked that curly haired bitch.” More fair.
“But I would never, ever do that. And if Brent did… I’ll happily hold him down while you cut off his balls. ”
I snorted. “I’m good.”
“Cut his brakes?” She closed the loft hatch. “Set his house on fire?”
Car, yes. House… “You worry me.” I started toward the top of the stairs. “Oh, if you really want to freak out Rogue, don’t feed the rats. They’ll come into the house looking for food.
“Just when I think you’re such a nice person, you make me so proud.”
“Thanks?” I stopped at the top of the steps and glanced at her. “You know Rogue will kill you if he finds out.”
“He already thinks he’s auctioning me like his best breeding cow, Jade.” Thinks …“Which means, this is war. Besides, how much worse can it get?”
With Rogue, I had the feeling it could definitely get worse.
My plan had been to leverage our way out of here before that auction and make sure she never had to go through with it.
But the situation had changed with Wolf, now…
I thought of the penguin I’d stolen from the closet over the weekend.
The drug-stuffed penguin that was currently in the backpack hanging off my shoulder.
I’d figured keeping it on my person was safest. I’d had every intention of going to the police station today—seeing as I’d been working late yesterday.
Now, though, Wolf had filed a fake police report for me and held me while I cried.
The thought of screwing him over made me feel like the world’s worst person.
“Cass, can you give me a ride to class this morning?”
Her brow furrowed. “Why? Where’s your car?”
I couldn’t bring myself to admit where it was, how much I’d screwed up, or the fact that I’d tried to rob the very house she’d informed me would be empty. “I got a flat last night. Had to leave it on the side of the road.”
“Jesus, you have bad luck with that car.” She wasn’t kidding. She started down the hall. “I’m leaving in ten.”
I didn’t need to be in that early, but I’d take it.
I descended the stairs onto the suspiciously quiet ground floor. After I’d dropped my backpack on the table, I put on a pot of coffee and went about tidying the kitchen. Thankfully, Rogue hadn’t asked us to cook breakfast since shit-gate.
Seconds after I’d poured myself a coffee, the front door creaked opened, and Squishy shot into the kitchen. The fact that Wolf walked the dog, because he refused to pee in the yard, had me fighting a smile. Big, bad criminal wrapped around the claw of a little fox-dog.
He leaned against the kitchen door frame. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel after last night. Awkward? Grateful?