Page 38 of Midnight Salvation

He grunts with a smirk. “She’s been up Jagger’s ass the entire time you’ve been away.”

Away, I think, looking out the window at the passing trees. Like I was gone for an extended weekend. I blow out a breath, letting it puff up my cheeks for a moment.

“I bet he loved that.” I snort at the image of my cousin becoming Jagger’s shadow.

He chuckles quietly. “He does alright. She nearly took his head off when he wouldn’t let her come into the clubhouse to tell me about the phone call.”

Silence settles between us. It’s a little uncomfortable, like suddenly we don’t know how to act around one another. Or how to process the whole situation, which feels like some kind of hallucination.

Part of me wishes I could just bulldoze right past it, move on with life as if it never happened. And maybe I’ll be able to in some capacity, but there’s still so much that needs to be said about it.

And I’ve never been more grateful than I was when he asked for details on what happened but didn’t push me when I told him I wanted to wait until we’re all together. So I don’t have to recount it over and over again.

I swipe my tongue along my bottom lip and blindly reach for a can of caffeinated water. I pull the tab and take a drink, letting the carbonated bubbles dance on my tongue for one blissful moment.

He nods toward the untouched bag in my lap. “Why don’t you eat too, yeah?”

I unroll the bag and pull out a blueberry muffin. I take my time peeling the muffin paper down, my mind exhausted but not quiet. “What happens now? Do we just go back to the way life was before?”

Bane nods slowly, stealing a sidelong glance at me. He still looks at me with the same soft eyes and quiet intensity as before.

And I wonder if that’s how my life is going to be now. A before and an after. Like this will be another defining moment in my life. And maybe five years from now, I’ll look back on this and see the fork in the road for what it is and not just a traumatic event.

I think the scariest revelation I’ve had this last week is rooted in fear but not in the way I would’ve thought. Sure, I was scared. But more than that, I felt scary. Like I was something to be fearful of.

And the wildest part? I liked it.

I liked the way I felt powerful when I was defending our house, when I was buying time. A fearsome distraction to make sure Hunter and Dixie got out okay.

And I don’t know how they’re going to look at me once they realize that. I worry that I’m going to catch them looking at me sideways, like they’re unsure of who I am or what I’ve become. My stomach twists with discomfort as I imagine the scene they must’ve found at the compound.

“Are you sure they’re all okay?”

He dips his head. “I’m sure, sugar. The family is fine.”

Warmth spreads inside my chest at the word family. “What about everyone else? Did any Reapers get hurt?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, they’re fine. Just a couple of minor things.”

I clear my throat and focus on breaking off a small piece of the muffin, my fingertips running over the coarse sugar crystals. “I suppose you saw the, uh, mess”—I wince at my word choice— “around the house.”

“You mean the bodies you dropped?” he says, a smirk tugging up the corner of his mouth.

My face feels hot, and a warm prickly wave of embarrassment rolls over me. “Yeah, about that.”

He reaches over and places his palm on my leg. His fingertips graze the bare skin of my inner thigh, and a flutter of an entirely different kind of warmth unfurls slowly.

“Don’t be embarrassed, sugar. You did what you had to do, and there’s no shame in that. It was a game of survival.”

“And I didn’t.” Shame curdles inside my stomach as images roll over my vision. Following the unnamed man into the secret tunnel, him jabbing me with the syringe, waking up in a car in god knows where. My hand drifts up to my neck, my fingers brushing over the smooth skin.

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

I swallow hard and nod, the blueberries and sugar turning to cement inside my stomach. “Yeah, I am.”

“You protected yourself, Evangeline. And make no mistake, as much as it pains me to say this: they would’ve taken you out in a heartbeat. They didn’t care if you’ve never fired a gun before, or if you were an innocent bystander. Those men didn’t give your life a single second thought, so I don’t want you to give theirs another one, yeah? It’s a game of survival now, baby girl. And we always play to win.”

“Survival,” I whisper, nodding and toying with my wrapper in my lap. “What does that mean for now?”

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