Page 23 of Dancing With Darkness

I pulled out another joint, sparked it to life, and passed it over to him. He surprised me by taking it from me and bringing it to his lips.

He didn’t say anything for a very long time, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think it would last. And I was not wrong.

“We’re all family here, you know.”

Not this shit again.

I snorted. I couldn’t believe this was what he was choosing to start out with here. Unbelievable.

“It’s true, and you’re a part of that. Whether you want to believe it or not.”

Here we went a-fucking-gain.

I didn’t want to go back to this. Ariel and I had already squashed it. I was sure he knew all about it. They all probably did. There were no secrets between that coven.

“Fuck, girl. Do you not even know how many people actually give a shit about you? It’s fucking obvious. We all dropped everything when you disappeared and we’ve been worried sick. Fuck, even Raven and his crew are on standby, ready to be here the moment we say the word. And Raven keeps his shit tight and stays out of everyone else’s business. Apparently, you left a lasting impression on all of them.”

I winced.

Raven was a good man. But that didn’t mean he cared about me. Raven was all about finding a female for his coven. He’d first set his sights on Ariel. When that didn’t pan out he had no issue looking my way. I didn’t care because at that point I’d already been too gone for Rain to ever be interested in anyone else.

Until I’d set my sights on Romero and Finn, that is.

“You shouldn’t have gone off by yourself.”

I sighed as I slouched back in my chair. He had me on that one.

My face pinched tightly as I scanned the yard. I didn’t want to talk about it, I wasn’t ready. But I also didn’t want to be rude to him either. “You don’t have to worry about me running off on my own again. Lesson certainly learned the hard way. Can we please stop with the lectures for right now? I’m not up for it at the moment. I’ll likely never want to have this conversation again, thank you very much.”

I stubbed what little of what was left of my joint out in the ashtray and Tyson did the same.

“What’s going on in the garage?” I asked as I watched people moving around in the building through the windows.

The building was a shit hole that needed to be torn down before the roof collapsed in on someone. As far as I knew, no one ever used the thing,

But there were certainly people in there now.

“I’m gonna let Rain explain that one. That shit’s all on him.”

Interesting. One never knew what to expect from Rain Kimber.

I also worried because I felt he ought to be here with me. What was more important than that? What was more important than me right now?

I stood up and held the sheet tightly to my chest. Tyson called out to me as I walked down the steps and across the grass. I ignored him. I’d gotten the gist of what he had to say and really wanted to hear no more of it.

My nerves were finally calm and I was feeling a whole lot like myself again.

I wanted to breathe easy and forget about all my brand new trauma.

It wasn’t smart to try and ignore it and pack it away into a tiny box to be shoved into a tiny corner of my mind. Doing that before is what brought me out of the house in the middle of the night and back to a place where nightmares were made.

Not smart. Maybe one day I’d change.

They didn’t notice me as I entered the garage. I found Rain, Finn, and Quinton watching a man struggle to escape the binds that had him tied to the chair he was in.

And that man had stabbed me repeatedly.

I kissed my happy high goodbye and crossed my arms over my chest. “What in the actual fuck do you men think you’re doing out here with this asshole?”

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