Page 143 of Wreck Me

“Why are you naked, B?” Caleb asked.

“After that call, I needed to calm down. Figured taking a bath with our girl would help with that.”

“Do you need me to intervene, sweetheart?” King asked.

“Why? She doesn’t know it was you. Damien’s not gonna admit to being taken down by the almighty Caspian King. It will make him a pariah in the city to go against you openly, and he knows it.”

Yeah, Bastian had gotten a call from his mom as he’d been making the two of us breakfast and reprimanding the others for not taking him up on the offer and eating too. Apparently, Damien had staggered into the house he lived in with their mom last night and she’d caught him before he’d been able to make it to his room. She’d seen the state of him then brought in a doctor and everything. She’d been ready to call the police until he’d told her it had happened at the fight club. Out of nastiness, he’d mentioned Bastian had been there too. Their mom had taken it as Damien being the victim and Bastian standing by and doing nothing to help as his brother had been attacked. Well, that last part had been true, but the rest had been completely out of context and painted Damien in an innocent light and Bastian as a complete asshole. His mom had reamed him out and it had gotten worse when Bastian had refused to come by and take care of Damien because their mom had an important meeting of some sort and couldn’t stay with him.

Since then, he’d been gone for several minutes, needing some time to calm down, especially with what I was about to reveal.

“I meant, in order to weave events to your liking and in your favor,” King told him.

Bastian waved his hand dismissively. “Nah, it’s just the same old, same old. Who cares?”

With the two of them staring at him incredulously, Bastian paid it no mind, then came back to me and folded his elbows on the edge of the bath. “You cool with me joining you in here?”

I reached out and ran my fingers through his hair. “Are you really okay? You seem… off?”

He blinked, then pulled away.

And then he was climbing into the bath without another word.

“Don’t work her up, she’s recovering,” Caleb told him.

“And she’s about to tell us about Jett, so be mindful,” King added.

Bastian grumbled under his breath. “What do you fuckers think of me? Seriously.” He settled himself opposite me, the bath big enough where there was so much space, that even with his legs stretched out, he wasn’t touching me. He grinned at me, then called over his shoulder at the guys, “Good enough for you? Not even touching my girl. My wet and naked girl who somehow looks a mixture of cute and sexy right now, yet I’m not laying a single finger—or anything else—on her. Got it?”

“Let’s lose the attitude, Bastian,” King said with a noticeable edge.

“And it’s our girl,” Caleb told him.

Bastian grunted, but then rested his head back in a relaxed position and told them both, “Fine. Got it.”

Something was definitely off with him.

I just couldn’t put my finger on what exactly.

Of course I knew last night at the fight club had been brutal for him, as it had for me, then that call with his mom had obviously only added to that, but his behavior now… it seemed more than even anger and frustration.

Before I got more of a chance to delve deeper into it, King settled himself onto the vanity beside Caleb and asked gently, “Ready, love?”

I sucked in a breath. “Yeah.” Not really ready, per se, but I just wanted to get it over with.

“Jett and I met in a fight club in the town where I was attending Vista Ridge. He was traveling around a bunch of underground fighting circuits with this goal of dominating one after the other. He fought under the moniker of Rabid. Beyond that, he was using an alias.”

“Jay Brimley?” King asked.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” I shifted in the bath, staring at the bubbles, as I went on, “I’d been the reigning champion of that particular fight club for over a year. I was really immersed in it back then. I’d used it as a training ground for Onyx, along with the combat skills and everything my dad had made sure to teach me when I was growing up. So, anyway, Jett challenged me, figuring he had it in the bag. I kicked his ass. And he couldn’t accept that. Just not in the way you might think. He became obsessed, wanting to know what made me tick, latching onto me. At the time, I thought he was just one of those guys who liked the chase. I figured if he got what he wanted, he’d leave and go back to his fight club mission.”

“So you fucked?” Caleb asked.

“Yeah. In an alley, so he didn’t know where I lived, and so I could take off right afterward. And I did. But it didn’t end there. Like I said, he was obsessed. He broke into my off-campus apartment one night wanting to talk and spend some time with me. It was then that I realized how unhinged he was. I kicked him out. And then suddenly, he was everywhere, showing up at the back of my classes, at the coffee shop I frequented every morning, tailing me back to my apartment where it always ended with me slamming the door in his face. Then he got a hold of my number through illegal means and the texts began. Relentless and crude. One day I called him back and threatened to call the cops if he didn’t back off. And that was when he told me who he really was, laughing at the absurdity of my threat when thrown up against that. The younger brother of Elijah Bane. Being from Rossun, I knew who Bane was.” I looked out at King. “To you, specifically. I may not have paid attention to the celebrity gossip, social media and all that, but I knew that much.”

“Fucking psycho doesn’t even cover it,” Bastian said. “I’m sorry, beautiful.”

“Me too.” I sighed and said, “With all that happening, I was really amped up, angry and at my wit’s end with him. It had me going out a ton as Onyx. That was when the whole thing took me over and even took on a much darker edge. He followed me one night, ripping right through all my evasion tactics somehow, and he joined in. It was a gory mess, really fucked-up. My mission that night had been to scare the shit out of two serial date rapists and punish them, put them out of commission and stop them from doing it ever again. Jett took that mission and twisted it into something a whole lot more depraved. The two guys ended up in the ICU for months. It went on like that for a while, him showing up on my missions and taking it to that fucked-up place.”

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