Page 152 of Wreck Me

Getting them out of this situation wasn’t enough. Sending them home wasn’t enough.

It lent more weight to the project I currently had in the works.

The necessity for it for these people who’d suffered this sort of trauma and horrific abuse.

They didn’t always get help. Not to mention, the waitlists to even connect with a care professional like that sometimes. Some of them needed full-time and round-the-clock care, just like Hayley had but we hadn’t realized at the time how badly. We’d been naïve to it.

But I wasn’t anymore.

Her death had made sure of that and I’d also seen a hell of a lot since.

I stared down at my phone for a moment, then sucked in a breath and pulled up the text that had come in earlier from the developer I had working on the commercial space I had my eye on as part of this project, and my overall goal of finding my path, which definitely wasn’t remaining at Luxe and studying shit I already knew just to have it done the proper way.

I looked out at Cas as he interacted with the drivers—his people—and also coordinated with Luke right beside him.

I grimaced and hesitated like I had been for the last few days, holding out on responding to the developer.

Because of him.

Because of us.

All four of us.

This was his world here in the City of Rossun. And I stood apart from that now.

He’d made sure of that.

He’d been trying to protect me, I knew that in my bones.

But he’d also wanted me to find my own path, and this, what I was working on here, was me doing just that.

I sucked in a breath and finally responded.

Caleb: Make the offer.

I pocketed my phone, then turned back and peered through the door of Shakers to see Bastian holding Skylar close by the hips, while she fondled his mask. We’d discovered that she had a kind of fetish about the things. The urge to go on in there and join the flirting should’ve been right there. To turn it into a hell of a lot more than just flirting and escalate the shit out of it should’ve actually been more like it. I always got incredibly worked up after a takedown like this, leaving me ready and raring to go in a really intense way.

This time it wasn’t happening that way.

I wanted to believe that it was just because it had been a while since we’d done this, that I was just reacclimating from all the normal of late.

It was more than that, though.

It was knowing that I had to get back to Luxe in the morning, to attend classes that I didn’t care for and just couldn’t get into, to get back on a life path that still didn’t fit, even after so many weeks going on by and me hoping that something would just click.

Even though I was working on that secret project, a big part of me had hoped that I could still salvage something here too, with Luxe. That I could maybe do the project at a distance, that I wouldn’t have to go as far as actually pulling myself from here.

That I wouldn’t have to pull myself further from Caspian and what the four of us were now building here.

But these nights as The Jackals wouldn’t be enough when everything else was wrong.

With the convention coming up, having to be with them again, my parents, it just served to highlight all that wrong even more so.

I blinked from my thoughts to see that Cas had finished up with the organizing and now Luke and the transports were heading out.

He turned from seeing them off, then came to me.

Right away, I realized that my turbulent thoughts were all over me, and I’d failed to hide it all from my face and the tenseness of every fucking muscle in time, before he’d picked up on it.

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