Page 185 of Wreck Me

This was fucking bad.

All of it was.

Every goddamn thing.

It was all falling apart.

We were falling apart.

“Is that why you really pushed off re-launching The Jackals for so long?” Bastian asked Cas. “You were worried it would stretch you more than you already currently were?”

“Partly.”

I frowned. “And the other part?”

He took a moment and looked between us. “I didn’t want to reopen the door to that darkness. The twisted and down and dirty that comes with our work as The Jackals.”

“Apart from last night, I’m handling it. I even taught Skylar how to do the same.”

“It’s not about that,” he told me. “It’s about me.”

“What?”

“I wanted out of the dark.”

Bastian and I exchanged a look of utter confusion and a whole lot of surprise at that.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I haven’t needed it for a while. It doesn’t give me the thrill it used to when we all started out on this road. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s eating at me, taking pieces of me with it, especially when combined with certain aspects of my more illegitimate operations with King. But for the two of you it’s different. You revel in it. Especially you, Caleb.”

“I can’t be without it, Cas. You know that.”

“I’m well aware.”

Shit. “You doing this when you don’t want to… it’s not healthy. Just catering to us. It’s becoming toxic.”

My words hung there all too heavily between us.

For a long time we just stood there staring at one another as it started to sink in.

Was this… was this the beginning of the end?

Luke burst in all of a sudden, making our attention abruptly shift to him as he made a beeline for Cas.

He whispered something in his ear, then Cas nodded and looked out at me and Bastian, “I’m needed. Both of you try to get confirmation from Skylar that she’s well. If that fails, I’ll use other means.” With that, he walked out alongside Luke.

Bastian and I both pulled out our phones in unison and sent another couple of texts to Skylar, all of which she’d ignored so far, along with our calls. For all we knew, she had her phone turned off, disconnecting from the outside world for a bit. Who could blame her?

“There’s no reason to assume she’s gonna pull away from us because of this incident,” I told Bastian, reading the grimace on his face well as he pocketed his phone.

“You can’t deny that it’s a possibility, though.”

“She’s stronger than that.”

“It’s not about strength. It’s about whether she’s in deep enough with us at this point to believe if all this bullshit is actually worth it.”

“You don’t think she is?”

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