Page 102 of Hate Me

I saw the moment Cas told them about Jeremy.

Caleb tensed up and pushed to his feet.

And Sky looked a mixture of surprised, then incredibly awkward.

It was going to get a whole lot more awkward when that shithead actually walked on in.

Caleb and I hung back at the threshold of the living room while Sky interacted with that fucker, Jeremy, in the living room.

Well, one of them. There were three altogether in the mansion.

One was basically untouchable full with antique furniture and artifacts from around the world, the latter which Caspian’s mom, Laura, had spent years collecting. Cas had kept it as a sort of shrine to her. Just like he’d kept one of the master bedrooms that had been his parents’ room untouched too. Another one of the living rooms was decorated with a sleek minimalist design with subtle displays of wealth, the room, aside from his office, that Cas used to receive business associates once in a while. Mostly, he kept that to King Tower, but every once in a while a more personal touch was required, especially when on-boarding new associates.

And this one was the living room we actually used. It was actually his style, complete with the two suits of medieval armor displayed in the far corners and a sleek marble bookcase taking up an entire wall. The seating area consisted of two black plush couches and a couple of armchairs, all of which were accented with a gold leaf design. The rug between them and beneath the frosted glass coffee table was a gold and black artsy zig-zagging design.

Cas was sitting on the edge of his coveted armchair supervising as the two of them talked on the couch facing one another.

Sky was all tense, her back rigidly straight which conflicted with the casual black yoga pants and blue hoodie she still had on from her session with Caleb just a little while ago.

Jeremy had come in a pair of black camo pants and a teal bomber jacket. He’d been armed to the hilt and Luke and his security staff had taken at least ten minutes to confiscate all of his weapons and devices before he’d been allowed through the gates. He’d come prepared for a war. He’d claimed to Cas that this war wasn’t against us, but his concerns about being on Elijah Bane’s radar after involving himself in the situation by helping Sky and Frank get clear and disappear that night. While, on the surface, it had looked like Cas had bought that, he still wasn’t taking any chances. He didn’t have the luxury of taking anybody at face-value, something that had saved all our asses several times over the years. It had to be stressful for him, always having to account for every little thing, to always be at his best to see several moves ahead.

As Jeremy continued to tell Sky about a couple of jobs that he was working on, as well as how he’d been maintaining the upkeep of the safehouse and all that, I turned to Cal, asking quietly, “How’s it going with her?”

I wanted to know how Caleb was doing with helping Sky, but I also needed a distraction right now to alleviate the tension all over me from watching her in such close physical proximity to that shithead.

While I obviously didn’t like the idea of her being with anybody else, fucking anybody but the three of us, my negative reaction to him wasn’t rooted in jealousy. I’d already exorcised that the first night she’d been back. Plus, still holding onto that wouldn’t just be toxic, it would also be some majorly hypocritical bullshit, considering we’d been apart, I’d almost started dating someone else, Cas had been frequenting Obscura like crazy, and Caleb had been fucking around too.

Nah, what was getting under my skin about him was the unsettling predatory type nature of what had gone down between them. While Sky had been relegated to that safehouse, and her dad had then taken off, Jeremy had been her only point of human contact. He’d obviously been well fucking aware of that and of the vulnerability it had afflicted her with. He shouldn’t have crossed that line with her.

Not to mention, he was so much older than her, which invited a power imbalance, along with him being her protector and in a position of authority with that role during their time at the safehouse. He was also her dad’s close friend and army buddy, for fuck’s sakes.

I mean, so many lines had been crossed by him screwing around with her.

Given the state she’d been in when we’d first brought her back here, it only made it all the more sickening. She hadn’t been herself. She hadn’t been in a position or the right frame of mind to make those sorts of decisions.

I was pissed at myself too for not recognizing that and how bad things were for her the first night when we’d fucked. If I had, I never would have touched her then, let alone taken things that far, no matter how receptive she’d been. I would’ve held off.

Jeremy being here now was bringing all that up too.

“She’s doing well with it,” Caleb responded, pulling me from my tumultuous thoughts. “We’ve been working on identifying her triggers that call to that dangerously unleashed part of her that knows no bounds. Some of them are different now than they were when we first worked on this two years ago.” He grimaced. “Also, she hadn’t killed anyone back then.”

“Shit,” I grunted at that last part. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help with that or properly relate to it, because I’d never taken a life myself. Both Caleb and Caspian had, so she at least had that understanding there with them. “Her triggers were grief and pain?”

“The root of it was powerlessness.”

“Powerlessness? Sky is the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”

“Something she recognized about herself and owned all the way. But what Jett did undercut that for her. Majorly. Losing her mom, not being able to stop what happened that night, being relegated to the sidelines when you were kidnapped, the release of that sex tape and all the shit that came along with that, not being able to save her home, having to go into hiding, then finding out that he didn’t even die that night and was actually loose in the world. Then there was her falling for the three of us, something that she couldn’t control for the life of her and ended up freaking her out. All of it took a big toll on her, all compounding.”

“So, then, her mission to take out the threat in Jett is also about her thinking she can reclaim that power she feels she lost in the process?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“She doesn’t need to deal with him to reclaim anything. She can do it without, by rebuilding her life, something we’re all here to support her with.”

“I agree, but—” His words were cut off as we watched Jeremy slide his hand along Sky’s cheek and tell her, “I missed you. So much.”

Cas rose to his feet.

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