Page 161 of Hate Me

His character had just walked right on by the cave we’d been searching for over the last couple of hours of our game play.

He wasn’t the only one being all spacey and unfocused about it. I’d ended up getting killed by a noob—twice now.

“This isn’t working.”

He swung his head my way as he sat on the edge of the opposite couch. “What?”

I rolled my eyes. “You can cut the fake calm act.”

“Sky—”

“I know you’re employing it in a bid to keep me calm, so I don’t use my skills to sneak out of here and go back either Caspian or Caleb up on their respective missions.”

“Well, you can be a loose cannon. A sexy-as-fuck loose cannon.”

“Nice try at trying to soften it. You’re right, though. But it’s how I was. I’m not anymore, not now we’ve all worked through everything, not now that we’re all together, Bastian. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t jeopardize it all by doing something so stupid and shortsighted.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be shortsighted. It would be you wanting to protect your men, baby. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that sentiment.”

“But the execution would be.”

“It would be too dangerous. For you, for Cas and his men too because they’d spent so long working everything out. To have a new element thrown into the mix would cause issues.”

“I know. I understand.” I put my controller down and rose to my feet. “It doesn’t make it easy to ride the proverbial bench, though.”

“No. It doesn’t. I feel you there. Absolutely.”

He turned off the console, then dropped his controller too. He came to me and slid his hands down to my hips, caressing soft circles. “How about we go do some knife-throwing? It’s a good distraction. It’s got the focus mixed with the violence that you get off on.”

“That I get off on? Pot. Kettle.”

He smirked. “I do miss it a bit, yeah. I’m betting Cas is gonna startup The Jackals again soon, once this war is done.”

“You think?” I asked, realizing just how hopeful I was about that. I’d been trying not to think about that or anything like it after what I’d done during those takedowns. But it had kept creeping up on me, reminding me that it was a missing piece of me that I could never fully deny.

“We’re all stabilized now. Better than ever before, actually.”

“What about him wanting to walk away from the dark?”

“A lot has changed in two years. He wasn’t able to step away. And I think this war has reminded him that it’s a part of him that he can’t just bury. He needs the outlet like the three of us do.”

“Just not in the form of back-to-back takedowns like it ended up becoming before.”

“Yeah, that was too much. It took a lot out of him.”

I stretched onto my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Let’s grab our knives.”

He smiled and took my hand, and we headed out of the den.

We’d only made it a little ways down the corridor when his phone rang.

We both came to an abrupt stop, hope sparking that it was Caspian or Caleb calling to tell us at least one of them had successfully completed their operations, and confirming that they were well.

He frowned as he pulled his phone from the back pocket of his ripped blue jeans. “It’s Ashley.”

“The model from your support group?”

“Yeah.”

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