Page 34 of Hate Me

I snatched up the bottle of tranquilizers I kept there, screwed off the top, then popped one.

They were the only way I could sleep at night these days.

Fortunately, despite my off-the-grid status, my dad had connections with a former military doctor who’d been able to help me with the trauma and grief of that hell from that night two years ago and he’d prescribed these.

Just as I put the bottle back down, Jer was there, crowding me against the nightstand.

“You are my concern.”

The heat from his skin, the intensity coming off him, rolled through me, making my breath hitch. “Step back,” I croaked out.

“Why? Too close for comfort?” he challenged.

“You know it is.”

He reached out and grasped my chin with his index and forefinger, tilting my head so I was forced to look him right in his gleaming brown eyes. “Because it was a mistake, yes? All four times?”

Dammit.

Even though I was twenty-two now, Jeremy was in his mid-thirties, more than ten years my senior. But that big age gap was the least fucked-up thing about it all.

The fact that my dad had been his commanding officer for several years, that they’d become close friends after serving together, then even gone into business together with Jeremy’s private security firm, JW Securities.

Not to mention, the fact that my dad had tasked him with watching out for me in his absence.

And, of course, there were the guys.

My guys.

I’d had to leave them behind.

That motherfucker whose trail I’d now picked up on had seen to that.

Not only hadn’t I been able to say goodbye, but I hadn’t been able to contact them in all this time that I’d been stuck in this cottage off the grid.

At first, my dad and Jeremy had refused to even look into them from a distance to make sure they were okay. When a few months had passed, they’d finally lifted that awful rule and done some recon using their many contacts positioned all over the place. That was when I’d found out that Caleb was in the wind, that Caspian was struggling under the weight of fighting a war against Elijah Bane, and that Bastian had succumbed to addiction and had suffered a massive relapse.

Hearing that had cut me open.

Knowing there’d been nothing I could do about it, that I couldn’t go to them, had been an awful torture that had eaten at me for so long.

As if my grief over my mom’s death hadn’t been enough to take on.

I shoved Jeremy back and stepped around him.

“Why did you do it?” he demanded, spinning around to face me. “You even used your name! Jesus fucking Christ, S!”

“Why did I do it?” I bit back. “Why do you think? That bastard murdered my mom! He destroyed my entire life! He stole these last two years away too! We’re in hiding because of him, because he’s the brother of that bastard, Elijah Bane. And after I take Jett, I’ll pull Elijah my way and end that elusive fucker too!”

“I told you what had been discovered about Jett to reinforce the need to remain here, when you’d gotten it in your head that enough time had passed to return to Rossun. Not for you to launch a deadly and very bloody crusade against him! You just put yourself back on the radar by doing that tonight.”

“I want to be on his radar. I want him to know I’m coming. And I want him to run like a scared little bitch so he can feel that fear and hopelessness that he made me feel—twice now!”

“This won’t end well, S!”

“I don’t expect it to.”

He jolted. “What?”

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