Page 100 of Fool Me Twice

“Never said you couldn’t, man,” Ash said, pushing Hart’s shoulder. “But how about you get yourself out of my face so we can talk like normal people.”

“Oh, so now you want to talk?” Hart asked, erratic and clearly hearing only what he wanted to hear.

“We’ve been wanting to talk to you for days about why you’re acting so insane,” Ash said. Again, wrong thing to say.

“So it’s my fault again that you can’t,” Hart threw back.

“You fucking said it,” he said. “Not simple to talk to someone hellbent on having a dick up his ass twenty-four seven.”

“My sex life is none of your fucking business! Any of you!” Hart yelled at the top of his lungs. It was a tone and level Cane had never heard before, bordering on frightening.

“It’s my business when it impacts all of us!” Ash shouted back, fists clenching by his thighs, clearly done with restraining himself. “There’s a list of people waiting for you to help them, we’ve been working your cases for you for days now, you literally have not asked about Wren, who’s clearly going through something and needs us right now. You even tried to fuck with my boyfriend. And I’d be fine with all of that if you were actually working Cane’s case instead of just his dick. But you’re not, so forgive us for being slightly frustrated by it!”

“Ash…” Fix said softly after the tirade, but it was way too late for any of that.

Silence washed over them, and Hart stood in the middle of the wasteland that had been created, breath coming in short puffs. Hart turned to look at Black, who looked down, silent for the first time since Cane had met him. Hart looked at Fix next, clearly searching for someone to be on his side.

Finally, he looked at Cane.

“You’re not gonna say anything?” he asked, voice hoarse from the screaming. Cane felt some of the anger ebb in the face of the worry he was feeling.

He agreed with the others. Hart wasn’t himself. Cane didn’t recognize the person in front of him at all.

“Fuck you,” Hart said when Cane took too long to answer. “Fuck all of you. If this is how you feel then I’m out. Clearly, all I’m doing is creating trouble for everyone, so have at it without me.”

Chapter 21

Cane

The door slammed after Hart, deafening them all. The sound of Hart’s car followed, and Hart was gone before any of them could react. Before anyone could stop him. They stood frozen in place, staring after him in disbelief.

All of the anger Cane felt, the betrayal and the hurt, took a back seat to the fact that Hart had just snapped right before his eyes. He’d looked wild to Cane, and not the kind of wild he always knew how to bring out in Hart. The primal, sensual wild that drove them both insane.

This was something else completely.

Hart had disappeared right before their eyes and turned into a vicious, argumentative, rude, and dismissive person who gave no thought to hurting everyone’s feelings. It wasn’t him. And as much as they all knew he’d been spiraling for days at that point, the culmination was something none of them had seen coming.

Cane was worried, he realized. The dread inside him that now felt like a permanent fixture turned from rage to anxiety over where Hart had gone.

They had to go find him. They had to bring him back.

He could see the looks on the others’ faces, the hurt crumbling them all to pieces. Cane might have had his issues with the cursebreaker team, but he knew Hart saw them as family and he knew what he meant to them. He could see the ruin of his absence already. They looked lost, confused and out of sorts.

He had no clue what to say to them. Comforting someone was not in his skill set, and with the way he was feeling himself, he thought he’d only make things worse.

Because not a single productive thought was in his damn head. He wanted to go scorched earth to find Hart. Any suggestion he had involved unspeakable acts he was willing to commit just to bring him back.

Black broke first, shaking Fix out of his stupor when he slammed into him as he ran for his car keys.

“I’m going after him!” he yelled, impulsive and reckless and without a smidge of a plan in mind.

“Black!” Fix called after him, but Black wouldn’t listen to reason. Cane wanted to follow. Black seemed to have the right idea.

He had no car, so going with Black might work for the best. He could feel himself stepping forward, but Black was out the door in two blinks of an eye.

The second slam of the door brought Ash back to life, and he ran a hand over his short hair, guilt painted all over his face. “What the fuck was that?” he asked Fix, pointing to the door.

Fix slumped onto one of the kitchen stools, looking broken and tired, like he was the one to blame for everything that had happened. Like the cracks in the frame of their family portrait were his fault and his fault alone.

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