Page 2 of Torn In Two

With my last breath, I screamed.

Screamed for Hawk.

Screamed for Hayden.

Screamed for me.

2

HAYDEN

“She’s not fucking there, Chaos!”

I stared at Hawk, the smug grin falling from my face.

Kara was supposed to have met me at the back gate to the Slayers’ compound. The plan had been rushed, no thought given to the details or what came next when all I’d been able to think about was that she was here, and five years had done nothing to dull the connection between us.

It had reignited, hot and hard, a bond not just born of physical attraction but of shared trauma. My heart had always been linked to hers in a way I’d never been able to find with anyone else. In a way that couldn’t be forgotten, no matter how much I might have tried.

I’d thought nothing of following her into that cinema bathroom. Locking her in a stall with me. Showing her I was alive and I wanted her.

I’d always fucking wanted her.

But she was with Hawk, and Hawk hated me with every fiber of his body. Slayers vs. Sinners. That’s how it had always been in Saint View. Him on one side, me on the other.

He was never going to let her go without a fight. But I’d asked her anyway. I’d asked her to meet me. Run away with me.

And that’s where I’d been when Hawk found me and dropped the goddamn bomb that Kara had a cult leader husband and a club full of Louisiana bikers trying to take her home to him.

Against her will.

Over my dead body was I losing her again. I didn’t care if it was me against fifty. They weren’t taking her anywhere.

She didn’t know it yet, but she was mine.

She’d always been mine.

“Then where the hell is she?” I stared at Hawk, praying he had the answer.

He dropped the gun to his side and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

That wasn’t fucking good enough.

I strode to the van Luca had left on the side of the road. It had the logo of an Italian restaurant printed on the side, but not ten minutes earlier, the back of it had been filled with women. Women I’d freed because fuck Luca. He might have been my boss, and this might have been my way inside the Slayers’ compound to meet Kara, but I wasn’t helping Luca traffic women. Not anymore.

I’d been young and stupid and desperate enough to fall into that trap once. It had led me to Kara, but I wasn’t doing it again.

I’d ram the fucking Slayers’ gates down if I had to.

Something inside me delighted in the thought, after what they’d put me through the last time I’d been inside their compound.

I gunned the engine as Hawk jerked open the passenger side door and glared at me. “Where the hell are you going?”

“I’ve been watching the road ever since I left the theater and haven’t seen anyone leave. Unless someone managed to get her out on foot, she’s still in there somewhere.”

Hawk glared at me. “They could have taken her out on bikes. Cut through the woods in any fucking direction.”

He was right, but I had to hope that wasn’t the case. It would take hours to send a search party out that far. “Well, we ain’t going to know by standing here, are we? So get in or get out. I don’t care. But I’m going to find my girl.”

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