Page 86 of Things We Burn

My hand went to my stomach, and the paper fluttered to the floor. It didn’t make a sound. I expected it to boom at the impact due to how heavy it had felt mere moments ago.

“I can arrange an appointment at a discreet clinic. I’ve been authorized to give funds to pay for the procedure.” Brax’s words seemed to be coming from a vacuum.

My head snapped up to meet his sniveling face. I was now released from any and all obligation to be polite to him.

“Go to hell,” I said evenly. “You and your small, small mind and your gigantic ego can go to hell.”

Then I turned and left, knowing I had nowhere to go, nothing left, but that I also had to protect the one thing in this world that was mine.

KANE

I clenched and unclenched my fists, willing my body to relax. I knew that she would assess every part of me in that sharp gaze of hers. She wouldn’t miss a thing. Avery made it her job to become an expert at whatever she was interested in. And lucky son of a bitch that I was, she was interested in me.

Therefore, she’d seen me wired, she’d noted my lack of sleep and the energy of a caged animal I’d worked my ass off toshake. Thankfully, I hadn’t been in any fistfights to establish dominance or some such shit. I’d been ready and willing to fight for a spot needed, but apparently, Knox had made arrangements since no one fucked with me. And I knew that was not because they were all motocross fans. Another way my brother protected me.

I was glad about it for many reasons, most because it would mean Avery wouldn’t have something else to worry about.

I might not have made it my business to become an expert in everything I did, but I had made it my business to become an expert in her. Part of the reason I couldn’t sleep— in addition to the paper-thin mattress, the stifling heat and the narrowness of the cell—was because I was haunted by images of her.

Running out into the alley, her eyes wide, pupils dilated like an animal that had become prey. The red mark on her cheek. The complete absence of the strong and sure woman I’d come to know. To love.

Her face after I was done beating Gerald to a pulp. Not horror. Not disgust in me. Not fear either. I couldn’t quite decipher the expression. There was an emptiness in it that scared me.

Then the way she looked when she came to visit me. Pale. Gaunt. Bags under her eyes she’d tried to cover. Panic coming out of her very pores. Worry. And worst of all, guilt. She blamed herself. The fucking world blamed her. A conclusion that made me furious enough to punch through a goddamn wall.

The world was mad at a brilliant, interesting, talented woman for the crime of being abused. For the crime of knocking an asshole off his pedestal.

When it wasmewho did the knocking.

And I’d do it all over again.

But fuck, did I miss the taste of her. The smell of her. The warmth of her. I was well aware that she had the reputation ofbeing an ‘ice queen,’ but no woman had burned hotter under my touch than Avery Hart.

Thinking of that, of her, her hair splayed out on the pillow, me inside her, eyes electric, wide, wild. The woman unrestrained …that calmed me.

Three hundred and fifty-five more days.

I looked up when I heard the clang of the doors open, my smile ready.

But Brax walked through the door, the door closing and bolting behind him. I’d already seen him once before. How he’d managed to get in before Avery I didn’t know, and it pissed me off. But he had things for me to sign, papers for me to go over, apparently.

“Where’s Chef?” I demanded, standing. “Is she okay?” My mind whirled with things that could’ve happened, my fucking knees trembling at just the thought.

Brax smoothed his suit, taking his time to walk over and sit down across from me. And fuck if I hated that unhurried gait, that inflated sense of importance. I’d always known who Brax was—arrogant, power hungry, calculated—but it had amused me more than anything.

No one was perfect, and I knew better than anyone that we were a product of our trauma, never knowing what someone had gone through. I tended to give people the benefit of the doubt. Brax had been with me since the start. And as much as he could be a smarmy, sanctimonious prick, he’d never fucked me over.

“She’s not coming,” Brax said.

I was still standing. “I fuckin’ deduced that. Why not?”

“You wanna sit?”

I sucked in a deep breath. “I want you to tell me where Chef is.”

Brax sighed. It was long and dramatic and fuck, it ignited the embers already simmering in my gut.

“No one knows.” He drummed his fingers on the table.

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