Page 19 of Pay the Price

Clearly he was fucking with me, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. Everything about the Beasts had been one giant mindfuck since the day they’d moved into the house.

“So you’re not going to leave me alone?” I asked.

“No.”

My mind filled with the white noise of frustration. I could call the police, but that kind of attention was the last thing I needed. Plus, I wasn’t eager to aim the police at the Beasts with their records, a sentiment I wasn’t eager to think too hard about.

I’d already established — if only for myself — that they had some kind of hold over me. I needed to focus on breaking it, not analyzing it.

“Fine,” I said. “Knock yourself out.”

I started to cross the street.

“You never even said thank you.”

I turned around. “For what?”

“For rescuing you at the dam.”

I shook my head and walked toward him. “You want me to say thank you? After what you did to Blake?”

“Good manners would dictate a show of appreciation,” he said.

I glared at him. “Nothank you.Fuck youwill have to do.”

I turned away and started across the street, then heard his evil laughter at my back.

Chapter 13

Daisy

Istepped out of the office building and breathed a sigh of relief. I’d only been back a week and things were still tense.

Kyle and Natalie were more standoffish than they’d been before, and Diana seemed less than thrilled by my return. I didn’t know whether it was because I probably seemed like the world’s hugest flake (who doesn’t show up to their internship for two weeks, then expects to still have a job?) or because Gray had been poisoning the well while I’d been gone, but I was hoping the awkwardness would ease with time.

I intended to do my part. Distance from the Beasts meant I could focus on my job while I tried to put my life back together. In the darkest part of my mind, the one I was trying to ignore, I knew that meant telling the Beasts to leave the house, cutting ties with them forever. According to society, they’d paid their debt for killing Blake, but it wasn’t like I could look the other way just because they’d done their time and I thought about them 24/7.

My chest constricted, like someone was squeezing my heart. It had become a familiar sensation whenever I thought about thethree men who dominated my thoughts — my dreams — but that didn’t mean I was used to it. It felt a lot like grief, an emotion I was pretty familiar with, and I didn’t want to think about what it meant that I was grieving my nearly nonexistent relationship with Blake’s killers.

I glanced across the street, looking for Jace’s bike, then hated myself for the disappointment that washed over me when I saw that it wasn’t there.

I was obviously a train wreck.

I started walking, trying to focus on the warm summer evening instead of my messed up life.

I was still getting used to being at Cassie’s, but one of the things I loved about living in her apartment was that I could walk everywhere. The coffee shop and Cassie’s apartment were on the north side of town, near Chasen’s and an upscale boutique called Stitch, but it was less than a fifteen-minute walk to my job at Cantwell.

I missed my old house, the antique furniture, and the sound of the falls, but I couldn’t deny the convenience of living in town.

Blackwell Falls was humming with activity: locals enjoying the warm weather and stopping to chat on the sidewalk while tourists walked hand in hand, dipping in and out of storefronts the way you did when you were on vacation and had nowhere to be.

I was a block away from Cassie’s when I caught a flash of bright green next to the curb. My heart raced and I had a flash of Wolf driving Benji, his dark hair tousled, a mischievous light in his ice-blue eyes.

The thought of him sent a storm of emotion whirling through my body — sadness and longing and yep, still a healthy dose of lust.

Because my body apparently didn’t care about moral content if the D was good.

And the D had been better than good.

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