Page 56 of Fervent

Jax blinked, hands still clutching his hair as he stared in horror at his father. He blinked again, shook his head, and closed the distance between us. “C’mon. We gotta move.”

He had to drag me down to that slab of a room, because I’d checked out. Whispers of the past taunted the edges of my sanity, and the mustiness of the basement incited flashes of my cellar on the island.

Alex. God, I could see her so clearly, her body shivering next to me, skin damp as I fisted her stringy hair in a tight grip. The clank of a lock. Her desperate pleas for me not to leave her in that cage.

Jax picked up a gas can and held it out to me.

We started in the basement, spilling gas into the crawl space since the other end was closest to the generator. Next, we hit the kitchen, the living room, dousing the furniture and curtains. The throw rugs.

But it was too much.

The putrid scent of gas reminded me of the night they’d taken us, and I relived that island going up in smoke. I dropped the last can, still half full. “Sorry, I need to get outta here.”

“It’s okay, man. Wait outside. I need to do this anyway.”

“Don’t blow yourself up.”

Jax shot me a sad, crooked smile. “I’ll try not to.”

As soon as I opened the front door, the countdown for the alarm sounded, and Jax hurried to finish spreading the gasoline.

I stumbled down the steps and fell to my hands and knees in the driveway. The red on my hands struck me in the face. Groaning, I rolled to my back and stared up at the azure sky.

I’d killed a man.

My heart pounded a slow, laborious rhythm. An airplane crawled across the sky, and I wondered what it would be like to be on that plane, to be someone else who had a future.

Jax hurtled down the stairs, boots thumping. “Get up!” he yelled.

I struggled to my feet as he struck a match and tossed it toward the mansion. The gasoline ignited and fire spread rapidly, licking the beams propping up the balcony over the front stoop, flaring inside the entrance, eating the curtains in a violent blaze.

Something crackled, then a thunderous crash sounded. We backed away from the heat, but an explosion went off, the force powerful enough to knock us to the ground, and I realized the generator must have blown. Pain jolted my head, my limbs, straight to my bones. Garbled noise seized my ears, muffling Jax’s shouts for me to get up.

Cops were on their way, he said.

I pushed to my knees and swayed.

And I remembered.

Everything.

As if the memories had always been with me.

I’d choked Jax’s uncle in prison, my rage over Alex’s betrayal a nasty entity that drove me in that moment. I’d squeezed his beefy neck, despite Jax trying to pull me off him, and hadn’t stopped even when the vessels in his eyes burst.

I’d lost control and killed a man.

Devastation consumed me, making me dry-heave. It didn’t matter if the guy had been on the verge of killing Jax. I’d taken the life of another human being, using nothing more than the strength in my own hands. Then I’d blocked it out, and Jax had let me exist in oblivion. But his uncle hadn’t gone to the infirmary that day. He’d gone to the fucking morgue.

Then there were the rapes. God, the fucking rapes. I doubled over, holding my stomach, and the dry-heaves turned into full-fledged vomiting.

Alex.

This was hell.

I pulled at my hair, rose to my feet, and turned in circles as the urge to break something overcame me. The memories shredded what was left of my mind. I’d fucking tortured her. I’d forced her under water, had brutally fucked her. I’d left her cold, shivering, and freezing inside that cage, even after she’d nearly drowned. Holy fuck. I’d almost made her suck Jax’s cock.

I’d treated her worse than a dog.

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