Page 67 of The Deception You Weave
"How's the head? I brought up more pills," he says, nodding to the bottle on the tray.
"Painful."
"Tell me what happened."
"Kane," I sigh, suspecting that me telling him the events of the night before will only anger him and change this thing we've got going on between us.
"Just tell me. Then I'll decide who to kill first."
"See, that's why I'm not telling you." A growl rips up his throat at my refusal.
"Tell me or I'll find the information elsewhere, but you won't like the results of you lying to me."
"I'm not lying, I'm—"
“Not telling me the truth. Why are you trying to protect me? You hate me."
A bitter laugh falls from my lips.
Yeah, that's why I'm sitting here in your bed eating breakfast, because I hate you that much.
"I have no idea who grabbed me," I say quietly. "After you… left, I decided that I couldn't go back to the party, so I took off through the forest."
The grip on Kane's fork tightens as I'm sure he remembers what I wasn't wearing.
"You decided to try to walk home… alone?" he seethes.
"Well, I wasn't walking back to the party and announcing to everyone that you'd just fucked me against the tree, was I?"
"You should have."
"Yeah, well, hindsight is a great thing. Facing Luca and Leon after that would have been a hell of a lot easier than Victor, but it's a little late now, don't you think?" I spit, getting irritated that he chooses now to get all protective of me when he was the one to leave me in the woods to start with. What exactly did he expect me to do?
"What did he do?"
"Other than hitting me across the head and tying me to a chair, nothing, actually. Dad was in a bad way though. I need to help him, get him out of there."
"Princess, I admire you for wanting to try. But your dad is part of a gang. A very dangerous gang. You can't just turn up at his trailer, tell him you don't like it and expect him to be able to walk away. He's been doing this for years, it's his life."
"His family should be his life," I mutter.
"Sometimes we have to do bad things to protect those we love."
"Calm down, next you'll be showing me you have a heart."
His body tenses beside me, and I wonder if I just hit a nerve.
"You have no fucking idea. The shit I had to do to get Kyle back, I—" He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter."
"You can tell me," I offer, finally cutting into one of the pancakes sitting on my plate and popping a piece into my mouth.
"Nah, it's probably best I don't."
"Oh my God, this is really good," I moan.
He glances over, his blue eyes a shade darker than they were the last time I looked into them before they drop to my lips as I run my tongue along the bottom one collecting up the syrup that's on it.
"Hmm… yeah." The connection that's always between us cracks so loudly I can almost hear it. "T-tell me about it, a-about our…" He trails off.
