Page 82 of Rule the Night
I wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, that she had to be on her own because the alternative was us getting involved in whatever clusterfuck this was — whatever clusterfuck it was going to be — and that wasn’t an option.
But now wasn’t the time.
“You might have lost the Hunt, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care,” Poe said.
I could tell it took effort for him to keep his distance. She didn’t want any of us to touch her, and I was shocked to my core when tears slipped from her eyes. She’d been so stoic about her predicament after the Hunt, it was like watching a statue suddenly weep.
The tears slid down her cheeks and fell to the floor. “It’s my fault.”
She said it so softly I thought I might have imagined it.
“What’s your fault?” I asked.
Questions were manageable. I was good at questions.
Feelings, not so much.
“What happened to June.”
“That’s not true,” Poe said. “I know you hate that we did background on you, and I don’t blame you, but we know what happened. The only person to blame is her boyfriend, and he’s in prison.”
She shook her head and sniffled. “You’re wrong.”
“We’re not saying Todd didn’t have a part in it,” Remy said, “but you can’t go around killing everyone who said dumb, dangerous shit to June’s psycho boyfriend.”
Her shoulders shook. “Ethan Todd might have incited Chris to do what he did, but I was the only one who could have saved her. And I didn’t. I didn’t.”
Poe’s gaze was locked on her face. “You’re going to have to explain, because from where we’re standing none of this makes sense.”
“She called me, okay?” Maeve lifted her tear-streaked face and her whole body shook with the force of the sobs that tore from her throat. “She called me the day she went missing and I didn’t pick up.” Maeve was crying so hard she could hardly get the words out. “I didn’t pick up because I was mad at her. I was mad that she was still with Chris when we’d tried to tell her he’d changed. I was mad she was being dumb and letting someone treat her the way Chris treated her. She needed me and I wasn’t there because I was being stupid and petty.”
The room was quiet except for the sound of her sobs.
Poe closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. She leaned into him, crying against his chest, her body shaking.
In all the years I’d known Poe and Remy, all the women that had come and gone, I’d never once been jealous of either of them. That would have been like being jealous of myself, because we were one and the same.
But I was jealous now, not just because Poe was holding Maeve but because he’d been able to take those steps toward her, had been able to risk having her push him away again, had been able to risk letting her hurt him.
And that was something I could never do.
“Shhhh…” he said, rubbing her back. “It’s okay.”
She shoved him away so fast he stumbled in spite of his bigger size. “It’s not okay! Don’t you see? June is gone and it’s not okay and it will never, ever be okay again!” She was shouting at him — at us. “And all becauseI didn’t pick up the fucking phone.” The fight seemed to seep out of her until all that was left were her sobs. "All because I wasn’t there when she needed me.”
She said the last part quietly, like she could hardly bear to utter the words, like she could hardly bear to hear herself say them.
Poe opened his mouth to say something but there was no time. Maeve ran before he could get the words out, and there was nothing we could do but stand in shocked silence as her footsteps echoed on the stairs at the back of the hall.
50
MAEVE
I could barely breatheby the time I got to my room. I’d cried constantly in the weeks after June’s murder, but something had happened to me in the aftermath, when the details of Chris’s movements before and after he’d killed her had come out.
The media had described his premeditation as “chilling,” recounting how he’d planned to kill June after weeks of arguing about his desire for her to quit her job at the animal shelter (June had loved animals), her pushback against his belief that she should be home in their apartment, making meals and keeping house.
And the more I’d learned — about Chris and about his obsession with Ethan Todd — the harder my heart had become. My tears had shut off and all the inner shame and guilt I’d felt about not picking up June’s call that day had become focused on making Ethan Todd, the only person responsible for her murder who still hadn’t paid a price, finally pay.
