Page 42 of Call It What You Want
I push out a breath and flick my chin at Wyn. “Would you mind going up to check on Ava?”
Wyn straightens with a frown. “Trying to get rid of me?Rude.”
I shrug. Wyn’s cool, but that doesn’t mean I’m cool sharing every detail of my fucking life with her.
“Fine,” she huffs, pushing to her feet. “I guess it’s time to welcome her to the traumatized sisterhood of dating a Sacred Son, anyway.” She leans down to give Lucas a peck on the lips. “Meet me down at the party?”
“Sure,” he says, reaching out to touch her as she walks away.
When the door shuts behind her, Lucas levels me with a look. “Well? What’s going on?”
“The situation is manageable. For now. Having Ava close helps with... complications.”
“Manageable,” Lucas repeats, lifting a brow. “You sure about that? We thought this whole damn thing was dead and buried until it was hauled back into the fucking daylight. Something Sin said yesterday makes me wonder if Shadow and Ash had something to do with leaking the information...”
Yeah, fuck. I can’t say I haven’t been circling around that exact same question.
“My uncle and his team are looking at all the angles,” I answer. “If Shadow and Ash are involved, he’ll find out.”
Lucas leans forward, forearms resting on his thighs. His gaze drills into me. “Does heknowall the angles, Jackson?”
I pull in another lungful of smoke, hold it, then release it slowly through my nose. The question hangs in the air between us.
“He knows enough,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend.
Lucas doesn’t blink. He just keeps staring at me with those steel blue eyes. He knows there’s something I’m not telling him. Something I haven’t told anyone. Well, except for one person.
“What aren’t you telling us about what happened in Missouri?” he presses, exactly like my uncle did.
My jaw clenches. There it is—the one question that hasn’t been asked for three years. There wasn’t any need. When I returned from Missouri, the other Sacred Sons were happy to leave the subject alone. Then the incident was swept away, and there was never a need to bring it up again.
Until now.
I take another hit from the blunt, then pull it away to study the charred tip. “There are some things better left buried. You know that better than anyone.”
“Even if it’s the truth?”
I glance over at him. “The truth is what I say it is.”
“Dude, if it’s something that can help you, you need to tell us what it is,” he says, sitting back. “I know what it’s like to have a prison sentence hanging over your head. It’s fucking hell.”
Nah,he has no idea what hell really is. Hell is seeing the love in your girlfriend’s eyes twist into pure disgust in an instant. I can handle all the legal bullshit, but the hatred in Ava’s eyes that day—that was true hell.
Rolling my tight shoulders, I stand. “Look, man, as much as I’d love to sing Kumbaya and talk about my deepest, darkest secrets, I gotta run.”
Lucas laughs and shakes his head. “Why am I not surprised? Let me guess, an army of digital demons just waiting to get shredded.”
I purse my lips, annoyed that I’m so damn predictable. But my friends know it by now, when the pressure gets too much, I disappear into a game. Spray enough pixelated blood, stack enough digital bodies, and it almost scratches the itch.Almost.Because gunning down avatars is the only legal way I can ease the tension and feed my need for violence.
But the urge to lose myself in pixels and blood will have to wait. There are a few things I need handled first. I find Lindsay in the kitchen.
“Hey,” I say. She spins to face me. “I need you to take care of a couple of things.”
Once she nods and I finish giving instructions, I slip into the living room. The party at Rush Beach is in full swing, leaving only a few stragglers scattered around the space. One guy is glued to the console, a couple more leaning against the walls, watching.
“Get out,” I bark.
He drops the controller without a word and backs off. I snatch it up and load my game, tension crawling under my skin. All I can think about is that ritual, about claiming Ava completely and finally making her mine. I should feel guilty about how it happened, but I don’t. Maybe that selfishness is what makes me the monster she thinks I am…
