Page 69 of Pray for Scars
He sighs, ignores my question. “You can’t save her, alright? You’ve got one week ‘til the full fucking moon and if you don’t deliver her to your father, we’re all fucked, okay?” He blows out a breath. “You can do what you want with him, but until you find out what the fuck your dad wants her for, you can’t save her.” His eyes narrow. “Don’t try it again.”
Too late.
Because I know he’s talking about fucking her without a condom. I know he’s referring to Julie.
But I never tried to save Julie. She didn’t need saving. She didn’t know too much. I mean, she does now, but at the time, I just did what I thought was the right thing to do for once in my life, and besides that, writing a check to send to her house in Virginia is literally nothing to me. I should actually spendmoretime with Finn, since I’ve decided to take on this role, but I haven’t. And it looks like I won’t have time to anytime soon.
But if Sid…
If we…
I swallow, forcing that thought from my mind, and step back, reaching out for the door again. “I’ll deal with it.” And then I slam the door closed and sink down to the floor, my head in my hands.
Fucking Sid Rain.
Lilith.
She fucked up my life and she doesn’t even know it.
What the fuck am I going to do with her?
* * *
I see her,and him.
They’re not exactly hiding, in a coffee shop by AU’s downtown campus.
He’s got his arm slung around her, and her own are down by her side. His mouth is in her hair as he whispers something to her. I can’t hear them, can’t read their lips from the building across from the café, but I can see them, and I want to vomit.
After what he did to her, after what Iwatched him do.
I run my hand absentmindedly over my shirt, but I feel the scars beneath, from the rope that motherfucker tied me with.
And for what?
To get back at us? Because he didn’t belong? To exit the Unsaints in some sort of macabre, freakish gesture? He knew I was going to find her that night, even if he didn’t know who she was. He just wanted to fuck me over before he did it, by getting to her first. He overheard us. Listened in to all of our whispered plans.
But that’s the problem that he doesn’t seem to understand.
Jeremiah Rain was never inducted into the worst of our secrets. He doesn’t seem to get that once you’re in, you can never leave.
And I let him leave.
“You should have killed him when you had the chance,” Maverick murmurs beside me. We’re inside the building directly across from the café, after Maverick demanded the building manager let us in here, evacuating the older man who lives here and is probably bitching right now at the office.
I don’t care.
I had to see this for myself. See what she’s doing now that she’s free of me. And next Sunday, I’ll have no choice but to bring her to my father, or all of our heads will roll.
Lazar Malikov isn’t a man anyone can afford to disobey.
“I still have a chance. I always have a chance.” I toss the binoculars we brought on the couch behind me, a patchwork quilt thrown untidily over it. Homey. Something I don’t know shit about.
I cross my arms as I face Maverick. He said he didn’t tell anyone else about this, that it was my call how to handle it now. If I wanted to handle it.
Do I?
Maverick leans against the wall, smirking at me, that inverted cross pulling up as he does. “What do you want to do?” he asks me.
