Page 15 of Stand: Part One
“I tore them apart.”
My brows lifted in shock. “With what, your bare hands?”
“Yes.”
My mouth instantly went dry, all the blood quickly draining from my face. Darren had just sent four men to their graves in literal pieces with his bare fucking hands for what had happened to me.
His bare fucking hands.
Darren’s particular brand of violence and bloodshed was legendary, but what I saw before me had surpassed all manner of my previous experiences and expectations. I’d never seen him wear someone else’s blood and guts with such…delight. It was actually really fucking disturbing, and it left me questioning what I thought I knew and understood about this man—if what I thought I knew was only just surface level. If I had to drown any deeper than I already was, the pressure alone would crush me into the empty black pit of Darren’s soul. I didn’t want to know any more than I already had to.
“Jesus, Darren,” I hissed.
A cruel smirk formed in the corner of his mouth. “I really can’t explain to you how much of a rush it is to bask in the blood of our enemies. How fucking satisfying it is.”
I gulped, biting deep into my tongue for strength as I took in his words.
A part of me wondered if Darren had done it more for me, or for himself.
Gaping up at him from the safety of my hospital bed, I just had no words. My mind was incapable of competing with this interaction. What could I even say?
I knew he was going to kill them. But I didn’t expect…this.
“How did you?—”
“I meant what I said earlier,” he interrupted. “About you being built for it.”
I furrowed my brow at the sudden change in subject. “Built for what?”
“Endurance.”
I paused, recognizing that he’d heard me. I hadn’t realized I’d said that out loud.
I sighed in contempt. I was so tired of being tested by him.
“Endurance is exhausting,” I replied bitterly.
He nodded like he was agreeing with me.
“Don’t you understand what that means, though?”
I arched a brow expectantly.
He tipped his head at me, like the answer was obvious. “It means you’re unbreakable.”
I scoffed, my eyes shooting to the ceiling at the audacity of his exaggerations.
“You broke me in the basement, remember?”
“For a time,” he concurred. “But it didn’t stick, did it?”
“Yeah, only because you wanted to put me back together.”
Darren shook his head. “No, Jaden. I may have given you the shovel, but you’re the one who dug yourself out.”
I looked up at him with indignation. Why the hell was he bringing this up now?
“You somehow managed to reshape yourself into something completely untouchable. And I lacked the foresight to see it coming.”
