Page 119 of The Piece You Stole

I wait for more, but no more is forthcoming. “So…?”

Her next glance is longer. Thoughtful. “Kade doesn’t kiss.Ever.”

I recall him stretched out naked on his bed in his apartment when I went to thank him before I disappeared forever. He plucked a pair of black panties from the floor and then tossed them out of the window. If that didn’t tell me how easily he moved on from women—I don’t know what else would have. “Oh.”

But he kissed me right in front of Sam as if he’d wanted her to see him do it.

“He must like you.”

“Want to fuck me, you mean?” I shoot a glance at her, eyebrows raised with a carelessness I know is only skin deep. What happened between us in the staff changing room—and upstairs in the bathroom wasn’t just fucking.

Not even close.

“You don’t believe that any more than I do.” Sam snorts. “You like him.”

I promptly shove my face into the flowers to hide my red cheeks. “I—”

“And he likes you. They all do.”

Surprise makes me jolt my head toward her, to find she’s studying me with a focus that has curiosity stirring. “What makes you say that?”

“I’ve been working at the Cerberus from the start.” She scans a garden crowded with wild dark green vines, weeds, flowers, and the barest hints of a stone path winding through it and toward what looks like an ivy-threaded black gate in the distance. I’m not sure what she’s looking for until she speaks. “So I know about Monica.”

Her lowered voice has me edging closer to her side. Since the only person out here…somewhere, is Dariel, that must have been who she was looking for. “Who is Monica?”

“WhowasMonica?” Leaning her back against a tree, she angles her head toward me. “They shared her before, and she lived here with them.”

I recall the photograph of three men with pain-filled eyes on Aden’s wall. Maybe they were at a wake after all?

“Shared her?” I repeat as I try to ignore the prickly thing stabbing my heart. Kade and Aden feel like mine, so the thought of Kade feeding someone else and Aden kissing another girl’s hair the way he kisses mine as I’m drifting off to sleep just feels…wrong. “You don’t mean—”

“I do.”

For a long moment, I study her in silence, hoping that nothing in my expression gives away what I’m thinking. What exactly is her motive here? “Is this why you came here? To tell me about the girl they shared before?”

“Partly,” she admits, her large brown eyes sweeping over my face. She’s trying to read me, and I hope she’s failing. “But you had the look of someone running at the bar.”

My jaw tightens as I look away. One look and everyone seems to know something is wrong. Am I that easy to read?

“So, you came here to…?”

Warn me away? Fill my head with so much jealousy about a girl who had Kade and Aden before me so I wouldn’t want to stay? What?

“See if you wanted a friend.” She pauses. “I heard about you being arrested for…well, stuff you didn’t do. I’m guessing the person you were running from set you up?”

I’ve already dragged the hounds into my mess. The last thing I need is to give Rylan another person to point his pack at, especially after what happened to Simon.

“It was just a misunderstanding,” I murmur.

Her eyebrow rises as she snorts. “A misunderstanding. Right.” Straightening from the tree, she turns to face me fully, her brown eyes serious. “I’m not looking for your secrets, Saige. I just thought you might need a friend. That’s all.”

Friend.

This is twice now in as many days that word has come up, a word I hadn’t heard in years before now.

When I don’t respond, she offers me a faint smile and turns to leave. “It’s cool if you don’t, I’ll—”

“Monica,” I interrupt, knowing I can’t let her leave until I know more about this woman who shared the hounds and who filled their eyes with so much pain. “Why would you want to tell me about her?”

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