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I nod silently, my mouth in a grim line.
A woman in danger. Placed there because of me.
Rose.Sunbeam.
James continues as he walks toward the door, “Although I’m not sure my statement will even be required at this rate. Your lawyer has it in hand. I’ve never seen the officers in this station move their asses so fast as when she asks them for something. You’ll be out of here in no time.”
I nod again, my voice thick, as I manage to get out one word. “Thanks.”
“Hey, Dax?” I look up and meet his eyes as he stands in the doorway to my cell. “I think this is the most we’ve spoken in all these months.”
I smirk. “All that time you knew who I was. And I thought you were a guy who was even more stupid than he looked and stank of stale sweat and feet. Don’t take it personally, but I was there for one reason. And it wasn’t to make friends.”
James smirks back and holds his hands up. “Hey, I’m not offended. We both had our roles to play. It’s all part of the act. Although, it felt fucking good finally getting a haircut this morning.”
I meet his eye as he runs his hand around the back of his neck and newly styled hair.
“It’s an improvement. But you somehow pulled off the oily look. I had no idea you weren’t who you said you were.”
“Same to you. If I hadn’t been clued in, that is. I could have easily thought you were one of them.”
Bile lodges in my throat at his choice of words.
One of them.
James was there. He heard what Rose said. Iamone of them. It’s running in my veins.Hisblood. His tainted, evil, warped—shouldn’t-be-allowed-to-exist—blood.
“Mmm,” I grunt, the smirk falling off my face.
“Eat up. And you’ll be out of here before you know it. Back to that girl of yours. I heard she’s already called the station five times for an update in the last hour.”
James hovers in the doorway for a moment. Maybe he expects this nugget of information to please me. To bring a genuine smile to my sour face. The comfort that someone is waiting for me, worrying about me. Wanting me home with them.
Wanting me back to watch the sunrise with them.
Someone who I could so easily have lost forever yesterday. All because I was too selfish to stay away until Julian Young was gone.
I wanted to move on with my life. Reset time.
With her.
But I’m still in a nightmare I can never escape. I spent years hating that bastard, dreaming of the day I saw everything taken from him. Only to find I share the same blood with him. It’s flowing through my body, giving me life.
Giving me life at the same time as stripping away every reason that I want to live.
My heart hammers as my breathing speeds up, each intake of air becoming shallow as heat flares across the back of my neck. Rage swells in my chest like a rough tide crashing onto the shore and washing up the corpses of fish, caught in old, gnarled nets.
Caught. Trapped. Their freedom a mere memory, lost forever.
James shuts the door. The sound of his boots hitting the tiled floor as he walks down the hallway is drowned out by an almightycrash!
Adrenaline courses through me like I’m hooked up to it directly into the vein.
Brown goo slides down the wall of my cell to join the broken plastic food tray and its remnants on the floor.
I was never good enough for her.
And now I never can be.
