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13
GRAYSON
Thank fuck Emme had stopped crying. The installed backdoor on the phone app worked too well. Hearing her vomiting, even if it was distant, had been painful, as had the half a night of her crying.
I put down the beer, watching the same sun rise that she would be, remembering when I had her strung up here, at the end of the patio. And yet I had let her go.
At six thirty, Axl arrived bearing two coffees and a brown paper bag. The packet spilled open, wafting the scent of crunchy croissants in the air. Those French delicacies came from a patisserie that had set up recently in Beddingford, a small town between my house and his.
The bastard was trying to get back into my good books.
“No warning text?”
He slumped into the lounger and flopped his hand to and fro. “That I was bringing you good food? Nope. I know I spooked you yesterday. This is me bearing gifts, apologizing.”
“The fuck.” Morosely, I sighed, then reached for the coffee.
“Where is she?”
“I let her go.” I braced myself for the onslaught of accusations.
“I know that.”
“Why ask then?”
“I was testing to see if you’d lie.”
I bit into a croissant, took a sip of coffee. It was venturing into lukewarm, but I wasn’t going to get up to microwave it.
“She was crying so much I considered calling an ambulance.”
I shut my eyes. “Backdoor app?”
“Of course.”
I should have known he would do that because I had. Though Axl might have ulterior motives—or more ulterior than mine were. “Are you stalking her, too?”
“Stalking is a dirty word, Grayson. I wanted to know if she called the cops, and my friends would want to know.”
I took a full gulp this time, swallowed the creamy flavor, and wondered if his friends could or would have any of us exterminated. “How deep are you in with them? You said you’d only visited once, before.”
“Some of them, like Wolfman, are ex-work associates. Some are friends, but not like you and me. I’d murder for you and bury the shovel for you.” He waved his cup. “Eat the shovel even? If you asked nicely.”
I grunted then carefully placed my cup on the small table. That was how I would have described us, too, before Emme and the party. “The things they were doing to some women, and what you suggested, were way past what I can handle.”
No macho bullshit here, not between us. I guess I was craving the old Axl.
“Like I said, it was consensual, even if extreme. And you are the man who kidnapped her.”
He had a point there, but I didn’t remember him stating so clearly that it was all consensual.
It depends on your definition of consensual nonconsent. That was it.
“With Emme, the truth is I was trying to mindfuck both of you, because I wanted her.” He shrugged. “It came out wrong.”
So he would swear it was all consensual. I chewed the inside of my cheek. “What about Wolfman?”
“He was an asshole. They booted him out after that.”
