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But it wasn't anger that it stemmed from; it was need. I needed someone to know, to understand, to see why I am the way I am.
He claimed he could take it. Well, I needed to see for myself if that was true.
Wolf watched me for a long moment, reading me, then slowly moved off the bed and walked to the dining table. He sat down and moved the cursor down. I knew the exact moment that it happened, the second his eyes relayed the message to his brain and he knew what he was looking at. He physically jerked backward in his chair, his entire body going ramrod straight.
I expected him to look up at me, to see disgust and horror and pity in his eyes. But he didn't. One of his hands balled into a fist on the table, the other moved the page down more.
He wasn't breaking.
He wasn't falling apart.
He was handling it.
God.
God.
On a loud sob, I flung myself back on the bed, burrowing under the blankets, curling up on my side, and letting the pain leech out of me.
The bed depressed a few minutes later and a cool draft hit me as the blanket was pulled up. The next second, I was wrapped up tight against Wolf's massive chest, his arms a familiar anchor around me.
"Took it," he murmured during a short respite in my embarrassingly loud sobs. "Doesn't change anything," he went on, his hand moving up to stroke my hair.
If I was paying attention, I would have felt the crack in my walls; I would have felt him start to slip in. But I wasn't focusing on that. I was focusing on the strange mix of grief and gratitude swirling through my system.
We stayed that way for a long time as my body wore through some of the long-buried pain, until I was too tired to do anything but sleep. And with Wolf there, wrapping me up tight, it was the first night in almost nine years that I didn't wake up screaming.
But I did wake up alone.
Wolf was gone.
But this time he left a note.
It was a message that changed everything.J-He can't get away with it.- WELEVENWolfThe second I realized what I was looking at, I wanted to slam the laptop shut, throw it across the room, and hunt down the mother fucker.
But she was watching. She was watching and searching for any tiny sign that it was sickening me, that it was too much for me to handle. And it was sickening. It was too much for anyone to handle. Up until that moment, I could only guess. I could only assume what happened to her. Not that it was a huge mystery. If it involved Lex Keith and someone female, well, let's just say that everyone knew what went down there.
It was one thing to know it.
It was a complete other to fucking see it. On the internet.
How many times had she tortured herself with the images?
How many times did she relive it?
I knew the answer to that, though. She relived it every single night of her fucking life. She relived it whenever she felt a man's hands on her. It was in every training session where she learned to make herself too strong, too fast to be a victim again. It was in the way she kept everyone from getting close enough to learn the bloody details and therefore offer her pity.
I climbed into bed and held her until she cried herself dry then fell into what seemed to be a dreamless sleep. I waited for just before dawn, left her a note, and headed out the door.
That bastard made her scream.
He made her uncomfortable in her own skin.
So now he needed to scream.
And have the luxury of his skin taken away from him.
I had to go hunting.TWELVEJanieI read the note twice before it sunk in, then charged to the door to check outside for his truck. Harley and Chopper flew out the door to go hunt and sunbathe or whatever it was they did. I simply started to freak the eff out.
He couldn't go after Lex. Even with my bugging out and culling his army a bit, I was sure there were many left. It would never be a fair fight. Wolf might have been a Goliath, but he wasn't bulletproof. If he went in there all hot and irrational, he was going to die.
I couldn't let that happen.
I went back into the cabin and found Wolf had left his cell, presumably for me, on the counter in the kitchen. I snatched it up and hit the only number I could think of.
"Malcolm," he answered, sounding distracted.
"I need to talk to Cash right now," I said into the phone, my tone a little hysterical as I swatted at my cheeks. I knew, I just knew that my eyes would never stop leaking once the dam gave way.
"Jstorm?" he asked, immediately alert.
"Right now," I said again and I could hear him on the move.
"Everything okay?" he asked and I closed my eyes tight, shaking my head even though he couldn't see me. "It's Janie," I heard him say. "She needs to talk to Cash."
"Hey kid, what's up?" Cash's easy voice reached my ear, sounding back to his old self.
"You need to get your brother and Repo and like... everyone else at the compound and you need to go and find Wolf. Like... right now, Cash."
"Calm down," Cash said and I took a deep breath.
"What's going on?" Lo's voice asked in the background and the knife stabbed into my chest.
"Wolf is hunting Lex Keith."
There was a pause. "When?"
"I don't know. He was gone when I woke up. He left a note. That's all I got."
"Fuck. Shit. God damn it," he said, his voice low and I got the confirmation I was looking for: Wolf on the hunt was about as bad as things could get. "Be there as soon as possible," he said, sounding almost soothing suddenly. "I'm bringing Lo to sit with you," he informed me then hung up before I could object.
