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"You need to talk about it."
"No."
"Okay well then... I need to hear about it."
"No you don't."
I closed my eyes, willing myself to stay calm. How could he know what I did and did not need to hear? "Did you kill Lex Keith?" I asked and when I opened my eyes again, Wolf had rolled onto his back, his eyes boring into me.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"You have nightmares."
"Plenty of people have nightmares. Are you going to kill the elementary school teacher who used to make me wake up crying because of that one time he yelled at me in front of my whole class?"
"Janie, he raped you."
Those words landed like a blow, pushing all the air out of my stomach. It was one thing to know it, to have lived through it and tried to move on from it. It was another thing to hear someone else say it. No one had said it before, not to me, not about me, not around me. Lo had been careful to use phrases like 'what happened to you' or 'what that bastard did'. They were phrases that almost detached me from the act, let it seem something impersonal. But putting it the way Wolf just did, it threw me right into it. Lex raped me. It didn't get more personal than that.
I swallowed hard. "Women get raped every day, Wolf. In fact, a woman is raped every two minutes in the United States alone. Are you going to track down all those men and kill them too?"
"Someone should."
"Answer the fucking question."
He sighed. "No."
"Then why?"
"Drop it."
"No."
"Fucking stubborn," he said, shaking his head before his arm swung out, snagged me around the waist, and pulled me down to his chest.
"Yeah, well you're pretty fucking stubborn too. But, guess what?"
"What?"
"I'm pretty freaking sure I can out-stubborn you."
"You can try."
"You need to talk about..."
"Shut it."
I tried to jerk upward, but his arm tightened around my hips, holding me in place. "Did you just tell me to shut it?" I sputtered.
"Yep."
Then I stole a page right out of his book; I growled. Which only succeeded in making him chuckle, his body shaking beneath me. "Let me go."
"Nah."
"I'm angry with you," I reasoned.
"You'll get over it."
"Yeah maybe if you stop being such a pain in my ass."
"Not gonna happen."
"This isn't over."
"Sure it ain't."
"It's not," I insisted, but I could feel my commitment to the argument dwindling. That was always how I was- I burned hot and fast and fizzled out just as quickly. He could totally out-stubborn me, damn it.
"Go to sleep."
"Stop being so freaking bossy."
"Stop making everything difficult."
"Did you just use two words with three syllables in each in one sentence? I think hell might have just frozen over."
"Woman..." his voice held warning this time.
"Fine," I grumbled, relaxing onto his chest. It felt too good to be close to him again to keep ruining it with useless arguments.
"Thank Christ," he sighed loudly, but tempered the statement with his hand moving into my hair and stroking it in the familiar way he always did.
A while later, he slept.
A few hours after that, so did I.
For the second time in the better part of a decade, dreamlessly.--"You've got to be freaking kidding me!" I yelled into the cabin, making Harley and Chopper's heads snap up. "Seriously? Seriously?" I ranted, storming over to the bathroom and going in though I already knew it would be empty. I threw the front door open and stomped out. Of course his truck was gone.
Needless to say, I woke up alone.
There was also no note this time.
So I figured he likely wasn't out mutilating more people because that was the only time he actually left me a note. But still. We had things to talk about and argue about and...
"Christ," I cursed myself, running a hand through my wild hair. I wasn't his girlfriend. I didn't get to demand he leave me notes and tell me his whereabouts. I wasn't even his little hostage anymore so I couldn't rightfully be pissed that he left me alone at all.
It was my own damn fault that I didn't have a car there or my laptop and books and shit to keep my mind occupied. I needed to stop planning my days around his days. I didn't do shit like that. That wasn't the kind of girl I was. On a firm nod to the strong-woman yelling at me inside my head, I turned back into the house, grabbed a gun, ammo, a coin, slipped into my boots, and headed into the woods for target practice.
I had just paused to reload the gun for the second time when I heard a throat clear behind me. I snapped the gun back together as I whirled, arm raised, ready to do what might need to be done. Like I was trained to.
"Aw pumpkin, what'd I ever do to you?" Shooter asked, standing about two yards behind me, hands tucked into his tight black jeans. Yeah, Shooter was the tight black jean kinda guy. He was also the creepers kinda guy. And tattooed, pierced, devilish kinda guy.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I snapped, my voice dropping low as if someone might overhear us, you know, all out in the deep woods.
"Nice to see you again, pretty girl," he said, giving me the smile I knew melted panties for miles wide. "Your aim is better."
"How would you know about my aim at all?" I countered.
"Hailstorm might watch all of us, sweetheart. But all us small timers keep an eye out too." Small timer? Ha. He was the best contract killer on the East coast. He got paid trunk loads of cash for the jobs he did. The last thing he was, was a small timer. Even if he was a one-man organization. When I didn't speak, his smile got a little boyish. "I know my attractiveness can make women senseless, but we got some shit to talk about."
I felt my own lips tip up and lowered the gun. "Thanks for killing Lo's ex. He deserved to get dead."
