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The officer who showed me his badge slaps the metal bracelets on me. “You’re being arrested for assaulting Mark Anders.”
“I need you to be strong while I’m gone,” I tell Ivy while the other guy is patting me down. “I need you to have faith that we can fight this together much better than we can apart. Can you do that for me?”
For a second she looks uncertain. Then she swallows her fears. “Yes.”
“I’ll be home soon,” I promise.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” the badge tells me. “After the state you left Anders in you’ll be lucky if they ever let you come home.”
“What?” My whole body grows cold from the inside out. Everything seems to spin in slow motion.
“What are you saying?” Riot surges forward.
The other cop stops him. “He left Mark Anders fighting for his life. Your brother is fortunate the man is still alive.”
“That’s bullshit,” Riot snaps back. “There’s no way.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” I growl at him before he accidentally says something they’ll take the wrong way.
Rebel comes back into the room. “What did I miss?”
“They’re saying Mark Anders nearly died,” Summer says in a strangled voice.
“The fuck?” Rebel grasps the hair on the top of his head and turns into a statue. Jason must say something to break him out of his trance because Rebel starts filling him in again.
“Oh my God.” Ivy has turned whiter than the bodice of her dress. She collapses into Adira’s embrace.
The first officer starts to tell me my rights.
It’s not the first time I’ve been cuffed. Not the first time a police officer overstated the trouble I was in. It is the first time I’ve been arrested and the guy might die though. Whatever calm I’ve managed to hold onto evaporates at the fear and confusion Ivy looks at me with.
I speak over the part where the cop warns me I probably shouldn’t say anything because it can be used against me. “It’s going to be okay.”
Ivy shakes her head wordlessly.
“Jackson will stay with you,” I tell her as the men help me to my feet. “Won’t you, Jackson?”
The bodyguard nods from where he stands outside the room. The cops coming to the apartment and my arrest are not something he can get involved in, but his job was never to protect me anyway. It was always about Ivy. Protecting her if Alec or Nicole came after her. Keeping her safe in case anything happened to me.
“I’ll be here,” he says. “I won’t leave her side.”
The officers march me toward the front of the apartment.
Ivy starts to follow.
One of the officers yells at her to stay back.
Her gaze grows watery and her pupils constrict as she stumbles to a stop. “Rogue?”
“I love you,” I tell her.
Her gaze stays locked on mine. “I love you too.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Rogue
Outsidethepolicestationthe media circus is growing louder by the minute. They swarmed the station before I even arrived. Gave them the chance to get the perfect shot of me being hauled from the back of the cruiser.
