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32
RAE
“Did you make him suffer?” I asked Fox.
“It was painful,” he grinned at me, settling into the chair in the hospital. He was content, which was beginning to be a constant state for Fox now that he had Anna. But there was nothing like seeing Fox after a kill. It was as if every last thing in his head was gone and all that was left was bliss.
“I wish I had finished him.”
“Nah, you know you wanted to be with Duke. You know how I know this?”
I knew he was going to tell me no matter what I said. “Sure, Fox. Tell me how.”
“It’s that moment when you know you’d rather walk away to be with the person you love than kill the person hurting him. I felt the same when I killed the man who hurt Anna.”
“I thought she killed him,” I said in confusion.
He huffed out a laugh. “See? I didn’t even care that she killed him. The old me would have taken him to a secret lair and made his death very painful.”
“I saw the pictures. It was painful.”
He’d taken pics on his phone just to remind him the fucker was dead. There wasn’t a place on that man’s body that wasn’t covered in blood.
“But I walked away. Getting Anna out of there was more important than making it worse for him. I saw you, the moment you got what you wanted, you checked out. You just wanted to get to Duke.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “You’re right. Don’t rub it in.”
He grinned and settled even deeper into his chair. I grimaced, thinking about the blood on his clothes soaking into the fabric. “You should probably change. The staff is probably terrified to see you.”
“They’re wondering what happened to the other guy. Don’t worry, they’ll never know.”
In other words, he either left the body unrecognizable, or he made sure no one would ever find it. I glanced back at Duke sleeping in the hospital bed. He was out like a light, which wasn’t surprising. They took him to surgery immediately after bringing him in. His leg was seriously fucked up, and they were still waiting to see how much damage had been done to his leg. It had taken us too long to get to him, though I doubted he would say that when he woke up.
A tourniquet would start to cause damage after four to six hours, which meant our timing cut it awfully close. But Duke was trained properly and applied the tourniquet where he was supposed to. Hopefully, that saved his leg.
“Any word on the kid yet?” Fox asked.
“Cash was waiting until the morning to go for him. He didn’t want to involve CPS, but I don’t think he had a choice. He didn’t want to freak the parents out and get them in trouble. As far as they knew, the adoption was legal.”
“I feel bad for them,” he muttered. “They just wanted a kid. It seems like the really shitty parents get the kids and the truly good people never do.”
“You don’t know that they’re not shitty people.”
“You don’t know that they are,” he countered. “For all you know, they’re people that wanted nothing more than to have a kid, but never could. Maybe the kid would have had a really good life with them.”
“And what about Jenna?”
“What about her? Is she going to take Theo in?” he asked. “She’s older. It would be better for the kid to be with parents that can take care of him properly.”
“She’s family.”
“If she really cared, she would have gone to visit Carolyn at any point over the last five years.”
“You don’t know that she didn’t try,” I said angrily. “We can’t know what really happened, and I’m not about to go ask her.”
He glared at me, reminding me that he had more experience with shitty parents than I did. I sometimes forgot that Fox was the way he was because of his lack of parents. Had his mom not been a drug addict and stripper, he might have turned out very differently. I couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. We couldn’t change the circumstances of what made us into who we were. And despite Fox being a little crazy, I liked him as he was. He had a huge heart for those close to him.
I looked at Duke and sighed. Fuck, I was becoming mushy, admitting that I loved Fox like a brother, no matter how much he irritated me. I couldn’t allow that to happen. But then I looked back at Fox and saw him sleeping like a baby in his chair, and it was hard to push away those feelings.
