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“Brat,” he teases.
Resting my head back, I stare up at the darkening sky and let my mind wander back to my first few days as Reid’s captive.
His favorite inmate, I think he referred to me as a time or two.
Blowing out a sigh, I allow myself to take a trip down memory lane.
“Reid was… well, he cut my hair and pierced my nipples,” I say lightly. The former still hurts. Every time I look in the mirror, I remember that promise I made Kristie all those years ago. It’s stupid. She’s gone. Has been for a long time, but the big sister in me wants to keep any memory close and keep every promise I made to her. But the latter, I can almost look back at that fondly now. I quite like the pink bars through my nipples. And I know for a fact that I’m not the only one, evidenced by how Mav licks his bottom lip and swallows at just the mention of them.
“But JD, he was… well, JD. His idea of torture came in a very different form.” A smile twitches at my lips.
I pause as my next words dance on the tip of my tongue. Mav isn’t going to like them, but that doesn’t stop them from being true.
“I’m a whore, Mav. And JD—”
“No,” he barks, sitting forward so fast that water sloshes over the side of the tub. “You’re not.”
“I am though. Look at everything I’ve done. Victor may not have paid me but he—”
“Stop,” Mav demands, dragging his hand down his face. “All you’ve ever done is what you felt you had to. That doesn’t make you a…” He swallows the word.
“Doesn’t it? What you just said, isn’t that the case for every woman who finds herself in a similar situation? Just doing what they feel like they have to.”
His jaw ticks with irritation, but he can’t argue with me. He knows I’m right.
“Anyway, JD saw it. Reid wanted to scare the truth out of me, but JD… he knew there was a better way to do it.
“We had a connection from the very first time he came down to see me. I didn’t know what it was to start with, but I think our dark childhoods might have helped us bond long before we dived into those nightmares.” Not that I know much more than the basics of his past. “He drove me to the brink of insanity, Mav. It was insane. He intrinsically knew how to play me, how to make me weak, and he used it against me in the best kind of way.”
Mav’s shoulder and neck muscles pull taut. If he were to lift his hands, they’d be clenched tight.
“It was electric. When he put me out of my misery… well, I’ve never experienced anything like it.
“I broke, Mav. Completely fucking shattered. And he held me through it, wiped my tears and promised me that everything was going to be okay.
“He was there for me in a way I’ve only ever experienced from you. He cared. He does care. And…”
“And?” Mav prompts.
Lowering my head, I find his eyes.
“JD is fragile,” I confess. “I don’t know the details, but there is a darkness there. It lingers too deep for most to see, but he let me in and—” I swallow thickly, trying to force down the massive lump that’s crawled up in my throat as I think about him curled up outside Reid’s room that night I kicked him out.
“You’re worried about him?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure that he’d handle this,” I say gesturing between us and the place we’re in. “Very well.”
Mav’s jaw pops again. It’s the only sign I need to know that I’m not the only one who came away from our time in that house with a fondness for the joker with the lingering darkness.
14
REID
“I’m putting a lot of faith in you with that,” Luciana says, nodding at the thumb drive she slid across the desk toward me a few minutes ago.
“I know. And I can assure you, everything you’ve found is in very safe hands.”
“There are very few people on this planet that I trust, Reid. I hope you understand that.”
