It’s similar to how he was with Rayden. Hedespisesthis woman.
“Her daughter?” The realization strikes, a thousand bolts.
“They kept you from me.” Jane transforms before me.
I almost can’t believe I didn’t see it prior. She is a woman on a mission. With nothing to lose. Searching for a daughter that has already been brutalized.
“You should leave,” I say. My stomach is knotting in on itself. I press back further against the bed. Sensing my discomfort, Axel shifts his attention to me.
“You’ve met her before.” He stares directly into me, and in this moment, I finally understand what I was sensing before.
A different loop, another life I lived. I have questions for him, but I save them.
Jane remains silent, but straightens back up. This time I am almost sure I see a glimmer flash between us.
Astring?
Is it a shadow of the past creeping across her skin?
The longer I stare, the brighter the light becomes before it envelopes her, thousands of bloodied neon strands, and just as it shrouds her in a disgusting cloak, she inclines her head.
It disperses, as if it were never even there.
“I’ll be back.” She throws a card onto my bed, spinning on her heel, and marching away.
The mirage vanishes with her movement, and I am left staring after her slack-jawed and uneasy.
The knots in my stomach have twisted and tied themselves together.
Once she leaves, it’s as if a collective sigh releases into the world.
Grayson paces the room. “She should be gone, we are out of the loop. This doesn’t make any sense. And Darius…fuck,” Grayson mutters under his breath, a tattooed hand comes up to brush his hair from his face as he continues marching across the room and back.
“Who is Darius’s dad?” I ask, readjusting in the bed, attempting to find comfort, but there isn’t any for me.
While Jane was here she distracted me from the dull throb in my body, but in her absence my pain takes forefront.
I was shot.
But how long has it been?
“Obviously, we didn’t tie up all the loose ends. The bitch kept showing up at the restaurant, at our house. We’re lucky she didn’t cross paths with Sunday sooner. I almost thinkshe’sthe reason for it all,” Axel grumbles. His hand reaches out on its own, tucking one of my curls behind my ear.
The warmth of his skin is a salve I didn’t know I needed, and I incline further into it.
“Who is Darius’s dad?” I repeat my question, raising my voice just a bit.
Grayson appears deep in thought as he continues his pacing, to one corner of the room, to the door, and back to my bed, on and on he goes. It takes him all of three steps for each loop and it isn’t long before I am dizzy from tracking his progress.
“We should have just turned her in. We practically had the evidence needed. Maybe we all should have just left this town. Ran as far and fast as we could.” Grayson increases his pace.
“You know that wouldn’t have worked. We tried to ship her off to her grandmother’s. You remember how that went.” Axel’s fingers trace along my face now, but his attention is on his brother.
Darius wouldn’t ignore me. He would listen when I speak. He would know what to say, how to fix this.
“Who is Darius’s dad?” I’m not yelling, but my voice is loud enough that it causes me to cough, my lungs to heave, my wound to pulse in agony.
“Maybe we can find Darius, get to him, and then try again. Maybe it will work now,” Grayson says. “I can keep you all safe. It will be fine. We’ll get him back. We have to. We can’t lose him too.”
