The Fortunates (Unfortunate #2) - Skyla Madi Page 0,17

my way past the mahogany lounges and the empty fireplace a few strides after.

Kade discards his clothes as I near the bathroom. One by one they’re carelessly tossed into a pile in the middle of the room, a tangle of white, steel grey, and black. Curiously, I reach out for the door frame. My heart thunders and quakes, vibrating my ribs like a hum through paper as I glide my fingers against the smooth white paint. I crane my neck to see around the inconvenient slab of wood—

“Nine.”

Gasping, I jolt backwards, my hand clenching my chest.

“Gosh.” I squeeze out on an exhale. “You scared me.”

Kade’s black eyes zero in on me. I found the stare scary in the beginning, but now I’ve learned the difference in the way they glisten.

“How’d you sleep?” he asks, slightly tilting his head.

He folds his long, thick arms tightly over his naked chest. He is beautiful. Even in sweatpants.

My words catch in my throat, restricted by the tightness that closes it. I’ve rarely seen him without a shirt. His skin looks smooth—poreless—and warm. The kind of warm that would feel nice against my cool, bare flesh. How long has it been since we were intimate? I don’t even know anymore. So much has happened in the last month that it almost feels like any sexual interaction we had was just a figment of my imagination.

It wasn’t.

What we shared felt too good to be fake.

Heat blossoms over my body, blooming rapidly, like flowers in spring.

“I slept fine.” I peer around him at the clothes on the floor. Small red dots coat his white shirt and, if I’m not mistaken, it’s blood. “Did you go out?”

“I had something I needed to take care of.”

He doesn’t attempt to stop me as I squeeze past him and into the bathroom. Crossing the room, I scoop up his shirt.

“Are you bleeding?” I ask, stroking the dry crimson spots with my thumb.

He turns around and leans against the door frame as I analyse the white fabric in my hands. It’s immediately obvious the blood isn’t from an injury Kade has sustained. It’s spattered over the fabric, like someone filled their mouth with it and sprayed it from their lips. It’s a spatter of high impact…a spatter that might occur when someone is excessively and repeatedly beaten with a blunt object…or if their head is blown off by a gun at close range.

I glance at Kade. He is the perfect picture of indifference.

“Why is there blood on your clothes?”

The shine in his eyes changes, darkening like the earth when a cloud blocks the sun’s bright rays. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

“What did you do?” I’m ashamed the question seeps out as a whisper. I should be stronger. I need to be stronger.

“Do you really want to know?”

I flinch at his disinterested tone, dropping his shirt back on top of the pile. No, I don’t want to know, but he doesn’t have to say anything. All of the evidence is here.

“You climbed out of bed…” I shake my head, unable to stop the irrational tears that seep from my eyes and well along the bottom. “…and you snuck out to go on some kind of murderous rampage?”

Kade pushes off the door frame, stepping further into the bathroom. “You left me with no choice!”

I try not to react to the loud boom of his voice as he saunters closer, eating up the distance between us. Two strides is all it takes for him to tower over me. His eyebrows are set in a serious line; his eyes offer no sparkle. Not a single one. It’s a look I know all too well.

“I left you with no choice?” I scoff. “How did I leave you with no ch—”

Then it hits me. His question—the one he asked after I inhaled the drugs he gave me. I told him everything that happened with the moderator in the cell, believing it was only a dream playing in my head. My lips part. I can’t believe it. He knew exactly what he was doing. I look him dead in the eyes.

“You manipulated me.”

He frowns, his face still devastatingly handsome as it pinches together.

“Manipulated you? I saw an opportunity and I took it.”

Inside me, frustration bubbles to anger and anger turns to rage. “It wasn’t yours to take. Nothing that is mine is yours to take anymore. You’re such a—”

“Such a what? A killer? A monster?” He smirks a sad smirk. “If you’re going to