and out through my nose. I forgot they saw my scars, saw the third worst moment of my life carved on my flesh.
“I don’t know,” Zay replies. “Maybe she put them on herself.”
“I kind of doubt it,” Hunter disagrees. “Do you know how painful that’d be …? How much pain you’d have to be in to do that?”
“She jumped off the bridge,” Zay stresses. “She clearly doesn’t give a shit about pain … or herself.”
I’m not a fan of how closely they’re assessing me, or how close they are to the truth.
“What scars?” Jax asks.
“They’re all over her side,” Hunter explains. “They look like someone carved words into her flesh with a knife.”
“Freak, loser, murderer,” Zay mutters. “That’s the three I managed to read. There might be more, though.”
My fingers travel toward my scarred side. There are six in total. They apparently didn’t see the bottom three that are close to my hip.
Silence stretches between them until Jax finally breaks it. “Yeah, we really need to set some rules with her.”
Why me having scars on my body makes him more certain of this decision is beyond me. But it doesn’t really matter, because there’s not going to be any rules. Because I’m not going to join their little gang. I’m not even sure why they want me to when they made it pretty clear they don’t like me.
“I’ll go check on her and make sure she’s asleep,” Jax announces. “Get the game started while I do that.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Hunter jokes, the amusement returning to his voice.
I assume Jax leaves then to go check on me. I wonder what he’ll do when he realizes I’m gone. Panic? Be relieved? Get pissed off?
“So, what do you really think about our little bird?” Hunter asks and the name sears at something inside me.
“Little bird, come here,” the doctor whispers as the door to my padded room shuts…
I blink sharply from the memory, unsure of where it even came from.
Forget.
Why am I always forgetting?
“I think you need to stop calling her ours,” Zay replies over the clinking of pool balls crashing together.
“Would you rather I call her yours?” Hunter questions.
“Shut the fuck up,” Zay snaps. “That’s not what I meant, so stop implying shit. That girl means nothing to me.”
“That’s total bullshit, or else you wouldn’t have jumped into the river to save her,” Hunter quips. "I've known you for most of my life, so I know you don't do shit like that for people.”
“She would’ve died if I hadn’t,” Zay grumbles. “I didn’t do it because I want her to become our fourth member in this twisted fucking group of ours. Or become mine.”
“Again, I call bullshit. You didn’t even hesitate when she jumped. You just ran and jumped into that freezing cold water.”
“Yeah, well, you screamed like a little bitch.”
“Um, yeah, because I didn’t think she’d jump. She’s crazy. But I like crazy.”
“That’s because you are crazy,” Zay says, and I can practically hear the eye roll through his tone.
“Then that’d make you a straight-up psychopath,” Hunter retorts.
“Probably.” Zay gives a short pause. “She called me that. Raven, I mean.”
“I know,” Hunter says. “They say great minds think alike or some shit like that.”
The balls clank again.
“Why do you think she didn’t try to swim out of the water?” Zay asks. “I mean, do you think …?”
“I’m not sure.” Concern fills Hunter’s tone. “She did tell us she couldn’t swim. Maybe she wasn’t lying.”
“But, why would she choose to jump if she couldn’t swim?” Zay points out. “Why not pick the other option we gave her?”
“To piss you off? To be stubborn?” Hunter suggests. “Or maybe she’s a virgin like you guessed.” Amusement seeps into his tone. “Can you imagine if she is? A virgin in our circle? That’d be … interesting.”
“More like trouble,” Zay says. “And if she is, you definitely need to stay away from her—”
“We have a huge problem,” Jax announces, cutting off their conversation. “Our caged bird is gone.”
“Wait … What?” Hunter stammers. “How?”
“She must’ve walked out of the room while we were in the kitchen,” Jax tells him. “But the alarms haven’t gone off, so she hasn’t left the house.”
Alarms? Suddenly my plan just to take off is feeling out of reach.
“Did you check the security cameras?” Zay asks over the sound of a soft bang.
Security cameras? Shit.
“I’m working on it,” Jax says. “I’m still waiting for the system to load up on my phone.”
I cross my fingers that maybe his system won’t load.
“Wait … Okay,