had been the one to attack Ryan and his friends, it was only fair that I was the one to end the last living idiot who’d tried to rape her.
“Markus and I went to the hospital, and I suffocated him.” The truth, laid bare, but as simple as it was, as much as I did not feel remorse for the act of killing, I knew Jaz wasn’t like that. She wasn’t like me; she felt guilt, remorse, and all the other feelings that usually evaded anyone with Scott blood.
Since she said nothing, I went on, “I paid Dante to go after Ryan and his friends, too.” In reality, they were all dead because of me, because I couldn’t sit back and let them live knowing what they’d tried to do. Maybe Dante would’ve gone after them himself—he did seem a bit off his rocker—but that was something we would never know now.
Jaz didn’t get up, and she didn’t say anything for the longest time. Those dark eyes simply stared at me, as if she expected me to say more. Finally, after a while, she murmured a single word: “Why?”
I turned my head to meet her stare, wanting to lean into her, to feel her soft skin against mine and those lips devouring everything I’d give her. Before Jaz, I never knew what addiction was like, what craving someone else was like. Now that I did…now that I knew how she made me feel, I never wanted it to end.
The realist in me told me it would. After graduation, I’d be stuck in this house, working for the family. Jaz would go off, do whatever it was she was born to do. Go to college, become someone in the world. That was never in the cards for me, and I’d been fine with that.
At least, I was fine with it, until her.
“You,” I said, knowing it probably wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I couldn’t let them get away with what they tried to do to you, Jaz. I couldn’t. They tried to hurt you in the worst way, and so I set a beast on them.”
Jaz’s expression was heavy, and she stayed silent, watching me, listening to me. Hey, at least she wasn’t getting up and storming away. I could consider this a win, in that respect.
“And I would do it over and over again,” I told her, meaning every word I spoke with my entire heart. It might be a black thing that sometimes ceased to beat in care of anyone else, but for her, it tried to be a normal heart. I’d never be like anyone else, but then again, Jaz had never asked me to. “Anyone who hurts you doesn’t deserve to live.”
A blunt blanket statement, but I meant it wholeheartedly.
Jaz then asked something I wasn’t expecting, “What would you do to your brother, if he hurt me?”
I blinked, my instincts telling me to tell her exactly what I’d do, what I wanted to do. It went against everything I’d been taught since birth, against everything that meant being a Scott—when you were a Scott, family and loyalty was above all else—but sitting here, staring at Jaz, I suddenly knew.
“I’d kill him.” I spoke it so easily, so calmly, as if I talked about killing on a daily basis. As if confessing to Jaz that I would kill one of my brothers for her was something normal. She wouldn’t know it went against everything I thought I was.
Jaz was changing me, and I didn’t know if I could stop it. I didn’t know if I wanted to.
She reached for one of my hands, and she ran a finger over my knuckles, tracing the tattooed letters there. “It’s bad that I’m not running for the hills,” she whispered. “At my old school, if a boy I was seeing would’ve told me that he’d killed someone, that he would kill his own brother for me, I would’ve run the other way—and called the cops. But you…”
I watched as she shook her head, wondering what was tripping her up now.
“This place has changed me, I think,” she said, her dark gaze locking with mine. “Or maybe the company I keep did.”
Maybe I changed her, was what she was saying. I never knew it was possible, to feel content that I’d gotten into someone else’s head, their heart, their body. I never knew any of this was possible for me. Jaz had stormed into my life and upended everything I thought