know you don’t understand what’s—”
“No, Mav, I think you don’t fucking understand.” Her words are a low growl from behind me, and just like that, I’m smiling all over again.
So. Fucking. Feisty.
“What do you plan to do with him? With us?” She whispers the last question, and I wonder if she’s thinking of what I said to her.
If I really meant it.
I fucking did.
I’m not living my life like this. I refuse. I tried to make a wild animal a pet, but it’s impossible. And when an undomesticated girl starts wreaking havoc? You put her the fuck down.
I don’t think I have the heart to do it myself. I can admit that.
But the 6 won’t have that problem. Maddox himself is probably itching for her blood, because of all the trouble she’s caused him, displacing his position within the 6.
And because she shot him.
I’m smiling again and I hate it, but I can’t stop.
“I’m going to take care of you,” Mav says, a scowl forming on my face as he does, the smile long gone.
“And him?” Sid asks, her words vicious, as if she doesn’t want anyone to take care of her, let alone one of us. But her question sends rage lighting through my veins all over again.
I wipe the back of my hand over my running nose, and twist around to glare at her behind me.
“If you fucking mention him again, Sid, I’m going to—”
She leans close to me, the seatbelt straining against her chest as her beautiful eyes lock onto mine. “You’re gonna what?” she snarls.
I grit my teeth, one hand fisted on my lap, the other on the center console.
Maverick says nothing, but I can practically feel the tension radiating off of him in hot, angry waves.
“Behave yourself, baby girl. Don’t fucking push me.”
In the interior lights of the truck, I see the corners of her pretty little mouth pull up into a smile.
Bitch.
Her hands are by her sides, and I catch sight of that pale white scar above her brow.
I did that.
My mouth goes dry, my heart sinking. I hurt her, and she was scared of me. I thought I liked her fear. But in that way? No. No wonder she didn’t stay with me.
I was never her shelter.
He always was.
“You wanna know how much I missed you?” she asks, surprising me, shaking me out of those dangerous thoughts.
I stiffen, my nails digging into my palm as I take a breath in through my nose. Out. I think about turning around, because I’m close enough to touch her. To hurt her. I’m close enough to do some permanent fucking damage if she breaks my heart again.
“Angel,” Mav says softly, but there’s a warning threaded in his tone.
She ignores him, instead flashing me her white smile at the sound of his voice. Because she knows she can hurt me.
She knows it, and she’s not going to hold back. “When he was fucking me,” she leans closer as my vision seems to blur, an edgy, twitchy feel to my fingers, still balled into fists. “I didn’t think about you once,” she continues, her voice deceptive. Dripping with honey. “I never wished he was you. When he was coming inside of me,” she continues, inching even closer. So close her lavender scent nearly chokes me, because I know he’s smelled it too. He’s tasted her, and her, him. “I wished he’d done it all the times before, too.”
I try to let it roll off of me in the silence that follows her words. I try to take them for what they are—my wife being a selfish fucking bitch. That’s what she is, and that’s probably all she’s ever been. She might’ve had a hard life, and she might’ve gotten fucked over more times than anyone ever deserves, but I did what I could for her.
I killed for her. I bled for her. I would have protected her from every bad thing in the world. But now?
Now, I just want to fucking kill her.
I undo my seatbelt in a blink, before she has time to react, and I’m reaching into the back of the truck, twisted around and half out of my seat as my fingers find her hair, yanking hard.
“The fuck did you just say to me?” I snarl at her. The coke I did before our trip is long gone, and I’m craving it all over again, but the worst part of the comedown is the fucking rage. And that, combined with what my wife just said?