me one.”
“He didn’t,” Fox said darkly. “I checked out his claims, but it was all bullshit. He even forged a receipt and sent it over to me, but knowing your daddy I dug a little deeper just to see if he really did have any decency in him. But he doesn’t.”
“Well that ain’t news,” I muttered. “I’m surprised he even tried his luck. He must be up to his neck in debt if he’s working that hard to scam me outa a few hundred dollars. So did you tell him to get fucked?”
“No,” he said with mischief in his eyes. “I told him you’ll be leaving the money in his mailbox at midnight.”
I frowned, opening my mouth to ask if he actually expected me to pay up when he went on.
“I paid off a couple of kids to give him a visit at that exact time after I filled their pockets with firecrackers and made them promise they’d get creative.”
A laugh fell from my lungs, one of the first in a damn long time and Fox cracked a grin. My laughter soon died away and I dropped my gaze, looking down at my leg with a frown working itself into my brow. “Looks like I’m turning into him, aren’t I? Dodgy leg, long hair, and everyone thinks I’m an asshole. I just need the wooden cane, the empty shithole of a house and the yellow teeth to finish off the look.”
“Ace,” Fox sighed, shaking his head at me, his eyes burning with unspoken words and if I wasn’t totally fucking deluded…regret. His throat worked then he dropped his gaze and strode to the door, but before he could leave, I forced out a thanks for the food and he glanced back at me with a tightness to his expression. Something passed between us in the silence, it felt like an apology but I wasn’t sure if it was mine or his. Then he was gone and the door swung closed. I automatically moved after him, hobbling along with my crutch as I went and cursing as I my leg started to ache. It was not happy with my how much time I’d spent on my feet today. I made it to the door, my pulse wild as I checked it was unlocked and a heavy breath of relief left me.
I ate my food and sat on the bed in the quiet, straining my ears to hear the others downstairs but their voices weren’t carrying to me now. I hated when I couldn’t hear them. Icy fingers started to creep beneath my skin, finding my heart and squeezing it tight. I focused on the room around me, reminding myself I was home, in a space I knew as well as the back of my hand. But somehow that wasn’t helping today. Trapped in Shawn’s prison, I’d felt an eerie kind of calm, a disregard for my life. But outside of it, I realised he’d damaged me deep down, in a way I couldn’t heal from. The kind of damage my father had left on me, where no one could see it.
The noise in my head grew to a roar and I fisted my hair, clenched my jaw and tried to fight away the dark with nothing but sheer will. It was a part of me now though, it ran in my blood. And whenever it claimed me from here on out, I was going to be torn apart by it. By my father, Shawn, myself. We were all the masters of my ruin and I was the product of that destruction.
A soft voice called to me that cast a ray of sunlight through the dark. Her hands fell on my face, her thumbs scoring along my cheeks.
“Chase, look at me,” she demanded as my heart beat a furious tune and I managed to do as she asked.
I found myself staring at the most mesmerising creature I’d ever seen and the darkness within me started to recede, the voices quietening until I could only hear my frantic breaths and feel a burning, desperate hunger in me for this girl. A girl I’d once blamed for every bad thing in my life. But I’d been the culprit all along.
“Sorry,” I said, but it came out on a heavy breath that had been locked in my lungs and her expression said she didn’t catch it.
“You okay, man?” JJ asked from somewhere close by and I nodded as Rogue’s hands slipped from my face.
“I’m fine,”