Devil's Pass (The Harlequin Crew #.5) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,45

open, his gaze flicking over my shoulder before dropping to the saturated grass at my feet like he couldn't bear to face me.

I turned to see what he'd been looking at behind me and spotted Fox's dad's black van beside a black BMW with blacked out windows and no way for me to tell who was sitting inside it. They’d carved a path here right across the grassy bluff where they must have cut off of the new road somewhere back beyond the trees.

"You're gonna have to leave town, Rogue," Chase said loudly, making me whip back around to face my boys and I nodded dumbly because I already knew that. I was leaving. We were all leaving. Together. Like they'd promised.

"Okay. Let's go," I said, my eyes darting between all of them as they remained rooted to the spot.

"Not us," Fox growled, his green eyes seeming almost black in the shadows cast by the storm. "You."

"But I... You said, all of you said-"

"It doesn't matter what we said. Those were the words of four boys caught up in a dumb fantasy about the men we wanted to become. But my feet were on this path before I was even born, there was never any turning away from it." Fox cut a look at the others which seemed to be commanding them to agree with him.

"This is what we were always destined to become," Chase added coldly and my frown deepened at the callous way he tossed those words at me.

"What is?" I asked. "What are you?"

"Harlequins," JJ muttered bitterly. "We're all sworn in."

"No," I said, shaking my head even harder. "That's not possible. The only way in is by paying with blood. I'm the only one of us who ever killed anyone. There's no way-"

"There is now," Maverick said darkly, flexing his fingers and drawing my attention to his split knuckles.

"How?" I breathed in horror. "Who?"

"That kid from the group home who was always following you about," Fox said with absolutely no emotion to his voice like killing someone was nothing to him. "The one who saw Axel drag you into his house and stood at the window watching him beat you and force you down and try to-"

"No," I denied harshly. "If Clive had seen me, he would have tried to help me. Surely he wouldn't have just watched-"

"He did," Chase interrupted. "He watched everything. Saw you kill that motherfucker. And then when the Harlequins came asking questions, he sold you out without even needing to be threatened."

"So we had to kill him," Rick growled. "To make sure he never squealed again."

"Because of you," JJ added bitterly and the look he shot me was like a stab to the freaking heart. Like he was blaming me for making him into a killer. Like he seriously thought I would have asked him to do that for me.

"I never asked any of you to-"

"You didn't have to," Fox said, stepping forward and looking down his nose at me, using every inch of his height to intimidate me. "That's the problem. You make us weak."

"I make you..."

"We risked everything for you," Chase added. "We put you before ourselves and could have been arrested for it. Or worse."

"I didn't want that," I breathed as their words finally started to sink in and I began to realise they weren't all about to crack a smile or tell me this was some big joke. They were being deadly serious. Whatever Luther had done to them had made them feel like this towards me. He'd turned them against me. The only people I'd ever had. The only ones I'd ever loved. "Please," I begged, not even caring if they saw how much this was hurting me. "You promised me you wouldn't leave me alone. Fox-" I reached out and caught his hand and for the briefest moment I thought I saw something soften in his gaze before it hardened to granite again.

"We're Harlequins now," he growled firmly. "And you're not. There isn't a place for you amongst us. You were just…a way for us to pass the time. A girl we could all try and win, but the game got old. We don’t need you anymore. We don’t want you."

"Fox," I gasped, my whole world caving in around me as my brain refused to accept those words.

"I got my dad to agree to let you live because of what we used to be to each other. But that’s it," he said.

"I...how can you all just