Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,41

and it was easier to just get this over and done with.

"My boyfriend turned out to be even more of an asshole than I realised he was when we got together. I guess he just got fed up of me or whatever and we got into a fight..."

It had really been more of a ‘him screaming at me for being a dumb, nosy, whore while I tried to escape and then begged for my life when he caught me’ type deal, but I didn't really want to explain the agony of Shawn's fist colliding with my face or the way my head had slammed against the wall as he threw me back against it.

"A fight about what?" JJ asked darkly.

"The kinds of things dumb assholes and their even dumber girlfriends fight about. Money, other girls, the usual," I shrugged but it had been something a whole lot worse than that. I should have just left the moment I realised he had company. If I hadn't been a nosey bitch and lingered there like a cocky asshole, expecting him to be pleased to see me if he caught sight of me anyway then I could have saved myself a whole heap of drama. Though that said, despite the fucked up way I'd ended up here, I couldn't say I was sad to be rid of Shawn. I'd been marked as his for longer than I had really liked, but in the life I'd been living, the alternatives had all been much worse. Besides, I couldn't have been the one to break things off between us if that wasn't what he'd wanted. Not without running a long damn way from him so that he could never track me down. That wasn't how The Dead Dogs worked. So in a way, I was just glad to be done with him.

"And then what?" JJ asked, his voice softening a touch, making me glance up at him.

"I'm not telling you his name," I said firmly. "Not his address, the town he lives in or even the state. I'm not even gonna tell you what colour hair he has or what's tattooed on his ass. This is my fight. I don't want some ghosts from my past charging in like a bunch of tough guys and trying to fix my problems for me. When I deal with him, I'm gonna be the one who pulls the trigger. I'm not looking for your help with this or anything else."

"Just tell me, Rogue," JJ insisted. "Tell me what he did to you and if you want, I'll keep my fucking mouth shut and you can just go right on back to bed. Tomorrow we can act like you never said a word and if you really don't wanna tell me who he is then I'll accept that. For now. But I need to know what happened to you, sweetheart."

"I'm not your sweetheart, JJ," I growled, shifting away from him. "I'm not your anything. But if you want to know what he did to me, then fine.”

I got to my feet and moved to stand right in front of him, reaching out to wrap my fingers around his throat as he gazed at me.

"He shoved me up against a wall, wrapped his fingers around my throat like this and squeezed." I tightened my fingers around JJ's neck, his Adam's apple bobbing beneath my palm as he looked into my eyes, watching me relive it while managing to hold his tongue. "He squeezed so hard I couldn't breathe and then squeezed even harder while I fought back with everything I had and found it wasn't even close to enough to stop him. Then he told me he was sorry and that he was really gonna miss my ass and I blacked out somewhere around the moment he delivered those parting words. When I came to, I was in a shallow grave not too far from here and I just walked my ass back to the one place in the world I never wanted to see again and the people I hate most in this world."

"Rogue," JJ growled, catching my waist between his hands as he tried to drag me closer but I just blinked away the prickle in the backs of my eyes, hardened my jaw and shook my head as I refused to let him move me.

"You wanted to know," I said in a hard voice. "And now you do."

"I'll kill him," he snarled, his grip on my waist