Page 53 of Ravage
There’s that word again. “I don’t know why you do, but anyway, how does that answer my question? I’m tired of vague answers, Jack. Just…help me understand why you’re here right now. Why you just saved me or care at all about me.”
“You wouldn’t have done it without a reason. You said it yourself. She was like a sister to you. Her death must have hurt you as much as it did the rest of us.” His smile drops for a second. “Except for Dane.” Of course.
“So, when you admitted that you’d killed her, I knew there was more to it. I figured you needed some time to grieve, and then you would come find us and tell us what actually happened. When you didn’t, I went to find you, but GE had separated you from us after that. I had to wait until we were both moving between rooms so I could catch you, but before that ever happened, the mansion collapsed.”
He believed in me? And still does? I’d thought…he had turned his back on me. Like the others. That was all I’d wanted from them. Some shred of belief or trust in me after all we’d been through together.
Instead, they’d left me to GE.
To him.
I fight for control of the wetness in my eyes to keep it from spilling over. I clear my throat and press on because that’s not everything. “If you believed in me like you said, you wouldn’t have left the island without me. You wouldn’t have abandoned me there with…them,” I choke out bitterly. A rogue tear escapes down my cheek, and Jackson catches it with a bent finger, then brings it to his lips.
“No. I went to look for you, but Aiden asked me to help guide the boat with my gift. He told me he would find and bring you back.” There’s a long pause, and I wonder if Jackson knows what Aiden actually did.
He did find me. But he didn’t bring me back.
He left me defenseless and alone with our enemies.
“By the time he came back, he was alone and being chased. He had to dive onto the boat and we had to speed away before they could catch us. Once we were out on open water, Aiden said he couldn’t find you, that another boat was already gone and you must have left without us. I didn't learn you were still on the island until years later.”
Aiden did this? On his own?
Why? Why not just ignore me and get on their boat? Why did he hunt me down to leave me vulnerable like that?
Jackson watches me intently as if he’s trying to pry open my head and see what’s going through my mind now. He’s not angry or upset with Aiden. That tells me he has no idea what his “brother” has done.
I could tell him and the others, but what would it change?
Jackson might kill Aiden.
The thought startles me. Shit, would he? Over me? After everything he’s been saying, I can’t rule that possibility out.
Which means I can’t tell him. Not yet, anyway.
I have unfinished business with Aiden first.
“Are you going to share what you’re thinking, little one?”
I smile at him with a faux-sweet look that he sees right through based on the twitch of his lips. “Nope,” I tease, popping the ‘p’. He looks disappointed, and now that I know how he’s felt about me all of this time, it feels right to playfully nudge him and start walking back toward the city. “Not yet,” I amend.
He nods, and his lips curve upward. “Yet,” he echoes like a promise.
Chapter fifteen
Raegan
The chorus of “Chandelier” by Sia pierces through the fog of sleep. I moan and fumble my hand around blindly in search of an alarm clock snooze. The chorus starts up again and then I realize that alarm clocks don’t play old hit songs.
My new burner phone does.
Well, it plays run-of-the-mill nagging ringtones, but when I gave Portia my phone to add her number, she apparently downloaded a bunch of songs and set up various sounds in it for different notifications.
Wait.
Portia.
I jolt upward and scramble for my phone, the last cobwebs of sleep in my head blown away in a panic. Portia is the only person who has my current number while Elias is out of reach.
