Page 74 of Temptation
“It isn’t his fault,” Rowan kept repeating. “He can’t help it.”
“What?” I swiveled toward him. “He couldn’t help himself when he carved that shit onto my forearm?” My voice was an octave higher than before, but I didn’t give a fuck if I brought this entire crypt to the ground. “Or was there something else he couldn’t help himself with?”
“Danny is…” Rowan trailed off.
“Danny is being fucked by Judah,” Dylan finished for him. My eyes widened even more, and as if somebody knocked the breath out of me, my lungs seized, and air couldn’t travel through my mouth.
“Moonshine,” Ash called out, but I couldn’t center myself. I felt his hands on my body, his voice in my ear, but as my vision started closing in, darkening on the edges, I tried inhaling, but nothing worked. “Fuck,” Ash cursed. “Skylar, calm down. You need to calm down, darling.”
I wheezed.
“I-I can’t,” I choked out.
“Breathe, Skylar,” Dylan murmured in my other ear, rubbing circles on my back. “You need to breathe.”
No, I knew what I needed to do. It wasn’t about breathing; it wasn’t about survival…
As they held me up, breathing with me, their voices overlapping in my ear, I knew what I had to do.
“I want them dead.” I looked up, meeting Rowan’s eyes. “You better pray that Danny isn’t there when I come for them.” He paled, gulping as I spoke. “You better fucking pray, Rowan, that he gets the fuck out of this town, or I will find him. I will fucking find him and gut him like the coward that he is. Motherfucking piece of shit.”
“Skylar,” Rowan whimpered.
“No. We’re done here. You’re going to tell me everything I need to know, right fucking now. I don’t care what you promised, Ro. I don’t give a flying fuck.”
15
DYLAN
Rain washed over Winworth,hitting the windshield of my car with the rhythm of the song blasting through the sound system, but none of us heard the lyrics. Neither one of us could focus on them at the moment.
I threw a glance at Skylar on my right side, huddled in the passenger seat, looking smaller than ever. The fog littered the streets of Winworth as we drove through town. I fought with myself to stay focused on driving, instead of stopping just so that I could drag her in my lap and show her how sorry I was.
But I knew that my sorries wouldn’t do shit right now, because she didn’t need more words from any of us. She needed action, and we all had failed her in the past.
I looked up at the rearview mirror and my eyes instantly connected with Ash’s, who was already looking at me with his calculating cold eyes, and had that fucking chip on his shoulder. God, I wanted to throw him out of the car, but after the bombshell Rowan threw at us, I didn’t want to risk Skylar’s mental state.
She was shaken enough for the day—hell, for an entire year, and adding the stress of Ash and I not getting along wouldn’t help.
The silence spread between us, suffocating me, but I had no words left. Nothing I could say would fix what happened to her. And I blamed myself.
I blamed my blind eyes and the inability to prevent what happened to me happening to her too. I failed her, and this rope wrapped around my heart kept squeezing and squeezing and squeezing, but I deserved every inch. I deserved her hate and her sorrow, because I lied. I kept secrets when all she ever needed was the truth.
We often forgot that Skylar wasn’t a flower that could easily be stomped on, and it showed today. For so long, I’ve looked at her, and all I saw was that scared little girl on the front porch of our house, with her wide, frightened eyes and the timid smile when she saw me for the first time.
But she wasn’t that little girl anymore, and I had to remember that. She wasn’t as fragile as I thought she would be. Even that bloody wedding didn’t break her. Even the things I had to do, the things I had to say to get the Order off my back didn’t deter her. She continued going forward, and this newly awakened fire stirred something inside of me.
Her fire and the ice from Ash’s eyes.
But what Rowan said about Danny, what I found out after my confrontation with Joanna, that made me sick to my stomach.
Danny was in love with Judah, thought himself to be his favorite one, when in reality, Judah had many toys he played with. Danny was just the convenient one.
But why did he try to kill Skylar? It made no sense. Was it because she knew too much and Judah was scared that she would talk? Or was it because in some fucked-up part of his brain, he wanted her only for himself?
“If you continue gripping that steering wheel like that, we’re all going to end up in some ditch,” Kane said from the back seat. My molars ground together, the scraping sound echoing in my head, yet I forced my eyes to stay on the road instead of looking back.
Kane was a thorn in my side, and I had no idea if he knew that I killed his brother. If he did, he was a liability, and I couldn’t allow that. Not when I had so much to lose.
