Page 43 of Crave Me

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“No,” I reply, an awful taste forming in my mouth. “He called me the other day.”

Curran’s face is unreadable. But I see enough in those hard features to know he’s latched onto more than I want him to know. “And?”

“And I think he sent me a text after that, but it was from an unmarked number.”

“And?” he presses.

“And nothing,” I respond. “Both times I told him to fuck off.”

“Why?” he asks. He leans back on his heels, watching me closely.

“What do you mean, ‘why’? Things didn’t end well,” I remind him. “I told you this when we broke up.”

Curran has this habit of scratching his buzzed blond hair when he’s relaxed or trying to stay out of trouble. But he’s not scratching, he’s observing me closely. “But you never told me why you broke up. Did he hit you?”

I don’t get a chance to answer. Just like I know them, my brothers know me. “Fuck, Wren,” he says, his face reddening with anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He’s a cop, you’re cop, I didn’t want to stir up shit that might make someone think twice about watching your back.” I’m not grasping at straws. Bryant hinted as much, not that the idiot had the balls to actually say it.

“He’s not a cop,” Curran grinds out.

My insides are already a mess, but it’s like what’s left of my stomach bottoms out.

“What?”

It’s taking everything Curran has not to crumple the evidence in his hand. “He never made it past his probation period,” he tells me.

Bryant, being the manipulative bastard he is, always had a way of making himself look like the hero, and me like a psycho slut. I did worry the men and women in blue would side with him instead of Curran, and that it would cause problems for Curran on the force. But the other reason I never told Curran how bad things were between me and Bryant was because of what happened long before he hit me.

“Wren,” Curran says, his voice morphing to a growl. “What exactly did he say to you?”

“He told me—”

“What?” he presses, when I shut my mouth. “Look, you needed to tell me a lot more than you did long before this. So don’t think you’re keeping anything from me now.”

He’s right. But there are some things my family doesn’t need to know about me, and this is one of them. So I tell him what I can, and hope it’s enough. “He led me to believe you were going to be partners when yours retired.”

“He’s a Goddamn liar. His first training officer was a seasoned vet who picked up that something wasn’t right, told me Bryant said too many of the right things. The captain thought it was maybe a personality conflict and paired him up with someone younger, but with a few solid years under his belt. Guess what? Both recommended against hiring him. The Captain ordered a psych eval, Bryant refused and was sent packing.” He leans in close. “What else did he say?”

“Not much,” I admit. “Just enough to convince me to stay with him a little longer.” Too long, I should have jumped ship when I realized he was poison.

“And what else did he do?”

I half expect Curran to start yelling at me, but he keeps his voice quiet and gives me a moment. The thing is, I need more than a moment. “Remember when I came back from Atlantic City, when Kill and Finn were promoting that fighter who got busted for steroids?”

“Yeah . . .”

“I didn’t get into a brawl at a club. I got into it with Bryant on the street.”

Curran doesn’t say anything, but the anger spilling from his pores says enough. “What were you still doing with him if he was hitting you?”

“He didn’t hit me before that night. And I didn’t invite him,” I add quickly.

“He found you, all on his own?”

The way Curran asks makes it sound creepier than it was, and it’s already an experience I’ll never forget. The way he came at me was brutal, like he had to punish me for walking away. But after what he did, I wasn’t holding back either. I nailed him as hard as I could, trying to make him pay for what he did to me.