Page 173 of Lawless
Coming to a stop in the doorway, I find both of them under the covers, their noses barely an inch from each other’s. It’s almost as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
My heart thumps against my rib cage as dejection tries to make itself known.
But deep down, I know she’s not choosing JD over me.
This whole thing isn’t one of us over the other. It’s all of us.
I shake my head, trying to stop it from spinning with that crazy thought.
The movement is enough to catch the attention of the two people in bed.
“Hey,” Alana says, a smile lighting up her face at the sight of me.
“Feeling left out, man?” JD asks as I move deeper into the room.
“Reid wants to know if you’re hungry,” I say as an explanation for my presence.
“Stupid question,” JD mutters with a laugh. “So you didn’t just come up here to steal my spot.”
“I mean, if it’s on offer, there’s no way I’m passing up the chance.”
“How about you take my place,” Alana offers. “I need to go and clean up.”
Throwing the covers off, both of us zero in on her bare body as she pushes to stand and not another word is said between us until she’s closed herself in the bathroom and we’ve managed to remember how to connect our brains to our mouths.
I study JD, searching for signs of the pain I heard in his voice while he was talking to Alana downstairs.
“What?” he asks as he pulls himself up so he’s sitting, leaving the sheets to pool around his waist, hiding his metal-filled cock.
“Nothing,” I say, unconvincingly.
“I think we’re all too close now to cover shit up. Out with it.”
When I hesitate, he realizes what I’m failing to say.
“You were awake, weren’t you?”
“J,” I start. “I didn’t listen on purpose, but I also didn’t want to stop you because—”
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s better that everyone knows my… issues.”
I shake my head.
“I’m not going to pretend it’s anywhere near the same, but Alana and me, we do understand. She lost her best friend, her sister. And I lost Ivy a few years ago. I didn’t love her, not like you did Maya, but it still felt like I lost a part of myself.”
“Death sucks, huh?” he mutters, keeping his head lowered.
A bitter laugh spills from my lips. “If it’s the good ones, yeah. Don’t give so much of a shit about the bad ones.”
“Good thing, I guess. We’ve put a few in the ground between us.”
“Yeah,” I agree, wondering briefly like I often do about the families of those we end.
They might be monsters, but even the worst of the worst have families and people they love.
Victor and Kurt’s faces pop into my head.
Or maybe they don’t.