Page 43 of Passion and Payback

“Kai, if I’d thought for even a moment that I had a chance to try with you, I would have held onto that with a death grip,” I said with a low chuckle, pulling lightly at one of the threads on my jeans. “But I had it in my head that you were straight and my best friend. Hell, if I’d known you were even into guys, that would have been enough. So, you keeping those secrets, let mego out and start dating. I guess, in a way, it worked against you in more ways than one.”

“And because of my choices, I helped what happened to you and Lucas,” he said in a low voice.

“No,” I said immediately. “That hadnothingto do with you. If you’re responsible for that, then I’m just as responsible. I was the one who kept talking to those guys. I was the one who ignored Lucas’s wariness and pulled him into that mess. I was the one who wanted to follow them for an afterparty. And I’ve already spent a long time blaming myself, when the real choices that night were made by?—”

By the monsters who had stolen more from me than I ever thought was possible to take from a person. There were whole aspects of my life completely and utterly changed that would never go back to what they were because of those four men. Well, now one of them was dead and never going to hurt another person, never horrifically change their life in ways that would haunt them.

It was something all of them deserved. Lucas had spent two years in the ground, and I had spent two years dead in spirit and then desperately trying to put myself into functioning order. And what had they done? What had they suffered? A little bit of ‘harassment’ from the cops until money traded hands and calls were made? And then it was right back to their silver spoon lives where they could be the monstrous devils they wanted to be to their heart’s content.

No, it wasn’t right, and it said so much about the world that cruel injustice could happen without so much as a whimper from anyone…except me.

Well, maybe it didn’t have to be a whimper.

“Okay,” Kai said gently, reaching across the space between us to lay a hand on my knee and squeeze it. “I can see it on your face. Don’t get worked up.”

“Kind of hard not to,” I said with a snort, looking away from him while trying my best to get my emotions under control. Along with a newfound sense of justice came a significant amount of anger. I wasn’t exactly a stranger to anger, you didn’t grow up in an angry household with anger constantly directed at you without picking up a few things along the way.

This was different, though, something altogether unfamiliar. I had never known the anger inside me to feel…constant. It would flare to life before I eventually tamped it down and made it behave. Now though? Now, it lived constantly in my head, always moving and slithering around like a dragon, ready to pounce at the slightest provocation.

But Kai didn’t deserve it, he wasn’t the cause of my newly emboldened rage, and I needed to get myself under control. I was too used to quickly getting myself under control, and if I didn’t get that back, I would lose my grip at the worst possible moment. I needed to learn how to control this new rage before deciding how to proceed.

“Sorry,” I said, glad he’d given me a moment to control myself. “That uh…that’s new.”

He smiled at that. “It’s different, isn’t it? After what happened the other day?”

I looked up in surprise, only to scoff. “Of course, you know what I’m talking about. If there were anyone who could claim to know me that well, it would be you.”

“Well, yeah,” he said with an almost shy smile. “But it’s also that I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to have something…well, like you said, break inside me.”

“A door,” I said with a frown.

“And it’s a messy, ugly, but sometimes necessary thing behind that door,” he said, his brow furrowing. “I never wanted you to see what was behind that door, not in yourself anyway.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that was pretty much a doomed hope from the start,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe it was supposed to happen this way.”

“Be careful thinking about what is or isn’t supposed to happen,” he warned with a wince. “You never know where that particular road will lead.”

For a moment, I didn’t realize what he meant until he looked away, guilt flashing over his face, and my chest squeezed uncomfortably. Of course, if all things were meant to happen for a reason, then maybe the universe had sent me back to that alley and delivered the dealer to me so I could find closure and perhaps some bloody vengeance. But that also opened up the idea that I had been meant to go through that awful thing and for Lucas to die. And for what? So I could suffer and contemplate the idea of getting vengeance? For the possibility of realizing my long-standing wish to be with Kai?

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I, uh, think I know what you mean. Maybe I should stick with just…not believing in the powers that be. That’s a good way to get even more bitter.”

“It can be,” he said, glancing sidelong at me.

“But,” I said, internally shaking myself and flashing a smile in his direction, “whatever the case is. At the very least, I get to have you in my life again, and like I said before, that kiss wasn’t exactly what I’d call a bad thing.”

“Hunt,” he said with a frown. “It made you spiral and go walking back to the scene of the worst day of your life, and hopefully the worst day you’ll ever have for the rest of your life. I wouldn’t exactly call that a stellar reaction.”

I could only stare at him blankly for a moment as I suddenly realized how the entire sequence of events must have looked from his perspective. Then I let out a sharp laugh and quickly covered it up when he gave me a dirty look.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to stifle my laughter before it got out of control. The last thing I needed was to go into one of the laughing fits I used to get into when I was nervous. “I didn’t realize how bad that must have looked for you. Or that I didn’t explain myself afterward. I meant to.”

“Well, you did have other things on your mind,” he said a little begrudgingly.

Namely, the fact that I’d been attacked again and killed a man, which was still such a weird thought. Taking someone’s life hadn’t ranked in the top one hundred things I aspired to do or even the top thousand, but here we were. I had officially killed someone, and my rugged, tough, extremely combat-capable best friend was trying and failing, not to pout that I had forgotten to tell him the kiss he’d given me was not, in fact, bad.

“Look,” I said, finally turning to face him completely. “Despite everything that happened, I didn’t consider the kiss to be a bad thing.”

“I don’t need to ask, but you were the one who freaked out after it.”

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