Page 34 of To the Grave

No one said anything because we all knew there was a pretty simple answer to the question: there wouldn’t have been anyone else. Who was he going to leave me to? Pinky? Aloha? Snake?

The truth was, there hadn’t been a single other person who had given a shit what might happen to me.

“Okay,” Wolf said. “Let’s think this through. Right now it seems like we have two separate issues: what happened with your dad and Mac’s relationship with Daisy’s mom.”

“Three,” I said. “We also have the missing girls, although that might be connected to Mac too.”

Wolf looked surprised. “Why would Mac have anything to do with the missing girls?”

“I found some articles.” I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that — Wolf and Otis liked Mac, they always had — but there was no point beating around the bush.

“About the missing girls?” Daisy asked.

I nodded. “Some of them were printed from the internet. Others were clipped from local papers.”

Wolf sat back in his chair. “Fuck.”

I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Yeah.”

Silence reclaimed the room. No one wanted to think about the possibility that Mac had something to do with the missing girls. Especially not me.

“I have to go to work in a few hours,” Daisy finally said, getting to her feet. “I’m going to bed.”

I didn’t blame her. It was still dark outside, but it wouldn’t be long before the sun came up.

Otis stood. “Sounds good to me.”

Daisy shot him a glare that could have frozen hell itself. “Alone.”

Otis nodded and sat down. We couldn’t exactly blame her for wanting to be alone. Not after what we’d done.

She looked at us. “In case you think you’re forgiven… you’re not.”

I watched her head for the stairs with my heart in my fucking throat. I’d been close to her for a few precious minutes, had been inside her, just like I’d been dreaming for months.

Now she was gone again, because no matter how much I tried to tell myself I could change for her — that I could be good for her — I just couldn’t stop proving myself wrong.

Chapter 25

Daisy

Ishut the door to my room with a sigh of relief. Not because I’d been itching to get away from the Beasts but because I hadn’t really trusted myself to walk away from them.

Jace was alive.

The words echoed in my head like a mantra.

I didn’t want to be apart from him. Not for one minute. In fact, I wanted to crawl inside his skin, plaster myself to his side so he couldn’t disappear on me again.

But also, what he’d done — what they’d all done — was totally fucked. I wasn’t about to let them all back into my bed so easily.

I had a flash of Jace’s face when we’d fucked in the kitchen. There had been raw hunger in his eyes but anguish too, both a mirror to my own. There hadn’t been anything considered about it. We’d been all hands and mouths and fucking, all need and desire and relief.

I could forgive myself the lapse in self-respect under the circumstances, but that didn’t mean I could pretend I hadn’t spent the last few months feeling like an empty husk while Jace had been snooping around the Blades compound, living…Where had he been living? How had he gotten food? How had he gotten around without his bike?

I had questions, but they could wait. I was totally drained. A glance at my phone told me it was nearly five a.m. If I was lucky I could get a couple hours of sleep before I had to get up for work.

I crawled into bed and rolled onto my side, but instead of thinking about Jace — about Mac and whether or not he had anything to do with the missing girls — I thought about my mom.

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