Page 45 of Break

Ikeep fidgeting with my lip piercing as I pace in Jared’s living room. I’m too wired up to keep looking for weird fucking shit.

Knox is crazy, though. He’s trashing Jared’s bedroom, ripping it to shreds in search of something.

I don’t know what else he’ll find, but I’m not naïve to act like there’s nothing to be found. Jared is sicker thananyone probably ever thought he was. If he has cameras and pictures, he has something else.

“Knox, are you done?” I bellow as I stare at my phone, unable to stop checking and fidgeting with impatience. Dimitri could be back with Hope any minute, and she shouldn’t come back and see Knox on a rampage. Again.

“Back off, Jaxon. I just know there’s more.”

“One of your voices telling you that?”

He whips his head out of Jared’s bedroom. “I don’t hear voices, dimwit!”

I cock my head. “You sure? Cause what else is telling you to fuck up the bedroom?”

He narrows his eyes at me. “Just a hunch,” he mumbles and disappears again.

I sigh and turn as I hear the front door opening.

“Dimitri, just tell me why we’re going into Jared’s apartment,” Hope says, annoyance tugging on her voice.

I can’t stop the smile that spreads on my lips at that sound, finally stopping my damn fidgeting. She puts me at ease yet excites me at the same time. No other person on the planet has that effect on me.

“Having a loving banter again, sweetheart,” I say and catch her angered stare, but not a sound leaves her.

“Come, sit,” Dimitri says as he points to the couch, and my lip tugs up.

“Sit, in this house of that perv—”

“There’s nothing wrong with the couch,” Dimitri says with aloaded sigh.

“Definitely something wrong with the owner of that couch,” I mumble.

Hope rests back and crosses her arms, looking around anywhere but at me.

“Don’t feel bad about Jared,” I say as I step closer to her, able to see the guilt weighing her down. She should be angry or happy that he was punished, but I know that she has a bleeding heart. Shecaresabout others, even if they’ve treated her wrong.

It’s one of the things that I love about her, but it makes me nervous too. That’s the chink in her armor. That’s how people are able to screw her over.

“He shouldn’t have done what he did, I know. But you destroyed him,” she says, and her shoulders slump. “I didn’t ask for that.”

“We should have killed him,” Dimitri says and hands me a drink.

She straightens while her jaw clenches. Fuck, she always looks so pretty when she’s angry and frustrated.

My hand slips lower and I casually adjust myself. Her gaze drops, and Dimitri nudges me.

“What?” I shrug. He knows how she affects me. How she affectsus all.

“Knox?” Dimitri calls out. “She’s here.”

“And why am I here?” Hope asks impatiently, and Knox’s heavy footsteps come in from behind me.

“We want to show you something,” Knox says and disappears into the spare bedroom.

Hope’s gaze follows him, but she stays rooted on the couch. “Perhaps I don’t want to see it.”

Dimitri steps closer to her and holds out his hand. “You want to, I promise.”

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