Page 45 of Brandishing Betrayals

Jason eyed us both contemplatively, not speaking.

“What if she dropped that day?” I asked.

“Sub-drop?” Jason asked, raising and eyebrow.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “We did next to no aftercare, after an extremely intense scene. I told you, Marcos, the next morning.We shouldn’t have left her alone. She should have woken with one of us there.”

Marcos nodded slowly, his eyes far away as if he was reliving the scene in his head. “We had to be at the clubhouse though. The out-of-town clubs were comin’ in.”

“Yeah, but you and Stone could have gone. I could have stayed back,” I argued for the hundredth time.

“Yeah.” Marco huffed, finally agreeing with me after all these years.

“I don’t buy it,” Jason grumbled.

I snapped my gaze to narrow my eyes on my buddy. “Why not?”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Even she had dropped, she would have come to us.”

“She did fucking come to us!” I snapped, raising my voice. “She showed up at the fucking clubhouse to find that bitch Tish hanging all over Marc!”

“Some Devil Chaser is not an exc—”

“Stop fucking making her into some one-off devil chaser! She was a God damn plant by the leader of a rival fucking gang! Fucking treat the situation with the seriousness it deserves!”

“I have been!” Jason sniped back. “She fucking left us! You don’t think that hasn’t torn me up all these fucking years?” He leaned forward slamming his hand on the table. “She was the God damn love of my life and instead of talking to us, she fucking walked out the door!”

I sat back, watching my stone-cold killer of a friend, lose the emotionless shield he held tightly in place and succumb to the feelings that were ragging inside him—finally. “I think we need to find outwhy,” I stressed the word.

“It doesn’t fucking matter!” Jason shouted, getting to his feet. “It’s not going to change damn thing! If she was in trouble, she didn’t fucking come to us! She fucking ran! She didn’t trust usenough to take care of her.” He acted like it was so cut and dry, it was fucking infuriating to me.

“We literally had just spent the night before punishing her! We strung her up and whipped her!” I shouted, getting to my feet to face off with Stone. “We had NEVER done a scene so intense before that night, and we gave her next to ZERO after care afterwards. You saw the fucking saline bag on the counter the next morning! She was fucking dehydrated! We did that! Why the fuck would she come to us? She had no reason to trust us! She was fucking hypothermic the night before and we fucking left her alone! We’re fuckingluckyall she did was run away. What if she was seriously injured? What if she fucking died?”

The silence that rang out in the room was deafening. Besides our labored breathing, none one of us moved. I could see the dawning horror in Jason’s eyes as it finally sank in his thick skull after all this time—how seriously we had fucked up that night.

“Nico’s right,” Marcos spoke up from across the room, his voice soft.

I sat back down and took a deep breath before I looked over at Marc. Marcos was still sitting in the recliner, his eyes slightly out of focus, but they narrowed on Jason who had turned to look at him.

“We could have lost her that night, and it was all my fault,” Marcos said.

“It was my punish—”

“It was my idea to take her outside,” Marcos cut off Jason. “My idea to string her up in the woods. It was my fucking fault she got hypothermia to begin with. And my fucking fault we left her alone the next morning.”

“We need to talk to her.” I ran my hand through my hair, needing something to calm me down. I finally felt like I had gotten through to my brothers—made progress—but we still had a long way to go. I knew neither Marcos or Jason would forgiveMaya for leaving and not telling them about Luke sooner, I knew this wasn’t them declaring their love for our girl again, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless. At least they could finally see Maya’s side to the things. Who knew if it would help anything in the long run.

“We’ve tried talking to her, she won’t talk.” Marcos sighed. “You try—try to get her alone.”

I nodded solemnly. I didn’t like that idea. I wanted us to corner her as a group, force her to speak, but I also didn’t want her to shut them out completely too. “Yeah,” I muttered. “We should all get tested too,” I added, rubbing his jaw.

“For fucks sake,” Jason muttered.

I glared him. “Don’t act like you haven’t quit the pussy in the last several weeks.”

Jason crossed his arms over his chest defensively, but didn’t say anything.

“I’ll set it up, this week, we all get tested.” I turned to Marcos.

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