Page 135 of Fight or Flight
“Who are you?”
I shoot him a quick glance as I turn off the access road and onto one of the back roads that will take us right to the dorm. “I thought we already established that I’m Jace, or at least I ended up being him.”
He shakes his head, and I don’t miss the way he closes his eyes like he’s fighting off a dizzy spell when he stops. “Not that.Whoare you? How can you do all this stuff? I know you’re what you are, but how the hell can you do all these things?”
“Our family learned early that the worst thing you can do is let me and my brother get bored.” I toss him a quick smirk. “So in order to keep us out of juvie, they taught us the ropes of thefamily biz early and let us learn whatever the fuck happened to catch our fancy. And our pathological need to one up each other and turn everything into a competition made it so we got really good at whatever we learned, no matter how atypical or unique it is.”
“Juvie?”
“Yup.” Turning off the road, I pull into the parking lot and drive over to the spot where I borrowed the car from.
“For like, shoplifting or shit like that?”
“Not so much shoplifting,” I tell him as I pull into the parking spot. “More like beating the fuck out of anyone who pissed me off and not giving a shit if I killed them.”
“Killed likekilled?”
“Killed like deleted from the census,” I confirm.
“You’ve killed people?”
“Yup.” I turn off the car and look over at him.
He tilts his head to the side and gives me a thoughtful look. Or at least as thoughtful as he can be in his current state. “How many?”
“How many people have I killed?”
He nods.
“Don’t know. Never bothered to keep count.”
“Did they deserve it?”
“Yes.”
He nods slowly. “Okay.”
I grin at him. “Okay? That’s it?”
He shrugs. “Whaddelse am I gonna say? S’not that much of a shock considering what I’ve seen you do. And what you are.”
“It doesn’t freak you out?”
“Nope.” He bends his head down so he can look out the windshield at the dorm looming over us. “Has Jax killed people too?”
“Yes.”
He snickers. “I was worried about killer bunnies in the woods, but it was just one of the killer twins. Nothing to see here.” He lets out a loud giggle that turns into a snort, then slaps his hand over his mouth with a horrified look.
Laughing, I shove open the door so I can get out of the car. I know he’s three sheets to the wind and probably has no idea what’s going on, but the fact that his reaction to giggle-snorting in front of me was so much more extreme than when I told him I’ve killed so many people that I’ve lost count is endearing in a weird and twisted way.
Shane has managed to get his door open by the time I walk around the car to his side, but he keeps getting his foot caught against the edge of the car every time he tries to get out.
Kneeling next to him, I gently pull his feet and legs out of the car, then help him shift in his seat so I can get him out of the vehicle and close the door behind him.
His knees buckle just as I’m looping his arm over my shoulders to hold him up, but I have a tight grip on his waist and keep him against me so I’m holding most of his weight.
“Gravity sucks,” he grumbles.
