They went back to talking about some event they were going to soon. Becca was asking Ava Jade if they’d have to bring one of hershadowswith them because they only had two tickets. My Ghost saidfuck no, but she was wrong if she thought Corvus was going to let her go anywhere, least of all out of fucking town to Lodi, without one of us with her.
It was cute that she thought she could get away with it, really.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Becca asked in a hushed tone I wasn’t meant to hear, her dark brown eyes slipping in my direction before falling back on her friend as she leaned in. “They haven’t left you alone for weeks.”
Ava Jade shrank back from her friend, the discomfort evident in the tightness around her eyes as she struggled with what to say. “Areyougoing to tell me what’s going on?” she asked, replying to her friend’s question with one of her own meant to divert the conversation back to safer waters.
I knew the tactic. Grey was a fan of that one.
“You’ve been here a lot lately,” Ava Jade prodded. “You’ve only gone out, what, once or twicein the last week to see your…” she shimmied her shoulders. “Friend.”
“He’s just...been busy.” Becca frowned, pushing her pin straight hair behind her ear. “Seriously though, Aves, why are they here? You know you can talk to me, right?” She lowered her voice, and I caught her brown eyes shifting to me in my periphery. “Maybe I can help you.”
Shit. If she were dead set on staying here, Ghost really needed to come clean with her bestie. Before things got real fucking messy.
I busied myself on my phone, trying to give them a modicum of privacy to chat. Besides, I was wholly uninterested in anything Becca Hart naively thought she could do to help Ava Jade out of this inescapable situation or her sexual escapades with her booty call boyfriend for that matter.
Once upon a time I’d tried to get her into bed, but she didn’t hold a candle to Ava Jade. No one did. She turned me down, anyway. Smart girl. The things I’d have done to that tight little body…
She never would have recovered.
I flicked over to the group chat with the guys and thumbed out a quick message.
Rook: What the fuck is taking so long?
His reply came after a minute.
Grey: I have them.
My teeth locked.
Grey: On the phone with Corv. One sec.
The fuck?
Rook: Three way me in.
My phone rang a second later and I picked it up, the mug in my hand clattering as I set it down harder than I meant to. I felt Ava Jade’s and Becca’s eyes follow me all the way into her bedroom.
“You there?” Grey asked.
“Yeah. Go.”
I closed myself into the bathroom.
“It’s worse than we thought.”
“Fuck,” Corvus hissed.
“Read them,” I ordered. “Read them all.”
Grey’s voice wavered between a growl and a rasping whisper as he read out a slew of text messages from Ava Jade’s stalker.
That was exactly what this motherfucker was.
With each message he read aloud to us, the tension on the line grew, coiling just as tightly as the knot of wrath forming in my gut. My skin prickled with the urge tokill kill kill,but I had no outlet here. Nothing to crush or break or burn or bury.
I gripped the ledge of the counter, bending my head as I breathed hard in through my nose.