steps away from the side of the cabin.
Lana battles a smile unsuccessfully, and I roll my eyes.
“Hadley, you’re staying here tonight. The rest of us have somewhere else to be. Keep your eyes open,” I tell her while tugging Lana against me.
“Always got my eyes open, Bennett,” Hadley quips as she stands and walks toward the door.
As she steps out, I push Lana against the wall and crush my lips to hers, shutting her up before she can talk more. She moans into my mouth, gripping my shirt to pull me closer.
And I decide my plans can wait.
Chapter 10
Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
—Voltaire
LANA
“Do you believe in coincidence?” I ask Jake as I prop my feet up on the dash of his car.
We’re lurking in the car, parked in the shadows, and watching the long line form for the one-night-only Sin House. You’d think people would realize this little one-night show gets more action than anything in town all year long. It should attest to the fact the sick people around here are dark and demented from years of oppression.
“Coincidence? Yes.”
“Coincidences as big as ours?”
He sighs hard. “What’s this about, Lana? You’re seriously starting to worry me.”
I toy with the ends of my hair, staring down at it while we wait.
“Marcus always believed that nothing happened by chance. That everything was interweaved in fate’s plan, and that there was a purpose for everything.”
“What purpose is there in what happened ten years ago to your entire family and the only man I’ve ever loved?” He asks the question calmly, but he’s good at hiding his anger.
“I didn’t say it was a good purpose,” I tell him softly, reaching over to lace our fingers together.
He squeezes my hand and inhales deeply.
“If it hadn’t been our family, it would have been another,” I go on.
He lays his head back, staring down the end of his nose at the ever-growing line to the Sin House.
“What would Marcus say the reason was?” he asks, though his voice is rasp.
“You knew him just as well as I did. If not better. You tell me,” I go on, squeezing his hand this time.
His lips tense for a moment, then finally he speaks. “If he’d survived, you and I wouldn’t have had the anger to dig into the darkness and do what it took to reap revenge. If your father hadn’t been targeted, another man and his family would have been.”
“And not everyone has the ability to go dark enough to slice men’s cocks off several times and torture them for days without losing all sense of humanity,” I add with a shrug.
He laughs under his breath, shaking his head.
“Yes. He’d definitely point that out, and he’d say it almost just like that. He’d also say that no one would have the determination to see it through like you and me. He’d point out that I learned code for this very reason. That I learned tech for this very reason.”
My eyes settle on Logan as he walks by, looking around the line like he’s searching for someone or something. We’re perfectly hidden here amongst the other cars, and there’s a sensor to alert us if someone gets too close.
My bestie is awesomely paranoid like that.