“You should see this,” he says, pulling out his phone. “I spoke to Logan.”
My eyes widen, and my mouth falls open. “What?! Why would you risk that?”
“I didn’t risk anything, and for you, nothing is too big of a risk. He wouldn’t hear your words, so I made him listen.” He turns and walks away, but I follow on his heels.
I blink back the tears I’ve barely been staving off all day. “You had no right,” I growl.
He spins, facing me as he walks backwards.
“He figured out all the good parts by himself by the time he found me. Don’t worry, Lana. I’m playing the game your way.”
My feet freeze to their spot, and that coldness reforms, stealing away the tears that almost fell. It’s as though Jake sees it, because his face falls.
“I’m not playing a game, and there’s no longer a prize.”
He groans as I pass him. “Damn it, Lana. That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“I do know it. I need to go for another run, and then we’ll talk about tonight’s murder.”
He grabs my wrist, and I react, slinging him around and coming down on top of him as he crashes to the living room floor. He grunts as I pin him, working all my muscles to hold him in place.
“How is it that we both took all those damn classes, but you’re the fucking master and I still feel intermediate.”
Despite my best efforts, my lips twitch as the shield around me thaws a fragment.
“For the same reason I took all those same tech classes and can barely work my smart phone, whilst you create virtual empires.”
He smiles up at me, and I climb off him, helping him to his feet. When his smile starts to slip, I know the seriousness is about to come back.
“There’s something you should see.”
Curious, I follow him as he grabs his phone from the ground, where it fell during his takedown. As he lifts it and moves his fingers rapidly over the screen, searching for something, I stare idly through the window.
Delaney Grove was once my home. Then it became my hell.
Now I just want out of here because it’s nothing to me anymore.
But it was something to Marcus.
To my mother.
To my father.
Their bodies are all buried here, just like Kennedy Carlyle is. Although her tombstone actually says Victoria Evans.
What a fucked up mess we wove so delicately.
It was a fool-proof plan. I thought the worst thing I could do was go insane from the dark depths I had to reach. Turns out, falling in love was truly the worst. The darkness is just my twisted little friend.
“Here,” Jake says, pressing play on his phone.
He sits down as I study the screen, seeing the time stamp on the video being almost an hour old. It doesn’t stop my heart from pounding just seeing Logan.
He slams his fist into the wall, and I grimace, ignoring the heat of my tears as they beckon to fall. From there, he loses it, slinging a chair across the room. One thing after another gets smashed as he yells at nothing and no one.
He grabs a bat from the corner, and he slams it into the window, busting it out. Then he takes the bat to the rest of the room, smashing anything he can break as he loses all control.
I slowly back against the wall, and my body slides down it until my ass touches the floor. And I watch. I watch the man who never loses control have a meltdown.