Her lips part to say something, but no words fall free.
“I… I want to tell you I’m sorry. I am sorry. I’m sorry you’re hurting because of that monster. I’m sorry you’ve lost your brother, your father—even if he was a mirage. I’m sorry you got messed up in all of this. But Joker, he… he tried to kill me, Jodie. More than once. He hurt those I love more than anything else in the world, and I can’t be sorry for protecting my family.”
Pain rips through me. The sheer depth of my grief that I still battle on a daily basis threatens to consume me as her eyes implore me to understand. To understand and not to hate her for it.
“Deep breaths, yeah?” she whispers when my breathing becomes so erratic I can’t help but wonder if I’m about to collapse in a sweaty, hyperventilating heap on the floor. “This probably wasn’t the best place to have this conversation,” she mutters to herself, realising her mistake with the lack of decent fucking air.
The seconds tick past, and eventually, I get my breathing back under control and my body begins to stop trembling, but even after Stella releases my face, she doesn’t move back. Instead, she drops her hand to mine and squeezes it in support.
“I’m not a bad person, Jodie. None of us are, not really. But this life is dangerous. It’s dog eat dog, and if we don’t stand up for ourselves and those we love, then it’ll all crumble around our feet. I need you to know though,” she adds before I get a chance to say anything, “that you’re a part of that now. You’re one of us, even if you decide that all of this is too much and you walk away. I know how you feel about him. I saw it in your eyes that night I took you home, and I see it even stronger today. You might question it… a lot… but you’re exactly where you belong with all of us. It might have been messy, and painful, and all shades of fucked up, but I believe that the two of you were meant to meet out of all of this. That motherfucker might not have given Toby much over the years other than pain and torture, but at the end of it all, he brought him you.
“I haven’t been around Toby all that long. I don’t know him as well as I should. But the difference in him since he met you, even when his intentions weren’t entirely pure, was unmistakable.
“You’re it for him, Jodie. I know it.”
She pauses for a beat and looks down at her hand holding mine.
“Toby’s not like the others. He’s not a player like Nico and Alex, like Seb was,” she adds with a roll of her eyes. “They’ve all got him pegged as the nice one because he’s never really been a fuck ’em and chuck ’em kinda guy. But that’s not true at all. He just wants… more. Something…”
“Kinkier,” I blurt without even realising it.
Stella barks out a laugh. “Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming either, don’t worry. What I meant was that he’s after something meaningful, not just some quick thing to blow off steam. He’s welcomed you into his life because he wants you to stay. We all want you to stay. But we also understand how… unconventional this is.
“What he—”
“Enough,” I say, cutting her words off immediately. “You don’t need to convince me of anything here, Stella. I’m…” I suck in a breath, knowing that one day I might very well regret this decision, but not letting it consume me. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Stella blows out a breath of relief that I don’t think she even knew she was holding.
“He told me he loved me last night,” I blurt.
“He does.”
“It’s crazy. It’s—”
“Our lives. Things are intense in this part of the world. But we all understand. Seb was vile to me when I first moved here, but he’s almost the most incredible person that I love with everything I am. Emmie and Theo, well, they’re just fucked up. You wouldn’t fit in if you weren’t just a little bit crazy.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“The things those boys do when they’re hurt and angry… they can be brutal. It’s how they’ve been taught to handle shit situations. It takes a very special kind of girl—or guy, if any of them decide to swing that way—to be able to see through all of that, to see the big hearts they’re hiding beneath their steel armour.”
“I see it. I see it in you too,” I confess.
A smile twitches at her lips.
“My training may have been less… hands-on than theirs, but I like to think I’m just as dangerous.”
“Just as dangerous?” I ask, my brows shooting up. “Girl, with that body, you are way, way more dangerous than the boys. They never stood a chance with you and you know it.”
She chuckles at my words.
“I’m not expecting you to forgive me… ever. But do you think we might one day be able to put the past where it belongs and find a way to move forward? To be friends?”
I fall silent for a beat as tears burn the backs of my eyes once more.
“The Joe that I grew up with, that I loved, died a long time before Joker did. Jonas got to him. Poisoned him. I didn’t really understand what happened before, but I’m seeing it now.
“Do you know why he did it?”