Jaxon takes a deep breath, as if he’s going to speak, and then he uses all of his strength to wrench himself away from Dean, pushing himself back on the hardwood so that he can get clumsily to his feet.
“Fuck you,” he says distinctly, blood bubbling on his lower lip. “Fuck you both.”
And then he strides up the stairs, leaving us both there.
7
ATHENA
Isleep way too long.
I guess I have plenty of excuses as to why. My mother’s funeral yesterday, showing all of the research Mia and I collected to the guys, Jaxon’s vicious handling of me outside. I don’t really remember passing out, just slumping to the ground after he let go of me, and then a creeping sense of cold. I barely even recall the bath that Dean and Cayde got me into—just a vague, floating sense of warm water and an understanding that they were both there with me.
When I wake up, it’s alone in my own bed, warm and dry but still feeling exhausted, as if I hadn’t even really slept. A quick glance at my phone tells me that it’s almost noon, but I roll over anyway, pulling the covers tighter around me and wincing at the soreness between my thighs.
I don’t want to let this go for too long, though. The longer I think about what happened yesterday, the more the anger builds, that anger that I’ve been clinging to in order to help me stave off the grief. And Jaxon has only added to it.
Yes, I know what I did was wrong. I know I should have told him the truth, before we slept together. I should have told him everything as soon as I even suspected. I let my own desires and my own needs get in the way, and he’s right to be pissed at me.
What isn’t right, in any possible sense of the word, is how he treated me last night.
And I’m not about to let it slide.
I force myself out of bed, getting dressed slowly. To my surprise, when I make it down to the dining room, Cayde and Dean are at the table still—a late start for breakfast for them, even for a Sunday.
What’s even more shocking is the state of their faces.
Dean doesn’t look too bad, just a few bruises here and there and a slight split to one lip, but Cayde looks as if he went ten rounds with Muhammad Ali. His face is black and blue, his lips swollen, and it’s clear that he had one hell of a fight last night.
“What the fuck happened?” I blurt out, staring at them both, and Cayde and Dean look up simultaneously. I can tell from the way they glance at each other that they’re considering not telling me the truth, but before I can say anything about it Cayde shrugs and looks directly at me.
“We had a little—talk with Jaxon last night, when he came home.”
I stare at them both, dumbfounded. It makes sense, then, why Jaxon isn’t at the table with them—but what I can’t wrap my head around is why. Jaxon is their best friend, practically their brother, and the idea of them getting into a fight that violent with him is almost unimaginable. “Why?” I manage, blinking rapidly. “What on earth—"
“After what he did to you?” There’s something dark and deadly in Dean’s voice that startles me. “Is that really a question you even need to ask?”
“You got into a fight with him because of me?”
“That’s what he said.” Cayde looks at me steadily, and it’s hard for me to look back—the longer I stare at his face, the worse it seems. “He hurt you, Athena. He fucked you and left you outside to freeze. We wouldn’t let anyone else treat you that way, we’re certainly not going to letJaxonget away with it.”
“So where is he?” I blurt out, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “He’s not like—beaten up and dumped somewhere, is he?” Truthfully, I don’tthinkthey would do that, but I’m so shocked that it got this far at all that I don’t feel like I can be a hundred percent sure.
Cayde shrugs. “At the gym, I think. Taking out his internalized rage in an appropriate place. Why?”
“I’m going to go talk to him.”
“I don’t think—” Dean starts to say, but I shake my head hard.
“No. Oh, no.” I cross my arms, staring them both down. “You can try to fight my battles for me all you want, but some of this I have to handle myself. I’m not planning to let Jaxon just get away with what he did either, but I’m going to confront him about it myself.”
“What if he—”
“Hurts me?” I don’t bother letting Cayde finish. “He trained me, remember? I’ve kicked his ass before and I’ll do it again.”
I sit down at the table then, reaching for a piece of toast. “I’m at the end of my rope, guys,” I tell them bluntly. “After everything that’s happened—I don’t know how much more I can take. But I’m not going to just lay down and let this kill me. I have to handle some of this myself. And I’m going to start with finding out exactly why the fuck Jaxon thought he could touch me like that.”
When I look up, I see something like a new respect in Dean’s eyes, and a grudging acceptance in Cayde’s. It’s starting to feel almost as if we’re working like a team, which is strange. I don’t think of them as my adversaries so much, and I don’t entirely know how to feel about that, either. They started as my captors, as enemies, and now they’re something else entirely.