Page 32 of Deviant Reign (Knight's Ridge Empire 6)

“Mind if I stay, too?” she asks, holding my eyes as I take the mug from her.

“Sure. The more the merrier.”

“So…”

“Theo shot her,” Stella says helpfully.

“What?” Calli gasps, her entire body going rigid as she lowers her arse to the closed toilet beside us.

“It’s not like it sounds,” I mutter after taking a sip of the chocolatey goodness she gifted me with.

“He shot the guy who’d just made me come.”

“Oh, because that makes it sound better,” she scoffs.

“It was his shoulder. He should be fine, I think.”

“You think? Calli asks, looking concerned for someone she’s never met.

“Cal, could you do me a favour?”

“Of course,” she agrees. “Anything.”

“Could you message Theo? Just find out if he’s okay.”

Her whole face softens at my request.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” she says, rushing to pull her phone from her jeans pocket. “But… don’t you think you should do it yourself?”

“Something tells me he wouldn’t respond even if I did,” I confess, trying to keep down the lump that threatens to crawl up my throat.

Both of them look at me with sympathetic expressions.

“I deserve it. I’ve hurt him just as much as he has me.”

“I’m not sure that’s true, Em,” Stella says sadly.

I think back to the look on his face as he stood staring at me with Dax. Right up until that moment, I thought everything was a lie.

But even while I was tripping, I saw the second of hurt, of pain that flickered through his eyes as he watched me fall apart under the hands of another man.

He cares. In that moment, it was blatantly obvious.

But then his anger, his training, his dark, depraved self resurfaced and took matters into his own hands.

I’m not prepared for the sob that rips from my throat as I continue to run those few moments through my mind.

“Shit,” Calli hisses, rushing to my side, and she takes the mug from my grasp, slipping her hand into mine instead.The three of us connected, both of them doing their very best to stop me from drowning.

“I’m sure he’s fine, Em. Theo is made of steel. This will barely cause a dent,” she says confidently, but it does little to eradicate that image of his devastation as he watched me fall.

“Y-yeah, I’m sure you’re right,” I force out.

“I know he’s a prick,” Calli says after a few silent minutes where only my ragged breathing can be heard. “But he does care about you, Em.”

“We’re a disaster,” I blurt out.

“So are Stella and Seb, but it’s not stopped them.”