Page 72 of Pretty Broken Wings

Raven shakes her head but says nothing.

I go back and forth between guilt and hate. Guilt, because Raven looks genuinely terrified, and hate, because if she didn’t try to play us, none of this would have happened.

“Buddy needs to go outside.” It comes out gruff again, and I clear my throat.

Buddy cracks an eye open to look at me, then huffs. She knows I’m bullshitting, but I want to get Raven close enough so I can look at her hand. It’s currently buried under Buddy’s body.

“Buddy, c’mon.” I whistle, patting my leg.

My dog ignores me.

“Buddy.” My voice is stern.

Still, nothing.

“Food? Are you hungry?” My dog just grunts. I glare at her, then pitch my voice high like I usually do when I’m feeding her. “Does someone want dinner?”

That perks Buddy’s ears up. I don’t look at Raven to see if she’s judging me for my dog-dad voice. I keep my gaze locked on my dog, who hauls herself dramatically off Raven’s body and ambles over to me.

As predicted, Raven gets up, too. She sticks to my dog like she’s her lifeline, and it’s not lost on me that she probably is.

I step back into the hall and wait there, then I decide against it and lead the way so Raven doesn’t have to walk with me behind her back.

Buddy trots out, going right to her food bowl, and I try to feed her quickly before Raven can go anywhere. Axel’s lurking, and I’m sure he’ll stop her, but I don’t want that to happen. We need to talk.

Raven’s frozen by the clock in the hall, holding her arm. I try to see what her hand looks like. It’s swollen but not super red; from what I can tell, her thumbnail doesn’t look black.

I hold in my sigh of relief, but it’s mixed with anger. Her hand is swollen to hell. If it’s not broken, it’s definitely sprained, or she tore a ligament.

Moving to the freezer, I check for the ice pack I used to pack with my lunches, but I don’t see it. I root around, feeling the urgency clawing at my back till finally, I give up, snatching up a bag of frozen food. Frozen peas.

I stare at them for a second, and at that moment, a horrible feeling sifts through my gut.

There’s a sharp coughing sound that makes me blink. Buddy’s wagging her tail, going back to the food she almost choked on.

“Here.” I shove the peas at Raven a little more roughly than I intended.

She sucks in a breath, catching the bag. There’s a sudden stiffness in her posture, and I’m not sure if she’s going to run or throw them back at me. Instead, she does nothing. And that almost feels worse.

My whole body feels hot. This isn’t going the way it should be. Nothing is going right. I’m fucking this up.

Raven isn’t safe, and this nagging feeling scratches the back of my mind, saying I can help make her feel safe.

I fight it. I’ve been fighting it ever since Axel told me about her situation. She’ll never wantmeto make her safe. Not when I look like Axel. Not when she hates my guts. Not when I’m her boss.

But the more I try to run from it, the more I realize that if I don’t step up for Raven, no one else will. She’ll be running for the foreseeable future.

And I can’t allow that.

My hands start sweating, and I shove them in my pockets so hard it hikes my jeans down, baring a strip of skin along my stomach and hips. Raven catches the movement, and I feel heat flush across my cheeks.

I have a plan. Raven’s going to hate it, but I have a plan.

I yank my pants back up. “You can go, but you can’t say anything.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Raven throws an angry look at me.

I keep talking, the words spilling out. “I’ll pay you.” I rattle off the amount I calculated, pulling from both Axel’s and my combined accounts. It’s a healthy amount. Enough to buy a house or at least rent for years.