Page 49 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

brAM

The hours crawled by but I didn’t dare leave the loft until I knew Remy had her. Once he’d texted that they were on their way back, I’d relieved some of my tension by delivering a message to one of the Blades who’d tried to skim from a weapons deal.

That had helped.

My knuckles were raw and bleeding by the time I got back to the loft an hour and a half later, but that had been preferable to the discomfort I’d felt wondering if Maeve was okay.

I had my hands in a sink full of ice when I heard the roar of the Spider outside.

“They’re back,” Poe said. He’d been as edgy as I’d been while we waited.

“No shit.”

Remy came trudging up the stairs a few minutes later, Maeve on his heels. She looked both defiant and sheepish, something I suspected only she could manage.

I’d become an expert on Maeve’s expressions, watching her when she thought no one was looking.

I knew that she bit her lower lip when she was frosting something elaborate and complicated, knew that a line formed at the bridge of her nose when she was confused.

I clocked her hardened jaw when she was pissed, her tendency to look away when she felt vulnerable.

Now she stalked into the living room, mustering her rage as cover for the fact that we’d caught her cold stalking Ethan Todd.

“How dare you?” she said, dropping her bag on the dining-room table.

“We’re just looking out for you,” Poe said.

“I didn’t ask to be ‘looked out for.’” She was pissed, her cheeks flushed, chest heaving. “And I definitely didn’t ask to be tracked.”

“And we did it anyway,” I said, drying my hands on a dish towel. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m not going to thank you for installing a tracking app on my phone without my permission.”

Remy walked to the fridge and removed one of his smoothies, made by Maeve the night before.

“What were you doing there, Maeve?” Poe asked.

“None of your business.”

I grabbed her arm as she started for the hall. “It’s our business when you’re living here.”

She looked down at my hand on her arm. “Get your hands off me.”

I dropped my hand like I’d been burned. The truth was, I’d dreamed about touching her.

I’d just never dreamed those would be the words out of her mouth when I did.

“We know about Todd,” I said. “We know that he played a part in what happened to your sister and we know that you’ve been hunting him online.”

I didn’t want to bring up the possibility that scared me most: that the rumored attempt on Todd’s life had been real, that Maeve had been the one to take a shot at him six months earlier outside his hotel.

I didn’t want to bring it up because I’d never been scared by a woman before, but Maeve scared me in ways I couldn’t even articulate, and acknowledging that felt like the end of my life as I’d known it.

“More background?” she sneered.

“In a manner of speaking.” I held her gaze because no one — not even Maeve Haver — was going to make me apologetic for keeping shit under control in my town.

In my home.

“Now you know,” she said. “So what?”

Poe walked toward her, took her hand. “We just want to make sure you’re okay.”

She pulled away. “I’m fine.”

But even I could see that she wasn’t fine. Her lower lip trembled, her mouth set in a thin line I’d never seen before, not even when she’d been pissed at us.

“Do you really want to spend your life fixated on that asshole?” Remy asked. “He’s not worth it.”

She shook her head and looked at her feet. Some of her dark hair had come loose from her ponytail, and the strands fell in front of her face like a wispy curtain. “You don’t understand.”

She looked so alone standing at the entrance to the hall. Poe was just a couple feet away from her, but from the way she was shutting us out, it may as well have been miles.

And me, I understood. I hadn’t given her the time of day, had been trying to run out the clock until her ninety days with us was up. But she’d gotten close with Poe — Remy too, probably — and everything about her body language said stay away.

“Then help us understand,” Poe said softly.

“What would be the point?” she asked bitterly. “I lost the Hunt. I’m on my own.”

“You’re not on your own,” Remy said.

I wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, that she had to be on her own because the alternative was us getting involved in whatever clusterfuck this was — whatever clusterfuck it was going to be — and that wasn’t an option.

But now wasn’t the time.

“You might have lost the Hunt, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care,” Poe said.

I could tell it took effort for him to keep his distance. She didn’t want any of us to touch her, and I was shocked to my core when tears slipped from her eyes. She’d been so stoic about her predicament after the Hunt, it was like watching a statue suddenly weep.

The tears slid down her cheeks and fell to the floor. “It’s my fault.”

She said it so softly I thought I might have imagined it.

“What’s your fault?” I asked.

Questions were manageable. I was good at questions.

Feelings, not so much.

“What happened to June.”

“That’s not true,” Poe said. “I know you hate that we did background on you, and I don’t blame you, but we know what happened. The only person to blame is her boyfriend, and he’s in prison.”

She shook her head and sniffled. “You’re wrong.”

“We’re not saying Todd didn’t have a part in it,” Remy said, “but you can’t go around killing everyone who said dumb, dangerous shit to June’s psycho boyfriend.”

Her shoulders shook. “Ethan Todd might have incited Chris to do what he did, but I was the only one who could have saved her. And I didn’t. I didn’t.”

Poe’s gaze was locked on her face. “You’re going to have to explain, because from where we’re standing none of this makes sense.”

“She called me, okay?” Maeve lifted her tear-streaked face and her whole body shook with the force of the sobs that tore from her throat.

“She called me the day she went missing and I didn’t pick up.

” Maeve was crying so hard she could hardly get the words out.

“I didn’t pick up because I was mad at her.

I was mad that she was still with Chris when we’d tried to tell her he’d changed.

I was mad she was being dumb and letting someone treat her the way Chris treated her.

She needed me and I wasn’t there because I was being stupid and petty. ”

The room was quiet except for the sound of her sobs.

Poe closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. She leaned into him, crying against his chest, her body shaking.

In all the years I’d known Poe and Remy, all the women that had come and gone, I’d never once been jealous of either of them. That would have been like being jealous of myself, because we were one and the same.

But I was jealous now, not just because Poe was holding Maeve but because he’d been able to take those steps toward her, had been able to risk having her push him away again, had been able to risk letting her hurt him.

And that was something I could never do.

“Shhhh…” he said, rubbing her back. “It’s okay.”

She shoved him away so fast he stumbled in spite of his bigger size.

“It’s not okay! Don’t you see? June is gone and it’s not okay and it will never, ever be okay again!

” She was shouting at him — at us. “And all because I didn’t pick up the fucking phone.

” The fight seemed to seep out of her until all that was left were her sobs.

"All because I wasn’t there when she needed me. ”

She said the last part quietly, like she could hardly bear to utter the words, like she could hardly bear to hear herself say them.

Poe opened his mouth to say something but there was no time. Maeve ran before he could get the words out, and there was nothing we could do but stand in shocked silence as her footsteps echoed on the stairs at the back of the hall.