Page 161 of Tangled Like Us

Blood.

There was blood everywhere. I can still fucking see Farrow and Nate covered in it.Animal blood.

“Yeah. I think about it.” My eyes sear, but I have trouble letting emotion through. “The worst nights of my life tend to stick around.” I think she needs me to go first. I see this look in her eye like she’s afraid.

But she wants to talk about Nate, and I’d rather crawl through barbed wire first and push it out of the way.

So I don’t ask her anything yet. I keep my arms wrapped around her shoulders and lower back. Waiting for her next question.

She searches my gaze. “What was the worst part about it for you?”

“Having to leave with security once the house was secured. Not being able to be with you after.” I breathe a constricted breath, my nose flaring, and I know she can feel my muscles clenching. “But I couldn’t be with you like that.”

She knows why.

Her eyes redden more. “Just knowing…” She swallows. “Knowing that you wanted to be next to me, that means a great deal.”

I nod and brush her damp hair off her cheek, strands already frizzing.

“It’s not what I thought you were going to say,” she admits. “I thought the worst part would be confronting Nate.”

“It’s up there.” I blink back the image. Blood. Farrow. Nate unconscious on the fucking floor. I train my focus on Jane, and I say what I’m thinking, “I should’ve ripped his head off his neck.”

But that night was more complicated than my anger, her hurt or his hatred.

“What stopped you?” she murmurs.

I wish I could saymorality. But outside of the civilian world, morality means something else and I have blood on my hands from war.

“Protocol,” I answer. “The target was already neutralized.” I pause. “But I’d be lying to say it didn’t cross my mind. I was left alone in the attic with him.”

I remember how Farrow and Maximoff went to go shower. To wash off the blood. And Farrow needed to leave the scene. He was shaking with adrenaline, and he knew it.

It was just me and an unresponsive Nate. “Quinn knocked on the door, and I wouldn’t let him in.” I hold her gaze. “I didn’t want any of the men to see the scene until it was cleaned. That was my focus.”

She opens her mouth, tentative to ask something else. “Is it so bad to say that I don’t think I want to know exactly what it looked like?”

She never saw the room.

I wouldn’t let her.

“No. I don’t want to paint the picture for you,” I tell her.

Jane exhales deeper, seeing that we’re on the same page.

Police took photos, cuffed Nate, and I knew Jane wouldn’t want more strangers walking through her house. Not that night. So no one called a cleaning company.

I scrubbed the floorboards while Moffy was with Jane. Farrow came in and helped me.

In dead silence we cleaned the attic room and threw out the shredded mattress. Hauled in a new one that Quinn went out and bought.

So it looked like nothing ever happened.

It was our responsibility, and we’d do it all over again. In a heartbeat.

Jane sits up to see me better, and I follow suit, my shoulders against the headboard. My arm stays around her waist.

“I think about that night often too.” She rubs her lips together, her bloodshot eyes on me, and she’s close enough where her fingers trace the gold chain around my neck.