Page 54 of Through Any Fire (Any x #1)

A fter breakfast, Jude leaves for the gym, and Mason heads off to take a shower.

Jenna brought him into the second guest room, then grabbed her laptop and went outside to do some work.

Suddenly, I’m left by myself. I trail around the house like a ghost haunting the living and find myself in front of the sizable bay window at the front of their house.

Jenna and Jude live in a cul-de-sac—something I’ve never let Jude forget—and in the bright February morning, the clouds part and birds chirp.

The blinding sun mocks my despair, its cheerful rays a stark contrast to the heavy weight of misery I carry.

Their neighbors go about their day, blissfully unaware that evil exists in this world—or even in this neighborhood.

On the street in front of the house, a black SUV rolls to a stop.

Frustrating—confusing—hope swirls in my chest. A glare flashes, and a car door opens.

It slams shut, a loud, jarring sound that makes me flinch.

Dark sunglasses conceal the face that steps out, but it’s not Cal. Disappointment floods my chest. I don’t care to examine the confusing emotion.

Cohen climbs out of the SUV in his usual all-black uniform, but he doesn’t approach. No, he just leans against the hood and crosses his arms over his chest. I’m frozen for a beat, but then I find my strength and charge out of the house, straight toward him.

His face gives nothing away. I land in front of him, hot breaths huffing from my chest. The sun warms my face, or that might be the anger flushing up my cheeks.

“What are you doing here?”

Cohen huffs a laugh. “What do you think, Mrs. Keane?”

I clench my teeth so I don’t lose my lid on him. Of course, Cal couldn’t just let me go.

Did you really want him to?

“Back to Mrs. Keane, are we?”

The corner of Cohen’s lip curls the slightest degree.

I sigh. “How did you even know where I was?”

Cohen arches a brow.

“Why am I even asking? It’s Callahan,” I say under my breath with a groan.

At least this time he chased me—or rather, he sent someone after me.

It’s something, at least. The realization defrosts the first icy outer layer of my fury toward him.

That’s what I wanted— needed —him to do eleven years ago.

I click my tongue and press my lips into a firm line. With a careless wave at the cookie cutter street, I try to reason with Cohen. “I think we’ll be safe here. You can leave now.”

Cohen shrugs, eyes scanning the street, ever vigilant. “Unlike you, I don’t have a choice. ”

This time, he doesn’t look back, just continues keeping watch over the street. When I reach the front door, indecision tugs at me.

Later in the afternoon, I’m lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, warring emotions stirring in my chest. On one hand, Cal lied to me.

He told me he’d look for my brother—manipulated me into marrying him— when really, all along, he knew where he was: down in one of his torture rooms. A shudder wreaks through me.

But no one actually harmed Mason until yesterday.

From the sound of it, whoever decked him wasn’t aware of his celebrity status.

It was a big case of wrong place, wrong time.

I arrived minutes after someone had knocked him unconscious.

It painted a terrible picture of Cal and his treatment of my brother.

A solemn pressure weighs on me as tears stream into my ears.

A gentle knock announces someone’s presence, but I don’t bother moving or wiping the tears away.

“Hey,” Jenna says softly. She joins me on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with me. “Want to talk about it?”

Where would I even start?

I sigh, the words spilling from me as I share the story of a young girl who fell in love with the wrong boy, only to be haunted by him for years after he betrayed her—or so she thought.

Cal’s confession might have healed the wound, but it didn’t erase the eleven years of heartbreak.

Jenna is quiet, the perfect listener as my voice cracks and my tears start anew.

She emits only a soft gasp when I finally reach the current events of the fires, bombs, and attempts on our lives.

When I finish, she’s quiet. My heartbeat thuds heavily. I focus on the rhythm, counting each beat for almost a minute until she finally speaks.

“Holy fuck.” Disbelief drips from her expletive, and the first smile in a while teases my lips.

Jenna doesn’t swear very often, so when she does, you know it’s a big deal.

“I mean, I heard some of the stuff from Jude, but never in my wildest dreams did I think what you just described was possible in real life.”

A laugh bursts out of me, and I wipe a tear from my eye, this one from humor. “More like an alternate reality.”

Jenna joins in easily, and for a moment, I’m just a girl hanging with her friend, having a good time. But when the laughter quiets, and the tendrils of silence creep back in, I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping to preserve the moment longer. It doesn’t work.

“How about we forget about men for a while?”

I turn to look at her. She’s curled on her side now, hands folded under her head as she watches me. Jenna smiles slowly, and my brows furrow.

“What are you thinking?”

When Jude comes home, I’m pretty sure his eyes bug out of his skull.

Jenna and I are in the living room in the middle of a karaoke duet and singing—screeching—at the top of our lungs.

Maybe he swears, maybe he says something akin to “these women are the greatest singers of all time”—we’ll never know because the chorus starts back up again.

My microphone is a wooden spoon and has been cutting out all night, but Jenna’s is a soup ladle and works perfectly—the bitch.

We spin around the living room, singing to each other as the song comes to a close.

My shoulders shake with laughter. Sweat beads along my hairline as heavy breaths chop from my lungs.

“Okay, this time I want Lady Gaga’s part, and you can sing Bruno’s.”

Jenna’s face is flushed, cheeks bright red from either the four margaritas we drank in the last two hours or the fact that we just crushed yet another song.

She sobers, a serious air settling over her features.

“You got yourself a deal, missy.” Jenna jabs out her hand to shake on it, but she stumbles.

In a flash, Jude’s steadying her with an arm and swinging her into a bridal carry. “I think that’s enough for you two.” He carries her toward their room.

I cup my hands around my mouth. “ Boo ,” I jeer.

Jenna struggles to escape, but Jude leans down to whisper in her ear. Whatever he says she must like, because she screeches a laugh, her giggles disappearing down the hallway.

My heart is happy for them, even if a little jealous—and a little bitter that I’m now drunk by myself.

I swing by the bay window to find Cohen sitting in the driver’s seat of the SUV still.

It’s dark in the cab, but when he notices me, he clicks on the light.

Then he gives me a finger wave. I roll my eyes, hunger gurgling in my belly, and turn to go in search of food.

Mason sits at the small table in the nook, eating a bowl of cereal.

“Thank god,” he mumbles around a bite. “I thought I was going to start bleeding from my ears.”

“Get choked.” I flip him off.

Mason laughs and watches as I pull out the box of pizza in the fridge from earlier and grab a few slices.

The microwave hums, and I perch against the counter as I wait.

My phone vibrates on the counter where it’s still plugged in.

After breakfast, I realized I needed some time and space from the Keane family, and I’ve left it in here the whole day.

My fingers itch to check the notifications.

If I had one more margarita, perhaps I would.

Instead, as Mason finishes his cereal a few feet away, a new anger sparks in my blood. I yank the microwave door open right as it beeps. The pizza is bubbling, and I grab a bottle of water and a napkin and stomp over to sit across from Mason.

Unfortunately, it’s too hot to eat, so I have to just wait, stomach grumbling and patience dwindling. Delayed gratification was never really my thing.

“So, what are you gonna do?” Mason’s words cut through my thoughts.

I meet his gaze. His bruises are getting darker, but the scruff on his jaw helps hide them. When did my baby brother get old enough to grow a beard?

I sigh, blowing a long breath onto the pizza to help cool it down.

For once, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I hate to say it, but at least when we were kids, it was obvious.

Cal cheated and dumped me in the same breath, and I would be damned if I ever begged a man to choose me.

I had no choice but to pick myself up off the floor, dust myself off, and move on.

But now, here I am in the aftermath of another lie, but this time, no one really got hurt.

Except me . Mason got clocked a few times, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say he deserved it for accepting such a dangerous mission.

If that’s all that happened to him, he got off easy.

I freeze. Did I just somehow justify a man’s lying and manipulation? A shudder rolls through me. Hell must’ve frozen over.

“I don’t know,” I say finally. At least it’s the truth. “What I do know is you’re not going back to the Bianchis.”

Mason opens his mouth to argue, but I throw up a hand to silence him.

“They were ready to throw you away like that.” I snap for emphasis.

“That family is falling apart at the seams, and I won’t let you get caught in the crossfire.

I know I’m not your mother, but for the last eight years I’ve been the one to raise you, and if I have to go mama bear on your ass, I will. ”

Mason is quiet during my tirade, but a sparkle of relief shines behind his brown eyes.

His mouth flaps open twice before he finally speaks.

“I did a lot of thinking the past couple of months. They took my cell, and any access I had to the internet, so my only source of entertainment was a DVD player and a stack of books. Three times a day, Tinley dropped off my meals, and sometimes she stayed to chat. She never gave much away, but she made it clear the Bianchis weren’t looking for me.

” Shadows eclipse his face, and his jaw tightens.

“I can’t go back to a family who saw me as chattel.

After everything Dad sacrificed…It’s obvious they’re on a downward spiral.

And I refuse to sink on their ship out of some twisted sense of loyalty. ”

Pride swells in my chest, and I nod curtly. Looks like my baby brother grew up a bit these past few weeks, after all.

Mason must sense my building emotion and deftly switches the topic. “What happened with Cal?”

A bitter laugh escapes. “He tricked me into marrying him when he had you in his basement the entire time. It’s hard to reconcile that every night when he got into bed, he was lying about looking for you.”

Mason’s face scrunches. “I don’t need to hear about you guys in bed together.”

My eyes roll. “Oh, shut up. Like I didn’t do your laundry when you were a teenager. You know how many stiff socks I threw away? ”

His face reddens like a tomato, a vein popping in his forehead.

“Or what about the girls you snuck out at two in the morning? Or when you snuck out? Did you think I was oblivious?”

Mason stands abruptly, stuttering an excuse as he skirts around me.

I stop him with a hand on his forearm. “Forgetting something?” I raise a brow.

Mason groans but turns back to grab his cereal bowl and take it to the sink. After he loads it into the dishwasher, he makes a speedy escape, and I can’t help the chuckle that trips past my lips.

Without our parents, and counting for our six-year age gap, I filled that parental role for him, and even though he’s twenty-one now, I find it hard to let that part of me go.

As I sit alone in the kitchen, eating my pizza and trying to sober up, fatigue washes over me. I’m too old for this.

The pizza soaks up the tequila, but by the last slice, I’m picking the cheese off.

It’s the only thing I can eat it on, and even then, I have my limits.

I move on autopilot as I tidy up the kitchen, flicking off the lights as I make my way to bed.

After a half second of thought, I grab my cell and take it with me.