Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Another series of bangs followed. Wolf got out of bed and opened the door. Light spilled in from the hallway where Rogue stood in a pair of pink boxers, holding a broom. He looked like a crazy meth head, if meth heads had fancy tattoos and wore Dior underwear. The worrying thing: it wasn’t all that alarming. Apparently, I’d already acclimatized to the crazy.
“What the hell are you doing?” Wolf asked.
“There are rats in the attic.” Rogue banged the broomstick against the ceiling.
Cassie’s giggle drifted from the other end of the corridor.
“You’re going to bust a hole in the ceiling.”
He banged the broom again.
“Would you stop?” Wolf said, exasperation leaking from his tone. “We don’t have rats.”
Rogue whipped around to face him, pointing the broom handle at the ceiling and shaking it. “I can hear them!”
Wow. I snorted, keeping a hold of Squishy, whose ears had pricked at the word “rats.”
Rogue’s attention drifted past Wolf, landing on me, in Wolf’s bed. “I see you’re taking your little sister role very seriously.”
The implication that I’d crawled into Wolf’s bed like some kind of shameless slut hit a nerve. “I hope that rat crawls out of a vent and gets you in the night.”
The smirk on his face fell before he stomped off.
“He has a thing about rats like Hendrix has about bird shit…” Wolf closed the door and got back on the bed.
“Clearly.”
He unpaused the show. “Rich people problems.”
Because in Dayton, rats were a constant, and the least of anyone’s worries.
Wolf dropped his head onto the pillow. Only moments ago, lying with him had felt like the most natural thing in the world, but Rogue’s smirking implication had shattered the spell. For me, at least. Wolf clearly felt no awkwardness as he pulled the covers up and focused on the show.
I shifted to the edge of the mattress. He’d played an emotional support blanket enough tonight. “I should—”
His fingers wrapped around my wrist, and he yanked me down onto the pillow beside him without a glance in my direction. “Watch the show, and go to sleep, Jade.” Apparently, he wasn’t ready for the spell to break, either.
The next morning, I woke to an empty bed, and the disappointment I felt over that was concerning. I put the money he’d given me into the front pocket of my backpack, telling myself not to be stupid and take this as anything more than an old friend’s help. Last night was emotional support. Clearly, nothing else. Though I worried what taking Wolf’s help, which I badly needed, would cost me emotionally.
I shouldered my backpack and stepped out of the bedroom, freezing at the sight of Cassie on the attic ladder, her head poked through the hatch. “Cassie, what are you doing?”
A bang sounded, followed by, “Ow! Shit.” She descended the ladder with a bag clutched in her hand. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Because you’re worried about being caught?” I plucked the item from her grasp and read over the label. Rat food. “Really? That’s why you wanted to go to the pet shop? To get rats?”
She shrugged with a smirk. It was nothing short of demented, but I admired her commitment to the cause of making Rogue’s life a living hell. Seeing as he was putting her in that auction, it was nothing less than he deserved. Still, if laxatives had him auctioning her off, she was playing with fire. Then again, it was Cassie. She’d burn herself alive if it meant taking him down with her.
“And you’re feeding them.”
She snatched the bag back. “I can’t just let them starve.” Then glanced past me to Wolf’s closed bedroom door. “Anyway, don’t think I didn’t hear that you were sleeping in Wolf’s room last night.”
God, Rogue was like a gossipy old woman. “Stop trying to deflect.”
“I’m not. So, clearly you no longer hate him.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Sure. Just remember, nothing’s changed. If anything, he’s more of an asshole than when you broke up. And he’s blackmailing you now…”
Her disapproval had suspicion niggling at the back of my mind. The past couldn’t be changed, but I needed to know…
“Look, I need to ask you something. I won’t be mad. I’d understand why you did it, but I just need to know.”
“Know what?”
“Did you change Wolf’s number in my phone after we broke up?”
Her brow furrowed. “What? No.”
Relief washed through me. I didn’t think I could handle her having been the one to hurt me like that.
“Why would you think that?”
“Someone changed Wolf’s number in my contacts and blocked his actual number.”
The attic ladder screeched when she shoved it back into place. “And you thought it was me? What the hell, Jade?”
“No! I just… Wolf thinks it’s Brent. I guess I’d just rather think it was you trying to protect me than…”
Realization washed over her face. “Brent might have set you up and manipulated you into dating his cheating ass.”