Deception. Betrayal. Mistrust.
It seems the closer Rayne gets to the truth, the more she finds herself wanting to run away from it. It's complex and terrifying-more than she ever fathomed.
New family members, good and bad, pop out at her like a br...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
𝗥un.
That was the only thing on her mind.
Follow the man that weaseled his way into their lives in the same way he allowed the smoke and water to hinder his presence. Chase after the heavy footsteps, shackled by boots—the same noise she heard every time he approached her desk with some excuse to annoy her.
The more the cold liquid plastered her hair to the tops of her ears and slicked across her face in paths of disgruntled and unforgiving serenades, she forced herself to believe that it came from above and nowhere else. As she unholstered her gun and held it up, stopping just a few feet shy of her partner, she rid all thought that made her hate herself and forced it all upon him.
Asher.
Real name or not, that's who he would always be to her. A mysterious male floating in the abyss of her lost mind—someone that took an unlovable person like her and morphed her into some insect that actually cared about another life on the outside, showing it, vulnerable.
"Keep close to the walls," Jonah whispered.
She nodded briefly, acknowledging him without words because she was two seconds from exploding on the person closest to her, or bursting the self-made damn that's kept her above water for the last several years. One she thought Asher had been building on, rather, he was pulling out the nails.
"Shoot to kill."
"But—" Auden broke her pact, too shocked to focus.
"Don't think with your heart," he cut her off.
She clenched her jaw.
That wasn't it at all.
Yes, Asher and she shared something that Jonah never understood, nor touched, and yes, it was a friendship that for once was not created on artificial grounds, but that's not where her hesitations lay. It hurt worse than bee sting to be betrayed in this way, but she was more worried about them than she ever would allow herself to be for someone as cynical as her former partner.
"I'm not," she said out loud, "—these are government-issued weapons. We could get in serious trouble once they find out we discharged them on illegal grounds."
"I don't care."
Auden drew her head back. With his platinum hair wild and messy, and droplets of water clinging to the clear of his glasses, she couldn't read what was going on with him. She couldn't see the blueness of his eyes and think in the way he was. She couldn't help guide him in the way she normally did once the reading of his conscience became obvious.
It took that minor indication to realize that they had switched positions. A man scorned as badly as he was right now, a man with a tongue singed—a man who couldn't see through someone's placid façade and year-crafted fakeness was a man that was becoming something she never wanted to see.
