Marc nodded curtly, then stared out his window. I tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look up, though the tension in his posture said he knew I was watching him.
Several minutes later, we turned right and pulled to a stop behind the rented Pathfinder. We scrambled out of the car and I transferred all of our stuff while Marc put the rest of his clothes on and Jace tossed Lance into the cargo hold, still bound and unconscious, but breathing. We shot him up with one of the tranquilizers to keep him quiet. Then we backed out of the drive and onto the road, this time with Marc behind the wheel and me in the passenger seat.
As we pulled onto the highway, I tried to touch his arm, but he jerked away from me, and my heart broke all over again. And guilt was like salt rubbed in the wound.
“Are we going to talk about this?” I asked, and Jace went still in the backseat.
“No.” But a second later, Marc’s fist slammed into the dashboard, leaving a sizable dent and a smear of blood. “Fuck! You two have incredible timing.”
I swallowed thickly, wincing over my bruised throat, and refrained from reminding him that it was actually Dean’s timing.
Marc stared out the windshield for several minutes, his hands so tight around the wheel that his knuckles were white. His neck was tense and flushed. I stared at my lap, my stomach churning, my heart one big, hollow ache. I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if there was anything I could do to make it better. Or at least not make it worse.
Finally, Marc glanced in the rearview mirror, and I twisted to see Jace returning his gaze steadily. “You’re getting out as soon as we cross the border,” Marc growled through gritted teeth. “If you’re lucky, I’ll stop the car. I want you off the ranch by the time we get back with Kaci.”
“No…” I began, but Jace spoke over me, his voice calm and firm.
“That’s not your call.”
Marc growled again and dug in his pocket. “Fine.” He dropped his phone in my lap. “Call your dad. Let’s get his opinion.”
“Marc, please don’t do this.” I wiped tears from my eyes with my jacket sleeve, flinching at the sting in my cheek. “Don’t drag everyone else into this. Not now. Think about the good of the Pride.”
“Is that what you were thinking about?” He demanded, and the speedometer crept toward eighty-five. “Are you thinking about the good of the Pride when you’re fucking him?”
I glanced at Jace, and the car lurched forward again—Marc’s temper directly affected the weight of his right foot. “It’s not like that,” I said finally. “It was only once.”
“I knew something was different.” He punched the dash again, and a new dent appeared, with even more blood. “But I never thought you’d go that far…” Marc ground his teeth together so hard I could hear them over the road noise, and I cringed. “And you told Dean about it?”
Jace huffed, and the wheel groaned beneath Marc’s hands. “Alex made a lucky guess.”
“And now the whole world will know,” Marc spat.
I felt my face flush. He was right. Malone would use my infidelity against my father, and against our entire Pride.
“Marc, I’m so sorry.…”
“Save it,” he snapped. “We’re going to concentrate on getting Kaci back for now. But after that, we will deal with this.” He glared into the rearview mirror again, and Jace nodded firmly.
“Looking forward to it.”
Twenty-Nine
We drove in miserable silence for nearly two hours, exhausted, angry, and tense beyond words. And to say that I got the least of the physical pain would be putting it mildly.
The gash on Marc’s left side was nasty. Not as long or as deep as my arm had been, but much worse than my cheek.
Jace’s head was still swollen and discolored, and he moved stiffly, trying to spare his ribs from any unnecessary movement. I turned to check the dilation of his pupils every fifteen minutes or so. I also kept the music cranked and my window cracked, hoping the cold and the noise would keep him awake until I was sure he didn’t have a concussion.
In spite of our injuries—or maybe because of them—we didn’t feel safe enough to stop for first-aid supplies until we were more than a hundred miles from Malone’s property. And even then, we hesitated, both because we were still in the heart of enemy territory and because none of us was exactly presentable.
In the end, we decided Jace should do the shopping, because with the bill of his hat twisted to cover the side of his head, he was the one least likely to prompt a call to the authorities. Marc’s wound had bled through his shirt, and I had a cut-up face, a sliced-open top, and finger-shaped bruises around my neck. If we were seen, some kind stranger’s concern could end in a call to 911.
But that was only part of it. Marc and I needed time to talk. Alone.
He parked near the back of a Walmart parking lot as the sun began to go down, and I jotted a list on a scrap of paper I found in the glove compartment. As soon as Jace was gone, Marc turned to me. “You should have let me kill him.”
At first, I thought he meant Jace. But then Marc’s gaze strayed to my cheek, and I understood. He meant Dean.
I ran one finger carefully over the cut. The pain had dulled a bit, but my anger had not. “Maybe so. But I think he’ll suffer more now.”
“If I see him again, I’ll kill him.”
Too tired to argue, I let my hand fall into my lap. “Fair enough.” With any luck, the next time we saw Dean would be during full-scale war. His death would be justified. “If I don’t kill him first.”
After another minute of silence, Marc glanced into the empty backseat. “You know it’s all I can do to be in the same car with him. Every instinct I have is telling me to kill him.”
Clearly, we’d moved on to Jace.
“I know.” My heart felt as bruised as my throat. “What about me?”
“I’m trying really hard not to hate you right now, Faythe.”
I blinked back fresh tears. “I hate myself right now.”
“Then why did you do it?” His teeth ground together audibly. “Just…why?”I tried to speak and choked on a sob instead. There was no simple answer. No logical reason. Jace and I had connected in a moment of heart-wrenching grief, and no one was more surprised than I was to discover that that connection went beyond the physical.
“Do you love him?” Marc asked, each word harsh, like he’d almost gagged on them.
I forced myself to look at him. To give him eye contact, at least. “Yes.” And that realization made my head spin violently. “I don’t want to, but I do.”
Marc fell back against the door, like I’d punched him, and that ache in my chest settled a little deeper.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen. Any of it.” I didn’t want to make excuses—he deserved much better than that—but he obviously wanted an explanation. “You were missing, and Ethan had just died. His blood was still wet on the couch. And we were all hurting so much. Jace, just as badly as the rest of us. Maybe worse, because he didn’t have anyone to turn to, and at the time, neither did I. Everyone was handling it differently, and I didn’t know what to do.”
I paused for a deep breath, and to gather my thoughts. The words weren’t coming quickly or easily, but they were the truth, and that seemed to be more important to Marc than my apology. Even if it didn’t make things any better.
“I went to check on him.” I couldn’t make myself say Jace’s name. Not then. Not to Marc. “He’d gotten hurt in the fight, and he’d closed himself up in the guesthouse, all alone. He was already drinking, and I had some, too. I wanted to make the pain go away, just for a little while.” Silent tears pooled in my eyes and I wiped them away, hoping Marc hadn’t seen.
“So, he gets you drunk, and you just lie down for him?” Marc spat, and I flinched at the venom in his voice, though I knew I deserved it. “Better not let that little secret out, or every tom in the country will show up on the doorstep with a bottle and a condom.”
I shook my head slowly, sniffling. “It wasn’t like that, I swear. He said he loved me. He said he needed me, and I…I made a mistake. Sleeping with Jace was a mistake. I know that, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I wish I could take it back. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t mean anything. It did. It does. It changed both of us and made me face the truth about…about how I feel about him.”
“You love him.” That time it wasn’t a question. That time his voice sounded dead, like I’d killed the part of him that supplied emotional resonance for Marc’s voice.
I could only nod miserably.
“Do you still love me?”
“Yes! Desperately,” I said, hoping the truth of my statement shined in my eyes. Hoping he could see it in the near dark. Or at least hear it in my voice. “I know I’ve messed this up, and I honestly don’t know where to go from here. But I don’t want to lose you.”
His eyes glazed over in anger. “Then you have to choose. It’s me or him, Faythe. Once this is over, he and I can’t exist in the same Pride. Not with you. We’d kill each other.”
“I know.” I’d known that all along, but that didn’t make the choice any easier.