Page 48

She stared up at me, her eyes glazed and unseeing. Her arms were streaked with blood.

“Answer me!” I demanded in a near roar. I couldn’t let go of her arms, or she’d be free to attack me again. I needed her to listen. I needed to find where she was bleeding from.

Abruptly, I lowered my forehead to hers, and she stilled.

“Selena Carmichael, I don’t know where the fuck you’ve gone, but it’s time to come back.” I looked into her eyes from point-blank range. “Come on, little heathen. Come back, calm down, and tell me what the hell happened.”

Slowly, piece by piece, I watched her drag the parts of herself together. Her eyes cleared, through tears ran endlessly out of them, dropping down her temples and into her hair.

“Breathe,” I ordered.

She immediately complied, her chest rising.

“In for four, out for eight, do it now,” I continued.

Her breath stuttered, and I shook her. “I said, do it.”

She swallowed hard and then did it. Minutes passed as she calmed her nervous system down. The fight ebbed out her muscles, and the manic look slipped from her eyes, leaving only sadness in its wake.

Why was this girl the way she was? This was no rebellion. This was something else.

“Good girl,” I murmured, when she’d calmed enough for me to let go of her hands.

She didn’t try to run off when I let go and rose, sinking back onto my heels. I looked down at her body and my T-shirt. Both streaked with blood.

“What happened?” I asked her.

She stared at the ceiling and shook her head. I got her message. She didn’t want to talk about it.

Still, I had to know. I slowly got up and went back to the bathroom. Turning the light on, I looked for the glass. It was broken all over the floor, but there was one particular shard that caught my attention. It was stained with blood in a very precise way, delicately painted down one edge. That wasn’t an accident.

She’d cut herself with this. I could feel it in my bones. I held the glass and straightened. What the fuck was I supposed to do with this information?

I walked back to the bedroom to find that she’d turned over, stuck her face into my pillow, and appeared to be… asleep? Passed out?

Perplexed, I stood there and watched her for a while, and then went to clean up the glass.

“What was all that?” Cal appeared in the hallway as I walked past with the glass wrapped in newspaper.

I told him what had happened.

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s a trauma response.”

I tilted my head to the side. I trusted Cal’s expertise in the area of therapy and mental health. He’d never shied away from understanding himself and his past, trying to conquer it.

“A trauma response? What happened to her?” I muttered to myself more than anyone.

Cal shook his head. “I don’t know, but I heard one of the random, lesser-player assholes on the Hellions team call her something behind her back the other night. That might be related.”

“What did he call her?”

Cal’s jaw clenched, a sign of the distaste he felt at repeating the words.

“He called her damaged goods.”

I reared back from that statement, such words offensive to hear. I thought about her drinking and the way she hated anyone to have authority over her. The way she dressed like she was hiding in plain sight. The way she tried to numb herself any way she could, even if it was with cough syrup, a fact the housekeeper had brought to my attention when she’d asked if someone was ill, as she’d noticed the medicine depleting.

“Who said it? Who called her that?” I asked my brother.