Page 22

Shit.

I put down my food and force myself to swallow what’s left in my mouth. Suddenly I’m not hungry anymore. I’ve never thought much about wanting kids. But the idea of a brother going through something like that sits heavy with me.

Kooper looks down at the table and runs his hand through his hair. “What do I do?”

I don’t answer because I know it’s a rhetorical question. There’s nothing he can do. Neither he nor Ruby. The kid’s baking. What they come out like is what you deal with. Can’t make any changes now. But I doubt he wants to hear that.

Not that Natalie seems to care when she speaks, cold and stoic, and to her food more than to either of us. “You love them.” Her voice might be soft, but there’s a hardness in her words.

Kooper looks up and gives her a dull look. “I know that. I meant—”

She interrupts him with a hard shake of her head and finally meets his eyes, squaring off with him. “No, that’s it. There’s nothing else.” Her eyes narrow and her head does this twitch-tilt thing as she shrugs. “They come out with an incurable disease? You love them. They have four eyes and no hands? You love them. They come out five seconds after their twin, and the twin dies six months later, you still. Love. Them. You don’t blame them for any of it. All they did was be born. How you ‘handle’ it”—she uses air quotes as she sneers at the man she’s berating—“is by loving them no matter how the world treats them. You will be their safe space. What they see and what they need to have in their corner. You don’t get to decide how to deal with shit other than loving them.”

Natalie glares, holding her stare with Kooper before getting up and storming off, taking the back exit and not looking back.

I don’t follow. We have a brother on the gate, and Flint will have eyes on her once she gets outside, watching all movement around our building.

“Think you pissed her off,” I mutter as I pick up my sandwich again, keeping my eyes on the back door in case she comes back in.

“Guess so,” he says before getting up, picking up his sandwich, and returning to his seat.

When I hear the wrapper open, I turn back to him. “Got your answer, though,” I say with a tilt of my head and a shrug. “No matter what comes out of Peaches’ cooter, you love them.”

His eyes narrow on me. “Get my woman’s cunt out of your mouth and mind.”

I just roll my eyes and keep eating.

I never had a thing for Ruby. She’s Kooper’s. My taste in women is nothing like his. I don’t want or need a ballbuster like Ruby is. She might have softened a bit, but I know if push came to shove, she’d cut a man’s dick off.

Apparently, she has experience with it already, if the rumor’s true.

When I’m done eating, I throw my stuff into the trash, then pack up Natalie’s food and go out the back. She’s sitting on the swings, swaying back and forth just enough for me to know it’s her foot causing the movement and not the wind.

The swings are attached to the castle fort the club made for Princess, Bulldog’s kid, a while back.

There’s a look on her face. One full of hurt. A past hurt she remembers.

Instead of going to her, I set the food down on the table closest to her and then leave.

I’m not here to fix anything.

Chapter 7 - Natalie

Crap.

Just my luck that I’d break a nail the day I decided I’m tired of living among the trash. I’ve put up with it for a month now, but I can’t stand the sight of the scattered pieces of my life staring back at me each day anymore. But the second I move things, my nail breaks.

To anyone else, that wouldn’t be a big deal.

For me? It means I have to ask for a favor. Something I don’t like doing with my captors.

And yes, each Hound, no matter how they treat me, is a captor in my eyes. They won’t let me leave. Which makes me the very definition of a kidnapped victim.

I head upstairs and use the house phone. Not allowed one of my own. Another kidnapper tactic if there ever was one. Atom says it’s for my safety. I call bullshit on that.

Making someone rely on another person for a phone is just another way to control them. They probably fear I’ll call or alert someone about something. Not sure what the issue is. I don’t have a family that claims me, and as far as I can tell, no one else is hunting for me after the whole Devils Damned kidnapping. I should be free to go.

And yet I’m still in a cage. Even if it’s a decent-sized house, with an adequate television and food to keep me from getting bored or starving.