Page 116 of Twisted Fate

I should’ve known she’d gone into some kind of shock induced melt-down.

I should’ve known that just by looking at her when she showed up to tell us what had happened.

She twitched in her sleep, making me sigh.

Caden had told me not long after she’d moved in with him and Josie that she’d had nightmares a lot, but they’d stopped when we all started sleeping with her.

She whined in her sleep as if she was in pain, so I shuffled further into her and tightened my hold around her until she fell silent again.

We could have lost her.

We could have fucking lost her.

That hit me like a bucket of ice.

I’d manage to get through life without Slash, despite the fucking pain, but how would I cope if it had been Rory?

I wouldn’t have.

At all.

I watched her until the sun started to rise, and then I watched her some more.

She was beautiful.

Even her damage was fucking beautiful.

I stared at the scars on her shoulder from where Skeeter had sliced her in the past.

I continued to stare at that part of her until she woke up, fixing a little piece of me when the first thing she did when she opened her pretty blue eyes, was smile at me.

* * *

Rory

“Morning. Pancakes?” Jensen asked gently as I dragged myself into Tyler’s kitchen the next morning.

I frowned as I accepted the coffee from him as he slid it over.

“What are you doing here? Didn’t you stay with Lukas last night?”

He gave me a small shrug as he placed a few pancakes on a plate and pushed it towards me.

“Yeah, I did.”

“So, why are you here so early? Where’s Lukas?” I asked slowly, watching him physically flinch, telling me something had gone wrong. “Jense, talk to me. What’s up?”

He leaned against the bench casually, meeting my gaze head on.

“We had a fight this morning.”

“Over?”

“You.”

“What for this time?”

“I wanted to come and check on you but he didn’t want me to. He wants me to stay out of all of this,” he replied, a hint of anger in his tone.