Page 275 of Boys Who Hunt

“Thank you,” she murmurs, and for the first time since I heard those words, I actually feel my heart squeeze like it’s grateful or something. Weird fucking feeling I’m not used to yet.

“Anything for you,” Max says.

“Don’t be such a fucking simp. I’m doing this for me,” I retort, pulling away.

She snorts. “Of course, you are.”

I grab her throat and pull her close. “You need to be available to me, so I made it happen.”

The excitement in her eyes tells me enough.

“Whew, it’s getting hot in here already,” Max says.

Suddenly, a loud bang downstairs makes us all look up.

“What was that?” Max mutters.

Heath pushes past us and barges out the door to check, so we follow him out.

“SILAS!”

“Oh God, run,” Max mutters as we approach the stairs while Heath starts to bite his nails.

“Who is that?” Ivy asks as we look at the woman with the long black hair barging into the house. Lana Rivera.

Max squeaks. “Oh God, my mother.”

“Silas, what the fuck did you do to my son now?” She steps closer until she’s right in my fucking face. “You’ve been dragging him into your murder sprees?”

“That’s my fault,” Ivy says.

When Max’s mom fixates on Ivy, I block her with my body. “It was my idea to go there in the first place. I take full responsibility.”

“I went along with it on my own accord,” Max says, quaking in his shoes. “I couldn’t let her die.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to involve any of them in my mess,” Ivy says.

“But we just wouldn’t leave her alone,” I say, smirking.

The door cracks open again, and now my mom and dad also barge in, breathing wildly.

“I tried to stop her,” my mom says between breaths.

“She wouldn’t fucking listen to me,” my dad grits. “As usual.”

“I needed to hear this with my own ears,” Max’s mom says.

She glares at Ivy, looking her up and down like she’s inspecting her worth and the weight she carries in the world.

“She’s the girl I told you about,” my dad says. “The one they rescued.”

Lana’s eyes widen and narrow within a fraction of a second. “So … this is her? This is the girl you three killed for?”

“Her name is Ivy,” Max says.

“She needed our help, so we gave it to her,” I say.

“It’s not what you think,” Max mutters.