Hate F*@k: part three Read Online Free PDF Page A

with us getting their blessing to return to Washington, but she’s still wrung out when I whisk her into the car, where our bags are already loaded, and we head straight for the airport.
    Goodbye Florida. I’ll do my best to help you fry Gerome Lively. And if you fail, I’ll kill him myself.

    — —  

    Three mornings later, I run from Hailey’s apartment to the office. Dawn is breaking, it’s cold as balls, and I’m pounding the pavement like it’s to blame for what happened to her.
    Nope. That’s all me. I clench my jaw, owning my responsibility. Hard to pound myself into the ground, though I’m sure as shit going to try.
    I own that I’m probably fucked up. Being abandoned at the age of two by addict parents will do that to a kid. The Parkers were good people—are good people, and that I just thought about them in the past tense proves that I’m not capable of the kind of emotional sensitivity Hailey deserves, and needs after what’s happened to her.
    My adopted parents deserve better, too. I should know, they told me over and over again, until I ran away at sixteen and joined the Navy. Now we live on opposite sides of the continent and I haven’t spoken to them in three years. I get polite cards at Christmas and on my birthday, because they’re good people even if they don’t like me.
    A pigeon lands briefly on the sidewalk in front of me, only to take off again in a huffy flutter of feathers when I don’t slow down. Fuck you, pigeon, I’m rarely likeable. It’s my nature, deal with it.
    When we got back to Washington, I wanted Hailey to come stay at my place, but I knew she wouldn’t.
    “Is my place safe?” she asked me as we drove away from a private gate at Dulles airport. I wanted to lie to her, to tell her she had to stay in my penthouse, but I had to confess to her that I had Wilson convince her downstairs neighbor to move—a fact that did not impress her. But now she has the most secure apartment outside of the White House in all of Washington, D.C., so I don’t care.
    Much. I care a little that how I deal with problems isn’t how she’d want them dealt with. But when she curls into my side, closing her eyes to the outside world, I think maybe she doesn’t know how to deal with the horrors of my world. Maybe she just accepts that I do what needs to be done, even if I don’t like it.
    I stayed home with her the first day. I took her to her office that morning and she made me wait in the reception area while she had a conversation with her boss about taking a leave of absence from her internship.  
    So far, we’ve kept her name out of the media, and our Florida attorneys will keep on the courts to ensure she remains Jane Doe, but that might not last forever.
    Yesterday was my first day back at work. When I returned to her place at the end of the day, she’d baked muffins, but as soon as I walked in the door, she crumbled. I held her as she cried, then I fed her and tucked her onto the couch with me. I rubbed her shoulders and smoothed her hair until she fell asleep.
    I haven’t touched her again since that night in Miami. I want to. God, I want to so much. The urge to lose myself in her body is overwhelming, but each day she seems worse, not better. I can’t take advantage of her.
    I want to tell her I’m working hard to make her world safe again, but that would be a lie. Because of me, her world is never going to be the same.
    I stole that from her, and I don’t know how to make it better.

    — —  

    Tag and Wilson step into my office shortly before lunch and close the door behind them.
    I shove Lively’s file, which I’d been poring over for the hundredth time, looking for something new—anything—and cross my arms. “What?”
    Tag’s face says it all, but he spells out the news anyway. “Lively’s been granted bail.”
    “Fuck.” I punch my desk and stand, pacing to the window. “Restrictions?”
    “Monitoring ankle bracelet. Passport surrendered.”
    I glance