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There’s pain in his eyes, and it plucks at my heartstrings, which is ridiculous because he’s still one of my kidnappers. But sympathy be damned, I guess we’re doing this. “Wanna tell me about it?” I ask.
He opens the door to my room, and I go in. He lingers in the doorway, his arms crossed as he watches me intently.
“Do you really want to know, Ariana?”
Up here, it’s my real name again. I nod with confidence as I sit on the windowsill, screw still in my pocket. “I do, yes.”
He steps into the room, taking a deep breath before speaking. “Until a few years ago, I helped the Sweet Mother of Mercy orphanage as well as I could. Some of it in the way of donations, money, food drives and charity events, that kind of stuff,” Raylan says. “I came up in the system, so I knew what those kids were going through, and I cared about them. I wanted them to have a better shot at life, to know that they weren’t forgotten. People don’t exactly line up to adopt children over the age of five.”
“They don’t?”
He shakes his head once. “Most couples want their adopted children to be as young as possible so they can raise them properly so that they can mold their habits and personalities. The trouble with older kids is that they come with vivid trauma responses: PTSD, uncontrolled rage, attitude, you get the point. Anyway, I looked after them and the nuns in charge of the place as best I could. One day, a town councilman came along to let the sisters know that the orphanage would be closing down.”
“Oh no …”
“Yeah. Guess who that councilman was?”
“Oh.”
Perhaps I should be more surprised. I knew about some of his back-door deals, the hands he shook, and the people he accepted money from—people who would raise eyebrows if the public ever got wind of it. But I never gave it too much thought. As long as he got elected, I believed that he would use the office to do good. Once my father took office, he’d work for the people. That was the original idea, anyway.
Apparently, he’d lied to me as much as he’d lied to his constituents.
“He promised he’d get the city to invest in a community center in lieu of the orphanage. The building was old, condemned, yadda, yadda. They had reason to tear it down, I guess,” Raylan continues, and I listen in absolute silence as he tells me all about how my father—the almighty and self-righteous Henry David—lied through his teeth in order to get as little resistance as possible while he snatched that property from under the church’s feet. “I don’t know how he did it in the first place, but the city bought back the land.”
“And they never built the community center that my father promised.”
“No, they did not.”
Then he goes on to tell me about how he tried his best to keep an eye on the kids after the orphanage was shut down. They all went to different foster homes. They vanished into the system and slipped through the cracks. Many of them were never to be seen or heard from again, except a handful who remained in Everton after they came of age.
“Manny is the sole survivor,” Raylan says. “The rest of them died over the past couple of years. One died today. Manny’s friend. He overdosed.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, my voice trembling with emotion.
I understand now. I can almost feel his pain coursing through my veins, and I’d give anything to be able to touch him. As if summoned, my brain shuts down, and my feet carry me away from the window. Alarms flare up in my head, but I can’t do anything about it. Raylan gives me a surprised look when he sees me coming over, yet he doesn’t move an inch.
Instead, he holds his breath as I put my arms around his waist. What in God’s green earth am I doing, hugging my kidnapper? It doesn’t matter. It feels too good to let go, and I feel him instantly relaxing as he responds to my embrace. His arms come around me like the loving branches of a tree, his warmth filling me to the brim as I quietly breathe him in.
He shudders ever so slightly, his cheek pressed against mine.
Heat spreads through my core, my heart expanding as I realize I actually feel at peace with Raylan around. To be perfectly honest with myself, I don’t feel scared when I’m with Sky or Kendric, either. Despite the circumstances, I find my heart jumping for completely different reasons whenever I’m close to them.
“I’m genuinely sorry,” I say to Raylan.
He exhales sharply and pulls back to look at me. The hazel pools of his eyes twinkle with an eerie, sweet familiarity as he cups my face. Before I can stop him, he kisses me, and I lose my senses altogether. I lose my mind and my ability to reason. I can only welcome his lips onto mine, taste him fully, and absorb as much of his grief as I possibly can through this simple yet profound gesture.
It’s not a hungry kiss. It’s not an aggressive kiss.
It’s strangely tender and all-encompassing as if our lips have met before in other lifetimes, in eras long gone. His tongue swirls and plays with mine, and it feels natural, it feels logical. But Raylan soon comes to his senses and puts an end to it just as my pulse is about to go on the maddest of races.
I’m left standing in front of the door as he mutters an apology and leaves.
10
Ariana
They’re not done with showing me what they’re truly about, as I quickly learn over the next few days. Every chance that they get, Sky, Kendric, and Raylan sneak me out of the clubhouse and take me out on their bikes to visit various points crucial Steel Knights activities.
