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Riot’s arm brushes against mine, and I glance his way just in time to see his eyes slide away from me. I heard what Trick and the guys were talking about in the woods; they weren’t exactly being quiet, and it's not like it's something that they haven’t brought up before. It’s not me. I’d have the conversation with him if I thought that there was any point in having it, but I just don’t think there is.
Chapter Fifteen
Rafe
He throws me a hell of a lot of mixed signals, like trying to stand as close as possible to me, or finding any excuse to touch me or spend time together, but as soon as I begin to think that maybe he feels something for me, he switches it up and becomes really distant, starts screwing around with loads of girls and makes sure I know that we’re just friends nothing more.
It's incredibly frustrating, but I’m not going to push him on it, not with the shit that he’s gone through in the past. I just hope he figures it out soon. We’ve got so much going on, especially at the moment, that I don’t know if we’ll ever have the time to sort our shit out properly.
Ever would have a field day with this if she was here. I know she would. I often wonder what her life looks like now, and I hope that she’s happy and safe. That’s the most important thing to me, I want her to be safe. I think because our world is so full of darkness and danger, I just hope hers is full of light.
For some reason though, I’ve got this niggling feeling that life isn’t like that for her. Just before she left, her dad was acting really strange, so strange that I remember it now, and I was only small when she moved. I was about to ask her about it because she started to behave differently as well, and I got the feeling that she wanted to tell us something, but the morning that I went over to ask her was the same morning that we found out that she was gone.
That day is imprinted on my memory, and I can see it as clearly as anything; I think the most worrying thing for all of us was that the parents were worried. They had no idea that Ever was about to move, and it came as a shock to them since her mom had just died and her father hadn’t said anything about them leaving.
I overheard the parents talking one evening when they didn’t realize that I was listening, and I know that Kat and Jenny in particular were really worried about her dad. I heard them say that the off feeling they’d always had about him had grown since her mom had died. I didn’t realize that they never liked him.
I never did, but I thought I was just being overly sensitive. Something about him never sat right with me. I hope I’m wrong, though. I hope that she’s okay and happy, and all the misgivings that I have about her father are just skewed memories from a child’s point of view.
Looking around at the party, the crowd is starting to grow around the fight ring again and I frown. She shouldn’t be around this; I mean, how would we protect her from the bad here? There’s a lot of bad. What if we brought her around this, and what happened to Trev happens to her? We’d all lose our shit, and she’d most likely be terrified of us.
Despite the fact that it would be complicated, I don’t think a single one of us wouldn’t want her here with us, and I don’t think our group, this family that we’ve created, will ever feel completely whole again until she’s back with us, and now that Atlas has gone, him too.
My eyes are glued to Jensen, watching as he shifts from foot to foot, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. We’re going to need to watch him closely. Atlas was closest to Jensen, and his just upping and leaving is clearly having an adverse impact on him. Even though he knows that Atlas had to go, I think he’s just worrying about him. We all know he’s not okay, and he's not safe, and Jensen is struggling with that more than the rest of us.
Whereas we’re able to put it to the back of our minds, he’s not able to do the same.
Jensen doesn’t let very many people get close to him, despite how happy-go-lucky he seems, but once he’s let you in, that’s it; you have his ultimate loyalty, and he will have your back in any situation, even the ones of questionable legality, and I think that’s the reason why he’s finding this so hard.
If Atlas had asked him, he would have been there, fought next to him, and had his back. Atlas wouldn’t have even had to fill him in on any of the details. Then again, he wouldn’t have had to tell any of us the details, and we would’ve stood beside him through whatever the fuck it was that he was going through. It’s what family does.
I’m hoping that with some time, Jensen is going to start to find it a lot easier, but until then, we’re all going to have to watch him closely. He's particularly volatile when his darkness is this close to the surface. The fight should help, especially since he’s going up against scum like Ryan, but I might suggest to Trick that we do some jobs a bit closer together so that he can get some more of it out.
We’re also going to need to spar with him, and he’d been doing a lot of sparring with Atlas before he left; I have a feeling that now he’s going to need two of us to spar with him just to make sure that he keeps his skills sharp.
I’ve tuned out of the conversation since no one bothers to talk to me apart from the guys and Trev, and I realize that I should probably tune back in just in case I miss something important.
“Alright, thanks for the information,” Cash says to the guy.
I’m actually surprised that he’s still here. I obviously thought I had been in my head for a lot longer than I actually was. I watch as the guy walks off, and double-check the area, to make sure that there’s nothing that we should be concerned about going on.
“Come on, we need to find Billy and the guys, even more so now,” Trick says grimly.
We stick near the treeline as we search for Billy and his guys. He should be in the middle of the crowd helping to sort shit out, and he usually would be. He would normally be as involved as we are, and his people would never have come to tell us if something was wrong. He’s massively dropped the ball recently. I have no idea how this conversation is going to go down with them. We’re basically telling them that they’re doing a shit job, and I know that it would most likely get our backs up if they said the same thing to us.
Eventually, we find them all sitting around one of the fires.
“Hey guys,” Billy says, a smile on his face but his eyes cautious. “Everything alright?”
Trick crosses his arms over his chest. “No, we had to break up a fight between our guys and yours; that’s the one I messaged about. Trev got stabbed and is on the way to the hospital. Kids are worried about their bets, and we found that out from one of yours because they told us instead of telling you.”
“Is Trev okay?” Billy asks.
The fact that he’s concerned about Trev is actually somewhat reassuring. He’s been so unconcerned about nearly everything recently that I had started to wonder if he’d even give a shit that something happened to Trev.
Trick sighs and nods, “Trev’s going to be fine; it was a glancing blow.” He shares a look with all of us and then adds, “You should also know that several girls are willing to testify against Ryan. It turns out that there were a few that he’s assaulted; they’ve written statements and given us their information. Cash has the email all ready to be sent automatically to the contact we have at the station as soon as the fight is over.”
Anger darkens all of their faces, none of them are happy about Ryan and what he’s been doing since he’s come to town.
