AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I could feel the plea pinch my face. “What does that mean?”
Hesitation brimmed in him, and I could almost hear his secrets bashing against the confines of where he kept them chained.
“Please…you’re scaring me, River.”
He exhaled a shattered breath before his eyes dropped closed as he squeezed my face tighter. “You asked me about the tattoo me and my brothers have on the back of our hands.”
Dread pooled in the pit of my stomach, and when he finally opened his eyes again, I could see all the way to the depths. To the torment and shame. All the way down to the corruption and immorality.
The second he lowered his walls, I could feel it ooze from him.
“Told you it was a pact we made. That we’d always be there for each other. Have each other’s backs. But it goes way deeper than that.”
“Tell me.” It wheezed from my mouth.
He warred for one anxious second before I could see him come to a resolution.
See the walls drop.
This man exposing himself to me.
“You already know we started out rough. On the streets.”
“Because you protected Raven.” I thought I was begging it because I needed that to be his reason.
River’s laugh was hollow. “Yeah, Charleigh, I got Raven to safety. Got her out of that house. Hidden from the violence. But that violence still lived in me. My hatred for the monster who’d hurt her. Knowing he was still alive after what he’d done to her? Knowing he could do it to someone else? I waited a year…a fucking year that piece of shit got to breathe when he should’ve been six feet underground. But I went back, and I made sure he would never get the chance to hurt anyone ever again.”
Sickness coiled my stomach.
I’d known immediately, though, hadn’t I?
That he was dangerous?
I’d tasted the wickedness that emanated from his being.
And still, I remained there, pinned. My eyes were wide as I watched the horrors play out through his expression.
I couldn’t speak, and River continued, “After I got her out of that house, we went into the city. Into LA. We were basically homeless, staying in whatever pit we could. Met Theo, Cash, and Kane there. All of us were running from something. We survived the best way we could, doing whatever odd jobs we could find and stealing the rest that we needed to get by. That was until Trent took us under his wing. He set us up with a safe place to stay. I patched into his MC because it was clear from the start that was where we belonged. The rest of my brothers followed.”
River paused, gauging my reaction. My fingers were curled into his shirt at his stomach, my breaths harsh and shallow as he finally gave me access to the places I’d known he’d kept concealed.
“World we lived in was rough,” he said through the strain. “Full of crime and misdeeds. We were surrounded by it night and day. Onenight, I was walking the street, and I heard this woman screaming from her apartment above, and a man was shouting as he clearly was beating her. I tried to keep moving. Mind my own goddamn business, but I couldn’t force myself to walk away. I climbed the fire-escape stairs and went in through the window. She was just fucking…bloody, and I knew if I left her there, she’d end up dead. Maybe not that night, but one day, she would. So I ended that fucker right then and there.”
His jaw ticked, the muscle feathering as he fought a wave of aggression, while I struggled to breathe.
To make sense of what he was saying.
His voice softened as his brow pinched. “The woman, she was crying and crying, whispering that she didn’t know what she was going to do. Stuck in that fucked up cycle of relying on someone who would only hurt you. So, I took her with me, and me and my crew set her up in another state. Helped her start a new life. MC was running drugs and guns at the time, so we had plenty of cash to make it happen.”
My mind spun with what he was telling me.
The brutality up against the generosity.
The kindness up against the barbarity.
My lungs squeezed as I tightened my fists in his shirt, my pulse thundering with each detail that he gave.
He tilted his head back to be sure I was fully in his line of sight. The severe cut of his jaw flexed with the clench of his teeth, his carved cheeks hard, his sharp brow cut in this beautiful defiance so fierce that I wasn’t sure how to make sense of it.
