Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Gage found me in a halfway house, hiding from half the city. I’d shot three inches above my mother’s heart and watched the last air leave her in an uneven hiss, then spent five years in and out of juvie. On the day I met Gage, I’d been out exactly six hours. I didn’t trust anyone. Not the system, not the other girls in my dorm, sure as hell not the man who appeared out of nowhere.
At first, I thought it was a joke, another prank by some girl with a meaner streak than mine. But then he told me things, things I had never told another soul, and I knew this man understood me on a level I could never fully understand. He knew about my mother, about the drugs I had been selling, about the people after me, about the darkest parts I thought only I knew.
He had a way of taking up the whole room; I couldn’t look away. At first, I thought he was like every other MC guy who rolled through looking for a good time with the girls here. Gage was different. He didn’t bother with jokes or borrowed charm. Instead, he started with the last day I saw my mother alive, and how he’d watched the ambulance pull away with me in it, and how it took him a decade and a lot of ugly actions to find me again.
“You don’t remember me,” he said. I’d tried to squint the memory into place, but nothing stuck.
Confusion washed over me.
“Should I?”
He just nodded and handed me a candied orange slice from the pocket of his cut. “You were ten the last time we met. You bit me so hard I thought you were going to take my thumb clean off. Thought I was a predator, instead I was a curious teen who lived next door, one that you never noticed.”
I’d stared at it, the cheap cellophane crinkling like static in my hand. “I don’t like oranges. Too sour.”
He winked at me, then took the slice and tossed it into his mouth. “One day you will.”
I’d like to say I fell in love with him then and there. I didn’t. What I fell in love with was his certainty. How he never flinched, even when I shoved at him, even when I accused him of wanting to fix me because he was bored or horny, or because he wanted to be some white knight. I tested him like a cough rattling my lungs, even after he moved me out of the halfway house and into his place. Even after he tattooed my name over his heart in Gothic black and let me design it myself.
He wasn’t kind, not the way people mean when they use the word, but he was honest. God, he was honest. There wasn’t a single moment in our time where he ever held the truth from me, even when it scared me. But the thing about dangerous men is that sometimes they’re dangerous to themselves, too.
The world outside never stopped being sharp.
He never asked for much. Just that I keep quiet about certain things, don’t hang around the bar when he’s working deals, keep my rage tucked away for special occasions. But I always knew Gage had secrets. There was always another ghost to chase, and most nights he woke up slick with sweat, shaking, staring holes through the ceiling. He’d let me talk him down but never let me all the way in.
He keeps a guard over his heart, and even for me, with my name sitting right above it, that guard never goes down.
Six years built fast under the weight of that kind of need. I managed the books for the club, juggled Gage’s moods, trained new old ladies, and kept to myself. He trusted me with the things he couldn’t trust anyone else with. It didn’t matter that most nights I felt less like a wife and more like an upper-class sweetbutt. I’d take it because part of me knew I was only alive because he kept choosing me, day after day. If I loved him, maybe I could survive anything else.
Just maybe.
But when the MC started getting involved in things they couldn’t control, everything shifted. His mood became stiffer, shorter, and if I dared ask questions, he would make sure I didn’t. Our love vanished into hatred; my throat became familiar with the pressure of his fingers wrapped around it. Danger was the only thing that felt like home to us until it finally broke everything open.
And now, now I lay in a hospital bed, Gage at the door, standing so still, his eyes fixed on Kael in a way that terrifies me. Kael doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch—he keeps his feet planted firmly on the ground, his fingers twitching by his side, ready for a fight.