Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 95906 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95906 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 480(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Just like I hadn’t grieved for what had happened to the little boy who’d lost his innocence in that dark alley.
It was a good fifteen minutes before Micah quieted against my chest. My shirt was soaked through with tears, but I didn’t care. I tried to gauge if he had fallen asleep, but it was hard to tell. I didn’t know for sure until he asked a question I hadn’t been expecting.
“Who were you fighting for that night?”
Chapter Sixteen
Micah
At my question, Con went quiet for so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer me, and I nearly told him to forget I’d asked when he said, “My brother, Lex.”
“How many brothers do you have?” I asked.
“Four,” he said. “I met King and Lex in foster care and the three of us met Vaughn and Luca when we were teens. Vaughn and Luca are actual brothers.”
“From the way you talk about them, it sounds like you’re all ‘actual’ brothers,” I suggested.
I didn’t need to be looking at Con to hear the smile in his voice as he said, “Yeah, I guess we are.”
“So you needed the prize money to give to Lex?”
When Con didn’t answer me, I pulled away from him and turned around so I was facing him. It meant I couldn’t be in his embrace anymore, but I needed to be able to read his expressions. I crossed my legs while Con pulled his up and leaned back against the headboard. “You don’t have to—”
Con shook his head and I fell silent. With what he’d already told me about his past, it was hard to believe that there could be anything in his life that would be more difficult to talk about, but it was clear from his expression that there was such a thing.
“King and I met Lex when he was pretty young. He was a sickly kid who wasn’t able to stick up for himself. King and I were older and we’d both been in the system for a while so we knew how to play the game.”
“What happened to put you in there?” I asked.
“My mom died when I was nine. One of her boyfriends beat her to death.”
The words were spoken so casually that if I hadn’t been looking at him, I would have believed he’d been completely unaffected by the event. But pain flashed in his eyes so I knew it was likely another situation where he’d learned to tamp down his emotions.
“There was no one to take you in?” I asked. “What about your grandparents? Isn’t this their house?”
“It is… was. My mom left home when she was sixteen. Life out here just couldn’t keep up with her. She went to Vegas, partied, met a guy, and followed him to LA. Then she met another guy, partied, and followed him to New York. She was pregnant with me by the time she was eighteen. The moving from city to city stopped but the partying never did and eventually she hooked up with the wrong guy. My grandparents had no clue where she was or that she’d even been killed. I didn’t know anything about them so when CPS found me, I couldn’t tell them more than my name. I eventually managed to find my grandparents on my own but didn’t get a lot of time with them before they passed. They left me the house but by then I’d already made a life for myself in New York. It never felt right to sell it, so I use it for other things.”
“Like training,” I offered.
Con nodded. “It’s a good place to get off the grid for a while and clear my head.”
“So why did Lex need the money?” I asked.
“He had a lot of health problems growing up. It wasn’t until he was in his early teens that he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. The late diagnosis meant a lot of damage was done to some of his organs, including his kidneys. By the time he was sixteen he was on the transplant list for a new kidney. Daily dialysis kept him alive but every time a kidney became available, there would be all this red tape to deal with. Truth is, I think CPS and their insurance company were just stringing the whole thing along so they wouldn’t have to pay for the procedure. King and I both got tested to see if we were a match.”
“Were you?” I asked, holding my breath in anticipation.
Con nodded. He reached for my hand at the same time that he lifted his shirt to expose his right side. I tried to ignore the tanned skin and tight abs and focused on the tattoo he was showing me. I’d seen the tattoo on television and the internet when he’d been in a match but hadn’t paid it much attention since it was just some Chinese letters. But now as my fingertips came in contact with his hot skin, my body began to respond so it ended up taking several long seconds to realize why Con had put my fingers in that particular spot. The dark ink from the tattoo was hiding a small scar.