Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
She touched my jaw as she emphasized it, and my lungs pressed full with her beauty, with that fiery, sweet loyalty that made her extraordinary.
Just like my mother had said.
“Told you fighting is in my blood.”
She barely flinched, but I still felt it, felt her spirit prepare to be led in a direction that would likely send her running out my door. “You did.”
“First time it happened, I was in middle school. These kids…they were always fuckin’ pushing me. Rubbing it in my face that we were poor. That my father was a drunk. Wasn’t like I didn’t show up at school with black eyes half the time.”
“Milo.” Sympathy rushed through her expression.
My head shook to cut her off. If she wanted me to get this out, I was just going to have to spill it.
“One of them called my mom a whore, which seriously? My mom’s a fuckin’ saint. That was it. I lost it. Beat the fuck out of that kid. It felt so damn good.”
My teeth ground when I admitted it.
When I gave voice to the violence that seethed underneath.
Barely held.
Barely constrained.
She wanted my darkness? I was going to give it to her. Make her understand. I was sure she still didn’t have the first clue what she was getting into.
“Well, I think I want to kick that kid’s ass, too.” Her voice was choppy with affection, blue eyes racing over me like she was trying to see through the veil, which apparently, she didn’t have to look too hard because when it came to her, there was no denying her.
“It got worse as I got older. Fought so much in high school, they finally expelled me. It was after my mom left my father.”
I paused, an onslaught of ugly memories impaling me. “My father was this nasty bastard who took his misery out on my mom and me whenever he got the chance. As I got older, I did my best to take the blows for her, but I swear, every fuckin’ time he hit me, this monster inside me grew. It got to the point where I think I craved it…him hitting me so I could return it. When I was sixteen, I came home one night to him hitting on my mom. I beat him so bad I don’t know how he ever got up again. That was the night my mom finally cracked. Knew we couldn’t stay there anymore. She and I took off while he was still bleeding on the floor, and we came here to Redemption Hills.”
Regret blistered hot across my flesh. “But it was like once I stopped having to fight him, I needed somewhere else to turn the aggression.”
She started to say something, but her questions stalled out, like she knew I wasn’t ready to answer them.
Not yet.
“I got involved in some bad stuff, Tessa.” Barely was able to force the admission out.
“My grandparents were still alive when we came back here. There was this shitty trailer sitting on this property, and they gave it to us, not that they had much else than the land to their names, either. Mom and I made it the best home that we could, but it was still there, Tessa. The rage. This feeling that threatened to boil over. We were broke as fuck, so when I was presented the opportunity, I took it.”
“The opportunity?” Tessa’s voice was thin, held in concern, but without any judgment.
My hand tightened on her hip, and I focused on the way her bare body felt against mine.
The warmth.
The goodness.
The hope.
The sun rising on a darkened day.
Regret churned through my insides. Hate and violence and thirst for retribution seething underneath.
“I’d met this guy. Stefan. I guess he’d seen something in me, and he took me under his wing. He started having me do random odd jobs. Gave me money. Made me feel like I was something more than the piece of shit my father told me I was. Treated me like his family, and that’s the way I’d come to think of him. I’d respected him, or really, maybe I’d just wanted to be like him. At the beginning, it was all good. I was already in thick when it started to become clear that he ran this underground shit. Drugs. Prostitution. Gambling. Fighting, which looking back now, I know that’s why he’d singled me out. What he’d wanted me for. He’d seen that potential in me.”
“Like Fight Club?”
A rough chuckle scraped free. “If you mean a bunch of assholes beating the shit out of each other in a basement, then yeah. But it was different. Money was on the line. It was all bred of greed. It was ugly, Tessa. Dirty.”
She gulped. “People got hurt.”
“Yeah.” The word was thick.
“Like…how bad?”
“Bad.”
Her fingers were back to running over that word. “Have you…killed someone?”