by Nashoda Rose
He pulled his hand away. “Ream’s going to want to shelter her. He isn’t thinking straight. He lost her once and he won’t lose his sister again.”
Yeah, he was going to want her back at the farm. I had no clue about this stuff, but hiding her away was not the way to go. “I’m not letting her go.”
Logan half-smiled. “No, I suspect not. I’m behind you and so is Kite. Ream is just scared, but he also saw you with her. I think it’s hit him that she trusts you.”
I glanced down at the vulnerable girl in my arms. Yeah, she did. And for Haven, I knew that was huge. “Logan.” I had to tell him. “Bad timing, but that chick texted me. At least I think it’s her.”
“Luke know?”
“I told Roman tonight.” And he would tell Luke, so I was sure they were already trying to locate her. She’d managed to get my cell number and that meant this was escalating. Fuck, not good. It was never a good time, but I didn’t worry about shit like that. Now I did because I didn’t want Haven affected by my shit.
“I’ll talk to him. See what he’s found out.” He nodded to Haven. “You look after her. The police are gone. Kite told them it was the girl, Lena, screaming because you kicked her out and she’d made one hell of a show leaving the building. Luke had the lobby security video and verified. The police didn’t file a report. Just a disturbance.” Logan had this God-like aura about him, part of the reason why he rocked the stage so well; he owned it. He was steady and confident, and the only time he lost his cool was when he was fighting to get his girl, Emily, back.
I called out to him before he walked out the door, “She’s going to be okay, right?” Logan knew about bad. His mother had been a sex slave to Logan’s father in Mexico.
Logan frowned, his hand on the doorknob. “I don’t know. Depends on her.” He nodded to me. “You’re good for her. And Ream knows it, too. He’s just ignored it until tonight.”
After Logan left, I watched Haven sleep for a long time, until I finally drifted off.
I woke with my arms cramped and tingling from being in the same position underneath her shoulders for hours. I gently lifted Haven from my arms and she didn’t wake, which I was guessing was partially due to the pill. Careful not to disturb her, I crawled out of bed, grabbed a grey throw blanket up on the shelf of the closet and laid it on top of her. I leaned over and kissed her temple then quietly left the room.
I had a piss, brushed my teeth, then walked downstairs. Logan, Kite, and Ream were sitting out on the terrace, their heads together, obviously trying to be quiet. I guessed the girls were in bed in the guest room.
I glanced at the time on the oven—three in the morning. We were used to the late nights though and seeing the guys still awake was nothing unusual. I grabbed a bottle of water and walked out to join them.
“How is she?” Ream asked before I even had the screen door slid all the way across. It was cold out, but the glass partitions on the balcony blocked some of the wind.
“Sleeping. Don’t think she’ll wake for a while.” I sat beside Logan, stretched out my legs and cracked the seal of the bottle.
“I’ll take her back to the farm tomorrow.” Ream was pretty calm as he said it.
Logan said, “That’s her choice.”
Kite nodded.
“She’s been fine at the farm. She lives here one month and look what’s happened.”
I remained quiet because there was nothing to talk about. I’d support Haven’s choice, not anyone else’s.
Kite put his beer down on the glass table a little hard and the sound clanged. “Because she hid there. Do you want her to do that the rest of her life? Because that’s what’s going to happen. Something triggered what happened tonight and this isn’t the first time.”
Ream stilled. “What?”
Shit. He was going to tell him. “Kite,” I warned.
“No, he needs to know.” Kite flicked his teeth over the stud in the tip of his tongue. “Nothing this serious, but it’s happened. At the farm the day before you came home and again at the party we went to.” Ream’s face tightened. “We have no idea what has gone down while we were on tour. She runs too much and we all know why.”
Ream quietly turned his beer bottle, something he regularly did when he was upset. “I know that, but she won’t talk about it.” Ream looked at me as if he was assessing me and then his shoulders sagged. I saw it in his face, the half-lidded eyes and the bottle stopped turning, and he was giving in to the possibility that Haven and I were close. “Has she talked to you?”
“No, but if she did, I wouldn’t be telling her shit to you. Even if you are her brother.”
Ream tensed and glared, super pissed-off, then he let it go and nodded because he knew I was right. “Yeah.” He got it. I may not protect Haven the way he did, but I’d protect her my way, and there was no chance I’d break the trust we’d built. “But you can tell me what happened tonight.”
I picked at the label of my water. Yeah, I could give him that. “It was like a grenade went off inside her.” I crumbled part of the label between my thumb and finger into a ball and tossed it. “I was talking to her, but she didn’t hear me or see me. Her eyes glazed over and . . . fuck, she just started screaming.”
Ream swore beneath his breath.
My stomach cramped as I thought about her kicking and screaming in my arms, and nothing I did or said got through to her. “She wasn’t here. You know? Like she was somewhere else and she had to get away or something.” She’d begged and pleaded. I tapped my hand on the side of table thinking. “She said it was her fault. Do you know who Charlie is?”
“No.” Ream held his head in his hands, his fingers digging into his scalp then dragging through his hair until he placed his palms flat on the table. When he spoke, it was muffled by the emotion ripping through him. “I’m telling you this because I think you need to know. After tonight . . . it’s important you know why I want her with me back at the farm. Why she needs help. And this, I’m guessing, is only part of what she’s suffered.
“She pretends to be strong. No, she is strong as hell, but she can’t be alone in this any longer.” Ream looked at each of us. “She was raped. Sixteen years old. Fuck, it was more than that . . . violated over and over again and I didn’t see it.” He kicked the table leg.
“The guy Gerard shot her up with heroin . . . that’s how she got addicted.” My heart thudded and tension gripped my insides. “He gave it to her and then . . .” When Ream looked up, our eyes met and there was so much anguish there that it was haunting. He never told me any of this and now I saw why. “I don’t even know how long it was happening for. But she lost weight, withdrew, skipped school.” He hesitated. “One night it all went down. She was fucked up on heroin and I saw the marks on her arm and freaked.” Ream slowly shook his head back and forth. “He was in her room and I killed him. Took a marble statue and slammed it into his head until there was nothing left but blood and shards of bone.”
I shoved my chair away, and stood, walking over to the railing. My hands curled around the metal bar. The roar rushing through me was like a tsunami churning the raging molecules into volcanic pellets of destruction.
“That’s when we left. Lived on the streets a while, then in that old lady Urma’s shed. The one who left us the cottage in her will. But Haven . . .” His voice cracked. “ . . . she was too far gone. Lost. Broken. I didn’t know how to help her. We were sixteen with no money and her addiction pushed her over the edge.
“Don’t know where she got the drugs from, probably some pimp who was going to make her one of his girls once she was indebted to him. She overdosed a number of times and I had to take her to the hospital. We’d get out as quickly as possible before children’s services were called. But the last time . . . a doctor came out and told me she’d died.”
It wasn’t long after that Ream came to live with us and he was seriously screwed up for a while.
“She needs professional help,” Kite said.
“
I know that, but she won’t go. She won’t talk about it,” Ream said.
I heard the scrape of a chair and turned as Ream got up. He looked at me for a second then did something I never expected. “I don’t know what it is between you two, but I know it’s something. She trusts you.” He took a deep breath and I knew this was hard for him. He knew my past, and my track record with chicks sucked. But there was resignation in his eyes and maybe he was getting that to me, Haven wasn’t just a chick. She’d become my friend and I cared about her. No, it was more than that. I loved her, but that was not something Ream needed to hear right now.
Ream strode over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “I love her,” he said.
“I know.”
“Thanks. For what you did tonight.”
“I’d do anything for her.”
Ream paused a second, then nodded and went inside.
Logan had obviously waited until Ream left before he said, “We have another issue.”
Kite shifted and his chair scraped the cement floor. “What’s up?”
“Received a few messages,” I said.
Kite’s brows rose. “That Tammy girl?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know for sure. At breakfast with Ream and Kat, I had the first one. Some rambling about sex. Another one before we went to Avalanche about me liking to fuck whores.” I shut my phone off when Kite and I were at Avalanche, but when I checked, there were three more, all explicitly sexual.
“Your mom or dad give it out?” Kite asked.
I shook my head. But fuck, you couldn’t keep anything private anymore.
Logan tagged his water bottle. “Bad timing.”
I nodded. “This crap with Tammy cannot touch Haven.”
“It won’t,” Kite said. “Go, be with her. We’ll worry about the rest.”
“Thanks.” I squeezed him on the shoulder as I walked by.
I went back upstairs and carried Haven to her bedroom, not wanting her to wake up in Kite’s bed, then lay beside her and fell asleep with my arms wrapped around her.
I WOKE SMOTHERED in weighted heat. My eyes flew open with panic thinking I was back at the club, but I immediately recognized the tatted arms curled around me. His breath lightly caressed the nape of my neck with each exhale while his heart beat against my back, steady and rhythmic.
Soothing.
Comforting.
Why was Crisis sleeping in my bed—?
I sucked in a lung full of air as it slammed into me. I choked back the strangled cry, tears filling my eyes. Last night. Oh, God, last night I broke. The buried particles of me broke through.
Crisis and Kite saw it happen.
My throat was raw and I knew what it was from—screaming.
A tear slid down my cheek and landed on Crisis’ arm, darkening the ink as it soaked in.
I stiffened when his hand reached for mine and linked our fingers together. He rested them on my abdomen and gently squeezed. I was desperate to crawl away, to run and hide, find a place to build up my shield so I could forget and be strong again. That was my strength when I was held captive, to shield myself from what was happening—numbness. But now . . . I knew where I’d find strength. Letting those I cared about in.
“It’s going to be okay,” Crisis whispered, his voice vibrating against my neck. He kissed the back of my head, and for a few seconds, I took in his words and believed them. Reality was there was a chance I’d never repair.
“What if it’s not?” Losing Charlie lived inside me like a rusted chunk of metal ready to slice me open if I took a wrong step.
He was quiet and Crisis rarely had nothing to say. His leg shifted and brushed against mine and I should’ve wanted to get away, but with Crisis I didn’t. There was something deeper in him that I trusted. And right now, I needed that.
“We find a way.”
He said “we” and it was as if a thousand pounds lifted off my shoulders. I wasn’t alone. I never had been, but I’d made it that way. Crisis had been there all along, building something I didn’t even realize, but it was brick by brick until I stood within his encompassing strength and trust.
“Okay.” With that one word, I gave him me.
There was a comforting silence as we laid together, and it was us letting one another in. Trusting. Accepting and giving at the same time. Woven hands interlocked us.
It was going to be okay.
I sighed and, in response, he kissed me on the head again.
“My brother.”
“Yeah, he’s here. He’s worried.”
Shit, that was the last thing I wanted. This was what I’d been trying to protect him from.
“He’s worried about you, but he’s okay, Haven. He’s even accepted this. I think he just wants to know that you’re safe.”
I shifted around so I lay on my back and Crisis moved up on his elbow, so he could look down at me. “Meaning?”
With his teeth, he played with his lower lip, his eyes on our hands that were still linked, fingers lightly stroking. “He’s okay with me being here with you. He knows we’re friends and I think he’s realized that.”
Oh. That was good.
He fell back against the pillow and let my hand go as he put his arm across his eyes. “Jesus, I was scared, Haven.”
And maybe this was why I connected with Crisis. He was real. There was no pretending that he was okay with what happened. That it hadn’t freaked him out.
I wanted to say ‘me too,’ but admitting I was terrified was too hard to say aloud yet.
I was swimming in an ocean of black, unable to find my way back to shore. I didn’t know whether I’d sink to the bottom or if I’d have enough strength to tread water until shore found its way to me. But I had a life jacket. I had Crisis. And if I sank to the bottom, I knew I’d lift back up—to him.
I took a deep breath and when I exhaled, my chest quivered. The memories I’d compartmentalized in parts of my mind, where I’d locked them up, had escaped. But there was always a trigger. A key that could open up the compartments and set them free. Maybe it was time I gave the key to someone.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Wherever you can, baby.” He lay on his side, his head on his arm above me, fingers gently caressing my hair.
I swallowed. “I don’t want to lose you. Or my brother. He’s suffered so much. I can’t do that to him again.”
“Haven. You’ll never lose him—ever. Your brother loves you more than anything.”
“But when he hears—”
“Shsh.” He kissed the top of my head like he always did. “No matter what happened or what happens, he will never stop loving you. And yeah, it’s going to hurt him, but it’s not your fault. You have to get that out of your head. I see the guilt in your eyes right now.”
“I didn’t fight Gerard.”
He stiffened against me and his voice took on a harder tone. “Ream, told us last night about him. About the drugs. The rape. It wasn’t your fault, baby. Jesus. You’re here. You’re alive and you survived. That’s fighting.”
I had no words. He knew about Gerard and the drugs. When I was at my weakest, scared and lost. “He killed him for me.”
“Yeah, he told us that, too. Gerard deserved it.”
He waited. I waited. And then I opened my hand and gave him my pieces. “The gun . . . I carry it because it ended the nightmare. It’s what I used to kill Alexa and—” I stopped, thinking about it, trying to put my thoughts together. “It’s my safety. My truth of what I did and what I’m capable of. It’s a reminder of who I’ve become. A symbol I guess.”
“Who do you think you’ve become?”
I didn’t know. Not in words. I’d killed. I didn’t let anyone in. I was cold. I hid behind a wall. But I did things, things I hated. “I don’t know.”
His rhythmic touch on my head calmed me and I closed my eyes as I spoke. “Alexa . . . in some fucked-up way I was her connection to Ream. She was obsessed with him when we were kids. Then when
he was gone, it was like she took it out on me, but tried to love me at the same time. Just a wrong kind of love.” I took a few deep breaths before I told him about the cage she used to put me in. I felt him stiffen and he swore beneath his breath. “Alexa told Olaf I was the one who killed Gerard so he wouldn’t go after Ream and kill him.”
“He wouldn’t kill you?”
“No. I was money to him. Ream was dangerous being with us as he got older.”
“Too protective.”
I nodded. “Olaf knew it was Ream all along. There was no chance I could’ve lifted that statue. But it was easier for him to let Ream live knowing he had something over me while Ream thought I was dead.”
“He’d go after Ream.”
I nodded. “So, I didn’t fight Olaf. I survived.”
“Jesus, baby.” He closed his eyes a second and I saw the pain in his expression. “He’s gone. Deck’s men killed him.”
I nodded. “Yeah. But they needed information out of him first.” Crisis’s hand stilled on my hair. “About a club.”
He leaned toward me and pressed a light kiss on my forehead.
“Vic found it and called me. That’s when I went running for three hours and Luke called you.” I inhaled a quivering breath. “Every Saturday night, I was blindfolded and taken there. There were other girls at the club, but I never spoke to them, wasn’t allowed to. I was put in a room alone.” I swallowed as my throat tightened. “I danced. Stripped. And after . . . I was taken back to my room and waited. They’d . . . the men would bid on the girls at the end of the night.”
I know he was trying to stay calm and relaxed, but Crisis tensed around me and his heart rate picked up. But I had to keep going. He needed everything and I was beginning to realize this was for me, not him.
“Highest bidder got us for an hour. Olaf told me I always went for the most. I was known as an exclusive, meaning Saturday nights only. It drew higher bids plus . . . the men got to know I fought. I always fought when I had the chance. I couldn’t help myself. No matter how long it happened, I couldn’t stop.”
“Oh, fuck, baby. No.”