“I think you really need stitches, Ryder.” I managed that, a haggard whisper issued at the top of his head as I focused on the wound that was two inches long, gaping enough that I could see the meat inside. And judging by whatever had caused it, I would worry that he might have a concussion, too.
But Ryder didn’t seem concerned with himself at all right then.
He curled his hand around my outer thigh, and he tipped his head back to look up at me. I froze there, locked in the grimness of his stare.
“I need to tell you something, Dakota.”
The last time I’d told him that, I was confiding in him that Kayden’s biological father had come on the scene, but I had a hunch whatever Ryder was about to tell me was so much worse than that.
That it might be something we couldn’t figure out or overcome.
Because devastation was written there.
Complete obliteration.
“What is it?” I wanted to take the question back because I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to hear the answer when Ryder pushed to his feet.
The man came to tower over me.
“You need to sit down and rest.”
His head barely shook. “I need you to listen to me, Dakota.”
The words were so low they crawled over me like the scattering of bugs. Chills lifted, and a cold dread slipped down my spine and sank to the pit of my stomach.
“I always knew that I wasn’t good enough. A fool to take a chance with you.”
He came closer.
Hovering.
I managed to mumble, “That’s not true.”
“It’s true, Dakota. You asked me what I was in, and I couldn’t tell you because I was trying to solve it myself. Take care of it. End it.”
I blinked, fighting the way my knees felt weak.
“You asked if I was still using.”
That cold dread sloshed, and I couldn’t speak, I just stood there waiting for him to deliver whatever blow he was going to inflict.
Because I could already feel it pressing down. A frenzy of desperation that clawed between us.
“It wasn’t a lie. I’ve been clean since I was twenty-two.”
Relief gusted, and I exhaled, but it clipped off when he pressed on, his confession so quiet, like he was offering me a secret and he was terrified someone else was going to hear. “But what I never got free of was that life. I became indebted to this small-time dealer when I was seventeen.”
Shivers rolled, dread that crashed through my being.
Ryder only pressed closer, and my back hit the wall. “He asked me for one favor, and I was the dumb fucking kid who fell into that trap. Wound in his chains so quickly that I didn’t know what hit me. I tried for years to get free of him, Dakota. For us. So we could have a chance. And every fucking time, he’s been one step ahead of me. Manipulating me. Threatening me. Tightening the shackles that chain me.”
My throat closed off, and I swore the room spun.
Ryder’s tongue swept across his chapped lips. “But small-time crooks never want to stay that way. They’re fucking greedy, and he pushed that greed on me. He made me a deal when I was twenty-six.”
Twenty-six.
Dread slithered through my consciousness. Vipers slipping beneath my skin.
It was the summer I’d come back. The summer I’d thought…
“I had to do this big job for him, earn us both a shit-ton of money, then he’d cut me loose.”
I blinked, struggling to process. To understand exactly what he was saying.
“But he double crossed me, Dakota. I got the money, but I also got sucked deeper into his sordid world. He made it clear what would happen to the people I cared about if I ever tried to walk. That I knew I was finished if I even thought about getting away from him.”
Misery flashed through his features.
Guttural and bleak.
On his tongue was a secret so sharp and deep and ugly that I couldn’t ask what he meant. Couldn’t stomach whatever it might be.
“He’s been using my shop as a front, Dakota. For all these fucking years,” he continued, his voice cracking through the confession. “I modify the cars so they can be loaded down with whatever shit he’s trying to get to the East Coast, and it’s on me to drive it there. Meet up with whatever slimy fuck is going to distribute it in that area.”
Disbelief pulled through the disorder, and my breaths turned choppy and shallow.
Fear covered, what he was saying, what this meant.
I tried to blink through it.
Process it.
This man who I loved. He was a…drug trafficker? Is that what he was saying?