I wanted to pop him in the mouth. I shrugged like he didn’t bother me. “It’s noon on a Thursday. I have work to do, so where else would I be?”
Dismissal huffed from his nose, and he came forward and angled in close.
So close that I was itching to get my hands around his neck and squeeze until he could no longer breathe. “Nothing else going on under this roof matters. Think you know that by now.”
Nash Metalwork Designs was a front.
Inconsequential.
But it fucking meant something to me.
“Whatever you say, Dare.” I drew it out, way too placating like.
Fury burned in his eyes. Asshole hated me as much as I hated him.
“Don’t fuck with me, Ryder. Warning you.”
Rounding around me, he went to the trailer and quickly unlocked it. He dipped inside and started up the car, carefully rolling it back into its spot.
When he climbed out, he tossed the keys at me. “I’ll be in touch about the date for the drop-off.”
“And what if I’m busy?” I said it like a taunt.
He was in my face in a flash, voice curling with a threat. “You want to play games, Ryder? I own you, and I’m getting worried you might have forgotten it.”
I cracked a smirk, but it was resolution that sank down to take possession of my soul. “Nah, Dare. Don’t you worry. I haven’t forgotten anything.”
TWENTY-FOUR
RYDER
SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
“Ryder, where are you going?” Pain curdled his aunt Linda’s voice.
Desperation and fear.
He should have kept walking, but he turned to face where her plea had hit him from behind.
The house had been quiet enough that he’d thought it was safe to sneak out.
He’d thought no one would notice anyway because what the fuck did it matter?
But there she was, wearing a floral nightgown, standing on her stoop and wringing her fingers together.
“Just out,” he said as casually as he could.
Grief broke across her features. “You don’t have to run, Ryder. This is your home now.”
Sorrow left him on a jolt of angry laughter. “My home? It’s not my fucking home.”
He backed away, shaking his head, while she took a step forward. “It could be. You just have to choose for it to be. You have to find peace here.”
Peace?
What was that?
His mind flashed to the big tree beneath the stars and the tiny stream that trickled through.
There’d been peace there, he remembered.
When he’d go there while his mother was sick and just find the silence. When Cody’s little sister would bring him treats that made him feel like someone had been thinking of him when he’d thought he’d die from feeling so alone.
But things like that were fleeting.
Because this emptiness was too great. Too broad and too profound.
He gulped around the clot of pain in his throat. “Thank you for letting me stay with you, Aunt Linda.”
Then he turned and jumped into his car where it was parked on the street. The old engine roared to life when he turned the key. It’d been his mother’s. The one thing he still had. The cloth seats were ripped, and the windshield was cracked, but he swore he could still feel the pulse of her hands where she’d held onto the steering wheel.
Through his bleary sight, he drove, winding through the darkness.
Aimlessly.
He shouldn’t have been surprised when he ended up in front of the simple white two-story house.
The paint was peeling and cracked, and the flowers in the planters on the porch had wilted.
A vacancy echoed from the blackened windows, so stark and gutting he felt it howl through his being.
A For Sale sign swung in the breeze, and a sold sticker had been placed on the top left corner of it.
He ground his teeth and squeezed his eyes, but the pain didn’t go away.
He took to the road again, driving through the night, and he ended up at the same house where he’d been last week. The place he’d sworn he was never going to return to.
If she knew, his mom would beat her fists on his chest. Scream at him that he was being a fool. Promise him that he had more to offer and there was so much more to this life. Beg him to make her proud.
But he couldn’t hear her voice anymore.
Guilt pulled through his consciousness, a sickness in his stomach as he took the path to the door. He knew he shouldn’t go inside.
Knew it.
But he didn’t want to fucking hurt anymore.
So he walked in like he belonged, and he did three lines then fucked some girl named Amelia against the wall in the hallway.