Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Watching me turn the key just sets her off again. “What the fuck, Aaron?” Anna hisses at me. “I mean, what the actual fuck?”
Shit, now she’s using my given name. Only our parents do that.
But that’s the least of my worries. Anna’s Prius is parked out front and I know damn well it wasn’t Gunner who let her show up out of the blue. I head over to the next cabin, where they store equipment for babysitting jobs, and snatch up a radio.
“Who the hell is on the gate?” I say into it.
“It was open,” Anna tells me, just as Knucklehead comes on from inside the clubhouse’s security room.
“Opened it up until the meeting,” he replies.
“Keep it closed.”
“You want me to open it up fifty times?”
Each time a brother comes through. Though it won’t be that often—and doesn’t matter if it were. “Yeah, I do. Unless you maybe want a couple of SUVs rolling in as easy as my sister just did.”
“Not so much. Will do, brother.”
Anna narrows her eyes at me. “What SUVs?”
“That’s club business, pipsqueak.”
“And that is a bullshit answer that I don’t take anymore. Not after you went missing and everyone said ‘club business,’ like you weren’t my brother, too,” she says, her breath hitching as she comes closer to stab me in the chest with her finger. “Not after that asshole showed up at our house and made me give you a message that said you had to fight in a death match.”
A message given while she was bleeding and bruised. Throat thick, I tell her, “That fucker got what was coming to him. Is that the business you want to know?”
“I don’t give a fuck about club business. I care about you!” She blows her hands wide as if this is a big fucking revelation. “Because you get out of the Cage, but you’re still gone. You don’t ever come see Daisy. You don’t go see Mom and Dad. Gunner says you went through some bad shit and I’ve just got to give you a little time to work through it. Okay. Sounds good. Except that is not an okay way to work through it.” She waves wildly toward the cabin. “That.”
That rot boils in my chest. “You think I’d rape a girl?”
“No,” she says immediately, her breath hitching, her eyes going from fiery rings to big wet puddles. “I know you wouldn’t. No matter what you’re going through.”
“She was the one who offered. And she said yes, clear. And she knew that if she ever said no, I’d back off.”
“I know you would! But, Aaron, you’ve also got her locked up. And you know—maybe you know better than anyone now—someone might make choices while in a cage that they’d never make if they were free.”
Like making Crash’s spine pop apart in my hands. And the rot is thick, so fucking thick, I can’t breathe.
“If you gave her a choice right now,” she says in a gentle voice that ruthlessly tears me apart, “between getting into bed with you or going out that door—which would she choose? And that’s all you need to know.”
That’s all I need to know. There’s nothing but rot in me. I’m choking on it. “Anna—”
“It’s okay.” She wraps her arms so tight around me, buries her face in my shoulder. “It’s okay. You’ll be okay. And I’m so sorry. I know you’re hurting so much.”
Gonna be hurting more. I hold her close, my throat so fucking raw I can barely get the promise out. “I won’t touch her again.”
She nods.
“But I can’t let her go.”
“So it’s like that?” Anna takes a deep breath before hugging me tighter. “Then maybe consider what they say about letting go of someone you love. If she comes back, then you know that love was meant to be.”
“This ain’t nothing to do with love,” I tell her hoarsely. “She’ll be killed out there.”
“Oh.” Anna leans back a little to frown up at me. “And she still wants to go?”
Jaw tight, I nod.
Sympathy deepens her gaze. “Well…I mean, I know you’ve got a thing for girls in trouble—but you can’t save everyone from themselves.”
“I know that. I just want to save her from Papa.”
“And I just want to save my brother.”
Too late. My short laugh feels like it rips my guts out. “I’m pretty sure your brother died in that Cage.”
“No,” she says firmly, reaching up to catch my face in her hands, her gaze holding mine. “I think he got hurt really bad. I think there will be scars. But it won’t be the first time you got scarred up. And you were still my same brother after.”
After scarring up my face. “A real stupid brother. Because the first time sure as hell didn’t teach me a lesson about going home with girls who are trouble.”