PROLOGUE
MASON
3 YEARS AGO
“It’s done,” my brother says as he comes inside our apartment and closes the door behind him. He’s in a suit—one he got from the secondhand store because things are tight, and it’s not like we go a lot of places that require formal wear.
It’s the same suit I wore the day I had to testify even though it fits him better than it does me, but we’ll probably burn it after this.
Ain’t got no use for it when we leave here anyhow.
I’d been pacing since he left this morning, my nerves having me doubting the plan we made for me to be here until I heard his truck pull up. We sold my car when Bodhi had been brought in for questioning, the threat of charges eventually dropped.
But we’d been scared—scared enough to hire someone.
They took him away from me once, and he swore it’d never happen again. It had been bullshit just like this time, but no one believes a kid—especially not kids like us.
A kid that has been bounced from home to home, a kid labeled asa problemwhen we’re just dying for a little bit of stability and a safe place to close our eyes at night. Not much had changed but it would.
Starting now.
Bodhi Maxwell was the only good thing the foster system gave me in this world, and I’d do anything to keep him. He sacrificed so much for me—for us—and I’d make sure with my last breath that he gets to live the life he deserves.
“Done?” I confirm, and he nods as my whole body goes still, the meaning sinking in slowly and then all at once. I feel like my heart is in my throat as I ask, “Guilty?”
He nods. “Got twenty-five years to life.”That’s more than I am now.
Relief floods my veins as I falter back a step, the news hitting me like an anvil dropping from the sky.
We’re finally free.
I can see the emotion reflected on my brother’s face.
Relief.
Exhaustion.
Fear.
Crossing the room, I wrap Bodhi in a hug and hold on tight as tears stream down my face. He holds me tighter, his aversion to touch absent when it comes to me, because we’d been kids when he held me as I cried myself to sleep.
We did it.
I couldn’t be in the courtroom—not because I didn’t want to be there, but because it wasn’t safe.
Not really.
Daryl Jeffers might be in jail, but his sons are still alive and well on the outside. No doubt they’ll be pissed their father finally got what was coming to him.
“We should leave tonight,” Bodhi says, his voice a raw scrape.
“Where will we go?”
“South,” he says, the word coming a little stronger. “We’ll keep going till we find somewhere we like.”
“Somewhere like home?” I ask, the innocence I still possess because of my brother making him smile.
“Yeah, man, somewhere like home.”
