Oaks shakes his head, muttering, “We’re screwed.”
And I look at Becki.Her hair wild.Her lips bruised.
Her eyes bright and burning.Like sin.Like salvation.Like the storm I was always meant to walk into.
Something dark and tender rips right through me.
I step between her and all of them.
“Get out,” I tell the room.“All of you.”
Legend’s jaw flexes.“Royal!”he barks.
“Get.Out.”My voice cracks the air like a knife.
Legend’s fists clinch like there’s about to be blows.
“You ordered me to protect her,” I argue.
“That’s not all.”
“Yeah, but you don’t get a say.If I’m supposed to protect her, I need to protect her from you, from the Kings.And you damn well know it.”
Legend stares hard, then jerks his head.Oaks leaves first, shoving past Whiskey.Whiskey follows, muttering something about this being the start of our downfall.
Legend lingers in the doorway.
“You’re playing with fire,” he warns softly.“And if she burns you, I won’t put you out.”
Then he disappears into the hall.The door closes.Silence drops.
Becki steps closer, chin lifted in defiance and desire, trembling but unbroken.
“That was stupid,” she whispers.
I move into her space, forehead nearly touching hers.
“No,” I murmur.“That was a promise.”
Her breath stops.Mine does too.And the storm between us finally breaks.
Chapter 25
Royal
The scrap shouldn’t weigh anything.
It is just fabric, thin, denim, stiff with dried blood, but it seems like a stone pulling me directly into the ground.I hold it between my fingers like it might bite.Becki found it first, in the cemetery dirt behind Pearly Gates, on a gravestone like the dead were trying to hide it.
She shouldn’t have been out.But if she hadn’t gone, we wouldn’t have this.
She could’ve run away.Could’ve gone to her daddy.
But she crawled back through that vent.
To me.
I sit on the edge of my bunk in the basement, elbows on my knees, studying the scrap like it’s gonna confess something.
