If something this beautiful can be found in death and darkness, then there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
I won’t let him win. I push myself up and stagger toward the waiting car.
I won’t let him ever win.
My eyes pop open with a gasp. My hand presses to my chest as I try to slow my racing heart.
Ansel is hovering over me, his hair falling over his face, his gaze concerned. “Brad?”
The unfamiliar name doesn’t register. Why is he calling me that?
He strokes my face, the gesture calming me. “You were breathing really heavily. Were you having a nightmare?”
I wet my dry lips and swallow. I don’t even bother lying. “Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I blink at him, his usual sassiness gone, the brat nowhere to be seen. I like this side of him too.
“If I tell you, will you tell me something about you?”
He bites his bottom lip and then moves away from me, lying on the other side of the bed, not saying anything.
But then he speaks. “I like computers.”
It’s a tiny kernel, one I already suspected, but I latch on like a barnacle. “Do you? What kind?”
He laughs at that. “Sorry, I meant, like, I like tech stuff. Coding, software…that kind of thing.”
“Hence the shirts.”
“Hence the shirts.”
He’s silent for a moment and then murmurs, “Your turn.”
“My father locked me in a mausoleum once, to teach me a lesson.”
There’s a long silence. I think I’ve made him speechless. Huh. I knew how I was raised wasn’t right. It’s why Samson, Wylder, and I did what we had to do to protect our younger brothers.
We didn’t want them to go through the same thing. Not as young as we had, anyway.
“What the fuck? I just… I can’t even…” Ansel says, sounding angry. “How old were you?”
“A teen. I made it out and learned my lesson.”
He grunts in frustration. “That’s not normal—how you were raised. From the little you’ve told me. It’s not normal, Brad.”
I grind my teeth at that fucking name again. I hate it. But I’m not ready to let my deception be known. I don’t want him to hate me because of it. “I know.”
“Were your brothers treated like that too?”
“You first,” I say.
He’s silent for a moment, probably trying to think of what to tell me, before saying, “I got into computers at an early age, mainly to track down my parents, who abandoned me. Left me in foster care.”
“Did you find them?”
“Yes.”
