The city passed in streaks of light and shadows as he leaned his head back…and thought of Gage.
A man he should forget, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about him. The preacher’s kid who’d played around in a lifestyle he knew nothing about and had paid the price.
“Fuckin’ dumbass,” he muttered.
White Ravens
Gage
“Home sweet fuckin’ home,” Roz said, cutting the rental car’s engine.
Gage didn’t move, barely breathed.
But his hearing…
His surroundings whispered to him like a living thing.
They weren’t at Roz’s stepdad’s house in the city—where Roz had lived before he’d gone to jail—there wasn’t a constant stream of traffic, elevated trains screaming overhead, or pedestrians walking around having too-loud conversations.
Instead, he smelled smoke from a chimney. A dog barked twice, then quieted, and there was the electric buzz of a streetlight to his right.
The car engine ticked as it cooled, and Roz exhaled beside him, sounding bone-tired.
It had been a long ride. Long for Roz…absolute hell for him.
Every time Roz slammed to a stop because someone cut him off, Gage’s body seized. Any time a tractor-trailer roared by, the air pressure punched him in the chest. When Roz swerved like a NASCAR driver after almost missing an exit, Gage had dug his shaking fingers into the seat so deeply he felt the springs.
Enveloped by darkness, plus high speed and constant surging adrenaline, made him want to throw up.
Two times his friend had pulled over to sleep, but Gage didn’t close his eyes once.
He’d never been more relieved to be still.
“Where are we?”
Roz was quiet for a long time before he confessed. “I left the Hustlers.”
Gage frowned. There was only one way to leave the Hustlers. Jail or in a body bag.
“What happened?”
“When you got popped, I, um…I went after Jace…hard.”
Gage swallowed. “Jace didn’t force me to get in his car. You warned me about him, and I didn’t listen.”
“He knew you were off-limits,” Roz snapped, anger flaring. “Everyone did. And he still chose to do dirt with you in the passenger seat. Besides, everyone knew how clueless you were.”
“Gee, thanks,” he muttered.
“After I put my boot in Jace’s ass, his bitch-ass brothers came for me. They shot up my dad’s place, then tried to catch me outside my job. I had no choice but to do ’em.”
Gage’s eyes were blown wide, seeing nothing. “You killed Jace’s brothers?”
Roz huffed. “You were the one good thing I had in my life back then, and he took you from me. So I took what he loved from him.”
They both went silent at that.
Gage had been clueless and dumb. He’d thought he understood the lifestyle because he’d watched it. Because he’d sat in back rooms and listened to the stories.
