“Rich, coming from you.”
A strike to the chest.
“I…”
“What happened, Ryan? Thirteen years ago. What happened?”
“I went to prison, Soph.”
I watched her face. The slight shift of her anger. A flash of surprise that she suppressed almost instantly. There it was. Just for a second. Raw. Unfiltered. And then it was gone. Smoothed away like it had never been there at all. And she was in control again. The kind you don’t learn overnight. The kind you built, piece by piece, until nothing slips unless you let it. I knew what that was, and I knew how it was built.
Her fingers curled slightly against her arm, nails pressing in just enough to ground herself, but her voice, when it came, would be steady. I’d bet on it.
“That night? That very night?”
“Yes.”
“I stood there in the rain waiting for you, Ry. I was soaked through. I waited an hour. An hour. You didn’t come. Didn’t ring. Ever. You just disappeared.”
“I’m sorry, Soph. I never meant to not turn up. I just got…”
“Arrested. I heard you.”
We both went quiet. Both took a mouthful of beer as if that would break the atmosphere.
“You didn’t call. Write…”
“I wrote to you, Soph. Every day at first. Then every week. For a while. But you never wrote back.”
“I didn’t get any letters, Ry.”
“Well, I wrote. For a while. I tried for six months to reach you.”
“I didn’t know you were inside,” Sophie’s voice quietened, just a mumble now. “As far as I knew, you just walked away, and I didn’t know why.”
She dropped her eyes to the neck of the bottle, or the floor; I couldn’t tell which. But I didn’t need her words to feel the swell of emotion. I felt it too. Before I knew it, I’d crossed the floor, sinking into the crushed velvet sofa next to her. The movement sent the air between us swirling. And in it, a sharp floral smell that screamed intent. Composure. Control. Even if that control was wavering before my eyes. I closed mine as I breathed itin again. Concentrating on the smell. The taste. The feel of my heart as the beat changed.
“The night before,” I stopped suddenly, wondering whether I should continue. “Me and Demon were in a bar. A fight broke out. Some local lads trying to look hard by taking on the prospects.”
“Were you a prospect then? I don’t remember that.”
“No, I wasn’t then. Demon was. I was just hanging around the club, trying to get noticed.”
Sophie nodded, satisfied. “Go on.”
“Demon went in hard, like he always does. And the minute that blood shed, he went batshit crazy. The one who started it didn’t get up off the floor.”
“He killed him?”
“He changed his life. And his face forever.”
“So, Demon went to prison too?”
I shook my head.
“I took the fall. For all of it.”
“What. Why?”
