He shifted slightly in front of me, his body loosening, the tension bleeding out of him in slow increments. Then his hand moved. Reaching back, finding my leg without looking, his palm warm where it wrapped around me. Simple. But it grounded something. Anchored me to him in a way I couldn’t describe. And now we could both breathe.
For a while, we cruised the deserted roads. The winding tarmac at the back of Gateshead smoothing into the straightness of the A1 motorway. And then to my left, crowned by the gold of dawn, she reared up before us. The light caught along her wings, stretching wide against the waking sky, red-brown weathered steel softened into something almost alive. She stood there, unmoving, watching over it all and judging none of it.
Ryan pulled off to the left, leaving the motorway at the feet of the Angel of the North and winding upwards, the road leading up past the structure. The car park at her feet was as deserted as the roads. Too early and too cold for most. Spring air still nipping at anyone brave enough to be out in it at this hour.
When the engine switched off, I still felt the vibrations deep in my muscles, counterbalancing the shivers that wracked my body in a different rhythm.
“Come with me, Soph,” Ryan rumbled, filling the void where the noise of the engine ceased.
He helped me from the bike, my legs wobbling as I straightened up and then wrapped cold hands in mine. We walked into the dawn, long steps winding up to where she stood, protectively watching out over the north east.
For a while we stood there, our backs against her feet, Ryan’s arms wrapped around me. It wasn’t enough to still the ever creeping cold, but firm enough to stop the shivers.
“Ry?” I asked eventually, breaking the silence between us and the gentle roar of traffic starting to build on the A1 below us. “Tell me what happened.”
He didn’t answer straight away. But I could feel the tension start building in him like I’d pressed a trigger and allowed it to flow again.
“Sometimes I’m like that,” he started after a long, slow breath. “In the night, I mean. I don’t know what they are. Nightmares. Night terrors.”
“It’s a form of PTSD, Ry, when they present like that. What happened toyou?”
I glanced up at him watching out over the world, and his eyes even further away.
“The first time I was inside,” he paused, and then continued differently. “It’s why my brothers call me Reap. Took the piss out of a phrase I use too often.”
“You reap what you sow?”
He glanced down at me, the hint of surprise in his eyes fading quickly.
“Yeah, that.”
“That’s what you were saying in the night.”
“I know. The first time I wasn’t prepared for what prison would do to me,” his voice lowered, a flatness creeping into it. I recognised that tone. The control over his emotions. “The beatings. The cruelty. Because they could.”
“The other inmates.”
“Some. Mostly the guards. Delivering punishments for misdemeanours that hadn’t happened.”
“Did you report it?”
“Darlin’’, that would have only made things worse. Besides, that ‘don’t talk to cops’? That applies inside, too. No talking. No complaining. In the end, it didn’t hurt anymore. The bruises. The broken bones. None of it. And that made it worse. One of them made it his challenge to break me. He’d chant those words as he did. The first time I dealt with business for the club. I said those same words. Like he’d forced them deep into the very back of my brain.”
“And that’s why they call you Reap,” I repeated. “Do they know about this?”
“No. I’ve never told them. Any of them. If Indie knows, it’s just a suspicion.”
“You never told anyone else?” I didn’t know why I needed to know. But I did.
Ry shook his head. “No, Grey.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
He folded his arms around me, pulling me back into the comfort of his chest and his huge frame.
“After a while I didn’t feel anything. Couldn’t feel anything. Couldn’t now. Not until that day I saw you again.”
“The tattoos and the piercings. When you told me you did them to feel again. That was because of prison?”
