Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 102136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
We had a new life awaiting us. We had a daughter or son who needed us. Needed us to love and protect her or him in a way that neither Flame nor I had ever been gifted.
Stroking Flame’s stubbled cheek, I whispered, “Rest, Flame. Rest. And then fight for us.” I kissed his lips softly, a promise that he would prevail. And I fell asleep. With Flame’s hand protecting our baby, I fell asleep. Knowing he would never harm our child.
We just needed Flame to believe it to be true. And he would. I would not fail him. He was my Flame. And I would stand beside him through it all. I would hold his hand and guide him through the fires of hell.
Chapter Nine
Lil’ Ash
“There,” Rider said confidently and stepped back from my bed. He properly treated the wounds he’d only managed to patch up in the woods. He busied himself with packing all his medical shit back in his bag. I looked down at my body. There were fresh gauzes and bandages fucking everywhere. There wasn’t a part of my skin that wasn’t marked in some way. Knife wounds, fucking snake bites. Rider had given me some shots for the venom, tetanus, and then started stitching me back together. He’d already been to Flame, done the same for him.
Just thinking of my brother felt like taking a crowbar to my skull. I knew he was fucked up right now. I knew he wasn’t handling Maddie and the baby real well. And I’d fucking crushed him. I knew it. He wouldn’t say that, of course. Fuck, his face had barely moved since I’d struck a nerve by calling him Poppa. I’d seen his cheek twitch and his muscles tense. And, in the fucking moment, it hadn’t been enough. I’d wanted him to hit me, to fucking hurt me, to show me that he at least fucking saw me. I knew he couldn’t express shit like that. But in that moment, I hated him. I fucking hated that he was different, that something inside him made him different from the other brothers. I wanted to be able to talk to him, wanted him to talk to me normally.
I was a bastard. I fucking hated myself for what I’d said to him. Telling him he’d be a shit papa. So I’d chased after him as he ran from the cabin, riding by his side. Showing him, I never meant any of what I said, that I fucking loved him as he was. He is my brother. I didn’t need him to be like everyone else. He’d saved me. He’d given me a home and a family. It didn’t matter that he was different, that we didn’t talk much or grabbed a beer at the bar while shooting the shit.
I’d smiled as I’d ridden toward the fuckers we were tracking. The Cade brothers riding together, killing the cunts that hurt Maddie. That is, until one of the assholes waved a snake at him. A motherfucking snake brought Flame to his knees. My brother, my brother who wasn’t scared of anything, the most brutal and ruthless killer there ever was, fell apart in front of my eyes.
Isaiah. He’d called me Isaiah. The brother he lost. He’d called the dicks who tortured us poppa and Pastor Hughes. And he’d fucking broke. He dropped to his knees and broke.
“Ash?” He looked into my eyes and called me fucking Isaiah. Not Ash, the brother he already had. But Isaiah, the brother he had lost. “ASH?” I snapped the fuck out of the memory.
“You okay?” Rider asked and shone a light into my eyes. I pushed the light aside and shuffled off the bed. “Ash, you need to rest.”
“I ain’t resting,” I growled and tried to pull a shirt over my head. I fucking hissed when the pain from the stitches pulled at my skin.
“Ash, forget the shirt and lie on the damn bed,” Rider ordered.
I pulled on a leather jacket and grabbed a pack of smokes from my pocket, putting one in my mouth. “I’m out,” I said and tried to leave the room.
“Ash, you need to rest. Don’t go out drinking. Your body has to heal. Alcohol will fuck with the drugs I’ve given you.” Rider tried to lecture me as I pushed past him, heading toward the door. I didn’t fucking care about healing. I didn’t care about resting. I wanted to get off my face on whiskey and eliminate the sound of Flame’s voice from my skull. The voice that came from his mouth when he’d been talking to Poppa and the pastor. The kid-like voice accompanied by the scared shitless look on his face.
I sniffed, feeling my throat start to burn at the fucking memory of Flame like that. But I couldn’t remove his face from my mind. I couldn’t get the fucking tears, which had tracked through the blood on his cheeks, out of my mind.