Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
“Bad dream?” he murmured into the quiet stillness.
Haddie had been relegated to Otto’s room and he’d taken the couch. It was the obvious punishment for the two of them breaking the rules.
A sticky sense of dread had followed Raven to her room, and she’d been sure in the moments before she’d finally fallen asleep that the fear was going to follow her there.
Torment her in her sleep the way the memory of her father so often did. Though tonight, that dream had been different.
It had started with her father, the same as always, only his face had changed to Dusty’s.
“Yeah,” she whispered where she’d shifted onto her side so she could look at Otto.
A strained sigh pushed from his lips, and he rocked his head back on the wall as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Could have been bad, Raven. The things those fuckers wouldn’t have thought twice about doing to both of you.”
Rocks clogged her throat, and she struggled to form the words around it. “I know. I’m really sorry.”
“Wouldn’t make it if something happened to one of you. If you had any idea of how fuckin’ scared I was when I came through that door and found you both there like that…”
He gripped his shirt right over his heart, his face contorting in agony as he swiveled his head to look at her. “If you had any idea, you would never have stepped foot through that door.”
Part of her wanted to say she hadn’t wanted to go in the first place, but she’d never throw Haddie under the bus like that. Haddie was just…going through a phase. Exploring and testing.
Things Raven would also want to do if she had half the courage and balls that Haddie had.
But sometimes when you were so eager to chase the good things in life, you made mistakes along the way. That’s all this was. A mistake.
Raven reached over and picked up the mirror she always kept on her nightstand, and she peered at her distorted features. Silently chanting the things Otto had told her all those years ago. That she was brave and strong and smart. A fighter. The truth that one day, she would rise. Stand firm and without fear.
“Were you scared tonight?” Otto’s voice was quieter than it’d been.
Careful.
She could barely nod her admission. “I…I didn’t like him touching me like that. It’s the first time…the first time I’ve been that close to a guy, and it wasn’t anything like I thought it might feel.”
“Fuck,” Otto seemed to say to himself, and sorrow curled through the shadows that played over his face.
Raven’s stomach twisted. Twisted in regret and also that feeling she knew she wasn’t supposed to feel. The feeling that made her want to reach out and trace her fingertips over the sharp angles of his face. The part of her that knew if it’d been Otto trying to dance with her like that guy had been, she wouldn’t have minded.
She would have fallen into the bliss of it.
The traitorous thoughts fell away when Otto yanked at his hair again. “Told you I would never let anything happen to you. That you’d be safe here.” He blinked in anguish. “And we were this close…”
He trailed off with a harsh shake of his head before he muttered into the lapping darkness of her room. “Never imagined it’d come to this. That we’d get so deep in this life there would be no getting out of it. So deep that eventually it was going to rise up high enough to consume those we care about most.”
It was the first Raven had heard of any of them speak of the MC in a negative light, but it wasn’t like she was privy to the inside. They tried to keep her protected from it the best that they could.
She’d seen a small piece of it tonight, though she imagined it went so much darker than she could ever imagine.
“What would you do differently?” she whispered like soft encouragement.
Air huffed out of his nose, and a sorrowful smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. He hefted his shoulder a bit. “Don’t know. Do somethin’ that makes a difference, I guess. Be a good guy. Somethin’ that brings goodness instead of corruption.”
Her heart clattered in her chest. It was the most candid she thought any of the guys had ever been, giving voice to the crimes and misdeeds she sometimes saw haunting their eyes.
“You do make a difference, Otto. For Haddie. For me.”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed and roughed his fingers through his hair. “Would do anything for you, Raven. For both of you.”
She got brave and she reached out over the side of her bed and found his hand. Heat blazed up her arm. “You are the one person who hears me when I need someone most, Otto. You’re the one person who makes it better. The one person who makes me feel like I don’t have to be afraid to go to sleep.”