Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Mind and body trapped by the memory of her. By the taste she’d left on my tongue and the chaos she’d elicited in my spirit.
Had taken my all not to go after her.
Not to chase her out that door.
Hunt her.
At least fuckin’ make sure she’d made it to wherever she was going safely.
But there was something about her last request that had left my feet rooted to the spot. Needing to give her anything and everything she was asking for.
Didn’t mean it wasn’t painful.
How the fuck could a stranger affect me this way?
Felt like a hurricane had come through, annihilating everything in its wake. Leaving me shattered, and I didn’t have a fucking clue why.
I didn’t know what it was about her that had me so spun up. Heart slanting a different direction than I ever let it because I didn’t do entanglements.
Refused to invite in those types of complexities.
But there I’d been, wanting to peel her apart. Unravel all her layers. Or maybe what I really wanted to do was get knitted up in the threads that made up her fabric.
So fucked up.
Groaning, I flopped over and rammed the heels of my hands into my eyes then forced myself out of bed. I grabbed my phone where it was charging on the nightstand and thumbed into the screen.
A grin hooked the edge of my mouth when I saw the slew of messages waiting from the group chat with my crew.
Now these…these were the people who mattered. The only ones I could ever trust. Ones who’d been there at my lowest. Ones who knew me inside and out. All the way down to the rage and the darkness and the greed.
Each of us were willing to lay it all down for the other.
Not one of them were blood, but we were family, through and through.
Our friendship forged in a fire when we’d been nothing but messed up kids running the streets of LA.
A fire that made us stone.
Unbreakable.
I scanned through the thread of the conversation that had started at the ass crack of dawn this morning. Not the one we used for Sovereign business, but the one used basically for giving each other shit.
River
Nolan wants to know when his lazy as fuck uncles are going to take him camping.
Nolan was River and Charleigh’s little boy. Kid was cute as fuck. Almost six and the ultimate fucking joy that was our crew. A symbol of our society. Of what we stood for and why we did it.
It didn’t matter how many depraved monsters we had to put in the ground. The blood that was shed or the crimes that were committed.
He represented our purpose, and we all loved him with everything we had.
Theo
Tell me those were his actual words?
Otto
His dad is River, sooooo…
River
Me? All your seedy asses are the bad influences, but no. He wouldn’t go and break his mom’s heart like that. Kid’s gold. Now when are you cockwads going to take him camping like you promised? Otherwise, it’s gonna be my kid getting his heart broken, and you know I’m not about to stand for that.
Like that was going to happen. Nolan had us all wrapped around every single one of his little fingers.
Otto
Sorry, just having a bit of a hard time working myself up to not having Raven wrapped around me, even if it’s just for one night.
He capped it off with a bunch of winky faces. I could almost hear River’s growl from across town, and a slow chuckle rolled out of me.
Otto was one brazen motherfucker. He loved to taunt River that he’d gotten with his little sister, constantly poking at that burly bear.
If you asked me, dude was lucky River hadn’t chopped off his dick and crammed it down his throat for hooking up with her, but hell, every single one of us knew Raven had been obsessed with Otto for years and Otto had basically worshipped the ground she walked on.
That shit was bound to happen.
It had taken River a minute to come to terms with it, but he finally realized there wasn’t anyone in the world who would love and protect Raven the way Otto would. He’d even gotten down on one knee and put a ring on her finger to prove it.
Didn’t mean River didn’t gag whenever he thought of the two of them getting naked.
River
Don’t make me hop on my bike and ride across town to kick your ass.
Otto
Oh, come now, brother. Know you love me, but not quite the way your sister does.
Another slew of winky faces, though this one with blowing kisses.
I laughed outright. Asshole was really asking for it.
Cash
Don’t think about showing up at my door crying when River comes for you.
I was surprised Cash even chimed in. Dude was such a recluse we rarely heard from him other than when we had society business or an actual family celebration going down.