Page 119 of Malice and Surrender
“Known what?” I wheeled myself a little closer, and Liz sat on the edge of the bed. She glanced out the door and lowered her voice as she spoke next.
“I guess I shouldn’t be the one to tell you this, but it’s Child and Family Services coming for you.” My eyes went wide, and my heart tripled its pace.
“What? Why?”
I wouldn’t say I loved the Collinses, they were both kinda cold and distant most of the time, but they were the only family I had left. I had loved Kai, or at least I thought I did, but he betrayed me and left me for dead. Now the Collinses weren’t coming. What had I done to deserve this? Was I really that much trouble? Did everyone hate me so much that they wanted to hurt me?
“I don’t know why, sweetie. I just heard that is who was coming to pick you up, so maybe they are just sending them to collect you or something,” she offered, but I knew better.
I ignored Liz as she called my name when I wheeled out of the room and turned to roll down the hall. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t care as the tears hit and flowed down my cheeks. There was a small sitting room to my left, and I stopped the wheelchair and pulled into the small space, closing the door behind me. Breathing hard from the burst of exertion, I sat in the privacy of the four walls and covered my face to let the tears fall. Why did the world hate me so much?
It was then that I realized I was probably better off alone. No one could hurt me when I didn’t let anyone in. I didn’t need anyone anyway.
Kaivan
I watched the black sedan turn around and ground my teeth together. The guy was gutsier than I pegged him for. Once I was sure Avro was out on the main road and out of sight, I closed the door and ran up the stairs.
“Fuck, I think he broke my nose.” Pushing open the door to the bathroom, I paused to look in the mirror and assess the latest injury. It didn’t look broken, but blood was running down my upper lip. I think my tear ducts were broken ‘cause I didn’t tear up anymore when I got hit in the face. Now all I got was more pissed off.
Grabbing tissues, I twisted them and shoved them up my nose to stop the bleeding. I definitely wasn’t winning any beauty pageants looking like this. Aside from my nose, I had a black eye and a cut over my brow from Jace. There was another cut and long bruise—a nasty shade of yellow—on my jaw, and my knuckles were once more split open.
Since the cops weren’t knocking on my door and hauling me back to prison, I assumed that Raine had won the argument with Jace and Avro…at least for now. It was stupid to storm into their home, but I couldn’t let them have her. Raine was mine. She’d always been mine, and there was no fucking way I was letting her take off and disappear.
Stripping out of my relaxed clothes, I pulled on my road gear before slipping my arms into my leather jacket. I picked up my phone and turned on the tracker app, smirking when I saw the little blinking dot. I knew it was smart to put that in her go bag. Wilder came through. Crazy fuck.
She was on the move, almost halfway to Atlanta, and a shit load further than I thought she’d be. With her headstart, she would be there by the time I caught up if that was where she stopped.
Sweat suddenly coated my body, and my gut churned as I pictured her hitchhiking her way there. She could be in some creepy trucker’s cab right now. I knew she didn’t have a car, and if Avro was here with his that left bus or putting her thumb out. If someone else hurt her, I’d kill them.
Grabbing my gun, I held it up, and what she’d said last night came rushing back.
“Look at me, Snake,” Raine yelled. She’d always refused to use the nickname given to me when I started fighting. She said it wasn’t me, said that she could only see me as Kai and that Snake was some made-up character to scare people. She said she never wanted to see me like that or be scared of me. It had divided us then ‘cause I thought it was cool, and it hurt now to hear her use it.
“You’re not Kai, not right now, not like this.” Raine’s eyes looked me up and down, and under the anger and fear was disgust and, deeper yet, disappointment. That look cut like a knife to my heart. I’d never wanted to hurt her, but the anger had been riding me for so long that it felt like it was a whole other person and all I had left, at least until now. “I don’t even recognize you.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said softly.
“Why not? You want me dead anyway, right? That’s what Snake wants. To destroy the person that made you this angry.” She spoke like I was two different people, and maybe I was. I felt as conflicted as two people inside of me.
“Well, I’m right here.” She said, giving me a clear shot to do what I’d dreamed about in prison and to take my final revenge. “Do it. Take the shot and end this, because I’m not living in fear of you anymore.” A tear slipped from her eye, and I watched it trickle down her cheek. Why that one tear punched so hard, I couldn’t say, but a well of emotion was trying to break free of the cage it had been locked in for years.
“I know now that it wasn’t you back then, but I’ve lived the last eleven years a shell of who I was because of what was done to me, and I won’t hide in my closet anymore. I won’t triple lock my door and stay up all night with a knife by my bed. I won’t close my eyes and see your face hurting me.” She shook her head, and my heart constricted in my chest. “Not anymore.”
I stared at the gun in my hands. The same gun that had taken countless lives since I got out of prison and the same gun that could’ve easily gone off and killed the only person I’d ever loved on this shithole planet. She wasn’t running. She was in protection mode. Protecting Avro and Jace and probably even me from myself. I pushed her to do that. I saw the look in her eyes last night. She knew I was on the line and would’ve killed them and had been willing to take the hit.
“Fuck!” I yelled. Self-loathing apparently had a lower level, and I had just reached the bottom floor. My hand began to shake, and I squashed the unease trying to take hold of my mind as old memories flooded to the surface.
“What the hell do you mean, Jack?” Mom yelled into the phone at my dad. She stomped across the living room and back again. I wasn’t supposed to be listening, but I couldn’t stay in my room when she started yelling.
Sitting on the stairs, I saw her shadow moving around with the light from the setting sun coming in the window at just the right angle.
“I told you I didn’t want to deal with this shit anymore. We have a son, for fucks sake.” I could hear the mouse-like sound of my dad yelling back as she stepped close to the stairs again.
“Yes, of course, I know he’s your son too, but he doesn’t want to be in the club. You were supposed to be done after the last job. I don’t care! You promised you’d leave. No, no, Jack. I don’t care.” I’d never heard my mom this angry before. I knew why she was pissed off. They’d been arguing for months about my dad leaving the motorcycle club he belonged to. I wasn’t really supposed to know much about what the club did, but I knew. Just like all the kids of the members knew, even though we were only allowed inside the clubhouse for special occasions or when my father needed to pick something up and I was with him.
When we’d all get together for parties and holidays and other shit like that, you could hear the men talking. Also, did they think we were all stupid and didn’t watch television or the news? It wasn’t normal for people to always wear leather jackets to weddings with a giant, snarling dog head on the back. They always assumed kids were stupid, but we picked up on a lot more than they knew.
Mom wanted him to be done. She said that he was too old for this shit and was always putting us in danger. She wasn’t wrong, although I knew even without asking that no matter what my dad said, he was never leaving the club. He acted like that place was heaven. Maybe it was. How was I to know? Things had come to a head when three weeks and two days ago, our house was broken into, and everything was smashed. A warning, ‘Stay out of our business,’ was sprayed on the wall. Dad would only say that one of the girls that worked at the club was roughed up. That’s when Mom got really intense and insisted that Dad leave and for us to move.
