AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My heart hurt for him. He was doing his best to pretend to be okay. I couldn’t fix him. His demons had to be befriended from within.
No one’s damage was the same. We all had to handle our pain in different ways. I knew this firsthand. Some struggled more than others to overcome their trauma, drowning them in a bottomless sea of bitter memories.
I was fortunate to have somehow held my head high above the waves. There were days I went under, but something always brought me back to the surface.
Maybe it was this. What if I really was always meant to wind up here?
I may not have been able to fix any of them by my willpower alone, but I’d be here as a life vest until they could stay afloat on their own.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I stared at the spot she’d been sitting in long after she was gone.
What the fuck was I doing?
I would’ve put my mouth on her, and my dick in her if she hadn’t cock-blocked me with common sense. Luce and I were as close as two men could be, brothers in every sense of the word, but he wouldn’t give a shit about that if I fucked his girl.
It could be argued that they hardly knew one another, but I saw the way he looked at her. It was the same way Romero looked at Calista. How Grimm was with Arlen. Hell, my parents too. You couldn’t timestamp something that strong, and I felt sorry for anyone who tried to destroy it.
Plus, dicking Star down kind of defeated the whole brotherly code. Honestly, I saw her as more of a sister. An attractive one. It’s why I never went after Nyx once Butcher had her, even knowing I was the better man.
Thinking about it, I should’ve known then that he was a grimy piece of shit. He never wanted her; he just didn’t want me to have her.
Fuck it, though. Right? It worked out in the end. Maliki worshipped the ground Nyx walked on.
If everyone else around me had these epic ass connections, maybe I could too. Or maybe I would be alone.
I wasn’t worried about it right then. I did, however, need to fuck sooner rather than later. I hadn’t been with anyone in… I couldn’t even remember.
For the first time in a while, my head felt as clear as the sunlight pouring through my window. There was something therapeutic about talking shit out.
It made Bella and Ice’s relationship clearer. He was her go-to person. I often heard them talking late into the night. Star waltzed her tiny ass in here and made herself mine.
Leaving my bedroom, I went in search of Luce. It took asking an acolyte to be pointed in the right direction. I walked outside, unbothered by the heat or the sun.
I’d spent too much time running around outside as a kid to be fazed by the Badlands’ heatwaves.
I spotted Luce and headed towards him. He was watching the acolytes finally burn the bodies in our pit. I stood beside him, peering down at all the bodies.
Some had decomposed to the point you could see the maggots wriggling inside them as flies and gnats made a buffet of their rotting flesh and guts. Kevin was one of fresher corpses amongst them, face-down.
“When did he die?”
“He’s not dead. I just wanted to watch him burn alive.”
“Nice.”
“Are you supposed to be in the sunlight?” Ice joked, coming to join us.
He had on grease-monkey clothes, which meant he was playing with one of the Jeeps or his classic Chevy.
I flipped him off.
“I need to tell you something,” I said to Luce.
“I know.”
“Did you just profile me again?”
