The Worst Kind of Promise (Riverside Reapers Book 2)

KIT

Finding someone who doesn’t want to be found is easier than you might think. Especially if you have a hell of a motive. I know what Faye said. And if it were under any other circumstances, I would’ve respected her wishes. But I can’t. Not when she’s had her whole life ruined by a pathetic, mousy-looking rich boy.

The endless sobs she cried into my chest as I held her, the burst capillaries in her red eyes, the shaking of her pale limbs. The only time I’d ever seen her so broken was the night she called me. The common denominator of this entire thing stems from him. A weed invading Faye’s lonesome little dandelion, starving her of peace and happiness, growing between her cracks with an irremovable grasp on her.

And how do you kill a weed?

You pull it.

When I arrive on the doorstep of the house he’s staying in, I notice the singular car parked in the driveway. It’s one of those classic, American dream houses, hugged by a white picket fence and bordered by hedges that don’t have a single leaf out of place. Two stories with a wraparound porch, a pathway made of cobblestone, and too many double-paned windows for any one person to need. The sky is bruised with a plum gloam, tiny clusters of stars twinkling through an overhanging nebulous. The breeze pestering my arms forewarns a cold night, but I welcome the shock to my system, letting it fuel my ratcheting anger as I rap on the door with my fist.

I can hear the faint rumblings of a game on television, followed by heavy footsteps trudging my way. The door swings open to reveal the douche canoe himself—Saxon—standing all dumbfounded with the stupidest expression on his face.

His mouth hangs open. “Kit Langley?”

“Hi,” I say, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe, realizing now how much I tower over him, how quick of a visit this will be.

I crack my knuckles one finger at a time, gridlocking my eyes with his, rage wading through my bloodstream in boiling-hot pulses.

Saxon adheres a sickening smile to his face, one that brings out the skew of his front teeth and the wrinkles in his too-big forehead. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Oh, trust me. It won’t be a pleasure for much longer.”

When I get home, my hand is oozing blood. I tried to staunch the flow with a pair of spare shorts I found in the back seat, but all it’s done is change the color of the shorts from light gray to a deep maroon. I admit that in the moment, I didn’t really think about how I’d sneak back into the house, and my patience is so fucking thin that there’s no way in hell I’m going to make an effort. I walk through the door, trailing droplets of carnage behind me, ignoring the wide-eyed stares from my teammates currently huddled in the front room.

“Whoa, dude. What the fuck happened to you?” Casen asks.

Whatever leftover fury I had is still storming inside of me, and my lips pull back from my teeth in a growl. “None of your business.”

Gage sits up from his slouching, knocking a bag of tortilla chips off his lap. “Um, it most certainly is when you’re leaking at least half a pint of blood out of your hand.”

I’m a sick fuck for wanting to smile. “It’s not mine.”

“Not yours?” Bristol chimes in, very clearly biting back whatever unnecessary comment he was going to throw at me.

I try not to let their disappointment cloud me and wring out the adrenaline rush I got from beating Faye’s rapist with nothing but my fist. How fear crystallized in his eyes when I backed him into a corner, how easily his skin split underneath my knuckles, the volume of his screams and the sticky tears that tracked down his lacerated face. Even though his blood was warm and the smell turned my stomach, I needed to see more of it. I needed to see copious amounts of it spurt from his broken nose and cracked lip, needed to subject him to as much pain as possible.

I imagined how Faye must’ve felt that night—how scared she was, how much pain she endured. And that imagery fed every one of my throws, each becoming harder and quicker than the last, so much so that when my own knuckles began to bleed, I didn’t care. My hand is so sore I can barely move it. I might need stitches.

But none of that matters.

“Helped someone who was bleeding,” I gruff out, adding pressure to my throbbing hand. All I want to do is see Faye. Make sure she’s okay after today. I don’t need a surprise intervention from my teammates. Nothing they could say would make me regret what I did.

Hayes’ eyebrows furrow. “Did you take them to the hospital?”

“Yep.”

“What happened to them?”

“Didn’t ask.”

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

“’M sure.”

Fulton, for once, is speechless. Nobody knows what to say, or what to do, apparently, because I’m still soaking through my makeshift bandage.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go wrap this in my bathroom,” I grumble, sauntering impassively past a myriad of confused and disbelieving looks. Nobody dares to follow me.

I’m not that much of a hothead on the ice, but I am a defenseman. I take hits all the time, deck them out myself. Being beat up is something I’m used to, and the guys usually don’t question it. I also prefer to keep certain aspects of my life private from them, and they know not to overstep their boundaries. Yeah, they’ll probably continue interrogating me in the morning, but if they were to get all up in my face right now, I’d blow a gasket.

I quietly enter my bedroom in case Faye is sleeping, and I shut the door and lock it.

I hear her voice before my head turns toward her.

“Hey, you’re—oh my God.”

Before I even have a chance to look at her, she’s up and out of the bed, sprinting over to me with fear imbuing her doll-like features.

“Kit, what happened?” Her touch is soft despite the urgency in her movements, big eyes blinking back at me, searching for an answer she isn’t going to like. She looks so small and fragile right now. I know she isn’t. Hell, she’s stronger than I could ever be. And yet, here I am, still feeling the instinctual need to protect her.

I lighten my tone with her—like I always do. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing!” she shrieks, half-walking, half-stomping over to the adjoining bathroom, rummaging around in the cabinets with the occasional curse here and there.

“Faye, I’m fine. It’s just a little bleeding,” I reassure her, sitting down on the edge of the bed, keeping my hand elevated and away from the sheets. I thought this part would feel better. But the worry I caused her…it strings me up like putrid meat on a butcher’s hook.

Her barely clothed hips sway in my peripheral as she comes over to me with an armful of gauze and antiseptic, kneeling down and splaying the first aid out on the floor. The corners of her lips are jacked down in a frown, and she refuses to meet my eyes.

“Give me your hand,” she orders, her voice halfway to a full-blown growl.

I carefully unwrap my carmine-stained hand, and a few indigo blooms have swelled up under the skin, coloring the surface of my knuckles a mosaic of gruesome hues. At least the bleeding looks less stark now.

She tucks her lower lip between her teeth, chewing on that one spot in the middle that always feels a little more tender when we kiss. “Jesus, Kit.”

“It doesn’t hurt.” I don’t mention my high pain tolerance or the fact that my adrenaline’s definitely been swaddling my pain receptors.

Faye uncaps the antiseptic and pours some onto a cotton swab, drenching it before dabbing at the splits ribbing my knuckles.

“Fuck,” I hiss, my arm tensing involuntarily.

She continues to clean the area. “Get used to it.”

She’s pissed. Wait until she hears about what actually happened.

The truth wrestles its way out of my throat before I can stop it, and the admittance of it has my face turning as red as the fluid seeping out of me. “It’s Saxon’s.” I don’t know why I suddenly feel like I’m in trouble. I didn’t do anything wrong. Frankly, that asshole is lucky to still have two working legs.

Her hand stills, betrayal shimmering in her eyes. “What?”

My mouth’s watery, and that apparently “nonexistent” guilt is rising faster than the goddamn sea level. “Faye…”

She fastens her gaze on the roll of bandages beside me, unraveling it without saying a word, only showing me her glossed eyes when she moves to wrap my knuckles. Unshed tears ream her lower lids, and her chin wobbles the slightest as her fingers begin to shake in the ribbon of cotton. She makes four circles around the gore-soaked gashes before gingerly tearing the end of the roll off, securing it to the underside of my palm.

As she stands up, so do I.

“Princess, please look at me.” My broken plea seems to get caught between my teeth, bereft of the prior complacency that I was willing to flaunt for anyone who’d look at me. I don’t feel bad for what I did, but I feel bad for making Faye so upset. I thought this is what she wanted. I thought she would be happy.

When she tips her head up, I’m expecting to see a river of tears muddying her perfect complexion, but all that exists is a fervid flicker in her eye, hot enough to melt skin off bone and char her resentment into the very planes of my soul.

“I asked you not to do anything. But you never listen to me.”

How can she be angrier at me than she is at him?

A low-grade headache bludgeons my skull, adding to the slow-rolling anger slinging up each vertebra of my spine. “You weren’t going to do anything about it, Faye! Someone had to give that prick the beating he had coming!”

I’m sure the guys in the living room can hear murmurs of our conversation, but whatever decency or civility I had circles down the drain.

“You always think you’re playing the hero, Kit. You still look at me like I need to be saved. I was perfectly fine with moving on, letting my trauma exist in the past, but instead of supporting me through my decision, you went and brought it into the present!” she yells, nostrils flared and jaw pulsing, brutalizing me with each stab of her words.

My own rage disgorges like water from a hot spring, and I dig my fingernails into the freshly applied bandage, my fingers still aching from the altercation. “You would’ve rather me let him walk away? Let him walk away after what he did to you? So he can go do it to someone else?”

“No. You’re not villainizing me,” she snarls, pointing her finger at me. “You had no right to assume how I felt. You had no right to do that without telling me.”

I find myself pushing my chest into the tip of her fingernail, glaring down at her from above, a growl starting deep in my belly and racing up the channel of my throat. “I didn’t realize I needed your permission to beat up the man who raped you.”

“Oh my God. There you go! Making me seem like I’m the irrational one for not wanting you to beat someone up.”

“I just don’t understand why you’re so mad at me!” I shout, refusing to back down even as her finger presses into my pectorals, even as I witness the most heartbreaking expression on her face. My heart feels like it’s being macerated by a mortar and pestle. That trust we’ve built, nursed—all gone within one stupid, impulsive decision.

“I’m mad at you because you did it for you, not for me! If it was for me, you would’ve respected my wishes!” She sweeps her finger into the ball of her fist, pounding it against my sternum.

Hit.

“How am I supposed to trust you? I was reluctant to tell you in the first place because I didn’t know what you’d do.”

Wince.

“You say you care about me, but then you go behind my back. You say you want to be with me, but you’ve made me cry more than anyone else has!”

Hit.

Wince.

A rhythm that doesn’t cease, that rumbles under my feet and splits into a fault line, threatens to swallow me underground. Though as much as her punches sting, they’re nowhere near as painful as her words.

My uninjured hand reflexively shoots out to grab her arm, but I keep my grip soft around her wrist. She reels backward—not enough to extricate herself—and she stares into my eyes from beneath those damp lashes, her chest rising and falling in frame-shaking breaths.

My knees are barely holding me up at this point. “You think I like making you cry, Faye? It’s the worst feeling in the world. That fight we had at the party was one of the worst days of my life.”

I don’t like revisiting that day. And now here we are, weeks later, and I’m breaking her heart all over again when I promised I wouldn’t.

“Then why do you keep doing it?” she spits, ripping her arm from my fingers. “You say I matter to you, you say…”

I don’t hear the rest of her sentence. I don’t hear anything over the bashing of my heart and the internal voices laughing at me from the dark corners of my mind.

She keeps saying that I don’t care about her. She keeps saying things that aren’t true. Why does she keep saying that?

There are cinder weights tied to my feet, pulling me deeper into the ocean, down far enough that I can no longer see the cerulean patch of sky above me. All that exists is the darkness closing around me like giant tentacles.

“Stop!” I don’t register how loud my voice is, how it reverberates off the walls. All I register is the agony bisecting the two halves of my barely beating heart, leaving behind a hole that only Faye can occupy.

And she flinches. She fucking flinches.

I can hear the guys’ voices loudening down the hallway, overlapping with one another in worried hushes, and right as Haye forces the door open, Faye charges for the exit. The group parts down the middle to make way for her bolting body, and I pray that my strides are long enough to catch her, but the goddamn roadblock in the doorway slows me down. Everyone’s asking me questions I don’t have time to answer.

I reach the living room—with the rest of the team on my heels—right as I see her snatch something from the entryway table, and then she disappears into the dark of night.