Better When He's Brave
Page 2
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“Your girl?” The accented voice was hard, furious, and I knew I had hit a raw nerve.
I barked out a laugh that sounded more like a dying wheeze, and felt a fleeting moment of satisfaction when some of my blood landed squarely on his face. We were almost the same height, and if I hadn’t been hanging limp and broken, we would’ve been eye to eye. I had a solid fifty pounds on Roark and I knew how to fight just as dirty as the next guy, but what I would never be able to overcome, what would always give men like him the upper hand over guys like me, was the fact that I still had a heart. I still cared. No matter how hard this city continued to kick me in the junk, no matter how many times I had to choose between my family and what was right, no matter how many times I was reminded that I lived in a place absent of justice and light . . . I still cared. I still had hope. I still wanted to be a force that fought for righteousness and the small amount of good that could be found hidden in the cracks and darkness, and I still loved. My heart was protected by a monster that lived deep inside of me, but that beast had kept the thing safe while we scraped by in this awful place.
I loved my brother even though he was a criminally minded hard-ass. I loved my job. I loved my small circle of friends that more often than not were on the other side of the law from me. I loved my mother even though she was a lifelong drunk with no interest in ever trying to dry out . . . and I loved my girl.
The girl. The one I would die for. The one I would fight this war Roark had started for, and if this was the way I was meant to go out, then so be it. I would die for having a heart but at least I knew I was going out for a fucking valiant and important reason.
“Mine.” I gave him another grotesque-looking smile as he let my head fall limply back down, my neck too battered to hold the weight up anymore. “She’s been mine since the second she flipped on Novak and his crew. She only fell in with you because she wanted me and didn’t know how to ask for it. She thought you could keep her safe like she knew I would. How does it feel to know you were nothing to her but a poor substitute for me? Every time you took her to bed it was me she was thinking of. You haven’t ever been anyone’s first choice, Roark.”
I felt him tense up. I knew the girl was a sore spot, a loss that had really amped up his drive to take the Point down in a fireball of vengeance and hate. No way was Roark ever going to let that rejection and slight go, not on top of the others the Point had handed out to him
His hand fisted in the hair on the top of my head and my face was yanked back up so we were once again eye to eye. Mine were starting to swell shut and I knew I was losing too much blood. I couldn’t feel much below my shoulders except for my throbbing knee and every part of my exposed skin that I could see was covered in bruises, welts, and open skin, leaking the last of my life force out onto the cracked concrete below where I was dangling. I tried to focus on his face, but it kept blurring and fading into one that looked like another I loved. The metallic burn against my split lips made me gag when the end of a wicked black pistol was sudden shoved between my puffy lips and stopped with the open end of the barrel resting against my teeth.
I saw myself reflected in the absolute void of that black gaze watching me and I knew he was going to pull the trigger.
“She chose wrong. I could have laid this city at her feet.”
“If she wanted the city at her feet, she would have put it there herself. That’s why you never deserved her, you prick. You never understood she could run circles around you in the misplaced-rage and need-for-revenge department. Only she was smart enough to know that there had to be more to life than that. I’m her more. You were just a means to an end.” The words were garbled around the pistol but I had to get them out.
I closed my eyes and waited for it all to end. I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t plead. I wouldn’t waver. I wouldn’t go out any other way than the way I’d lived my life . . . I was going to go out bravely and there was no fucking way this piece of shit would ever know how scared I was that not only was I leaving my brother behind in this tragic place, but I was leaving my girl . . . the girl. When I was gone she was going to unleash hell, and Conner Roark had no clue what a vengeful woman who was far more bad than good could do when she was suffering from a broken heart.
BANG!
EPIGRAPH
Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.
—Tennessee Williams
Chapter 1
Reeve
THERE WERE TWO PLACES in the world that I never thought I was going to step foot in again. One was the crumbling and rotting surface of the city simply known as the Point. The other was the police station that sat in the heart of that city and had just as much corruption and crime inside its walls as the town had on its streets. I hated everything about why I was here and yet I put one foot in front of the other, knowing if I ever wanted a shot at being the type of woman that could live with the person looking back at herself in the mirror every day, I had to do something guided by right decisions for once in my life. I had to do something not motivated by my own selfish desires and my own burning need for payback and revenge against the cruel injustices I knew this place was capable of doling out. Good or bad, we all had a target on our backs if we called the Point home. The city didn’t discriminate when causing pain and tearing apart lives.
My hands shook as I reached for the handle on the door. I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in this city. Not at this building. Not in this life that wasn’t mine anymore.
I was supposed to be hiding. I was supposed to be someone new, someone that had been handed a chance to start all over. I was supposed to be a girl that didn’t know what death and revenge felt like even though they lived so hot and angry under her skin. The new me was supposed to be safe, supposed to be insulated and so far removed from the crime and sleaze that was the lifeblood of the Point, that she wouldn’t last five minutes in this terrible place.
Only the new me had never stuck, and truthfully, I had never been a fan of that girl’s fragile and soft disguise. Hiding was for the weak, and I knew deep down to the core of who I was that I would never, ever actually be safe. I had harbored too many demons, made too many deals with devils along the way to ever think I was going to get away with walking out of the Point without doing some sort of bloody penance for my misdeeds.
I was standing on unsteady legs, asking the young cop who was sheltered behind bars and bulletproof glass at the front desk of the station to go find the one man, the only good I had ever seen in the godforsaken place. If I was going to throw my new life away, jump feetfirst back into the fire, Detective Titus King was the only person I was going to trust to keep me safe from the flames.
I barked out a laugh that sounded more like a dying wheeze, and felt a fleeting moment of satisfaction when some of my blood landed squarely on his face. We were almost the same height, and if I hadn’t been hanging limp and broken, we would’ve been eye to eye. I had a solid fifty pounds on Roark and I knew how to fight just as dirty as the next guy, but what I would never be able to overcome, what would always give men like him the upper hand over guys like me, was the fact that I still had a heart. I still cared. No matter how hard this city continued to kick me in the junk, no matter how many times I had to choose between my family and what was right, no matter how many times I was reminded that I lived in a place absent of justice and light . . . I still cared. I still had hope. I still wanted to be a force that fought for righteousness and the small amount of good that could be found hidden in the cracks and darkness, and I still loved. My heart was protected by a monster that lived deep inside of me, but that beast had kept the thing safe while we scraped by in this awful place.
I loved my brother even though he was a criminally minded hard-ass. I loved my job. I loved my small circle of friends that more often than not were on the other side of the law from me. I loved my mother even though she was a lifelong drunk with no interest in ever trying to dry out . . . and I loved my girl.
The girl. The one I would die for. The one I would fight this war Roark had started for, and if this was the way I was meant to go out, then so be it. I would die for having a heart but at least I knew I was going out for a fucking valiant and important reason.
“Mine.” I gave him another grotesque-looking smile as he let my head fall limply back down, my neck too battered to hold the weight up anymore. “She’s been mine since the second she flipped on Novak and his crew. She only fell in with you because she wanted me and didn’t know how to ask for it. She thought you could keep her safe like she knew I would. How does it feel to know you were nothing to her but a poor substitute for me? Every time you took her to bed it was me she was thinking of. You haven’t ever been anyone’s first choice, Roark.”
I felt him tense up. I knew the girl was a sore spot, a loss that had really amped up his drive to take the Point down in a fireball of vengeance and hate. No way was Roark ever going to let that rejection and slight go, not on top of the others the Point had handed out to him
His hand fisted in the hair on the top of my head and my face was yanked back up so we were once again eye to eye. Mine were starting to swell shut and I knew I was losing too much blood. I couldn’t feel much below my shoulders except for my throbbing knee and every part of my exposed skin that I could see was covered in bruises, welts, and open skin, leaking the last of my life force out onto the cracked concrete below where I was dangling. I tried to focus on his face, but it kept blurring and fading into one that looked like another I loved. The metallic burn against my split lips made me gag when the end of a wicked black pistol was sudden shoved between my puffy lips and stopped with the open end of the barrel resting against my teeth.
I saw myself reflected in the absolute void of that black gaze watching me and I knew he was going to pull the trigger.
“She chose wrong. I could have laid this city at her feet.”
“If she wanted the city at her feet, she would have put it there herself. That’s why you never deserved her, you prick. You never understood she could run circles around you in the misplaced-rage and need-for-revenge department. Only she was smart enough to know that there had to be more to life than that. I’m her more. You were just a means to an end.” The words were garbled around the pistol but I had to get them out.
I closed my eyes and waited for it all to end. I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t plead. I wouldn’t waver. I wouldn’t go out any other way than the way I’d lived my life . . . I was going to go out bravely and there was no fucking way this piece of shit would ever know how scared I was that not only was I leaving my brother behind in this tragic place, but I was leaving my girl . . . the girl. When I was gone she was going to unleash hell, and Conner Roark had no clue what a vengeful woman who was far more bad than good could do when she was suffering from a broken heart.
BANG!
EPIGRAPH
Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.
—Tennessee Williams
Chapter 1
Reeve
THERE WERE TWO PLACES in the world that I never thought I was going to step foot in again. One was the crumbling and rotting surface of the city simply known as the Point. The other was the police station that sat in the heart of that city and had just as much corruption and crime inside its walls as the town had on its streets. I hated everything about why I was here and yet I put one foot in front of the other, knowing if I ever wanted a shot at being the type of woman that could live with the person looking back at herself in the mirror every day, I had to do something guided by right decisions for once in my life. I had to do something not motivated by my own selfish desires and my own burning need for payback and revenge against the cruel injustices I knew this place was capable of doling out. Good or bad, we all had a target on our backs if we called the Point home. The city didn’t discriminate when causing pain and tearing apart lives.
My hands shook as I reached for the handle on the door. I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in this city. Not at this building. Not in this life that wasn’t mine anymore.
I was supposed to be hiding. I was supposed to be someone new, someone that had been handed a chance to start all over. I was supposed to be a girl that didn’t know what death and revenge felt like even though they lived so hot and angry under her skin. The new me was supposed to be safe, supposed to be insulated and so far removed from the crime and sleaze that was the lifeblood of the Point, that she wouldn’t last five minutes in this terrible place.
Only the new me had never stuck, and truthfully, I had never been a fan of that girl’s fragile and soft disguise. Hiding was for the weak, and I knew deep down to the core of who I was that I would never, ever actually be safe. I had harbored too many demons, made too many deals with devils along the way to ever think I was going to get away with walking out of the Point without doing some sort of bloody penance for my misdeeds.
I was standing on unsteady legs, asking the young cop who was sheltered behind bars and bulletproof glass at the front desk of the station to go find the one man, the only good I had ever seen in the godforsaken place. If I was going to throw my new life away, jump feetfirst back into the fire, Detective Titus King was the only person I was going to trust to keep me safe from the flames.
