Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
The air left me in a whoosh as his words echoed in my brain.
“The first gunshot I ever heard was that of my sister taking her own life,” he continued. “And that gunshot was the first inkling I had that there was anything wrong with her. She was strong. Smart. Feisty. She was so fucking strong that she hid all of her pain away, buried all of her sorrow so deep even people living in the same house as her couldn’t see it.”
Tears rolled down my face. The first I’d shed since … since I was sobbing in that warehouse, begging for my life.
I’d been successful in fighting them for almost two years. I’d been able to chase away my own sorrow, but Colby’s took up this entire room. It was impossible for me to not grieve the pain that I hadn’t seen so close to the surface.
I wanted to apologize. I wanted to touch him. Comfort him. But I had no fucking clue how to do that.
My legs were unsteady as they took me over to the bed, sitting gingerly. Colby didn’t move to grab me, and I didn’t nestle up against him as I ached to do.
“I’ve never asked about you or your family,” I realized in a whisper.
“Well, since you spent the majority of the time we knew each other fighting me and fighting us, it would’ve been counterproductive to get to know me,” he said dryly.
I didn’t smile.
“What was her name?” I asked, tugging at the comforter.
“Alyssa.”
I forced my eyes to meet his. There was pain there, that much was plain to see. And how much he’d loved his sister. But there was something else that was hard to explain. A … distance. He’d removed himself from this loss in order to survive. I understood that. Had been living that.
“Is what happened to her the reason…” I trailed off.
“The reason I patched in?” he deduced.
I nodded. It was the question I’d been wondering since the first time I saw him.
“Yeah, to put it simply.” He shrugged. “Our parents were first generation Americans. My grandparents came from Korea in pursuit of the American Dream.” He shook his head, gathering his hair at the nape of his neck then fastening it with one of my many hair ties cluttering the bedside table.
“They had barely anything to their name and worked their asses off to send their kids to school,” he continued. “On both sides. My Dad is a doctor, he has a small family practice. My mom worked there with him once we were in school.”
He said all of this without warmth or emotion. I didn’t recognize this version of Colby, but I related to him.
“They wanted the best for us because they wanted us to have great lives,” he explained. “They pushed us but showed us love too. We respected them. Wanted to make them proud. Alyssa worked hard. She was smart. Funny. Kind. Everyone knew that she was destined for great things. No one knew that she was planning her death instead of her future.”
My body shook, and for the first time in almost two years, I was entrenched in someone else’s horror instead of my own. Colby’s. And I would’ve gone through what I went through a thousand times so he didn’t have to recount the story of his sister’s death in that resigned tone.
“It tore us apart,” he recounted coldly. “My parents were devastated, of course. Broken. But they also grieved in a way I couldn’t understand. From my perspective, it seemed like they didn’t care. It seemed like a disservice to her memory to bury all of their feelings inside and act like everything was okay—the exact thing that killed their daughter.” He shrugged. “I was an angry, selfish teenager. I didn’t know shit about life, just knew that I much preferred being angry to lettin’ the sadness in.”
He reached over to snag a bottle of whisky I’d left on the bedside table, taking a long pull then wincing. It was warm and cheap, but it did the job.
“My grades suffered,” he said after he swallowed for the second time. “I quit every sports team I was in. Drank a lot. Fucked a lot. My parents didn’t know what to do. The longer I stayed in that house, the angrier I became. It got to the point where I knew it wasn’t safe. I wasn’t safe. So I left. And like a fuck of a lot of my brothers, I found the Sons of Templar MC instead of a jail cell or an early grave. Pure luck. Or something bigger, if you believe in that shit.”
Something in me wanted to laugh. Not because any of this was funny.
“My parents believe in ‘that shit’,” I informed him. “And they would think you finding yourself in an outlaw motorcycle club after leaving your family home as an act of the devil.”