Page 6 of Ruthless Reign

Ice water filtered into my veins and I shivered, prompting Hardin to pull me closer to him on his lap and snake an arm around my back.

“The explosives, both the ones strapped to him and the ones at the safehouse were both rigged to his pulse. If his heart stopped…”

I gasped. “They’d go off?”

He didn’t answer.

“That’s fucked up.”

I felt him stiffen.

“No, Becca. What’s fucked up is I…I almost k-k-killed him anyway. D-d-dammit.”

He slid me from his lap, unceremoniously pushing me onto the debris covered bed.

Something in my chest hollowed out as the realization dawned on me and burning tears pricked the edges of my eyes.

The reason he didn’t speak.

Hardin had a stutter.

My stomach twisted, and I rushed off the bed, reaching for him, hugging him from behind.

“But you didn’t,” I told him, choosing to not draw attention to the stuttered words. “You didn’t kill him. You were able to control that urge.”

He gripped my wrist at his middle, drawing in a shuddering breath.

He said nothing, and somehow I just knew he wouldn’t speak again right now. Not after stuttering in front of me. Not while his emotions were still so high.

A visceral hatred for the person or people who ever made him feel like less of a boy—less of a man—because he had a stutter had me hot all over. It was their fault he stayed silent. Their fault he held everything in. Learned to be cold. Distant.

I remembered Kaleb’s admission. That their dad was buried out in the canyons. And I had to wonder if it was him who made Hardin this way. If it was, I was glad he was dead.

My skin tingled, and I surprised myself at the amount of acid in the thought. The amount of truth.

If the man was still alive, I’d want to hurt him for ever making Hardin feel like he should be embarrassed about something he couldn’t control.

Not that I could actually do it. I barely knew how to operate a gun. Or how to defend myself, much less attack someone else.

It was that feeling of uselessness, I realized, that made me so enraged at their insistence that I remain close. Implying that it was their job to protect me. That my wellbeing was their responsibility.

If I were more like Ava Jade I could take care of myself. I wouldn’t need them to come to my rescue. I could come to my own rescue. I decided right then, with my arms around Hardin, that I’d endeavor to be more like her. I’d work hard to be a person that could help protect others instead of always needing protection herself.

Hardin pried my arms from his middle and turned around. I let my head fall, expecting him to go back to stone cold silence. At least I’d succeeded in diffusing him. And I hoped, in letting him know that there would never be any judgment from me.

His fingers settled beneath my chin, lifting my gaze from the floor.

“I…” he started, and I went still under his touch. I heard him swallow, sensing him carefully choosing his moment, his next words. “I’m not good for you. I could’ve gotten you…I’m n-n-not—fuck.”

“Say less,” I said, my lips quirking up into the ghost of a smile as I closed the short gap between our faces, pressing my mouth to his.

He startled, his lips hard against mine for a beat before I felt the shift in him. His hands came around me, crushing me to him with one firm palm pressed to my lower back and the other curled around the back of my neck. He groaned into my mouth as he parted our lips, claiming me with a kiss so deep and so feral I felt it all the way to my toes.

I fisted my hands in the front of his shirt, needing to get closer, needing to feel alive after finding out that mere hours ago I could’ve died.

That could’ve been it for me. For all of us. That same feeling I had when I awoke in the hospital after being shot in the chest in Thorn Valley washed over me again: the innate demand for life. To grip it with both hands and never let go.

To live like we’re dying because it can happen that fast. Without warning.

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