Page 47 of Savage Rule

“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s just keep quiet till we get where we’re going.”

“When you said you were taking me somewhere, I imagined a romantic sunset on some secret rooftop,” she says, taking in her surroundings with a confused expression.

“What, this isn’t romantic enough for you?” I grin at her.

“I guess it depends on what it is.” She walks over to a sign that’s been torn off the wall and is now leaning against a dusty desk. “Keaton Banks Orphanage.”

“It was just The Keaton Orphanage when I lived here. They were having a really bad time and sold it in an attempt to save it.”

She glances between the sign and me, and something like pity comes over her so strongly, I think she might cry. “This is where you lived?”

“It is.” I rub the back of my neck. “I’ve never brought anyone here.”

“Why did you bringmehere?”

“I told you, you showed me yours, I wanted to show you mine.” I take her hand and tug her up a rounded staircase of the old Victorian. It creaks with every step we take, a reminder of the repairs needed.

On the second floor, to the right, is a bedroom I’m so familiar with, sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night, I still search for the window.

“This used to be mine,” I tell her.

She walks in, staying close to the wall, touching everything in her path—furniture, old wooden figurines, pictures.

“Were these yours too?” She picks up a matchbox car left on the dresser.

“Nah. I took everything when I left.” Some other sad kid left that behind. “The place shut down six years ago. They ran out of money.”

“Where did the kids go?”

I brush my hand over a spider web clinging to a lampshade. “Other orphanages, foster homes. Wherever they could place them.”

“How sad.” She sits on the edge of one of the five beds placed in here. I know what she’s doing, trying to imagine what it would have been like when I lived here. Able to easily do it because she had a similar childhood.

I decide to help her. “The walls were covered in some hideous blue wallpaper with little flowers. There were only three of us in here, I had the bed closest to the window. No rugs because they were too hard to keep clean, but the wood floors were warm enough. We got to pick our covers. I had a set with the WWE logos.”

A chuckle bursts from her. “That is exactly what I pictured. And some of those wrestler’s figures on your nightstand.”

“Yup. Stolen ones.”

“Of course.”

“Did you get to choose your own?” I ask her.

She peers at her feet. “I never lived in one place long enough.”

I wonder what’s worse, having bounced around as much as she did, or spending most of the time in an orphanage.

Sitting beside her, I glance around and inhale. “The smell, that’s the same.”

“You mean, mildew?”

“Smell of my youth.” I laugh. “The place is mine now.”

Her brows pinch together. “You bought it?”

I nod. “A year ago.”

“Luca must pay you well.”

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