Page 124 of Treacherous

"Do your parents know where you're going?"

"My mom knows," she replied. "I guess she'll talk to dad when he's calmed down."

"We're really leaving it all behind?" I sobbed. "You're sure about this – about coming with me?"

"One hundred percent," she choked out. "I am leaving Thirteenth Street and I amnevercoming back."

****

Treacherous

Epilogue

Seven Years Later

Noah

"How you doing, man?" I heard my manager ask seconds before he landed in the booth beside me. Tugging a sweet little brunette onto his lap, Quincy pressed a kiss to her neck before raising his beer bottle and clicking it against mine. "How're the knuckles?"

"Still functioning, Q," I told him before taking a swig of my beer. I was sore as shit, but the adrenalin that was still coursing through me numbed the aching.

Quincy was celebrating tonight. So was the brunette on his lap and the other forty or so people crammed up in the private room of the Krash bar. I'd done it. Finally. After eighteen months of blood, sweat and fucking tears I was the champion.

The champ…

The irony that I was now at the top of the very same game that had gotten me thrown behind bars seven years ago didn’t go unnoticed.

I was twenty-five years old and had spent the majority of my adult life behind bars, paying for a liar's mistakes…

"Smell that, champ?" Quincy chuckled, bleary-eyed and three sheets to the wind. "That, my man, is the smell of success – of freedom."

I wasn’t sure if I would ever get used to the feeling of freedom again.

It had been eighteen months since I'd been released and every day since still felt like I was living on borrowed time. But I didn’t verbalize my thoughts. Instead I stood up, tossed another shot back my throat, and headed for the bar.

A dark haired woman caught my attention at the far end of the bar and when I realized who she was my world came crashing down on me…

"Hope?" I called out as I pushed past a drunk couple in my bid to get to my old friend.

My heart was beating erratically in my chest. "Hope? Is she here – is Teagan with you?"

"Stay away from her, Noah," Hope warned me before rushing from the bar.

Like hell I was staying away from her.

Every fucking day since she ran out on me felt like I was hemorrhaging.

She was my thorn.

And I was getting her back.

****

Teagan

…"What do I mean to you?" I blurted out, never one to mince words. My cheeks reddened, I could feel them burn, but I kept my eyes on his face.

"Everything," Jordan mumbled, never taking his eyes off the pad he was sketching on. His fingers moved so fast across the paper, so skillfully, as I stared at him, drinking him in.

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