Page 79 of A Love Like Venom

"You motherfucker!" I growl.

It isn't until they all leave, and we hear their motorcycles speed away do my brothers finally let me go.

Glaring at all of them I take my bloodied damaged helmet and launch it across the compound with a feral scream.

My hands are vibrating with fury as my body is a live wire. I feel like destroying everything that I can get my hands on.

A heavy silence falls throughout the room. I do my best to ignore all their stares but it's too much. Without my mask I can't face them and pretend like everything is okay.

Everything is wrong.

And I need to make it right.

And I have to keep Alice Hall safe.

If anything happens to her . . .

Fuck!

Oak clears his throat and dismisses everyone. "I think it's time for everyone to go home."

The room begins to clear automatically.

Standing off by myself I hear the heavy footsteps that belong to him. He comes to stand besides me but doesn't say a word. Except he doesn't have to.

He's telling me that he has my back on this. That I'm not going to fight this war alone.

"I'm going to do what I should have done all along," I tell him.

"What's that?" He asks.

"This time when I leave Hollows Point I'm taking Alice with me. I'm not abandoning her. It's time to start righting my wrongs and that begins with fixing the promise I broke."

I told her I would never leave, and I did.

I am never going to leave Alice Hall again. Even if she doesn't forgive me, even if she hates me, I will not leave her behind.

I can be that man again, her savior.

God, I fucking hope.

Alice

"Iknew there was more between you two. It all makes so much sense now," Gracie Mae tells me as she sits across from me at my kitchen table. Her little brother, Connor is in the living room watching cartoons on our painfully small television. Thankfully it doesn't seem to bother him. He's all too happy about watching his favorite show rather than going to bed.

I called Grace over as soon as Snake left the trailer. There was too much going on inside my head for me to face alone. After everything life has been throwing at me lately, I needed the support from the only friend that I have.

"I just don't understand why he would doubt me. I never doubted him. Not for one second and he believed what he heard so easily," I reply to her still torn up on the inside from what he told me.

Now that I have told Grace my history with Snake, she knows everything. Including the part where he killed Chris Blackwell, and I helped burned the body.

And I know I told myself I would never tell another living soul what Reed Carter did for me. That I would take it to mygrave and then some. But after what he told me I couldn't face this by myself.

I felt myself crumbling, my heart breaking all over again.

My soul was being destroyed by his words.

I needed to tell someone before I shattered. Before there were too many pieces to mend back together.

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