Page 226 of At the Edge of Surrender

His throat bobbed harshly as he studied me. “And I’m fucking terrified that you might run when I do. Terrified that I’ll lose you. Terrified because I love you so fucking much that I don’t recognize myself any longer.”

Moisture continued to pool, my own emotion cresting. Rising up and overflowing.

His confession sounded so sweet in the middle of the hurricane.

“I love you so much,” he pushed on. “So much that I’m willing to face any consequence for the chance of you loving me back.”

My heart burned.

Burned and blazed as the confession poured from him.

“But if I have any chance of that, then you need to know me. You need to knowthis.” The last word cracked.

“What isthis?” I begged.

Kane inhaled a steeling breath. “You know that I met my crew while living on the streets of LA. I ended up there after my mother was killed. Desperate and alone and trying to find a way to survive. And we did that by falling into a bad crowd. A really bad crowd, and we got involved in really bad things.”

Apprehension expanded, my breaths coming short and haggard while I watched the demons play through Kane’s eyes.

The grief and regret.

The shame and the torment.

My fingers trembled with the urge to reach out and smooth them away.

“Our hands are dirty, Emery. Fucking filthy and tainted. Brutality. Barbarity.” Shadows of shame crawled across his striking, intimidating face. “I’ve done horrible, abhorrent things.”

My throat was so thick I could hardly breathe, and I clutched his hand to keep myself grounded. Tied to his reality that he didn’t want me to face.

Remorse shook his head. “So many years passed like that, and I don’t know if we all came up on a T in the road at the same time or what. If there was something that popped up inside us that told us we all had to make a change.”

Kane hesitated, sweeping his tongue over his bottom lip before he forced himself to continue. “This one night…”

Pain oozed out of him on a torrent. “This one night, I ran straight into a T, Emery. A dead end.” He swallowed hard, barely able to speak. “These bastards that we’d gotten messed up in were asking me to do something I absolutely could not do. I don’t think I realized I still had a conscience until that moment.”

I couldn’t get the air into my aching lungs while I waited, my eyes trapped by the torment that thrashed in Kane’s penetrating gaze.

“What…what was it?” I finally managed to ask.

Grimness shook his head, and he brushed a trembling thumb over the apple of my cheek. “I’ll spare you that, Little Warrier. The only thing you need to know is I couldn’t go along with what they had planned. So, that night, I betrayed these guys who were supposed to be my brothers.”

He inhaled a shattered breath. “Not one of my crew knew what I’d done. None of them knew I was basically a dead man walking. I hid out for a couple of weeks, trying to lay low, though I kept an eye on Theo and the rest of the guys to make sure they were safe. I couldn’t let what I’d done blow back on them.”

My heart was hooked on every word that he confessed.

Kane let go of a disbelieving chuckle. “Thing was, those monsters we’d gotten involved with? About a week later, that whole group imploded, and they scattered like the fucking rats they were. So, I went back home—to the house I shared with all the guys and Raven.”

He pushed out a heavy sigh before he continued. “Two nights later, River showed up with this woman…”

Kane blinked a bunch of times, as if he were taken back to that time. His voice ground like gravel. “River had overheard an altercation between her and her boyfriend. Had heard this guy beating on her. Her pleas and cries.”

He paused, staring at me, worried that he was revealing too much.

My entire being rattled. Sure of the direction he was going, but needing to hear him say it, anyway.

“Tell me,” I rushed on a whisper.

Kane gave a soft nod as if it would lessen the verbal blow he was about to deliver.

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