Page 124 of Ruin My Life
I shift to the corner of the couch and tug gently on his hand. He doesn’t resist. Just follows the pull like it’s pure instinct, sitting beside me with heavy limbs and heavier silence.
I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.
So, I listen.
“Songbirds never used to kill for what they wanted,” he tells me. “Back then, it was all petty theft, carjackings. Quick grabs. Then the boss got greedy. Started running loan operations—putting desperate people into impossible debt.”
He pauses, his jaw tightening.
“I didn’t like it. I knew what it felt like, scraping together coins to pay rent, watching my mom skip dinner just so I could eat. But they’d helped us. Paid her hospital bills. Kept a roof over our heads. I thought Iowedthem.”
“So you stayed,” I gather, my voice softer than I recognize.
He nods.
“But they took things too far. We went to collect from this guy—some poor bastard barely staying afloat. The boss said to make an example of him, and the member I always paired with… he’d been unhinged for months. He got off on inflicting pain. But I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to rock the boat.”
His voice drops lower, harder.
“When we got there, the guy was noticeably antsy. Kept trying to get us to leave and come back later. I thought it was just nerves, but it only made my partner angrier, more volatile,” he says. “I didn’t know he’d brought a gun until he pulled it out of the back of his pants. Started waving it,screaming at the poor guy to give us the money he owed. I couldn’t stop him before he took a shot.”
Damon swallows hard, then presses his fingers to his eyes like he’s trying to squeeze the memory out of existence.
“He missed and shot the closet door behind him, and at first I was relieved… But then we saw the blood pooling, seeping out from under the door. Turns out, the guy’s pregnant wife was hiding in the closet.”
My breath catches, the vivid image of what he went through already burning into my mind.
I can picture every second of it as if I was there myself.
And Damon King—The Coyote—sits beside me now not like a threat. But like a man cracked in half by a decision he’ll never forgive himself for.
My hand finds its way to the back of his shoulder—gentle, and a little unsure. It’s the way my mom used to comfort me and Amie when we couldn’t find the words to explain what was hurting.
I don’t know why I do it.
I shouldn’t feel this way. Not with what I came here to do. Not with why I started this conversation in the first place.
But I wish she were here to tell me what to do.
To explain why I feel somuch.
“I was done after that. I told them I was done,” Damon says, his voice bitter and low. “But they told me that same old line:‘once a Songbird, always a Songbird’.”
I flinch, realizing how many times I’ve thrown that in his face myself.
“But... youdidget out. Right?”
His gaze finds mine.
It’s unreadable and yet full of everything all at once.
“Not without consequences.”
The lump in my throat swells. “What kind of consequences?”
His voice is distant. Detached. Like if he doesn't disconnect from the memory, it might destroy him.
“They went after the people I cared about most. I knew they would. I got my mom out first—set her up in anotherstate, somewhere far, somewhere safe. But my girlfriend at the time…”
