Page 8 of Beautiful Ruins
It was in the way she used to bite her bottom lip and smile like I was someone she could love. She was fifteen then. I was seventeen and had known I was wrong for her, known I couldn’t drag her into the mess I had made of myself, so I’d kept my distance.
The last place I ever expected to see her again was Barrenridge. The town practically chewed up all the good and left the bastards to fight amongst themselves. I was no different. I’d been planning ways to get rid of Snake for good, just had never found the right time. I needed to make it look like an accident, or at the very least, like someone other than another Ridge Rider took him out.
I lifted a shoulder, my gaze flitting to Sadie’s bedroom window. It was dark. Maybe she had already fallen asleep. “She’s like a shiny new toy. What do you think?”
Just the thought of what Snake was capable of, had me clenching my jaw and tightening my grip around the bottle.
He’d sell his own mother for convenience, then buy her back just to do it again. He was the sort of guy who thought women were disposable. The sort of guy Sadie should never be around.
It wasn’t enough that she was the chief’s daughter. Burning the world down would never be enough for Snake. He only cared about getting even with me for taking what he believed was his—the VP position. And if he got wind that Sadie and I were somehow . . . involved, he’d jump at the chance to ruin her. Prick. Like her being my girl would’ve changed anything, not when he was so hellbent on payback.
But I’d hurt her moments ago. She didn’t need to say as much. It was written all over her face. Still, that was better than the pain I’d have felt if something happened to her because of me.
She’d thank me for it later, for saving her from drawing anyfurther attention from Snake. Maybe, if he thought she was nobody, he’d back off, leave her the hell alone—the way I was planning to.
But I was also naive in that respect.
She’d been back less than a day, and my world was already upside down. Shaken like a fucking snow globe, everything stirred up and suspended—memories, pain, the pieces of me I thought I’d buried. I was drowning in it, a tidal wave of everything I’d locked away, numbing the parts of myself that had somehow scabbed over.
Didn’t matter that we’d never shared anything more intimate than a few lingering glances as teenagers. Or that she had ripped my heart out of my chest when she left me six years prior without so much as a goodbye.
Not only did I lose my brother, I lost her, too. The only warmth I ever let myself feel, and it had broken me more than I cared to admit. Losing Logan was a dagger in my back, but Sadie leaving? That was a knife to the heart, a twist that I’d felt every day since. The two of them took everything with them. Every dream of having a family, a damn future with someone who gave half a shit about me.
“Rowan?” Jasmine’s soft voice broke through the wreckage of my thoughts as she dropped into the chair beside me. She tucked her blonde hair behind her ears, a frown on her face. “Sadie’s back.” It wasn’t a question. It was a reckoning.
I nodded. “Yep. Sadie’s back.”
She was always like that as a child, a teenager—darting around, lighting things up, and impossible to pin down. Like a firefly in human form—that’s what I had called her one night when she was stomping around outside looking for a goddamn possum that apparently had a broken leg.
Logan had been inside, so Sadie dragged me outside with her.
“You’re going to trip in the dark, you know?” I had muttered while she gripped onto my hand.
“I’m not scared of the dark. I’m looking for something,” she had said, not bothering to look at me.
I’d scoffed. “What, trouble?”
She had spun around suddenly, the torchlight catching her wild hair and eyes. “Maybe,” she said, grinning.
She had caught me off guard, and all I could do was mumble, “You look like a firefly.”
Sadie’s face had grown serious, and she blinked at me, frowning. “What?”
I’d shrugged, an attempt to shove off my words as nothing more than just a casual observation. “Just all lit up and wild. Won’t stay still.”
Sadie had tilted her head as though she was studying me. “Firefly, huh?”
A smirk had lifted the corners of my lips. “Yeah. Fitting. You boss people around, light everything up. Even when you shouldn’t.”
She had grinned then and darted off to search for the bloody possum.
Of course I had followed her, groaning even though I didn’t mean it. I couldn’t help but be drawn in by her warmth, her beauty, and her unpredictability.
She was fucking gorgeous back then. But now? Now, she’d just shown me exactly what I was missing. Her.
She shouldn’t have come back here.
It changed everything.
