Page 92 of Savage Hearts

His hand fell away and I almost begged for it back. I missed his touch instantly.

“What was it like, growing up in the club?”

I frowned at him. “Don't you know? Drugs, sex, and violence.”

I was sure it wasn’t hard to miss the bitterness in my voice. Maverick looked at me thoughtfully.

“I know all that,” he finally answered. “Or, at least, I can guess. I want to know what it was like foryou.”

It wasn’t a secret that things had been shit for me at home.

“Daniel Hayes only cared about one person in this world, and it was himself. What do you think?” I asked, my voice as low and emotionless as possible.

He didn’t say anything for a beat.

Then he reached over and grabbed my shirt by the collar. I looked at him questioningly when he pulled it down to bare my shoulders.

His finger gently skimmed over the raised skin on my back caused by the whip.

Only Silas had seen it in its entirety.

But I’d had a feeling Maverick was aware of it.

It was confirmed when I was met with unsurprised dark blue eyes.

“Tell me about this,” he said softly. Maverick was not a soft man.

I laughed, the sound cold and empty.

“This? I got it for trying to run away.”

He froze, his eyes widening slightly.

“I’ve shocked you. I didn’t think that could be possible.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“That young?”

I averted my gaze. His thumb moved in circles on my skin. I didn’t think he was even aware he was doing it.

“It feels like a long time ago.”

Sometimes, it felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. The optimistic girl I had been at fifteen, the one who didn’t know how the world worked, was killed that night when Daniel Hayes’s men dragged me in front of their club president.

Yet, sometimes, it was as if no time had really passed at all.

Like I had simply blinked and suddenly nine years had gone by—disappeared, really—and I didn’t know what happened to that fifteen-year-old girl.

I wondered if things would have been different had I not changed so much. Would I have been less careful and attempted to run a second time, years before the club was attacked? Or would I simply not have existed in this world anymore? Finally provoked my dear old dad enough to kill me, like he had threatened to do so many times.

“Not so long ago,” Maverick said, and I didn't know what that tone in his voice meant. “You were a kid.”

I shrugged, my gaze unfocused. “He whipped me in front of his club.”

Maverick stiffened beside me, but I didn’t bother meeting his eyes. It was easier to tell him when I didn’t have to.

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