Page 28 of Steel Rain

That was the darkness that lurked underneath everything. Every action. Every movement.

I was here to save someone who would rather get her nails ripped out than trust me again. But I had to try. She was my sister. I loved her. I always would.

“Hey, oppo!” The greeting came with a knock, and an unhesitating twist of the doorknob.

Kieran O’Malley was the only person in this miserable place who did not stain the world by his existence. He was like a ray of sunshine, burning away the cold, gray clouds.

“Hi, Kieran,” I greeted him at my door.

I was getting ready to go to dinner; throwing on a sweater, to help fight the bite of the cold winter snow.

I pulled the sweater down, trying to unravel it from how it had rolled around my ribs. In unwrapping it, I realized that I was getting thin. My ribs were poking out.

I had gained weight in the Army. Good, healthy, lean weight that made me feel strong, and tough. In the weeks I had trained for the underground fight, I had cut weight. I cut even more now because unless my oppo was with me, I didn’t want to be in the chow hall. I would not go to the big house. Not without someone at my back, because I knew that someone could stick a knife into my ribs, and there’d be no recourse unless there was a witness.

Walking anywhere alone was a huge problem.

I could feel people’s stares. People who had known me. Or people who knewofme. The way they hushed as I walked by, or the way they stared when they didn’t think I was looking made my skin heat like a rash.

They were speculating and gossiping. That’s what a lot of men do best. Run their fucking mouths.

Kieran took the liberty of entering my rooms.

“I got a question for you,” he said as he lay down on my bed, his booted feet dangling off the end. Gone was the hesitance from yesterday. He was pretty comfortable hanging out in my room now. “Just between us girls, you know. What’s with you and coach?”

I paused in my movements.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Kieran stretched his hands above his head and raised one skeptical eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“Really.” I started pulling down my sweater again. Then I reached down to grab my army green jacket, twirling it theatrically over my head to get my arms in.

“So, you weren’t lovers in a past life?” Yes, we were. But he didn’t need to know that. “You don’t have something going on between the two of you?”

I jutted my chin up, looking down at him as he sprawled like a happy kitten with his head against my pillows. I can’t remember the last time I’d had a guy in my room. Much less in my bed.

I always preferred my one night stands down and dirty. In the back of a car. In an alleyway. In a supply closet. Nothing that brought them home. Nothing that made them last more than the moment I needed them for.

“I’m not judging,” he finally said, his hands coming out in a small surrendering gesture. “But it was hard to miss. He’s clearly crazy about you.”

“Come on,” I scoffed. “Now I know you’re full of shit.”

“I’m serious!”

“No, you’re not.”

“Look, I can be a girlfriend,” he said, sitting up. “And it’s clear you need friends.”

“I don’t need friends.”

Again, that brow rose halfway up to his hairline. “You need friends. And I’m willing.”

“Youneed friends,” I countered.

“Yes, I do. I can admit that.” He said with a smile, swinging his legs off my bed, and planting his feet on the ground. “I needgoodfriends. And good people are in short supply. Even out here.”

Truer words had never been spoken. He was absolutely right about that.

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