Page 42 of Ride Forever
Chapter 16
Sloane
Hopelessly.
The word held so many conflicting definitions I wasn’t sure which one to focus on.
Outside, I heard Gasket’s motorcycle start, and I looked toward the door, knowing the two men would’ve had words. I just wanted… What did I want?
Chaser’s end echoed Marini’s, but where my father didn’t care about my mother’s murder, Chaser cared too much about the murder of Madison. Just us being here, working against King and the Hollow Men, was evidence of that. After all we’d been through, I still harbored jealousy over a dead woman.
He was right about one thing. I’d locked everything away rather than deal with it. Indifference wasn’t a badge of honor. It was the mark of death.
It was ironic in a way. I was becoming the cold, unfeeling one, and Chaser was warming the fuck up. Who would we be at the end of all this? If we survived, would our relationship?
I turned my mom’s engagement ring over in my palm and studied the light refracting through the diamond. At least, I thought it was a diamond. It could be a shitty cubic zirconia or a slice of glass for all I knew. It didn’t matter. It had belonged to my mother, and it was the only thing I had of hers, even though my father had given it to her.
The motel room door opened, letting in a shaft of sunlight and Chaser. Murky orange light enveloped the space once more as he shut out the world.
“What’s that?” he asked, sitting beside me.
“My mom’s engagement ring.” I held up my palm so he could see the gold band.
“Where’d you find that?”
“I stole it from Marini’s room the night of the coup.” I sighed. “I went after him then, but he wasn’t there. I know you didn’t want me to be part of all that, but…”
“I was trying to protect you,” he murmured.
“I know, but I needed to fight my own battles.”
“Is that why you went after him at the cabin?”
An unexpected wave of emotion clouded my mind, and I waited a moment for it to clear. Where it had come from, who the hell knew?
“I know I said I was going to kill him,” I said. “I believed I would, but when it came down to it, I wasn’t so sure I could go through with it. But he tried to smash my head in with a rock, and I knew… At that moment, it was him or me. So, I took the shot.” I shrugged. “It wasn’t a cold-blooded murder. Not really.”
“Self-defense,” Chaser murmured.
“Self-defense,” I echoed. “All that other stuff, the revenge, the hatred…those reasons came after. But…”
“But?”
I glanced at him before turning toward the window. “I liked it. King goaded me into admitting it. Chaser”—I looked at him again, trying to gauge his response, but his face was as stoic as ever—“I don’t want to feel like that again. It brought out the parts of me that echo Marini. I don’t want to be him. It was like a sick addiction was trying to drag me away, and I… I didn’t want to admit it.”
He didn’t say anything, and my mind began filling in the blanks with depressing action items. I’d become the thing he hated. He didn’t want to love me if I was like Marini. He’d realized he’d made a mistake and should never have touched me. He’d signed himself up to a death sentence he no longer believed in. No pussy was worth this amount of shit.
I began to panic, the tragedy of my life flashing before my eyes. “I know you said you’d die for me and that you are mine, but saying the words… If you can’t say it, do you really believe those things?”
Chaser’s expression closed so fast it was like he’d slammed a door in my face.
Oh God, I’ve screwed everything up. I’ve pushed too hard, and now he’s realized he wants out.
“If this ends up being one-sided, if it’s just the danger and adrenaline that’s made you feel this way, then I don’t care,” I declared, rising to my feet. “I’d rather have loved on my own than not at all.”Shit, talk about self-torture. “I can’t let you sacrifice yourself…” I trailed off, a sick realization hitting me square in the heart. He wasn’t doing this for me. “You’re not… You’re doing this for…”
I turned my back on him, humiliation heating my cheeks. Where did I get off thinking I was so goddamned special?
“I don’t know what I expected,” I muttered. “A happy ending? In this life?Yeah, right.”
