Give Me a Reason (Redemption Hills 1)

While I fought harder to break through the cloud of hate that surrounded Trent.

“Trent.” My hands sank into his shoulder, gripping at his arm. “Listen to me. Stop. He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve this.”

Trent kept wailing away.

I begged while the beast seemed removed.

Completely oblivious to anything but the wrath that poured from his being.

Finally, Kult broke through the thrashing wall of bodies. His eyes were wild as he assessed what was happening.

“Kult. Help. Stop him,” I pleaded, still trying to pull Trent off the man.

But I got the sense he couldn’t see me. Couldn’t feel me.

A black veil of antipathy was his driving force.

His demons alive and freed.

Screaming and clawing and begging for destruction.

Kult shouldered through and ripped Trent off. “Let up.”

Trent thrashed and flailed while Kult struggled to hold him back. “Cool the fuck down, man. Cool it.”

“Oh my god.” It left me on a gasp when I saw the guy who lay bloodied and battered on the felt. Coming in and out of consciousness.

Blindsided.

While Trent continued to rage. Those ferocious eyes filled with hate. With grief. With something so dark that I couldn’t see through to that level of pain.

One of the upstairs bartenders, Jason, was on his phone, calling for the paramedics.

While Kult dragged Trent back through the gaping crowd.

I rushed to the guy on the table whose wife was helping him sit up.

“I’m so sorry,” I barely managed. “An ambulance is coming. I’m so sorry.”

A Riot of Roses continued to play downstairs, completely unaware that the owner had just snapped.

It was what he’d warned would happen.

He’d warned that destructive force would one day rise. No longer contained.

Milo was suddenly there, pushing through the people who’d decided the incident was more interesting than the band, though most continued on blissfully unaware. “Let’s get him moved downstairs.” He lifted his chin. “You’ll be compensated for your trouble although it’s company policy that patrons do not touch our servers. Security believed she was in danger.”

Right.

A veiled threat and a payoff so the cops wouldn’t be called.

Taking the employee elevator at the back, Milo led the man down to the locker room and propped him in a chair, and a minute later, two paramedics came through the door.

They tended to his wounds that could have been much worse, and I had to assume that Kult had intervened much faster than it’d seemed when I was trying to break through Trent’s anger.

The man’s nose was bloodied and he had some cuts littering his face, but it didn’t appear that he would have any permanent damage.

Thank God.

While I hovered and paced, a fear bottled deep, that thing that Trent believed raged inside him freed.

Once the man and his wife left, Milo squeezed my arm and walked out, and warily, warily, I eased down the hall to Trent’s office.

I pushed open the door to the darkened room save for the small lamp that glowed from the edge of the desk.

Jud was kneeling in front of Trent who sat in a chair in the far back corner. He was bent over at the waist with his face buried in those tattooed hands.

His knuckles bloodied and his being tossed in chaos.

Jud swiveled to look at me, and he slowly rose to standing when I quietly slipped inside.

Unease blistered. A receding storm that threatened to make a rebound.

Jud moved my way, his heavy boots thudding on the ground, his understanding thick. He paused in front of me, squeezed my fingers, and leaned in to murmur so only I could hear, reiterating what he’d told me all those weeks ago. “He deserves someone who will see him for who he really is, Eden. Not for what he’s done.”

My nod was short and shaky.

He dipped his bearded jaw, edged out behind me, and clicked the door shut behind him.

With it, that intensity struck.

A flashfire of severity.

A wash of hate and wrath.

Trent looked up through the darkness.

All that loathing was directed at himself.

Still, he did that casual thing that he did, slung himself back in the plush seat with his arm draped over the back as he pinned me with that unrelenting gaze.

He angled his head in challenge. “You see it now, Eden? You see me for who I really am?”

“I’ve seen you all along.” The whisper curled through the dense air.

On a scoff, Trent climbed to his feet. A menacing refuge in the billowing night. “And just what is it you see, Eden?”

The last time he asked me it, he walked away from me.

Fear tumbled down my spine, a cold sweat that shivered across my flesh. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I was afraid of the power he wielded.

I lifted my chin and met his steely gaze. “I see a man who’s touched me in a way no one else can. I see a man who burns so bright, he might burn me alive. I see a hatred that runs so deep in his veins, and still, I want to dip my fingertips into the flow.”