Unwritten Rules (Rules 1)

“Why would I do that? The girl deserves to know the truth. She’s a temporary girl. Just like they all are. Just like Riley.”

My lips part. Riley?

“But he didn’t tell you about her, did he?”

I wait for Haze to explain himself. Wait is the key word here.

“How the hell do you know about that?”

“Of course he didn’t tell you. Why would he tell you he got a girl pregnant?”

My lungs collapse.

Haze is a father?

“Don’t you dare talk about things you don’t understand.”

“Oh, but I do understand. She was sixteen when you got her pregnant, wasn’t she? Then you left her to rot. Because even though you said that you cared, in the end you were still this heartless piece of shit, and she was still a temporary girl.”

“Enough,” Haze barks.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to stop divulging your darkest secrets? You don’t want Winter to know you’re a father? You don’t want me to scare her away? Well, don’t worry, she’s too stupid to be afraid of you. If she was even a little bit smart, she would’ve run away from you a long time ago.”

“I’m not a father. She said she’d get an abortion.”

“And you never cared to check?” Blake spits.

Haze’s words seem to have left him at first.

“How the hell do you even know about Riley? I haven’t heard from her in years.”

“Oh, that’s funny. Neither have I. She never wrote. Never called. All because of you. You knew her parents would kick her out, and they did. Well, I lost my sister that day, my only real family—and now you’re going to pay.”

Haze sighs in realization. “You’re her brother. The one they sent away.”

“Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner.” Blake begins to walk around us in circle. “You can’t even imagine my surprise when I heard that she’d run away. My parents were never the same. My mother would’ve done everything to get her back home, but my father couldn’t stomach the thought that his daughter was the trashy girl who’d gotten pregnant at sixteen. They divorced five months after. You destroyed my family. You’re the reason I might never see my sister ever again.” He punches Haze in the face as hard as he can.

I wince in helplessness. I don’t want to judge him, but what does that say about him? He let her down and alone with a baby at sixteen.

“If I wasn’t tied to a chair right now…”

“Keep making threats, Adams.”

“Is that why you’re working with my brother? Because you want to kill me?”

Blake snorts. “Kill you? Please. Your brother would never allow that. He still believes that you can be saved. But we have something in common, him and I. We both want her gone.” He turns to me.

Haze raises his voice. “What does she have to do with any of this?”

“I don’t know about your brother. He says he wants to set you back on the right path. As for me, I’m just doing to you the same thing you did to me.”

He pauses for a dreadfully long moment.

“Taking someone you care about away from you.”

He tilts his head to the side as he analyzes me thoroughly. Then he says the three most terrifying words I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Hold her still.”