Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC 5)

His head tilted and he stepped forward too, his body brushing against mine. “Then what, Becky? The way you looked at me scared the fuckin’ shit outta me,” he admitted.

I sucked in a breath. “I wasn’t looking at you,” I said quietly. “I wasn’t even seeing you.” I gazed up to his hazel eyes, needing them to anchor me to the moment. “I was seeing him.”

His entire body froze as if he sensed what was coming. “Who?” he gritted out.

I wanted to look away from him, escape the intimacy of his gaze. But if I looked away the darkness of the memory would swallow me up, and without the cushion of narcotics, I’d get lost in the abyss. So I kept his gaze. “The man who raped me when I was twelve years old.” The words flew out with the breeze, which carried them on the air and polluted every molecule they came into contact with. It was visible, tangible, the effect they had on Gabriel. Every inch of his body turned to stone and his eyes deepened with emotion, with intensity.

Then I wasn’t seeing his eyes. Or even him. I wasn’t even me. I was a stranger. A little girl still clutching the last soft edges of her childhood that hadn’t been filed off.

I couldn’t sleep because I was hungry. It wasn’t unusual, going to bed with no dinner. Mostly because there wasn’t enough food to go around in these stupid prisons they called foster homes. The fat ‘parents’ stuffed their faces and gave the kids the scraps.

It should’ve been illegal, or something. But I guessed the fancy people making the laws didn’t care about orphan hood rats getting all Oliver Twist up in there. I was going to make sure they did, when I was older and out of this craptastic place. When I wasn’t bundled under itchy sheets and trying to ignore the rumble in my stomach. I was totally going to get one of those fancy suits and fancy hairdos and go on the TV and tell kids like me they weren’t forgotten. I’d help them.

Not just the one little girl clutching a dirty rabbit, like the one I’d given my dinner to earlier that night.

All of them. I’d help them all. I was smart, read a lot. I could totally do it.

I was contemplating trying out my lock-picking kit and going for the padlock on the refrigerator since the whole house was asleep. Then I could hoard some stuff for me and bunny girl. You didn’t learn names here. Names meant attachments, friendships. You couldn’t do that. Nothing here was for the long time. Everyone was only visitors in each other’s lives. Nothing was for good.

But I liked bunny girl, despite my rules.

So I guessed it was her who was creeping into my Harry Potter-esque cupboard of a room. I rolled over, about to let her into my bed as I had for the last four nights she’d been there.

She couldn’t sleep alone. Think it might’ve had something to do with the fact she’d been alone in her apartment after her mom offed herself.

Brutal.

But the kid was cute and small; someone would adopt her. But for now, she had me. And I’d take care of her.

But it wasn’t her small form that stood over my bed. This one was much bigger, the shadow taking up the whole room.

I scuttled back, already scrambling for the knife I kept hidden in my boot.

Another kid gave it to me when I was ten. Leather jacket was his name. He was older, cooler. He smoked a lot. I didn’t like that, but I liked him. He’d given me the knife the day he left.

“You hide this,” he ordered.

I gaped at the glittering steel he held out to me. I took it, trying not to do something stupid like cut myself. That would be embarrassing.

His smoke-tainted hand went to my chin, tilting it up to meet his eyes. “Kid, you listening?”

I nodded rapidly.

“You hide that.” He nodded to the knife. “When the time comes, you use it. The time will come. You’re a cute kid, a life in the system ahead of you. There’s all kinds of men—monsters, not men. They like cute, green-eyed little kids who don’t have anyone in the world.” He gave me a hard stare that kind of scared me. “You use that on them. And don’t you dare be scared of them. Ain’t no use for fear in our life.” He let go of my chin, stepped back, and was gone.

I hadn’t realized what he’d meant, but I kept the knife.

Now I knew. But it was useless in my boot because a sharp pain erupted in my head and I was slammed down roughly on my cardboard bed.

“Not so fast, Rebecca,” Walter whispered.

His breath stank of the food he’d gulped down, rotting in his big fat stomach.