Ride Wild (Raven Riders 3)

Right there in Slider’s arms.

Fucking hell. Jesus fucking hell.

Slider couldn’t help the tenor of the refrain running through his head. Given what little he’d known, suspected, and deduced, it was what he expected. And also a million times worse than his worst imagining.

Her father. Her fucking father.

It made him want to retch. And rage. And tear the motherfucking world apart with his bare hands.

But his hands were full of her. And Slider realized that was the only place that mattered.

Because Cora mattered. Because, goddamnit, he was falling in love with her. Despite his rules and his fears and his insecurities. He was falling in love with Cora Campbell.

But that didn’t matter just then, either. The only thing that did was her and how she was feeling.

So Slider held her until she cried herself dry, and then he held her some more. He stroked the damp waves of her hair off her face. And kissed her forehead. And silently whispered, I’m sorry, and It wasn’t your fault, and You never deserved that, and I’ll never let anything hurt you like that again.

He said it again, just to be sure she heard him. “I swear it. I’ll never let anything hurt you like that again.” Slider wasn’t sure of the entire universe of what he was promising just then, but that didn’t keep him from promising this.

Finally, her tears quieted, and her muscles went limp, and he wondered if she was asleep but didn’t want to ask and chance waking her. So he let himself relax against the soft back of the overstuffed family room couch, and he drifted off, too.

It was her voice that woke him some hours later. The clock read after midnight, which explained the stillness of the house around them.

“Slider?”

“Yeah, sweetheart. I’m here.”

Her fingers traced along the edge of his cut. “I wonder if I did enough, fought hard enough, said no loud enough. You know? Part of me wants to analyze the whole night bit by bit, but the bigger part of me is too terrified to do so and maybe find that it was partly my fault—”

“It wasn’t, Cora,” he said, his voice cracking from sleep. And emotion. “It wasn’t your fault at all. He was your father, the single person on the whole fucking planet whose number one job was protecting and providing for you. Not one thing about what happened to you was your fault.” He leaned over until he could make eye contact. And, aw hell, the tears had made her eyes as bright as emeralds. “Do you hear me?”

She nodded. “Still . . . do you think less of me?”

“Look at this face. Look into these eyes. And never, ever doubt that you’re looking at your biggest fan, your staunchest defender, and the man who will always hold you up and have your back.”

She swallowed, hard, her eyes searching his. So he let her see it. The emotion. The confusion. Him. He let her see it all.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this.”

“Do what?” Of course, healing from this was going to take some time. And he’d help her with that however he could. And forgiving herself, well, even when there was nothing to forgive, it was possible to beat yourself up till the end of time. Slider knew that too damn well, didn’t he? As for getting justice—or revenge—the Ravens had already taken care of that when they’d killed her degenerate drunk of a father at their racetrack the night Haven’s father attacked the club.

But none of that was what she meant. Instead, she surprised the hell out of him—not with what she revealed, exactly, because he had an inkling. But instead she surprised him with her courage. “Pretend that I don’t have feelings for you,” she said.

If she hadn’t owned him already, she did as of that very moment. Emotion thick in his throat, he tried to tell her. “I’ve been such a fucking wreck, Cora.”

“I know. I didn’t admit that to try to make you say anything back.”

He cupped her face in his hand, because he sure as shit was going to respond to that. “I’m a wreck, and I’d convinced myself that I always would be. But lately, I’ve been trying. I’ve been better. Hopeful, for the first time in years.” Admitting that should’ve been freeing, and it was. But, maybe ridiculously, it was also scary as fuck. Because when you’d become wed to a certain narrative of your life, letting go of it threatened to crumble the ground beneath your feet, leaving you with no idea where you’d be left standing when the dust settled.

Her expression went so, so soft. For him. “I’m really glad of that, Slider. So glad you feel better.”

“It’s you, Cora. It’s me, too, some. But you worked your way into my heart and my head and my house and my whole life until I could see again that I had a life. One I’d been neglecting. One I hadn’t been appreciating. So I don’t know how I’m going to pretend, either. And frankly, I don’t want to, not anymore. Because I care about you, too. And not just as a friend.”