Ride Hard (Raven Riders 1)

She shook her head as she brushed the sand off her feet and slipped them back into her sneakers. Finished, she turned to find Dare standing behind her, a strange expression on his face.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

For a split second, she saw the answer in his eyes, and then he glanced to the trail that led down to the parking lot. “We should head back.”

“Just tell me.” She crossed her arms, hugging herself against the feeling of dread settling over her body.

He stepped toward the trail, and she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he turned on his heel and stalked up to her. “You know what? Yeah. Something’s wrong. You lied to me.”

“What? When?” she asked, her mind racing, panic lancing through her veins.

“The fucking reward, Haven. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? Jesus.”

The words sucked all the oxygen out of the air. Instinctively, she stepped back, her chin down. “I was going to tell you,” she said, her response sounding as pathetic as it was.

“Oh, so you did know, then. How?” he asked, words clipped, tone full of disappointment.

Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes. But no way was she letting them fall. “We heard the guys who held us talk about it.”

“You mean the ones who held you in the storage facility, the Church Gang?” he asked, and then he chuffed out a humorless laugh. “And this didn’t seem like information that you should maybe share with the people trying to keep you safe? Like, say, when I specifically asked you to tell me everything I needed to know?”

Suddenly, all the stress of the past weeks welled up inside her. The escape. The kidnapping. The rescuers they hadn’t known whether they could really trust. The uncertainty of it all. Haven forced her eyes to meet his, anger straightening her spine and making her stand taller. “It did. But it seemed equally like information that could be used against us. As that gang did. It seemed like information,” she said, taking a step forward to close the gap between them again, “that should be guarded until we knew for sure who we could trust.” Standing chest to chest with him, adrenaline shivered through her. “When we talked, I didn’t know if I could trust you, and—”

“And now?” he asked.

“You have to ask?” After everything she had told him, was it possible he didn’t realize how huge it was that she’d opened herself up to him the way she had? That making herself so vulnerable to him could only have happened if she trusted him—in a way she hadn’t trusted anyone in years?

“Yeah, I have to fucking ask.” He nailed her with a stare.

Which meant that despite how bare she’d laid herself open to him, Dare didn’t trust her. And that really freaking hurt, because of everything he and the Ravens were doing for her and Cora. Because she understood why he was mad, even if she thought she’d been justified—at least initially. And because Haven liked him. Really liked him. And wanted him to like her back. “Yeah, I trust you,” she said, forcing her eyes to stay up, to drink in the disappointment he was throwing off.

His jaw ticked like he was clenching his teeth, but finally he gave a tight nod. “Then I need you to not keep anything else from me.”

“Okay,” she said. Part of her wanted to say more—to explain, to defend, to fight—but she didn’t want to make things worse.

After a long moment, he cursed on a sigh and raked his hands through his hair. He paced away, then turned, his eyes flat, expression resigned. “You need to know that I’ve called a meeting of the club’s board to strategize how to deal with the existence of this reward.”

Her stomach dropped to the ground. “What does that mean?”

“It means we have to operate under the assumption that the Church Gang had time to contact your father and let him know you were in Baltimore,” he said, a hard edge slipping back into his tone. “And if that’s true, it means we have to assume that it’s possible for your father to learn what happened to you after the Churchmen lost possession of you.”

Fear had her heart racing and goose bumps rising over her skin. She pressed shaky fingers to her lips, her thoughts racing. Why had she never put it together like that? Why had she stayed put with the Ravens? What if her father or his goons were close, or closing in? “I can’t go back,” she whispered. But then her financial reality closed in on her—she’d stayed because she had absolutely no means of leaving, of running, of starting a new life somewhere far, far away.

“You’re not going back,” Dare said. “Ever.”

The conviction behind his words cut off the sharpest edges of her panic. “But I can’t stay here either. Can I?”