Page 5 of Convict's Game

Shade banded me in a hard hug, his arms crushing me. “Shite, did I hurt ye? That’s a stupid question. You’ve never felt pain in your entire life. Not when we were kids in a fight club and not now.” He palmed my jaw and examined me, his Scottish accent strong. “Do ye remember me?”

Shade was… I searched my mind. An enforcer? Yes, I’d seen him kill. He took out the assholes who crossed our crew.Right.

“Course I do,” I muttered.

Like with the docs, I wasn’t admitting my shite memory. It was bad enough that I was in hospital-issue t-shirt and trackies, cut to accommodate my walking boot, my dark hair overly long with a scar running back from my hairline from my skull injury. Coupled with the fact I needed a shower and a shave and to get off the fucking meds that were slowing my thoughts, I was a wreck.

Relief swept over his features. “Good. That’s good. Don’t worry, brother. We’ve got ye covered from here. Arran isnae home, but the minute he reads my message, he’s going to fucking die.”

He twisted to talk to Dixie, asking her about the hospital and what the nurses had said.

But the name Shade said gave me pause. Arran was the leader of our crew, my brain supplied an image of the man. I’d known him for years, and small details peppered my thoughts. He was as deadly as Shade and more ruthless. In that mental picture, Arran was enraged.

I’d done something bad to him.

Sickness crawled through my belly at the certainty. Somehow, I’d fucked over one of my closest friends and ended up broken in a hospital bed.

I swayed, either at the realisation or exhaustion.

Shade caught me. “Come on. Upstairs and to bed. You’re dead on your feet.”

He was wrong. I was alive.

We took the lift up to the fifth floor.

Shade led the way into a corridor with rooms opening to the left and right. “Thought it would be better for ye to stay here where we can take turns in checking on ye. I had someone prepare a bedroom right at the end, so ye shouldn’t be disturbed too much.”

Dixie whispered, “This is the cam girls’ and boys’ floor. Lots of faking orgasms for paying viewers.”

As she spoke, a door opened to one of the rooms and a woman exited, buck naked aside from a barely there bra. She gave us a polite smile and sauntered to a bathroom opposite. Inside the space, another woman sprawled on a bed reached between her legs to slide out a double-ended dildo.

Fucking hell. That was fire. Or it should’ve been. Still, there was zero response in my body. No rush of heat. No reaction at all to the display of sex they’d just quit.

Either my brain was fried or my dick had gone on strike. And honestly, I wouldn’t blame either of them.

Shade and Dixie directed me to the last room on the corridor and set me up with water, my oversized bag of medication, and promises for regular check-ins.

Shade held the doorframe. “Rest. Fuck knows ye need it.”

Finally alone, I dropped down onto the cool white blanket and exhaled hard.

Somehow, I’d been gifted a second chance with people who cared about me. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it, or to earn their rejection in the first place, but one thing was certain.

Whatever I did to get tossed in the fire, I wouldn’t repeat it. I’d been burned once. Now I’d set the world ablaze for them.

I’d never fuck up again.

Chapter 2

Convict

A wailing moan of pleasure pierced my consciousness, dragging me from sleep, and I sat up, blinking in the low light of my room.

There was no cast on my leg. No IV in my arm. No hospital beeps or the scent of antiseptic. Just the thudding bass of music and sex moans through the wall. Deadwater’s version of a wellness retreat.

Fuck, I was free.

Swinging out of bed, I touched my booted foot to the floor then stood, testing my balance. Not bad. On the bedside table waited a white pharmacy bag, and I pulled out the only meds I’d be taking from now—the last of my antibiotics—swallowing them down with a gulp of water. My head hadn’t felt this clear in forever, and I wasn’t about to cloud it with drugs for pain I couldn’t feel.