Page 70 of Deviant Reign (Knight's Ridge Empire 6)

Why do I keep going back time and time again no matter how much they hurt me?

What is wrong with me?

With my heart in tatters and my body still weak from my earth-shattering release, I clean up and get ready for bed.

My phone taunts me, but I don’t turn it back on.

I can’t.

My fragile state won’t cope with whatever he might have said back to my final message.

Instead, I just lie there in the dark, running the events of the past few weeks through my mind.

Moving here. Starting over at Knight’s Ridge. It was meant to be a fresh start. The beginning of a new future, one that might even include some success, unlike the one I was destined to live if I stayed in Lovell. But… I let out a sigh. Yet here I am tangled up in the middle of three gangs, none of which I really want anything to do with.

I toss and turn, but I never manage to drift off, and I’m still awake when Dad finishes his shift at the studio sometime after midnight.

He often stops and knocks, but normally I only answer if I’m still awake working or watching TV. If I’m curled up in bed, I usually pretend I’m asleep.

But not tonight.

Tonight, something forces me to call out to him.

Pushing the door open, he pokes his head around the door.

“Hey, kiddo. You doing okay?” he asks, slipping inside.

“Yeah, can’t sleep.”

“I’d have thought you’d be exhausted after all that exercise earlier,” he quips.

Groaning, I shove my face into my pillow.

“Cruz sent it to you?”

“Yeah, he’s pretty proud of his bad-arse niece. Gotta say, I am too. You killed it in that ring, kiddo.”

I shrug, risking a look at him. “I lost.”

“Against a boy who’s been training since he could first walk and must be double your body weight. You held your own like a pro, and you should be proud.”

“Meh,” I mutter, flipping onto my back. “What’s that?” I ask, noticing a parcel in his hand.

“No idea. Found it at the front door. It’s got your name on it,” he says, holding it out to me.

My brow wrinkles as I stare at it.

“Not expecting anything then?” he jokes.

“N-no, I wasn’t,” I mutter, taking in the black wrapping paper it’s covered in.

That in itself should have been a clue, but I can’t claim that I’m really firing on all cylinders at this moment in time, so when a very familiar shirt falls from the wrapping, I gasp in shock.

I stare down at it with my heart in my throat and tears burning the backs of my eyes.

My shirt. I mean… Theo’s shirt.

My heart is like a runaway train in my chest as I think about him dropping it off.