Page 99 of Ridin' Free

This—this was bigger. Scarier. Darker.

This wasall of it. Decades of abuse, violence, manipulation, and fear haunting me. Tempting me. Ravaging me. My memories had been unleashed, and they wreaked havoc on my mind, leaving me immobile, exhausted, and weak.

Simple as it would have been to slip into the skin of a victim and claim whatever power remained therein, I’d long since abandoned the notion that I could be anything akin to innocent. I was responsible for the death of not just one man buttwo—one of whom was unequivocally good and just and entirely undeserving.

‘Baby—you’re not a monster,you’re a fuckin’ warrior.’

Yet another tear spilled from the corner of my eye, slowly tracing a salty path over the bridge of my nose, tickling me. I pressed my eyelids closed tight and furrowed my brow, devastatingly aware that I felt like neither a monster nor a warrior. I was hardly more than a mangled soul, damned in this life and likely the next; a woman so fractured and broken, I wasn’t sure I could be recognized as human, let alone one worthy of admiration.

‘Baby—you’re not a monster,you’re a fuckin’ warrior.’

His voice was like a broken record in my thoughts.

Intrusive. Repetitive. Agonizing.

He saw a warrior. A survivor. A phoenix.

I was none of those things. I was nothing.

What little I had to give I gave it all to him.

In every kiss. Every fuck. Every secret shared.

I thought I could handle it. I thought I could bask in it—inus—for a little while. I wasn’t wholly aware of it while it was happening; I didn’t realize the cost of my desire; it wasn’t until Ileft my heart in the parking lot that my toll was collected. I was left with hardly more than the devil within.

In the deepest most hidden part of me, there was the faintest of whispers I hardly registered, telling me Benson was right. The tiny, girlish voice was meek, but it was there—trying and failing to convince me I might not have felt like a warrior, buthesaw it. He saw me.

Ben had proven time and time again that when he looked at me, he saw beyond what anyone else could see. He was one of two men I’d known in my whole life who didn’t see what I wanted him to, but through the façade I used to shield myself.

Wesley had seen my pain—both physical and emotional.

But Ben saw the girl I once was and the woman I longed to be.

‘You can fly, baby—and the door is open. It’s always fuckin’ open.’

I understood what he meant as clearly as if he’d spelled it out verbatim.

He’s not gone, Ali. He hasn’t let us go.

Oh, how I wished he would have let me go.

I sobbed, drowning out the tiny voice.

How I wished he would have snuffed out the possibility of us entirely—but he didn’t. I knew he was waiting for me. He hadn’t called. He hadn’t texted. He hadn’t returned, but none of that meant a damn thing.

He was waiting.

He was giving me the space to deal with my shit.

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to even so much as sit up.

My secrets were no longer mine. I’d carved myself open, exposing nearly all of them—revealing the ugliest parts of myself to a man I wanted to be mine for always.

For always.

I told myself time and time again we wouldn’t last forever, but that desire was there all along, shrouded in the shadows of my past. I’d let the light in. I’d lethimin. I’d emptied myself completely. I showed him the depth of my messiness, and I was smart enough to know there was no way he could still want me. He was convinced I was better than a club sheep. I’d never chased a kutte or paraded myself around the clubhouse like a hang-around, but I’d let myself be used by the worst of them. In time, he would realize whatever honor I possessed was nothing more than a lie.

I wasn’t his beauty.