Page 32 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

He’s proven he’s not the man I thought he was. He’s more .

And I’m so goddamn tired of not being able to trust anyone. Especially when everyone else seems to trust him so easily.

“All I wanted was to leave,” he whispers, his voice already raw from the memory. “But they wouldn’t let me go.”

The way he says it...

It’s like it still surprises him.

Like he’s a man who walked through hell and still isn’t sure he made it out.

I shift to the corner of the couch and tug gently on his hand. He doesn’t resist. Just follows the pull like it’s pure instinct, sitting beside me with heavy limbs and heavier silence.

I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.

So, I listen.

“Songbirds never used to kill for what they wanted,” he tells me. “Back then, it was all petty theft, carjackings. Quick grabs. Then the boss got greedy. Started running loan operations—putting desperate people into impossible debt.”

He pauses, his jaw tightening.

“I didn’t like it. I knew what it felt like, scraping together coins to pay rent, watching my mom skip dinner just so I could eat. But they’d helped us. Paid her hospital bills. Kept a roof over our heads. I thought I owed them.”

“So you stayed,” I gather, my voice softer than I recognize.

He nods.

“But they took things too far. We went to collect from this guy—some poor bastard barely staying afloat. The boss said to make an example of him, and the member I always paired with… he’d been unhinged for months.

He got off on inflicting pain. But I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to rock the boat.”

His voice drops lower, harder.

“When we got there, the guy was noticeably antsy. Kept trying to get us to leave and come back later. I thought it was just nerves, but it only made my partner angrier, more volatile,” he says.

“I didn’t know he’d brought a gun until he pulled it out of the back of his pants.

Started waving it, screaming at the poor guy to give us the money he owed.

I couldn’t stop him before he took a shot. ”

Damon swallows hard, then presses his fingers to his eyes like he’s trying to squeeze the memory out of existence.

“He missed and shot the closet door behind him, and at first I was relieved… But then we saw the blood pooling, seeping out from under the door. Turns out, the guy’s pregnant wife was hiding in the closet.”

My breath catches, the vivid image of what he went through already burning into my mind.

I can picture every second of it as if I was there myself.

And Damon King—The Coyote—sits beside me now not like a threat. But like a man cracked in half by a decision he’ll never forgive himself for.

My hand finds its way to the back of his shoulder—gentle, and a little unsure. It’s the way my mom used to comfort me and Amie when we couldn’t find the words to explain what was hurting.

I don’t know why I do it.

I shouldn’t feel this way. Not with what I came here to do. Not with why I started this conversation in the first place.

But I wish she were here to tell me what to do.

To explain why I feel so much .

“I was done after that. I told them I was done,” Damon says, his voice bitter and low. “But they told me that same old line: ‘once a Songbird, always a Songbird’ .”

I flinch, realizing how many times I’ve thrown that in his face myself.

“But... you did get out. Right?”

His gaze finds mine.

It’s unreadable and yet full of everything all at once.

“Not without consequences.”

The lump in my throat swells. “What kind of consequences?”

His voice is distant. Detached. Like if he doesn't disconnect from the memory, it might destroy him.

“They went after the people I cared about most. I knew they would. I got my mom out first—set her up in another state, somewhere far, somewhere safe. But my girlfriend at the time…”

He works to get the words out, as if they shred his throat on the way up.

“They beat Isabella until she was unrecognizable. Left her bleeding in a dumpster behind my apartment building. I found her too late... She died because they knew losing her would hurt me.”

I forget how to breathe.

Everything I couldn’t find online, everything his encrypted files refused to give me— this is what turned him into the Songbirds’ number one enemy.

The story The King of Kings doesn’t want etched into data.

The kind of pain that carves itself into your bones and never lets go.

“You became The Coyote after that,” I murmur. “You went on a killing spree.”

He nods. “I vowed to kill every last one of them… but I didn’t. I made a deal with the boss. For the betterment of Kings.”

I roll the thought around in my head.

Of all the versions of Damon I’ve imagined since the night we crossed paths—this one makes the most sense.

“I’m sure most people in your place would’ve done the same,” I say.

“But most people don’t live to regret it,” he says, staring at me. “If I’d finished what I started, they wouldn’t have had the chance to go after you. Or your family.”

The realization knock the air out of my lungs.

My body pulls back on instinct.

It feels like he hit me. But he didn’t. He just told me the truth.

He won’t say who. But someone he could have killed lived.

And now my family’s dead.

All of this—every drop of blood I’ve spilled, every sleepless night I’ve hunted ghosts in the dark— could have been prevented by a different decision.

By him .

But I can’t bring myself to blame him.

Because he’s not hiding from it. He’s not deflecting or running or building walls.

He’s bleeding in front of me.

Right here. Right now.

“Damon…” I whisper.

He bolts to his feet before I can reach for him.

“Tell me you hate me,” he demands, his voice rough. “Tell me I’m on your list. When this is over, I’ll get through it if I know I’m next in line for your revenge.”

He starts pacing the room like a man circling his own execution. I rise slowly and step into his path, pressing my hands against his chest until he stops moving. My fingers curl into his shirt, and I force him to meet my gaze.

“I don’t hate you,” I say firmly. “You didn’t break into my house. You didn’t hold that gun. You didn’t pull the trigger.”

His hands rise and cup my face. They’re warm, trembling with both guilt and rage.

“That’s the fucking problem, Brianna,” he growls. “I didn’t pull the fucking trigger when I had the chance.”

His voice spikes—not at me, but at the past.

At himself. At everything he’s tried and failed to carry.

His thumb brushes my cheek like he’s memorizing me.

Like he’s already preparing to lose me.

“Please,” he whispers. “Don’t let me keep walking this road where all the paths lead to you. Push me away. Call me your enemy. Hate me. Just—just don’t let them use you against me too.”

I try to speak. But I feel winded. Like he’s confessed something I wasn’t ready to hear.

Because I know what this is.

This isn’t control. This isn’t obsession.

This is love , the kind born from ruin.

He’s telling me he’d rather lose me than be the reason I get hurt. And I hate how badly I want to wrap my arms around him and make him break that promise.

“I can’t,” I whisper. “I don’t want to. ”

Pain flashes through his eyes. Real and raw and so utterly human.

“Don’t you see how much I’ve already ruined your life?” he asks, shaking his head like he can’t understand me. “Why would you ever want more ?”

I open my mouth.

But I don’t have an answer. Not one that makes any sense to me anyway.

And while I’d usually brush him off with something guarded and sarcastic, the truth slips out on its own—soft and unplanned.

“I wish I knew the answer to that.”

Part of me already knows how this ends. One of us will betray the other.

Damon will choose to keep the identity of my sister’s killer a secret.

I’ll use his feelings—his obsession—as leverage. I’ll find a way to make him break.

There’s no version of this where it doesn’t end in gunfire and ash.

So why can’t I just play the role I planned when I stepped out here? Why am I standing here now, choking on words I can’t seem to say—words that might salvage whatever this is after I burn it all to the ground?

Because... I don’t want to lose him either.

His eyes flood into mine, dark and stormy, asking every question I’m not ready to answer. He shakes his head like he’s trying to pull himself free of me.

But he can’t.

“Fuck. Brie... why don’t you ever listen to me?”

I don’t get the chance to respond before his mouth crashes onto mine.

He tastes like whiskey and mint—a burn and a balm in the same breath.

His hand knots into my hair while the other drags down my spine, pulling me against him until our bodies mold together, like they’ve done this a hundred times.

It should feel wrong. It should .

Every man I’ve kissed in the last six months has been business. Transactional. Cold hands and colder intent. With them, I never wanted more than what I needed to take.

But this isn’t like any of the others.

Damon’s kiss is electric .

Everywhere his skin meets mine feels like an inferno, lighting up my body until I’m drenched in flames that all burn for him.

I fist his shirt in both hands, surrendering to the heat that builds with every hungry sweep of his tongue.

He kisses like he’s starving. Like I’m his last chance to feel something.

Before I realize it, my back hits the wall. He’s already moved us, already trapped me—in a way that makes my knees weak instead of afraid.

His mouth drags down my jaw, his tongue sweeping the hollow of my throat, and I whimper when his fingers hook beneath the waistband of my shorts.

He pauses. Breath ragged. Eyes locked on mine.

“Tell me to stop, and I will.”

I shake my head, already trembling with a need I haven’t felt in months—maybe longer.

“Don’t stop… Please, Damon.”

“ Fuck .”

He groans the word into my mouth and kisses me like it’s a punishment. His knee presses between my thighs, spreading me open just as his hand slips beneath my shorts.

I brace myself—for fear, for pain, for memories that might resurface.

But they don’t.

Because Damon’s touch is nothing like theirs.

When his fingers sink into me, slow but desperate, I nearly lose control right then and there. My head thumps back against the wall, my teeth digging into my bottom lip so hard I taste blood. My back arches instinctively, hips moving against his hand like they have a mind of their own.

He groans against my skin, his voice low and reverent .

“Let me hear you. All of it. I’ve wanted to hear every sound you’d make since the second I saw you.”

And god help me, I give them to him.

Especially when he presses the pad of his thumb against my clit and starts rubbing slow, firm circles. The moans fall like confessions, breathless and broken.

“You were begging me to hate you a few minutes ago,” I pant, the words spilling out between gasps as he works his fingers deeper.

“The me from a few minutes ago,” he growls against my neck, “didn’t know how you sound when you beg for me. How your pussy feels when it clenches around my fingers. How you tremble when I hit just the right spot.”

He curls his fingers and hits that very same spot that makes my knees weak, but he holds me in place.

It’s like he already knows my body better than I ever have.

“Damon!” His name bursts from me like a secret I’ve kept buried too long.

He captures my mouth again, biting down on my bottom lip until I gasp. “ Fuck . Now I know how it sounds when you moan my name,” he murmurs. “And I’m never going back. I’m going to have to keep you here, little rose. With me. Forever.”

The pressure finally snaps.

My entire body fractures as my orgasm rips through me, loud and bright and relentless.

Damon doesn’t let go. He holds me steady, coaxing me through it, his hand and his mouth and those fire-lit eyes never once leaving mine.

My forehead slumps to his shoulder, every breath ragged.

I’ve never come like that. Not ever .

His arms wind around me like chains made of silk. “I’ve got you,” he whispers. One hand on my hip. The other drawing slow, soothing circles up my spine.

I want to say something. Anything.

But the only word that exists is, “ Damon ...”

“Tell me what you want, little rose,” he murmurs.

I lift my head .

Those dark eyes gleam with flecks of gold in the low light from the baseboards, burning with something I don’t think I can ever unsee.

I could ask for anything, and he’d give it to me.

All I’d have to do is ask.

The key to The Speakeasy. The truth about the man in those pictures. Access to all the information I need.

But my mind is smoke. My body is ash.

There’s a hungry fire in me that he lit with his very own hands.

“More,” I whisper. “I want more .”