Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(3)

My cloud moved. I shifted my gaze. I wasn’t floating. I was in someone’s arms. Strong arms. Scarred arms. The rippled patches on them seemed like they were moving. I held my finger to them and trailed it lightly along the moving scars, hypnotized. Everything else in the room was forgotten.

But not the man with the hazel eyes. He still existed. Somewhere.





Chapter One





“I am the architect of my own destruction.”

-Prince of Persia

Ten months earlier





It started with a pill. Harmless, really. Everyone was doing it. ‘A party favor’ was what one of the girls called it. Never one to turn down anything to do with a party, I took it. It was surprising I hadn’t indulged sooner. Maybe it was because before, I had deluded myself into thinking there was a way I could escape. Get clean. Transcend the life I was born to. At that moment, that time when that little pill was offered, I had been educated on how f*cking wrong I was.

So I took it.

And it was awesome. Everything was better, more colorful, more complex. It was as if that little pill took the film off my eyes which had been there since birth and I could see the world. Really see it, in all its beautiful color.

I had been searching for an escape, but I’d been doing it in the wrong places. Trying to trick myself into thinking I could escape by becoming better, by becoming a doctor, learning how to clean the dirt off my soul.

I was wrong. Escape didn’t come with college education and a medical certificate.

Escape came in the form of that little pill. I forgot. I forgot all of it. That I sold my body for a living. That filth was flowing through my blood. That the woman I considered a mother was fading before my eyes.

It was all gone. So easy.

I was easy. Weak. Took the simple way out. When the devil held out his hand and invited me into hell with that little pill, I took it without hesitation. And I descended into the fiery depths before I knew better.

I read somewhere that it apparently takes a few hundred injections and a year to make an addict. So written by an addict. What a wonderful romantic thought to have.

So then, by those standards, I was not an addict. The thought comforted me.

Tightening the elastic at my elbow and positioning the needle right at the vein that protruded after I did so, I paused. Not for long. Too long would be to bathe in the bitter sticky bath of shame that submerged me in these moments. I was always tainted by this feeling, knowing that the only person who gave a shit about me didn’t see the filth. But in those short moments between expectation and exhilaration, the need and the fix, that was when my body crawled with shame.

What would Faith say if she saw me now?

What would Lily say?

What would that little girl who was curled up in a lumpy bed, broken and violated, say? The little girl who had had her innocence wrenched from her tiny body before she had time to realize it was something to be stolen?

They’d all rear away from this stranger in disgust. I’d do the same if such a thing were possible. But I couldn’t run from myself. Couldn’t escape nightmares when they existed when I was awake. I could only choose the things to make it bearable to stumble through the life I’d been given.

I chose the easiest escape. What was another mark on an already stained soul?





Four months later


I was flying high. Not exactly high; that’s what the pills did. Shot me into space until I was floating and plucking stars from the air. Heroin was different. Gave me a happiness that had been unfamiliar until that first hit. It wasn’t just happiness, but contentment. Life, for the first time since forever, was okay. I was okay. It wasn’t gray anymore; it was color, it was fresh. My job wasn’t dirty, or shameful. It was fine. It was good.

And the grief melted away. It still existed, but it wasn’t draining me. It was part of me. It was okay.

Since the moment we buried Lily’s mom—my mom—I had relied on the prospect of my next hit to get me through. Through the pain that not only sliced my soul, but the utter devastation that lay beyond my best friend’s beautiful eyes. I couldn’t surrender to that pain; I’d learned that early in life. I also had to be strong, put on that mask I’d become so skilled at hiding behind. I had to do it for my friend. My sister. The only person in the world who didn’t see the filth.

I hid behind the drugs while her grief hid the drugs from her. I used them as a way to feel nothing in order to take care of my best friend as well as I could. Which wasn’t exactly well. And I took it to escape my own demons.

When it got down to it, I just took them to make it easier.

So, as I strutted my barely clad ass onto the dimly lit stage, I was high. Soaring.

That meant the world was fuzzy around the edges, and everything seemed like it was underwater. I was wading through at exceptional speed. I could feel the music inside me, as if the beat originated within me. I let my vacant mind move my vacant body to the music, aimlessly looking over the crowd that was focused on me. I didn’t see them. I never did. I learned quickly not to look at the mostly disgusting men leering at my naked body.

Drugs helped.

But I glanced at Lily’s portion of the bar, just to make sure my girl was okay. Because even though I may be flying high, forgetting all the bad that took up ninety percent of my world, I wouldn’t forget the good. The ten percent. My girl. And if anyone f*cked with her, they were dead.