Rein In (Willow Bay Stables #3)(23)

Words with Rhys were always hard to come by, and I was asking for so many in this moment.

“Are you sure you want to know, Aurora?” He rolled his shoulders back, and his body was overrun by the slightest tremor.

I sat up straight in my seat. “Yes, I’m sure.”

He cleared his throat, once and then again. It was clear that of all the things someone could ask of Rhys, this would be the hardest for him to answer.

I prayed for whatever God he believed in to give him strength in this moment.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, his lips began to move.

“I grew up in foster care, not the worst kind but not the best kind, either.” He shrugged like this was something of old news to him. “When I was thirteen, I got placed with a woman named Clara Hicks, who already had one foster child, a girl. She was a year older than me.”

Suddenly the image of the girl in the driveway played back in my head. “The girl who brought you your bike a few weeks ago?”

He nodded. “Madison Parry.”

Something heavy sat on his heart when he said her name. It was nothing like the happiness I’d seen in him the day she’d shown up.

“Maddy was my whole world.” His voice tripped over memories his heart was remembering. “She was a sister, a mother, a father, and a friend. I lived to see her smile.”

I reached across the table, suddenly feeling guilty for doing this in such a public place, and interlocked my fingers with his.

They flexed and squeezed mine tightly like he was fighting a battle on whether to hold on or let go.

He held on.

“When I was sixteen, I fell in with a motorcycle club. The bad kind.” He grimaced. “I was a prospect for just over a year until the night I watched the president, and the man who mentored me, rape a girl I went to school with.”

My stomach turned.

“She cried and I begged them to stop.” The features on his face were at war with his words. “When I tried to pull Hyde off her, he hit me in the back of the head with a baseball bat.”

It took all I had not to rush to him as he spoke.

“When I came to, I left my cut on the floor and walked out.” His voice had dropped so low that I strained to hear him. “You don’t walk out on the Hounds of Hell.”

His body visibly started to shake.

“A week later, I was watching TV. Clara was out on a bender, and I heard screeching tires.” The last word struggled to leave his lips. “It was Maddy.”

My social decencies fled to the door, and I crawled into the booth beside him.

His large, lean frame was wrecked with a cool shiver.

“She was barely nineteen.” A tear slid down his left cheek. “They beat her unconscious.”

My own tears pricked the back of my eyes.

“There was so much blood.” The muscles in his forearm contracted on the table. “Her blood, everywhere.”

I slid an arm under his and laced my fingers back with his again.

His breathing had become shallow and disconnected. Like he was trying to get air but it wasn’t quite reaching his lungs.

“I thought she was going to die,” he choked out, and his voice cracked.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, wishing I had more to say than that. But what was there to say?

He wiped away his tears with the back of his hand and swallowed hard. “I waited until the paramedics arrived before I went looking for him.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

“I found him in a shit hole bar just outside of the city,” Rhys growled, and the vibrations reached my chest. “I broke a bottle over his head.”

The first assault charge, I thought.

“I beat him with a crow bar until he stopped moving.”

I expected my body to react, to wince or to revolt, but it didn’t. It stayed steady against his side.

“When the cops arrested me, I thought I’d killed him.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t until the attempted murder charge was added that I knew he’d lived.”

“Why didn’t you push to be tried as a minor?” I asked a question that had been nagging at me since I saw the information in his file. His public defender had wanted to have him tried as a minor, but Rhys declined.

He was tried as an adult and pled guilty to all charges.

“I made the choices I made as a grown man, and I’d bear the consequences of them without shame.” His voice had regained some of its strength.

“You pled guilty…what about standing up for your… doesn’t that count for…” My voice trailed off.

For the first time since he started talking, he turned his head to look in my eyes. There was so much heartbreak in them that it hurt to look at him.

“I was guilty, Aurora.” He moved a loose stand of hair behind my ear. “I’d do it again.”

A tear finally spilled onto my cheeks.

“For Maddy, Aurora. I’d do it again.” He never wavered.

In less than an hour, the decisions he made cost him eight years of his life, and he never wavered.

“Yesterday?” I asked. “The blood…”

“A memory trigger.” He nodded, his thumb finding the healing wound above my eye. “Between the biker’s leather and your blood, I couldn’t tell where the memory ended and reality began. I lost it.”