Ride Hard (Raven Riders #1)(38)
Suddenly, all the stress of the past weeks welled up inside her. The escape. The kidnapping. The rescuers they hadn’t known whether they could really trust. The uncertainty of it all. Haven forced her eyes to meet his, anger straightening her spine and making her stand taller. “It did. But it seemed equally like information that could be used against us. As that gang did. It seemed like information,” she said, taking a step forward to close the gap between them again, “that should be guarded until we knew for sure who we could trust.” Standing chest to chest with him, adrenaline shivered through her. “When we talked, I didn’t know if I could trust you, and—”
“And now?” he asked.
“You have to ask?” After everything she had told him, was it possible he didn’t realize how huge it was that she’d opened herself up to him the way she had? That making herself so vulnerable to him could only have happened if she trusted him—in a way she hadn’t trusted anyone in years?
“Yeah, I have to f*cking ask.” He nailed her with a stare.
Which meant that despite how bare she’d laid herself open to him, Dare didn’t trust her. And that really freaking hurt, because of everything he and the Ravens were doing for her and Cora. Because she understood why he was mad, even if she thought she’d been justified—at least initially. And because Haven liked him. Really liked him. And wanted him to like her back. “Yeah, I trust you,” she said, forcing her eyes to stay up, to drink in the disappointment he was throwing off.
His jaw ticked like he was clenching his teeth, but finally he gave a tight nod. “Then I need you to not keep anything else from me.”
“Okay,” she said. Part of her wanted to say more—to explain, to defend, to fight—but she didn’t want to make things worse.
After a long moment, he cursed on a sigh and raked his hands through his hair. He paced away, then turned, his eyes flat, expression resigned. “You need to know that I’ve called a meeting of the club’s board to strategize how to deal with the existence of this reward.”
Her stomach dropped to the ground. “What does that mean?”
“It means we have to operate under the assumption that the Church Gang had time to contact your father and let him know you were in Baltimore,” he said, a hard edge slipping back into his tone. “And if that’s true, it means we have to assume that it’s possible for your father to learn what happened to you after the Churchmen lost possession of you.”
Fear had her heart racing and goose bumps rising over her skin. She pressed shaky fingers to her lips, her thoughts racing. Why had she never put it together like that? Why had she stayed put with the Ravens? What if her father or his goons were close, or closing in? “I can’t go back,” she whispered. But then her financial reality closed in on her—she’d stayed because she had absolutely no means of leaving, of running, of starting a new life somewhere far, far away.
“You’re not going back,” Dare said. “Ever.”
The conviction behind his words cut off the sharpest edges of her panic. “But I can’t stay here either. Can I?”
Oh, how a part of her longed for him to respond with the same fierce conviction. But he only said, “Well, that’s part of what we need to discuss.”
It made sense, but it also made her feel like she was losing the one safe place she’d ever found. She’d always known the Ravens wouldn’t let her and Cora just live there forever, but she hadn’t thought her time there would be over so fast, either.
She heaved a deep breath, stuffing all the hurt and regret and sadness down. Burying it deep. Pretending it wasn’t there at all. She had a lot of experience doing that, after all—when you’d lived the life she had, willfully ignoring all the things that could most hurt you became a survival skill. Something that you needed in order to pull yourself out of bed in the morning, to put one step in front of the other through the day, to not go crazy as the darkness of another night closed in on you.
“Then I guess you’re right,” she said. “We should get back. I don’t want to make things any worse than they already are.”
CHAPTER 13
Dare didn’t know which was worse—the desolation that had put out the light in Haven’s eyes during his conversation with her back at the lake, or the expressions on his brothers’ faces as he’d brought them up to speed regarding Haven and the reward. Both left him feeling like somehow he’d f*cked things up and, no matter what, was letting someone down.
And the fact that not letting Haven down ranked anywhere close to not letting his fellow Ravens down? That said something. What, exactly, he wasn’t sure. Or maybe he just didn’t want to probe it too closely.
“This changes a helluva lot,” Maverick said, concern furrowing his brow. “I think we gotta assume that the threat is imminent. Which means we can either sit here and wait for it to come to us, or we can neutralize it by going on the offense or setting up the women with new lives far away from here. Which protects them and us.”
“Going on the offense isn’t really our style,” Doc said, concern deepening the lines on his weathered face. “And do we really think the club is up for waging war on some far-off crime family within weeks of what went down in Baltimore?”
Dare heaved a deep breath. Doc was right on both counts—the Ravens didn’t object to violence and even lethal intent in the name of defending their own, but they tried like hell not to be the ones to start shit or to create unnecessary enemies. It was part of what made them different from the Diablos.