The Raven (The Raven Four Series Book 2)

by Jessica Sorensen

  True. And that should be enough for me to walk away. In fact, I should just get up now and do that. Forget I ever spent any time with these guys. But I can’t bring myself to do so.

  I try to convince myself that the reason I can’t is because I want to find out if I’ve ever met Zay, if there’s any truth to the dream I had last night. In reality, that’s only part of the reason. The other part has a lot to do with the curiosity of what it would feel like to not be totally alone anymore. Not that I think me and these guys are going to become BFFs, despite what Hunter says. But it might be nice to have someone else in my life, besides my aunt, uncle, and cousin. And these guys seem okay with the whole murder thing, which should be a warning flag, but honestly, so am I.

  Murderer.

  Freak.

  Monster.

  Alone.

  Alone.

  Alone.

  I skim my finger along the inside of my wrist, along the elevated scars. “Even if I agree to try to complete the task, I still don’t think I’m the right kind of girl to seduce a jock.”

  “I can teach you a few things about seducing,” Hunter offers as he shoves his empty plate into the middle of the table. “I’ve been told I can be quite charming.”

  “I’m sure you have,” I agree. “But I think that kind of charm is a gift and can’t be taught.”

  He dismisses me with a flick of his wrist. “You have it in you. You just need the opportunity to explore it a bit.”

  I lift a brow in skepticism. “And you’re gonna help me with that?”

  He gives a nod. “Absolutely.”

  They momentarily fall into silence after that. I’m not sure what they’re waiting for. For me to agree to this task? For me to run out of the diner?

  “So, do you accept the oath?” Jax finally asks, surveying me carefully.

  Every part of my mind screams at me to say no. That I won’t be able to pull it off. That I don’t need to. That I’ve handled being by myself for years and can keep handling it.

  But then I skim my fingers along my scars again, remembering the agony, the emptiness of each passing day, of not wanting to get up, of having nothing. And I’m tired of having nothing. I’m tired of being in pain. I’m tired of being tired.

  Maybe I’m crazy for doing what I’m about to do. I have spent the last several years being told I’m crazy. So, I tell myself I’m just living up to my reputation.

  “All right,” I say. “I accept the oath.”

  They all grin. Even Jax cracks the smallest of a smile.

  I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

  I guess I’m about to find out.

  “But I’m not moving in with you,” I add, just to make sure we’re on the same page.

  No one says anything, but with the looks they give me, I know I’m gonna have a fight on my hands. Not that it matters. Yeah, I may have taken the oath, but I’m not going to rely on these guys for everything nor will I let them take care of me. Sure, it’ll be okay to not have to be totally alone while I’m living in Honeyton, but in the end, I can’t trust someone that much. And plus, I’m always gonna take care of myself.

  “Don’t rely on anyone,” my mom told me only hours before she died. “You’re a strong girl. Always stay that way, okay? You can’t trust people. They’re evil.”

  My parents had said that to me a lot and I’d always nodded, not fully understanding what they meant. But now…

  I understand them more than I wish I did.

  Jax

  “Don’t you feel at all guilty?” Hunter asks me as he slants against the wall of the small office in the diner.

  After Raven agreed to the oath, I wandered back here to check on a couple of things before we head to school and I made Hunter come with me so I can talk to him about the agreement he made with Raven about teaching her how to seduce Porter. I left Zay with Raven, and he’s showing her how to use her new phone, which should be a safe zone for the two of them.

  I hope…

  Not that I worry about Zay hooking up with her. No, that’s going to be an issue with Hunter. Zay is more likely to fight with her. Although, the more I watch the two of them together, the more I’m noticing Zay fights differently with Raven than he does with others. I think in his own way he might be flirting with her, which I don’t know what to do with since Zay has never been one for flirting. Again, that’s Hunter’s thing.

  Maybe it’s because he feels like he knows her? I’m not sure and not knowing is driving me crazy. I’m not used to it.

  I’m used to control.

  “I’m taking your silence as you admitting you do feel guilty,” Hunter says, drawing me from my worries.

  “I’m not admitting anything. And I never feel guilty. You should know that about me.” I sift through some papers, looking for the most recent inventory.

  Even though Mable takes care of almost everything in the diner, I occasionally check on stuff, mostly because I’m a control freak. I like being this way. If I’m not, then I end up spending my days feeling like I’m living inside a panic attack. Plus, the diner is important to me. It’s one of the few things I own that my father has no control over.

  He frowns. “Well, I do … Raven, she’s vulnerable, even if she pretends not to be.”

  “What happened when you guys went out into those trees?” I ask him, shuffling through the papers.

  He fiddles with a chain dangling from his beltloop. “I can’t tell you.”

  My gaze snaps to him. “Maybe I should remind you of the rules.”

  He rolls his eyes. “There’s no rule forbidding me to keep her secrets. And if you want to know what happened, ask her yourself. Maybe if you’re nice for once and show some compassion, she’ll open up to you.”

  I return my attention back to the papers, deciding to let this go for now. But I’ll get to the bottom of it, even if I have to force one of them to give me an answer, because we can’t have secrets between us. It defeats the point of all of this if we do.

  “Why would I want her to open up to me?” I ask him. “I don’t give a shit whether I know her or not. And you should have the same mentality. It’ll help you stay out of trouble and keep your hands to yourself, something you better make sure you do. At least until we’re done with her.”

  He shakes his head, pinning me with an irritated look. “I don’t know why you always have to be such an asshole. I mean, I know you’ve had a fucked-up life, but we all have. And so has Raven, which makes what we’re doing to her even more fucked up.”

  I elevate a brow. “And yet, you’re still going to do it.” When he gives me a dirty look, I add. “Look, I know I’m being harsh, but I need to be harsh… For all of us since no one else will. And it’s not like we’re completely screwing her over. We’re going to offer her protection for now, which she’s going to need. And we’ll take care of her uncle for her once we get some info on him to give to our bosses. And you’re going to punish her cousin. That’s more than we’ve ever done for anyone else.”

  “Yeah, but you’re using her in exchange,” he mutters, shaking his head and massaging his temples.

  He looks more stressed out than he has in a long time and it has me concerned that he’s already falling for Raven. It makes my concern grow.

  I can’t let him get attached to her. It could ruin everything we’ve worked so hard to gain… the stuff we’ve done to get us to this point… so close to our freedom… We can’t lose it now….

  “So are you,” I remind him. “We all are.”

  He glares at me. “Only because it gets us all closer to getting out of this hellhole. But I still feel guilty about doing it. And so should you. She’s… she’s hurting just like us, Jax, only she’s been going through it alone. And even though she acts tough, in the end I know we’re going to break her, which makes us just as bad as our fathers.” With that, he exits the office, leaving his words echoing around me. And it pisses me off because, for the briefest second, I do feel guilty.

  �
��Fucking Hunter,” I mutter as I slump down in the chair in front of the desk. Then I grab my flask and take a long gulp, telling myself to shut it down. Shut down everything inside me before it takes over.

  After another few long drinks, I’ve calmed the hell down. Then, shoving all thoughts of Raven aside, I stick my hand into my pocket and do something else I need to do. I call and give my father an update on what I’ve learned about Ravenlee Wilowwynter, which really isn’t much, other than she’s joined our group. But that’s the starting point to learning more about her, to sneaking our way into her mind and finding out all her secrets and her families. And then I’m going to hand them over to my father. And I’ll do it without a drop of guilt.

  At least, that’s what I tell myself, yet my chest tightens a bit as I think about doing it, and deep down, I worry that I might be fucked.

  That maybe we all might end up screwed.

  But in the end, I know what I’ll do.

  I’ll put Zay, Hunter, and me before everyone else.

  Because, in the end, guilt or not, I’ll do anything to get my brothers the hell away from this world without us being in a coffin. In the end, we’re not going to be the ones falling and crashing. I won’t let that happen. Because if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s making sure Zay, Hunter, and I make it out of this town without being buried beneath the ground.

  It’s what I silently vowed the day we decided to make the deal with our bosses.

  “We should tell them to go fuck themselves,” Zay had been pissed off that day about some of the stuff the bosses wanted us to do.

  It was around the time he had started cutting, and he was always wearing long-sleeved shirts. A few days earlier, when we’d went swimming in the river, I had noticed some fresh cuts on his arms. When I’d asked him about them, he’d gotten pissed. I had once learned about cutting in health class, so I wondered if that’s what he was doing. But that was about around the time I started drinking, so I didn’t press him to tell me. It was also around the time Hunter started having sex on a daily basis and snorting shit up his nose.

  We were all about thirteen.

  “If we do that,” I replied to Zay’s absurd statement. “They’ll just punish us more.” I took a drag of my cigarette as I stared out at the bridge in the distance, a place we spent a lot of time at, mainly because no one came up here.

  “They already punish us every fucking day,” Hunter murmured as he lay in the back of my truck with his eyes shut.

  He had a bruise on his face that his father had given him after he had told him he didn’t want to do drug runs anymore.

  “I know,” I agreed, taking a drag of my cigarette, using my good arm to do so.

  My other arm was in a cast, courtesy of my father. It had happened a few weeks ago when he was given me one of his “lessons,” which meant he beat me into submission, something he’d been doing to me since I was a kid.

  “If you so much as ever think about disobeying me!” he had yelled as his knuckles collided with my jaw. “Remember that at any time of any moment of any given second, I can take it all away!” He’d crouched down beside me as I lay on the floor, bleeding. “Remember who owns you—who will always own you.”

  I balled my hand into a fist, wanting to take a swing at him. I never had before, but I was getting tired of this. Tired of everything. I didn’t care anymore if he hurt me. In fact, part of me wanted the pain to end. And at least this way, I’d get the sweet satisfaction of punching him before he ended my misery.

  But he noticed my fist and grabbed my arm, gripping hard enough for the bones to break. I’d bit down on my tongue to keep from crying out in pain, refusing to give him the satisfaction of knowing he hurt me.

  “If you ever try to hurt me again,” he warned, gripping my arm harder. “I’ll end you and Zay and Hunter. Remember that.”

  It was the threat of hurting Hunter and Zay that had stopped me from trying to fight him. I didn’t care about much in this world except for them. In fact, that was about all I cared about. They were like brothers to me, had suffered through this dark life with me. They meant everything to me, which is why I knew we needed to get out of this life. If we didn’t, we’d end up like our fathers, or dead, and I didn’t know which one was worse.

  “Maybe there is something we can do,” I muttered, putting my cigarette out on the ground. “Maybe we can make a deal with them… Like maybe we can spend the next five years doing everything they ask without arguing with them… maybe we can become their servants. And in exchange, they’ll let us leave this town when we graduate.” I wasn’t sure if that plan would work, but it was a start.

  Hunter lifted his head and gaped at me. “Are you being serious right now?”

  “Am I ever not serious?”

  He sat up, dragging his fingers through his hair. “No… But, still… I mean, even if they did agree to something like that, we’d still have to put up with their shit for five more years. And they’d probably make it even worse for us.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “But isn’t five years of suffering better than living this life until we die? And at the rate we’re all going,” I gave a pressing look at his bruised face. “This shitty life we’re in now isn’t going to last very long.”

  They both grew quiet and I could see the fear in their eyes. I wanted to reassure them that everything would be fine, but I wasn’t a fucking liar. In fact, I was known for being blunt, even when the truth was painful.

  “I’m in,” Zay muttered as he lit up a cigarette and smoke circled his face.

  I flicked a glance at Hunter. “What about you?”

  Hunter wavered, worry cramming his eyes. Out of all of us, he was more likely to show his emotions, but I think that was because of how much Diane had messed with his mind.

  From what he briefly told me once while we were both drunk, she sometimes would play mind games with him until he broke. He never fully went into the details of what happened, but when he told me some details, I could see the torment in his eyes.

  “I’m in… But if we propose this idea to them and they end up punishing us even more…” Hunter swallowed audibly. “I’m out.”

  He didn’t need to explain what that meant. I knew already—I felt the same way.

  “Me too,” Zay grumbled with a heavy sigh.

  They both looked at me and I nodded. But I also made a silent vow to make sure that would never happen. That I would protect my brothers.

  And I’ll do anything to make sure that vow is never broken, even if it means breaking Raven—

  My phone buzzes with an incoming message and I begrudgingly open it.

  BOSS: I want you to do whatever it takes to find more about this Ravenlee Wilowwynter and her family. I mean it, Jax. I’m giving you a week and by the end of that time period, if you don’t know almost everything about her and her family, the deal is off. The same goes with Porter. Understand?

  A fucking week? Jesus, we’re going to have to work quickly with winning Raven over, and I’m not sure if we can pull it off.

  But you’re going to have to. You don’t have a choice.

  A flicker of guilt tries to flash through me as my fingers hover the buttons to reply to the boss, but the alcohol inside my veins quiets it.

  Me: I understand.

  BOSS: Good. I look forward to hearing all about the new addition to Honeyton.

  As I put my phone away, I can’t help but wonder the reason behind his urgency with this. Why is he so interest in Raven and her family?

  For the craziest second, I wonder if it has anything to do with Zay and Hunter having the feeling that they know her. But why do they feel like they know her yet they can’t actually remember her?

  Who is the mysterious girl that fell into our lives almost literally?

  I guess I’m about to find out because like I said, I’m going to do anything it takes to make sure Zay, Hunter, and I come out on top.

  Raven

  “You really don’t have any soc
ial media accounts?” Zay asks me as we wait for some apps to download onto my new phone.

  “Nope. I’ve never had a reason to have them.” I glance up at him. “I can’t believe you have them, though. You don’t seem like the type to air your personal shit out into public.”

  “I don’t post a lot of shit,” he explains as he stacks our dirty plates. “But I do have some accounts—everyone does.”

  “Except for me,” I remind him as I set the phone down on the table.

  Man, downloading apps takes forever.

  “Nope. Not except for you.” He taps his finger against the screen of my phone then starts stacking the empty cups that are on our table. “You, princess, have officially become a member of online social media.”

  “Awesome,” I say flatly. “Honestly, I’d rather not be. It’s not like I have anything to say. Plus, I don’t want people knowing my personal shit.”

  “Then don’t post anything.”

  “Okay, but then what’s the point of creating the accounts?”

  He shrugs, rotating sideways so his knees are touching mine. “It’s a way for us all to communicate with each other if we needed another form besides text. Plus, we can keep track of each other that way. And, we gotta play the part.”

  “The part of what?”

  “The part of us we show the world,” he says, tossing dirty napkins onto the stack of plates.

  “As opposed to the part of you guys the world doesn’t see?” I collect the rest of the dirty napkins.

  He lifts a shoulder as he takes the napkins from me. “I think you’ve already caught on that we all have two sides to us. The one we show the circle and the one we show the world. And I know you have two sides to you two so don’t pretend like you don’t.”

  “I’m not pretending. I’ll admit I have a ton of sides to me, but no one ever sees most of them.”

  His gaze fleetingly zeroes in to my side. “Is that where you keep one of your sides hidden?”

  I tuck my arm against my side. “Maybe.”

  His gaze lifts to mine. “I think Jax should’ve made you show us what you’ve gotten hidden underneath your shirt… He should’ve made it part of the oath.”