Point of Redemption

by Stacey Lynn

  I wanted to smack him across the face and scream at him for leaving me, for forcing me to turn into the whore he saw in front of him. And then I wanted to throw myself into his arms, wrap my legs around him, and beg him to never let me go again.

  The quiet click of the door finally shutting behind him snapped me back to reality.

  I had one job to do tonight. Get Ryker to leave town forever. But first, I’d make sure he’d give me a memory to last a lifetime because I knew it was the last good one I’d ever have.

  “Faith.” My name rolled off his full, pink lips with a quiet surprise. It snapped me back to reality and away from my reverence of his body. With one word—using my real name—something no one did anymore besides the few times I’d been able to see Olivia over the last couple of weeks—Ryker made me feel sixteen years old all over again.

  My palms began sweating, my heartbeat increased, and my thighs wobbled. I felt wrapped up in him all over again. It was a dangerous place to be, and I couldn’t let him have the control. I refused to give it to Ryker Knight ever again.

  My shoulders rolled back, the emotions I felt coursing through me disappeared from my face. I smiled my perfected seductive grin that was way too plastic to be genuine, but men never cared.

  He flinched as I took the first, slow step toward him. A perverse thrill flowed through me at seeing Ryker standing so close to me, looking so uncomfortable.

  “What can I do for you tonight?” I hoped like hell he couldn’t see how my finger shook as I reached out and slowly ran a perfectly manicured fingertip across his jaw. I lightly dragged it down his chest, stopping at the waistband of jeans.

  His head jerked back and he blinked once, then twice, as if clearing his mind. Then his hand reached out and grabbed mine that was still fidgeting, running lightly back and forth across his shirt, over the waistband of his denim jeans.

  “Stop it, Faith.” His voice was scratchy, and I froze at the sound of my name, again, rolling off his lips.

  Something inside me snapped. How dare this man who I loved, who left me to this life, have any emotion toward me at all. I was here because of him, doing what he paid me to do, and he had the nerve to stop me?

  Anger replaced my nerves and trepidation. How stupid of me to think I could seduce Ryker and leave unscathed by the night.

  I pulled my eyes from his hand that held mine and looked directly at him. I didn’t know what he saw when he looked at me, but he flinched when I spoke.

  “Diamond,” I snapped.

  “I can’t.” He cleared his throat and shook his head. He looked uncomfortable, uncertain. I almost felt like a bitch. Ryker had given me that nickname. He said when I was sixteen that my eyes shined so bright and clear they sparkled like diamonds. “I can’t call you that.”

  I tilted my head to the side and examined him. Regret flashed in his eyes, unasked questions were on his lips. I didn’t want to hear them, and I certainly didn’t want to answer anything he had to ask me.

  “Tell me, Ryker,” I said quietly, my own voice shaking again with nerves. My free hand went up and lightly scratched the skin at the back of his neck. I saw him shiver beneath my touch before he stiffened, reached up, and grabbed my other hand, too. “Tell me what you want me to do tonight.”

  He looked pained. His eyes snapped closed tightly, and he threw my hands away from him before he took two steps away from me. We were still in the entryway, and the move put his back to the door. His hands flew to his hair, tugging on the back of it before he spun around, putting his back to me.

  Disappointment hit me at the realization that he had denied me. I was here, in a room he wanted, fully paid for, and Ryker was still turning me away. A pain I hadn’t felt since the night I got his damn text smacked me in the chest with such force that I wobbled in my high-heeled shoes and took two steps backward.

  I stood there, watching Ryker’s shoulders heave and fall under deep breaths, and hated him. Screw him for denying me again. If I couldn’t give him my body, I had nothing left for him.

  When he turned around, his eyes fell on every place in the room, refusing to land on me. The feeling that I was nothing to him caused the backs of my eyes to burn with unshed tears. I wouldn’t allow him to see the pain he had caused me.

  I looked at my platform, high-heeled shoes and blinked rapidly until the burn dissipated. When I finally pulled my eyes back to him, I caught Ryker watching me intently before he looked away again.

  Then he pushed past me, walking fully into the room, and headed straight for the bathroom. When he came out, he held a bathrobe in his hands and pushed it to my chest.

  “Cover up. We need to talk.”

  His voice was so cold I shivered underneath his angry glare. I caught a flash of it before he walked to the kitchenette and grabbed a beer from the small fridge.

  It left me in the entryway to the hotel room, completely rejected, holding onto a white, terry cloth bathrobe that would cover every inch of my skin. I slowly pulled it on, resigned to the fact that I still had to stay because if he left too early, if Cain found out he left too soon without me doing my job, there would be consequences I would need to pay.

  With the robe on and the belt tightened around my waist, I still felt completely naked. I was short enough that the large robe tickled the floor as I met Ryker in the kitchenette and grabbed my own glass of wine.

  Thick, palpable silence filled the room. Neither of us spoke, and from the corner of my eye I watched Ryker down his drink before he reached for another.

  Right as he tipped it to his lips, with his eyes on the windows and not on me, he said, “I didn’t come here tonight for this.”

  I heard his teeth grind together right before his lips wrapped around the edge of the thin glass and he took another large swallow. The wine glass shook in my hands.

  Then why the hell was he here? And why in the hell was I?

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t trust myself to speak, but it was best to get the night over with. “Then why are you here?”

  I was a fucking pervert. I stood in the hotel room that I had requested for Faith to give us space and time to talk, to figure out what the hell went wrong. Except all I wanted to do as soon as her finger singed my skin was throw her on the huge ass bed and taste every inch of her creamy, white skin.

  I had to get myself, my adrenaline, and my damn hard dick under control before I could talk to her.

  Not even then would I be able to touch her the way I wanted to—not when I was too fucking terrified she would think the only reason I was touching her was because I paid for her. That wasn’t it at all. It was simply the only way I knew to get her alone and out from underneath the eyes of Black Death.

  Her owners. Fury boiled inside of me at the damn thought.

  “Ryker.”

  I set down my beer and turned around, facing Faith. Her shoulders were pulled back as she watched me. She looked confident. She looked sexy as fuck. The robe fell past her fingertips and puddled on the floor around her feet, but it couldn’t erase my memory of her in lace. Black fucking lace. God, she was beautiful.

  “Why am I here?”

  “I wanted to talk to you…” I stopped, ran a hand through my hair, and took a deep breath. “I wanted to explain why I left.”

  She scoffed. The blood rushed from her cheeks and her hands gripped the knot on the belt around her waist. “A little late, don’t you think?”

  It was. It was way too fucking late and I wasn’t looking for absolution. Not from Faith. If what I’d figured out was true, I didn’t deserve it.

  It didn’t stop me from walking toward her, though. For five years I’d lived with the anger that she had cheated on me the first chance she got, if not before. I had left thinking she had never loved me. But now, as I saw the pain and fear and nerves dance across her eyes, I knew without certainty that I had to be the biggest prick in the entire fucking world.

  This was Faith.

  The girl who’d loved me for as long as I could
remember.

  There was no way she could have done what I saw that night.

  Not willingly, anyway.

  “I think I fucked up,” I admitted quietly when I stopped a few short feet from her. I could take one large step, reach out, and have her in my arms all over again. I’d be able to feel her fingertips dragging lightly down my skin, play with my hair, and have her lips on my skin.

  Faith leaned back, rested her ass against a countertop, and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I’m pretty certain you fucked up.”

  I winced, and then I nodded.

  I might have, but she also had no idea how fucked up my head was that night.

  “I saw you that night,” I gritted out. Her eyebrows pulled together.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Her voice was quiet, mousy. I believed her instantly.

  I needed another drink before I relived it with her, too. “Want some wine?” I asked and moved to the counter where the bottle was now half empty. I didn’t wait for her to answer as I poured her a glass. She took it slowly from my hands, careful to avoid our fingers touching.

  When I could no longer stand the silence or the memories beating down on me, I pulled my eyes directly to Faith. And then I had to blink because she was so damn beautiful with her light blue eyes and black hair and fuck… that black lace shit I could still see, even though it wasn’t visible through the robe.

  “When I left you that night, I went to my dad to patch in.”

  Faith gasped. I said the words as evenly and calmly as I would have spoken to her five years ago. This time, I watched her eyes widen in surprise.

  My voice lowered. “I would have done anything for you, you know. I would have patched into the fucking club that I wanted nothing to do with just to make you happy.” Memories. My cold truck. Her shivering hands. Her tears. They assaulted my vision until I felt the need to sit down.

  I turned my back to Faith and moved to the small couch in the living area of the hotel room. It wasn’t comfortable, but my legs were starting to shake and I had to sit. Better an uncomfortable couch than collapsing to the floor like a pussy.

  I rolled the beer bottle between my palms and watched her. She stared out the window with emotionless eyes. I wanted to ask if she was remembering that night like I was, but she gave away nothing with her vacant expression.

  “I went to my dad’s house and saw… I saw everything, Faith. Fuck, I can still see it. I can still smell the blood when I’m on the oil rig twenty miles off the coast. I can see Cherry’s blood, and I can see Olivia passed out in the chair. I can still hear the bullets going off and I can definitely see the way I fucked it all up by letting that bastard get out of the house before I got my shit together and started moving again.”

  My head dropped. I set the beer down before I scrubbed my fingers through my hair and across the back of my neck. It was pointless. I had done that move a million times over the years, and no matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn’t erase what I had seen or what I had done.

  I heard Faith’s soft footsteps padding toward me on the carpet, but I didn’t look up at her. Instead, my elbows went to my knees and I held my head in my hands while I memorized the strands in the carpet. Grey carpet speckled with dots of red.

  Red like blood.

  I blinked and looked up.

  Faith was mere feet from me again, looking uncertain and unwary. No longer looking pissed and dejected, though, so that was good. Better.

  I almost smiled.

  And then I kept remembering.

  “Daemon showed up, the men kicked me out, and do you know what I did?”

  I licked the front of my teeth, trying to hold in the anger that always hit me at that point in the memory.

  “No.” Faith cleared her throat and shook her head. “But I’m sorry you saw all that.”

  I blinked away the look of compassion on her face.

  “I saw you,” I growled. Faith flinched, and I pulled in a shaky breath. I had to calm the hell down again. But like always, I could feel my anger, the betrayal of seeing another man’s hands on her, build deep in my blood. “With Cain. His hands all over you.”

  She frowned and then stopped breathing on a sharp inhale.

  I rolled my tongue in my mouth. I could see it like it was yesterday. I could see it like it happened a minute ago.

  “You were all over that asshole from Black Death.”

  We stared at each other for what felt like hours. Finally, she exhaled and collapsed into a chair. “That wasn’t—” She looked dazed as she stopped talking and shook her head.

  I felt like a gigantic ass. I always should have known.

  “I know. I know that now, Faith. But that night… it was all so fucking scary and ugly and I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what the fuck Black Death was doing at your house that night, but at the same time, I thought…”

  She shook her head. “You have to be kidding me.” She shook her head again, and the dazed look in her eyes cleared. Before I knew it, they flashed anger. She jumped out of her seat. “Are you fucking kidding me, Ryker?”

  I fell against the back of the couch.

  “Faith.”

  “No,” she snapped and pointed a finger at me. “You don’t get to explain this shit. Holy shit!” She spun on her heels, running her hands through her black hair. I could hear her breathing heavily right before she spun around again and faced me. “You are an asshole.”

  My eyes widened. “An asshole? I had just killed my dad and came back to you, needing you, and you were all over the club’s enemy.”

  “I wasn’t all over him!”

  “I know that now!”

  “You should have known it then!”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and balled my hands into fists. She was right; I should have.

  “Jesus, Faith. I had just killed my dad. I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.”

  She blinked once and then twice. I heard her sniff before she pulled her eyes back to the window. “You are such an asshole. You have no idea what happened to me that night.”

  “I know.” I cleared my throat, feeling the dryness and the lump in it. “I know that now.”

  Silence filled the room, and for the first time in years, Faith was so close to me. All I wanted to do was wrap my arms around her and feel her. I wanted to go back to the way it used to be so she could make me forget. Forget everything that had happened that night.

  “Faith,” I called quietly, standing up and closing the space between us. “You have to cut me some slack that maybe I wasn’t thinking straight that night.”

  She scoffed and raised a hand to stop me. She bit her bottom lip and her chin shook slightly. “I don’t have to do shit. Not now.” She shook her head. Then she opened her mouth before snapping it shut again. “God, that night…”

  “Tell me.”

  She shook her head. “You’re a dick.”

  “I know,” I said, taking a small step forward. I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to be with her, to make all this shit right again. That probably made me an asshole because regardless of what happened between Faith and me, I’d still leave again.

  “Cain was there the night you dropped me off. He was talking to my mom about making a deal.”

  I nodded because now I knew that. I knew what the deal was. Except hearing it from Daemon felt completely different than hearing it fall from Faith’s lips. I wanted to rip the man’s head off with my bare hands as Faith stood in the center of the room, in a robe three sizes too large for her, looking timid, terrified, and fucking broken.

  Her eyes cut to mine, slicing through the already broken areas in my heart. They were as cold as ice when she narrowed them directly at me. “Do you know what they did, Ryker?”

  “I know they own you,” I said quietly. Bile rose in my throat as the words left my lips.

  Faith scoffed. It was cold and emotionless and so unlike the Faith I knew. I hated it. I hated hearing her sound like that. S
he shook her head and looked away.

  “You have no idea what that means.” Her eyes glazed over.

  “Then tell me,” I said, walking toward her. I hoped like hell she wouldn’t back away. I had done this to her. Another innocent victim with their pain on my conscience. Fuck. Would I ever stop screwing over everyone I cared for? My brain told me to stop and back the fuck away from her.

  My feet kept moving, unable to stop until I stood directly in front of her. “Tell me what they did to you so I know who to kill first.”

  She frowned when she looked at me. “Kill?” I watched her swallow slowly.

  I nodded equally as slow. It’d be the first kill I did willingly. I’d probably smile and feel good doing it, too. “Daemon made a deal with Black Death, Faith. In a few weeks they’re working together and in exchange Black Death is setting you free.”

  “What?” Faith’s jaw dropped and her eyebrows shot up her forehead in shock. I couldn’t stop myself. My hand went to her shoulder and I squeezed it firmly. I could barely feel her through the thick white robe. She froze under my hand.

  She shook her head. “That’s never going to happen. Daemon and the rest of the club are idiots if they think Cain will stay good on his word. He’ll never let me go.”

  Her voice made my blood run cold. A small burn started boiling inside me. I wanted revenge on everyone who had fucked me and my family over. If Cain so much as thought of backing down on this deal, his head would be mine.

  “Faith,” I warned, but she shook her head and backed away from me.

  “Cain won’t ever let me go, Ryker. He’d kill me first, and I don’t even want to think about what he’d do to my mom.”

  “Your mom? She fucking gave you to him.”

  “Sold,” Faith snapped, and her lips pressed together. “I wasn’t given. I was sold for drugs.”

  I knew that. It didn’t make me feel any calmer as Faith snapped it at me like she didn’t give a shit. Although maybe she didn’t.

  “And it doesn’t mean I want her dead. She’s the only family I have.”