The Worst Kind of Promise (Riverside Reapers Book 2)

FAYE

Pressure. But not the kind that makes diamonds. The kind that crushes the strongest, most resilient objects—that reduces them to irreparable debris.

It’s everywhere. I can feel it sitting on my chest like a gargoyle, crushing my diaphragm. I can feel it in between my legs, but it’s less pressure and more a biting pain. It’s too dark for me to see anything. It’s too dark for me to identify the warmth pooling beneath me, whether it’s blood or piss or something entirely different.

It hurts. It hurts so much. But I can’t stop it, no matter how hard I try. I don’t know why I can’t stop it. I just…can’t. All I can do is scream. The thing about screams, though, is that they’re only heard when they want to be.

“Does that feel good?”

“This is what you want, remember? You’ve wanted this the whole time.”

“Don’t try to move. It’ll only hurt worse. I don’t want to hurt you, Faye.”

A slew of tears dance down my face, cries and sobs mutilating my vocal cords. I try to speak, but nothing comes out. It’s like the words are fully formed in my brain, but they glitch as they transfer to my tongue.

Something’s holding my arms down. I’m completely helpless. Not just helpless but forced to watch what’s being done to me.

A repeated invasion. A repeated memory. A repeated trauma trapped in my brain. A ghost that always lingers in the shadows, whether I’m asleep or awake, haunting me for the rest of my life. No matter how far I get away from it, it’ll never be far enough. He will always find me.

I awake in a cold sweat, depleted of breath and panting for air, my soul feeling like it’s been pulled from my physical body and forced to solidify in an incompatible world. My voice breaks on a cry, and my vision doesn’t adjust quickly enough to unknot the panic gnarling inside me.

I immediately search for Kit’s arms in the darkness, my hands patting the mattress distraughtly, but the lack of warmth beside me reminds me that he’s not here—that I’m alone in the bed. My heart rages behind my ribs, and the moisture lacquered on my face must’ve followed me from my nightmare. Tears ambush my eyes as I pull my knees into my chest, condensing myself into a small ball, as if that’ll protect me from my hyperactive mind. The words stay with me—braying, derisive, preying on the progress I’ve made, insistent on squashing my resilience like scraps of metal in a trash compactor.

With my head buried, I can’t see who charges into the room, but I know the feeling of the arms that encircle me. I switch from folding in on myself to leaning on the one person who’s been my rock this whole time, letting him take some of the pain like he promised.

“Shh, Faye. You’re okay. You’re safe,” he whispers, his hand stroking the back of my head, and his scent surrounding me like a second skin.

I clutch at the cotton material of Kit’s shirt, trying to remind myself that I’m in Kit’s room, physically safe from Saxon, with no chance that he’ll ever hurt me again. But it’s hard for me to suppress the memory—because God knows I could never forget. I sob hysterically into his arms, not caring if the loudness of my cries notifies the rest of the guys in the house.

“Breathe, Faye. I’m right here.”

Hiccups lay siege to my raw throat. “I can’t.”

Kit’s voice is a low rumble in his chest before it tickles my eardrums. “You can. In and out, Princess. Follow my breathing.”

I can feel his ribs expand against my legs with said breath, and thanks to being in the darkness for so long, my vision isn’t nearly as blurry as it was before. The image of Kit’s silhouette in front of me neutralizes my abject terror, slowing my pulse and arming me with enough composure to try and mirror his breathing.

In. Out. In. Out.

Fresh air reaches the farthest corners of my lungs, circulating through me on swift wings, and that paperweight on my sternum lifts slightly.

I know I probably should’ve said something along the lines of “Thank you,” but all that spews from the cusp of my lips is “You came.”

He brushes the back of his knuckles over my cheekbone. “I’ll always come when you call,” he says.

Comfort. Something I’ve never known much about. Not from my father, not from my exes, not from the man who raped me. I only found it in the shape of my brother, but even then, I had convinced myself that his comfort only existed out of obligation. Kit, though. Kit is a different story. He’s synonymous with comfort. A lighthouse guiding me to shore in the bowels of a violent storm.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” I apologize, dabbing the tears from under my eyes, shame cartwheeling through my stomach.

I wish I could see his face, but all that my vision allows is the sight of his defined profile under a canopy of shadow—one that manipulates moonlight across the ceiling like a master puppeteering a marionette.

“Don’t be sorry. I couldn’t even sleep.”

“Because I took your bed,” I finish guiltily, mucus congesting my naval cavities and trickling down the back of my throat.

“Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he corrects, moving his hand to thread his fingers through mine, giving me one of his consolatory squeezes.

Love acts as a soothing balm on my hacked heart, and slowly, the pain from my nightmare begins to deescalate. “Oh.”

His chuckle sounds sweeter than the early-morning trilling of mourning doves—a precursor to a new dawn. It reminds me that only hope is stronger than fear, that hope is the answer to surviving my trauma.

“Oh,” he mocks.

The mattress dips to accommodate Kit’s weight, and he sidles up beside me, his back flush against the headboard. “Come here,” he coaxes.

Even in the darkness, I’m able to find his body, find the space in his arms where I have always fit. I curl up against his chest, resting my ear over his heart, where I hear his lifeblood rushing through him. A strong plinth holding up my fragility.

He kisses the crown of my head as he forks his fingers through ratty tresses of my hair. “You wanna talk about it?”

I’m surprised that I don’t instantly shut him down. “It was about…Saxon.”

“I’m so sorry, Faye.” His tone, although croaky from exhaustion, is packed with empathy powerful enough to scare away the monsters skulking on the outskirts of my mind. “Is there anything I can do?”

Realistically, there’s nothing he can do. Or I guess he’s done everything he can do. When he mentioned to me that he may or may not have rearranged Saxon’s face, I was furious at him for going behind my back. But now, after I found out why he really did it, I’m not going to lie and say that a little part of me isn’t satisfied. Kit’s scary—I’ve seen the way he flattens players on the ice—and by the amount of blood he lost that night, I don’t doubt that Saxon looked way worse.

“That night you went to visit Saxon…weren’t you worried about word getting out? How it would affect your reputation?” I ask.

“Faye, the only thing I was thinking about that night was you. If you hadn’t noticed, you pretty much live rent-free in my mind.”

“You could lose your career, Kit. You could go to jail.” Fed up with the darkness, I turn on the lamp on the nightstand, watching as rays of light lengthen over his handsome features, sharpening the cut of his jaw and the angular slant of his cheekbones.

“I won’t.”

He sounds so confident. Kit was willing to sacrifice his career for me. Everything he’s worked so hard for could’ve disappeared within the service of a lawsuit. It doesn’t sound real.

When I settle back into his chest, I crane my head to look up at him. “I don’t understand.”

“After I finished ‘talking’ with him, I told him that if he told anyone what happened, I’d tell the whole world what he did. Of course, I’d only go through with it if I got your permission. So I was bluffing, but dude was scared shitless at that point,” he explains.

I frown. “Even if I wanted to take him to court, there’s no evidence.”

A half-cocked grin graces Kit’s lips. “You do know I’m rich enough to hire a private investigator, right?”

“You know I don’t watch Law and Order. I don’t know what any of that means.”

“Deleted texts, call records, and voice memos can be restored. It takes a while, and it’s fucking expensive, but it’s possible. So if we really needed evidence of what transpired that night, it’s retrievable.”

I never thought about anything like that. One, because I don’t have the money. Two, because I know jackshit about laws. And three, because it’s preposterous. That’s the kind of shit billionaire Mafia heroes do in romance novels, not the teammate of your older brother.

After the assault occurred, I did reach out to Saxon. I tried to get a confession out of him. I was confused and hurt and didn’t understand why he’d do something like that to me when we were supposed to be best friends. The worst part was that he didn’t even deny anything. He told me it was consensual. He told me I asked for it. So there is evidence floating around somewhere in the catacombs of my phone.

I regret not screenshotting it at the time for evidence. I wanted it gone. I wanted the reminder to be gone. I couldn’t stare at those pixelated words any longer. I wanted to try to move on and forget. Moving on doesn’t work when you always have one foot planted in the past.

“And if I didn’t want the world to know?” I whisper uncertainly.

He shrugs. “Then I would’ve been rocking a sick jumpsuit.”

I gasp, punching him in the arm. “Kit, that’s not funny!”

“I’m not joking. I look great in orange.”

I want to laugh, and maybe I would if my emotions weren’t off-kilter. But all I can think about is what would happen if I lost Kit. Not being able to feel his arms wrap around me. Not being able to talk to him whenever I want to. Adjusting to life back in Pennsylvania’s gonna be a challenge as it is, but I can’t imagine adjusting to life without him. Period.

I can feel the tears coming to a boiling point inside me, and the wet patches on Kit’s shirt haven’t even dried yet from when I used him as a tissue ten minutes ago. “I don’t want to think about…”

He uses his forefinger and thumb to gently tip my chin up, our lips merely a breath apart. If I leaned forward a centimeter, I’d be kissing him.

“Princess, you’re gonna have to do a lot better than that to get rid of me.”