Damaged (Boys of Winter #2) - Sheridan Anne Page 0,20

“I hate this,” he tells me. “I could fucking kill Carver for putting you in this situation. We all fucking knew Royston was guilty, we just needed the proof. So I can’t understand why he’s acting all shook.”

I shrug my shoulders and do my best to soak up every little bit of his comfort. “Who knows? Maybe he truly believed his father was innocent.”

“Nah,” he says, shaking his head. “Out of us all, Carver was the most suspicious of his father. This is something else. He knows he was guilty, and he was waiting for the day where he got to kill him himself.”

Guilt drops into my stomach and makes me feel sick. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my voice traveling through the silence. “I promised you at the beginning that I’d never come between you guys, and now look at us. You guys are trying to kill your best friend and visiting me in a fucking cell.”

King’s fingers run down my back before he curls my long hair around his hand and forces my head to tilt up and meet his eyes. “To be fair,” he says, leaning in and softly brushing his lips over mine. “None of us could have foreseen that you were going to steal a fucking antique dagger and kill the fucker in the middle of the dance floor.”

“Good point,” I say. “But taking my track record into consideration, you probably should have prepared for something like this.”

“Yeah,” he scoffs. “Trust me, we’ll be much better prepared in the future.”

“Future?” I laugh. “You’re assuming that I’m going to have one of those.”

King’s lips press into a tight line, his eyes hardening as he watches me. “You’ll have a fucking future, a grand one if I have anything to do with it. We’ll get past this. It’s just a matter of time until I’m fucking you up against the side of a random house and stealing even more of that innocence away from you.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Who the fuck have you been screwing this past month? There’s not an ounce of innocence about me. I was well and truly corrupted before I got here.”

King’s eyes soften and the appreciation that filters through his gaze has the butterflies soaring around my stomach and making me feel an equal mix of hope and regret. “Nah, babe. You’re filled with innocence, you just don’t see it.”

“Well,” I scoff. “There were sixteen men who sat around a table this morning, and they sure as hell had a hard time pinpointing my innocence, and eight of them didn’t even bother to look.”

King sighs and pulls me back in, doing his best to curl me into his chest despite the bars between us. “You don’t need them to see your innocence,” he says, his tone dropping as his hand slowly moves up and down my back. “You just need one of them to change their vote.”

My brow shoots up as I gently pull back and raise my chin to look into his eyes. “And how the hell am I going to do that?”

“Don’t you worry about it, babe. You just focus on not going insane inside this little box.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” I say. “But why do I get the feeling that one of those eight men are about to get seriously screwed over, and why am I secretly hoping that it’s Carver?”

King just laughs before indicating across the room to my tiny little bed. “Are you sleeping?”

I scoff, hating the topic change, but I let it slide for now. I doubt he was going to share much more than that anyway. “What do you think? I forced Cruz to stay up all night telling me stupid stories about you guys just so I could avoid closing my eyes.”

“Is it that bad?”

I nod, not wanting to admit just how bad it is out loud. “I’ll be fine,” I tell him. “I have the mental image of Grayson jerking off and screaming ‘YAHTZEE’ to keep me company.”

“Fuck me, that was a good one,” King laughs, before shaking his head in horror. “I’d hate to find out what little secrets Cruz has spilled about me.”

“Oh, trust me,” I say, my eyes lighting up. “You really don’t want to know.”

CHAPTER 6

I shiver against the small bed as my body aches from an uncomfortable night. Dynasty must have billions of dollars. Is it really too much to ask them for a comfortable bed in their cells? They have a fancy as shit security