at any moment he’d reach out and grab me. I could tell he was only a few moments away from losing his shit entirely.
“I met Ramsey Buchanan when I was sixteen,” he said, shattering the silence. “I’d run away from Lerwick—the orphanage—more times than I could count. Eventually, they stopped coming after me.
“I lived in Edinburgh, on the streets. I was big for my age, even then. Anyone who tried to fuck with me learned quickly that I had a lot of rage, and no one to take it out on. I never started shite…but I ended it. A lot.”
When he looked at me, it was like he was waiting for confirmation that I was listening. I nodded quickly.
He inhaled and went on, “One night, four lads a few years older than me thought they could take me on. Ramsey helped even the score.” He smiled at the memory. “Here was this eejit with designer clothes and an expensive haircut with just as much rage as me. He had my back and never asked for anything. He just started hanging out with me. He’d disappear for a time and eventually come back. I found out he was doing the same thing—running away from home, looking for trouble for a few days. But he didn’t know true struggle like I did. He wasn’t built for living on the streets.”
He shrugged. “Anyway, he came back one day and told me he met a couple of guys who ran an underground bare-knuckle boxing ring. He thought I could make a lot of money beating the shite out of rough men. And he was right.” His smile at the memory dimmed.
“There was a girl,” he said, his voice so low I had to lean forward to hear him. “An orphan girl two years younger than me named Finola. She’s the one who introduced me to The Last Unicorn and King Haggard. We’d sit up in the belfry, hiding from the world, reading stories to each other to pass the time and escape the…”
He looked over my shoulder, going to a place I couldn’t follow. “She’d get the dreamiest look on her face and tell me about all the places she’d go if she could, all the foods she’d eat if she had a million pounds. What life would be like if she were normal and not just a poor orphan.” Hadrian came back to the present and glanced at me. “When she got placed with a family, I ran away to Edinburgh for good. There was no reason to stay there anymore. Finola was gone.”
He scrubbed a hand through his strawberry blond hair. “I didn’t expect her to find me a few months later on the streets. She told me her foster father made her uncomfortable. Staring at her. Touching her shoulder a little longer than was normal. Things she couldn’t put into words, but she knew something was wrong. But she loved being in a home with a family so she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to go back to the orphanage.”
A sick feeling took up residence in my stomach, but I bit my tongue and let him continue.
“He snuck into her room one night.” His expression went cold. “She sliced the bastard across his face with the knife I gave her as protection—just in case. They sent her back to the orphanage, of course, claimed she’d made up the entire story, but the father mysteriously didn’t want to press any charges. He said she was crazy, and that was the end of it. No one looked into it further.”
“What did Mother Superior say?” I asked, my heart breaking for a young girl I’d never met.
“I think she believed Finola, but what could she do?” He shook his head. “When Finola ran away, I think it was a bit of relief for all parties involved. Nothing would come it of it after that, no matter who said anything about it. The orphanage didn’t look very hard for her. She was just gone.”
He paused for a moment and then said, “I used to think I was brave. Beating the shite out of men. I was big, so what did I have to be afraid of? Finola was slim. Fragile. She needed to be protected. That’s why she searched for me in Edinburgh.
“We slept on the same dirty mattress in the warehouse I’d made my home. I introduced her to Ramsey. Finola was never,” he thought for a moment, “bitter. Never jaded. Never broken.