He only calls me Ravenlee when he’s mad at me or stressed out.
He shakes his head. “No, you’re not in trouble. If anything, I am.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know … It’s …” He offers me a smile. “You don’t need to worry about it. This is grown up stuff. All you need to worry about today is making sure that, if anything bad happens, you swing your fist like your life depends on it, got it?”
I nod, wanting to make him proud of me. “Got it.”
He starts to smile, but it fades when the gates start to open.
Sighing, he drives forward through the entrance and turns onto a paved driveway that leads to the biggest house I’ve ever seen.
“Whoa, who lives here?” I ask with my nose pressed against the window.
The house is so huge that it has three floors.
“A business acquaintance,” my dad replies as he pulls up to the front doors.
Two guys are standing on the front porch, and just behind them is a kid around my age with dark brown hair. Even with how far away he is, I can tell he looks sad.
I turn to my dad. “Is that boy your business acquaintance?”
Shaking his head, he puts the shifter into park, turns off the engine, and then hesitantly reaches for the door. “No.”
He’s being really weird. It makes me worry, even though he said I don’t need to. I want to ask him questions, but he opens the door and climbs out.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to follow him or if I should stay in the car.
“Come on, Ravenlee,” he says then closes the door.
He called me Ravenlee again.
Something’s wrong.
But I get out anyway, trusting my dad, and hurry around to the front of the car where he’s waiting for me. He takes my hand when I reach him then pulls me with him as he starts up the pathway toward the guys.
“You made it,” the taller one says to my dad. Then his gaze flits to me. “And you brought her.”
My dad’s hold on my hand tightens. “I didn’t really have a choice, did I?”
The man stares at me for a beat with eyes a strange color of grey, like storm clouds, then he looks at my dad. “No, you didn’t.” Again, the man with stormy eyes glances at me.
He’s starting to make me feel really squirmy, so I look at the boy instead. He has a scar on his jaw. I wonder where he got it from.
He looks even sadder up close, so I smile at him. But all he does is stare at me like I’m a weirdo, which I guess I sort of am. Then his confusion shifts to worry as the man with stormy grey eyes looks at him.
“Kid, go inside and get the others,” he tells him.
The kid nods then looks at me for a fleeting moment before hurrying inside the house.
The man looks back at my dad and opens his mouth to say something when lightning snaps across the sky and thunder immediately follows, so I miss what he says.
As the land shadows over with clouds and the wind picks up, the memory swirls away with it—
My eyelids pop open as I suck in a sharp breath. My skin is damp with sweat, my hair feels gross again, and the wound on my side throbs as I stare up at my bedroom ceiling.
That dream I just had … or memory … whatever it was … that kid in it … was that Zay? Hunter told me that Zay’s dad calls him Kid, and Zay has a scar on his jawline, just like the kid did. But, why would I suddenly remember that I met Zay a long time ago?
Maybe it was just a dream. I’ve had vivid dreams before. But I’ve also forgotten memories before.
“No, it has to be a dream,” I mutter to myself. There’s no way I met Zay once and somehow forgot about it.
Doubt weighs on my mind, though.
Since it’s still too early to get up, I close my eyes and shut my mind off, trying desperately to fall back asleep so I don’t feel the pain in my side.
Last night, I took a shower to try to scrub the wound clean … and wash the river scent out of my hair. Then I put some peroxide on the wound my uncle had given me so it wouldn’t get infected before I closed my eyes, but I didn’t go downstairs to pop some painkillers, not