I blinked stupidly at the woman sitting on my sofa with a huge steak held to her face. “You’re little Rain Lawson?”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I was never little, Jonah.”
“Do not even try to start that shit with me. So, you’ve known who I was this whole time?” I asked, a little pissed at her for deceiving me.
“If by ‘the whole time,’ you mean at the hospital and the bar, then yes,” she answered with a hint of attitude in her voice.
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“I just told you. Because I don’t know where my mother and brother are, and I have no interest in seeing either one of them.”
“And why’d you start going by River?”
She sighed. “Because I wanted to distance myself as far away from this place as possible, physically and figuratively. Rain was the poor little fat girl with no future. River is the healthy, college graduate with a solid career and a promising future.”
“I see,” I said. I wanted to argue with her about her description of her younger self, but I knew it was pointless. “Well, I don’t know shit about your mother, but Da—Reed doesn’t live here. He hasn’t lived here for a long time,” I told her.
“Oh, well that’s good to know. With any luck, my mother is dead, and I have nothing to worry about for the rest of my contract,” she chirped.
“Your brother isn’t a bad man, Rain,” I said.
“River. My name is River,” she corrected.
I held my hands up in surrender. “Sorry. Your brother isn’t a bad man, River.”
“Never said he was a bad man. I said I didn’t want to see or talk to him. And I don’t,” she stated.
I sighed, knowing what I was about to tell her would not make her happy in the slightest. “You remember the Blackwings MC?”
“Yeah, why?”
“The club moved to Croftridge a while back. A few years ago, a new chapter of Blackwings was started in Devil Springs. Anyway, your brother is a member of the Croftridge chapter,” I told her.
“Okay. Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, I’m a member of the Devil Springs chapter, and I have to tell him you’re in town,” I said.
The steak landed hard against my chest seconds before she walked out and slammed my front door in her wake.
***
I hoped River would knock on my door after she’d had some time to cool down, but three days passed, and I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of her in passing. So, I sucked it up and knocked on her door, but, if she was home, she didn’t answer.
I went back to my place and picked up the phone. I’d already waited too long to call, and I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Judge, what’s up, man?” Dash answered.
“Hey, brother, uh, I ran into your sister a few days ago,” I said.
“No shit. Where?”
Dropping down on my sofa, I filled him in on my encounters with River.
Dash blew out a slow breath. “I hate to say it, but I’m not going to bother her. I know she doesn’t want to see me. She made that clear the one time I was able to track her down a few years ago. If she’s in trouble or she needs my help, I’ll do anything I can for her, but otherwise, I’m going to leave her be.”
“Can I ask what happened between you two?”
He let out a humorless laugh. “Honestly, Judge, I don’t fucking know myself. When I was discharged from the Marines and came home, she was gone. Took me a few years to find her, and she flat out told me she would press charges if I came anywhere near her again.”