When I got out of juvie in New York, I went straight to the Fury Vipers. Digger didn’t hesitate to offer me a place, nor did Octavia. They opened their lives to me.
They gave me structure and rules. They gave me a place where the violence had somewhere to go that wasn’t into the people around me. But no matter how tight I kept my control, I couldn’t outrun what I’d done. The line I crossed that couldn’t be uncrossed.
They never saw me as someone other than the boy who shot Octavia. I wasn’t met with open hostility, it was worse: disappointment, distance, the kind that sticks to your skin. I couldn’t escape my past there.
So I asked for the transfer.
Dublin was far enough that I could breathe again. Far enough that I could pretend I was more than the worst thing I’d done.
New chapter, same patch, same promise.
I became the quiet one, the controlled one, the one who never lost his temper.
I locked it down so tight I almost convinced myself the violence was gone.
Until Everly.
She makes me want to let it loose, makes me want to stop controlling every reaction.
And that's what terrifies me most.
Because the second I stop controlling it is the second I prove every fear I have about myself is true.
I'm standing on the cliff watching the Irish Sea when I hear her car pull up.
She walks over and stands beside me, doesn't say anything for a long time.
"You okay?" she asks finally.
"No."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Okay."
We stand there in the wind and the silence feels comfortable instead of awkward.
"I spent five years in juvie," I say eventually.
She doesn't react, just keeps looking out at the water.
"I shot my teacher when I was thirteen, held her kid at gunpoint, tried to save my sister."
"I know."
I look at her. "How do you know?"
"Chloe told me. She thought I should know what I'm getting into."
"And you're still here."
"Yeah, I'm still here."
"Why?"
"Because you're more than the worst thing you've ever done."