Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Riven

Getting out of prison wasn’t what I thought it would be.

It really was similar to the way it happened in movies. Once I wasn’t property of the United States government anymore, they didn’t really care what happened to me—well, unless I screwed up again. All bets were off then.

What I didn’t expect was how lonely the walk down the fenced tunnel would be, and I couldn’t make sense of why I felt that way—why I felt much of anything when I’d gotten pretty good at turning that shit off during my lifetime.

Grandma was waiting for me outside, like I knew she would. She was the only person in my life who had ever really given a shit about me. She always had my back no matter how angry I was as a kid or how many times I’d fucked up. I’d made her cry too much over the years, but that was in the past. Things were going to be different now. I was…damn, I was tired. The bone-deep kind that weighed down your body and your mind, and I wasn’t sure if I could ever make that go away. I might never be happy, but I was going to keep my ass out of trouble, was going to stay away from Rex Hunt—away from all the Hunts.

“Riven,” she said, tears already in her eyes, hand shaking as she pressed it against her mouth. The last few years had turned her ponytail a little grayer.

“Hey, Grandma.” I dropped my bag to the dirty, hot ground and wrapped her in a hug. She squeezed tighter than the strength most people probably thought she had, but the truth was, this small woman in my arms was the strongest person I knew. “Don’t cry.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she countered, making me laugh. She couldn’t have spoken words that were more her. “It feels good to see you out of that place.”

I’d never wanted her to see me in that place. I’d told her she didn’t have to come, but she’d made the drive several times a year during the six years I’d been inside. “Let’s get out of here.” The muscles in my body were stiff, and I didn’t know if they would relax until I was gone. Hell, maybe they’d never relax again.

She squeezed my hand and smiled, and I grabbed my bag and threw it into the back seat of her old Honda.

“I still have your truck,” she said as she pulled away. It was about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Salem to Clayton, the town I wished I never had to see again. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a whole lot of options. I’d gotten a high school diploma, but barely, then hadn’t held down a job for long between eighteen and twenty-five, when I’d gotten locked up. Employment would be hard, money would be hard, and I needed someone in my corner, so here I was.

“Thanks. You didn’t have to keep it all this time.” It wasn’t nice then, and it would be in even worse shape now, but I didn’t care about shit like that. I just didn’t want it to be more of a hassle for her.

“It didn’t do much but sit there. I drove it sometimes, had a tune-up done. It’ll be good enough to get you back and forth to work and to your appointments with your parole officer.”

“Thanks,” I said again, not sure what else to say.

“You hungry? We should stop and get you something to eat. What do you want? Your choice.”

Jesus, she was great. I was going to do everything in my power to deserve her. “I’m good. Right now I just want to go home.”

She nodded, glancing my way with those knowing, soulful brown eyes that matched my own.

“Your apartment is still all set up too, of course. I got a window-unit AC and put it in for you.”

I’d remodeled the detached garage into a studio for myself when I’d been seventeen. Working with my hands was the only thing I’d ever really been good at. The place wasn’t anything special, but it even had a small bathroom and kitchen. It was mine, and that was all that mattered to me. “I wish you wouldn’t put out that kind of money on me. You shouldn’t have to take care of me.”

“I got it at Walmart, Riven. It didn’t break the bank. Plus, I’ll make you work it off.”

I laughed because I had no doubt about that. She was good at finding things for me to do.

I could tell by the set of her jaw that she had something else to say, something she’d likely been holding in for a while now. The hairs on my arms stood on end, but I did my best to ignore it. A lot of bad shit had happened in my life, and I’d lived through it all. Whatever she had to say couldn’t be worse than that. “Just tell me. I can take it.” I didn’t much care about anything other than her anyway.

“Becca…she’s with Rex now. Has been, well, since not long after you went inside. They have two little ones.”

I waited to feel something at hearing my ex-girlfriend was officially with my ex-best friend, but then, it wasn’t as if I was surprised. She hadn’t come to visit me once. In the beginning we’d talked on the phone the few times I called her, and she’d always make promises, but they never happened. Eventually, she stopped taking my calls, and I stopped trying.

And now she was with Rex, the man who had really been the one who killed Jerry Wilson, the one who should have spent the last six years of his life in prison instead of me. The guy I’d taken the fall for was boning my ex-girlfriend, and the truth was, I didn’t give a shit. Not anymore.

“Good for them.”

“You need to stay away from Rex and Frank Hunt, Riven. No good will come from spending time with them. They’re trouble and always will be.”

No one knew that more than me.

It had been Frank who used to let us drink when we were kids, who’d gotten Rex and me into selling drugs—first weed, then heroin. Every time I’d gotten into trouble in my life, Rex had been egging me on. But I couldn’t blame Rex or even Frank for my choices. That shit was on me, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I was letting myself get tangled up with them again. I never expected to have shit in my life, but I didn’t plan to spend another second of it behind bars.

And I wasn’t ever going to let myself get close to anyone again either. I’d thought we were family, but they had used me and thrown me away, just like my own dad had thrown me away.

“I’m done with them, done with all that shit.” I leaned my head against the window. “I’m gonna take a nap.”

I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep.

*

“You have tomeet with me once per week,” Tom, my PO, said, “but remember, I can make surprise visits at any time. You play by the rules and don’t get into any trouble, and we can change that to biweekly or monthly. It all depends on you.”

I nodded.

“You’ll take a drug test every time we meet. You live with your grandma?” he asked, though he knew I did.

“Yeah.”

“That can’t change. No meeting a girl and moving in with her in two weeks. Moves need to be approved, and that leads me into employment.” He passed a card to me. Harold Graves Construction. “They’re only about fifteen minutes from Clayton, and he’s already agreed to hire you. The owner is a friend of mine, and he’s doing me a favor. You’re good with your hands, right?”

“Yes. Hell yes.” Was I really going to get a job that easily? And working out in the sun, building things? It might not be a dream come true to most people, but to me, it was. After spending six years locked up, the last thing I wanted was to be cooped up inside a building at work all day. And unless things had changed a whole lot in Clayton, which I doubted, jobs didn’t usually fall into your lap. No one there came from shit, none of us had shit, which was a vicious cycle.

“Good. You sound excited. I like that.” For the first time since I’d met him today, Tom smiled.

We went over my parole sheet, and he hammered home every condition of my parole. Then he followed me into the bathroom and watched while I took a piss in a cup, even though I’d just gotten out yesterday.

He let me use the phone to call Harold, my new boss. I didn’t have a cell phone yet. Grandma offered to help me get one, but I didn’t want her to put any more money out for me. Harold and I arranged for me to come in the next day to fill out the paperwork and get started.

“You’re going to need a phone in case I need to get in touch with you,” Tom said when I ended the call.

“Can it wait until my first paycheck?”

“No.” He opened his drawer and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here’s a voucher for—”

“Nah, I’m good. My grandma already offered to help.” I would rather pay her back than owe the government anything, even if I wasn’t expected to pay it back. I had too many complicated feelings about the system.

“Okay. Call and give me your number.”

“I will.” A few minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Grandma’s car.

“Ready to head to the DMV?” she asked.

No, I really wasn’t. It was…a lot, being free again. Great but also different, almost like the world was bigger than I remembered—the small area of Southern Oregon never ending—and more uncomfortable than it should be. But if I wanted to be able to drive myself around, I needed my driver’s license. “Yeah. We also gotta do the cell-phone thing. My PO got me a job already, so I’ll pay you back as soon as I get my first paycheck.”

“I’m not worried about it, Riven.”

But I was. She deserved a better grandson.

The DMV took for-fucking-ever, but I passed and walked out with a temporary license. She took me to her phone-carrier office next and added a line for me. It was expensive as hell, and I didn’t have credit, so none of it could be under my name.

I was a felon, starting over at thirty-one. People around here lived screwed-up lives already, and mine was going to be even worse.

The second we pulled into Clayton, the pressure was back in my chest. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to living here again—didn’t want to, to be honest. It was guaranteed that I’d run into one of the Hunts sooner rather than later. The thought made my skin crawl, made bile rise up in my throat and my hands tighten into fists. I wanted to kill them, and I wasn’t sure if I could keep myself from doing it, which was a scary truth. I wanted to get my shit together, wanted a damn life, but just thinking about all the trouble they’d caused and how they’d gotten away with it made me see red.

“I’ll cook you dinner,” I told Grandma when we got home. It was the least I could do. She’d spent the whole day running errands with me, and it was after seven.

“I won’t argue,” she replied.

I made tacos because it was one of the only things I actually knew how to make. We ate together, and then I made up an excuse about being tired and disappeared into my apartment.

I didn’t know how to be around people anymore, not really. Didn’t know how to relax around them, not even my grandma, whom I fucking loved.