Raven ©

Cruise Control

September 2018

I feel like I just drove myself straight into a concrete wall traveling at a hundred miles an hour. The cruise control of my life has been set on a crash course for disaster since March, and now it's finally caught up to me. The inertia from the impact kept me moving forward until I flew through the windshield and smashed into a solid brick wall of reality right here and now. My entire world has shattered into a blazing, soul rupturing dead end. I desperately want my memories to be a giant, heaping lie, but I know they aren't. The facts are what they are, and all of it makes perfect sense. I can't unsee the past.

I can't unsee him and the deceit.

Reid met me before seven months ago. He lied about everything. My family was kidnapped by Luna Rossa and slaughtered on the very grounds I'd been living for two months. I was locked in Reid's basement for a week; tortured, starving and sexually assaulted within the walls of his own home. All those nights ten years ago that I begged for mercy, pleaded for a higher power to take my pain away, Reid sat inside the same household and slept peacefully. Then, he hunted me down like an animal in the woods. He sought me out with the rest of his godforsaken pack on a mission to drag me back to death's doorstep; back to Dominic. Everything between us has all been a massive pile of bullshit, and now, that's clear as day. All he's wanted to do is fulfill Dominic's main goal; to get on my good side and weaponize me. He's the one who hired a pack to kill me, he was creating a reason to get close to me. All of this has been planned from the very beginning, and I've been too infatuated with him to see the situation for what it is. I've been too busy falling in love with him to see the writing on the walls.

He's no better than anyone else in Luna Rossa.

He's no better than Matteo, and my skin crawls to think that I've slept with them both.

I slowly back out of the bathroom, still in an overwhelming state of denial. I glance over at Reid for a brief moment, wishing these weren't the circumstances between us, but they are. I'm forever bonded to a man I no longer trust.

I shuffle backwards out the cabin door and into the night. Once my feet hit the back porch, I turn around and stumble towards the woods. Yet again, I don't even know where I'm going, but I can't stay here. The thought of staring into Reid's eyes as he spews more bullshit and lies makes me sick to my stomach. I can't be with him after what he's done.

"Raven, what are you doing?" Reid's voice drifts up behind me. I stop walking and swallow hard.

"You knew..." I whisper while shaking my head.

"I knew what?" he asks, taking another step in my direction. I grit my teeth and rotate to face him with fury coming to a boil in my blood. I rush in his direction, smacking him in the face as hard as I can.

"You knew, Reid!" I scream at him. "You knew we'd met before March, you knew Luna Rossa was the pack who slaughtered my entire family, and you knew Matteo was the one who raped me!" I pace back and forth in the mud as blood rushes through my body at an abnormally fast rate. "It's been you this entire time! All of it...it's been you."

As venomous accusations fly out of my mouth, Reid's face goes stoic and pale. "Raven, you have to let me explain..."

"Explain what, exactly? How you killed my family? How you've been using me and lying straight to my face with every word you say? How you've led me down this path of total and complete bullshit for seven months?" I snap, angrily shaking my head. "I gave myself to you in every way possible, and what'd I gain from it? An earth-shattering reminder why I don't trust people?" A sharp pain stings the spot where Reid marked me, but I ignore it and press onward. I'm so livid that all I see is burning, scarlet red.