Riven
I’ve never been great at letting people in. Life is easier if I bury my feelings. People tend to let you down, which is only proven when my best friend, Rex, accidentally kills a man and lets me take the fall.
When I get out of prison, the last thing I want is to go back to Clayton, Oregon, but it’s where my grandma lives, the only person who’s always had my back. My plan is to stay out of trouble, steer clear of my old crew, save up, and the second we can, leave town for good.
Parrish
I want nothing to do with my family and their illegal activities. With Riven back, I worry things will get worse. He and Rex have always brought out the worst in each other, but then I discover Riven went to prison for something my brother did, and my family isn’t happy to have him home.
Riven wants nothing to do with me, and I don’t blame him. But like a moth to the flame, I’m drawn to him. It starts out as mutual lust, Riven sating the pleasure he craves, while I get to fulfill my first-crush fantasies. But with every moment, I see there’s more to Riv than anyone knows.
Not everyone would see him as a good man, but to me, he’s the boy who used to try to keep my family’s lifestyle from becoming mine.
And now he’s the man who risked his heart to fall in love with me…and the one who’d risk more to protect me.
Risk the Fall is an ex-best friend’s brother romance that contains violence, drug use, crime, and death of a non-main character.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re gonna get comfortable out here. We can sleep under the stars, with a nice, pretty fire we don’t really need, but I like it anyway,” I teased.
“I don’t sleep.”
“Well, maybe you will tonight. And if not, we’ll lie under the stars and talk.”
“I don’t talk,” he countered.
“Stop being difficult. And you talk to me,” I said in a flirty voice, testing the waters.
“Stop trying to seduce me,” he said, surprising me.
“Do I really have to try? All I have to do is offer you my ass, and you take it.”
He shrugged. We both knew I had a point there.
“Come on, Riv. How long has it been since you’ve gotten to do something like this? Stop fighting any way you can to enjoy yourself or be happy. Just let go a little bit.”
“You say that like it’s easy. I don’t…” He waved his hands in the air. “Do this. Know how to do this. Everything always gets fucked up.”
Riven hadn’t really had a lot of good, had he? Outside of Betsy, most things in his life had been screwed up, and damn, did I want to be something different for him. His parents hadn’t wanted him, and his grandpa had died before Riven could even get to know him. My dad taught him to be a criminal from a young age, made him think he was loved, then used him to save his own son. I wanted to show him another way, when really, I didn’t know much about having any other kind of life either.
“I won’t let it, Riv.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t need someone to take care of me. You or anyone else can’t fix my life.”
“I don’t want to fix anything, but I do want to be here for you, to be a soft place for you to fall. Let me try to give you that.” I walked over to him, risked holding his hips and looking him in the eyes, and he let me. “Take a risk with me. Don’t make me fall alone.” Because I was falling for him. I liked Riven a lot. I wanted to be those things for him that he never had, for him to be able to depend on me, to lean on me, have someone who would always have his back and fight like hell so nothing would hurt him.
I waited for him to pull away, to tell me to fuck off, but he just sighed. “I don’t know how to do what you’re asking.”
“Neither do I. Not really. But we can figure it out together…if you stop fighting it so hard.”
I grinned, and for some reason, it must have been contagious because Riven caught it. His was smaller, but it was there.
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