Trouble: Crooked Souls MC by Zoey Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

them. What would they have talked about? It wasn’t like making conversation was a strong suit for any of them.
    And yet…it was exciting. I couldn’t deny it. For a sheltered person—and I knew I’d sheltered my sister her entire life—the club must have seemed like an interesting, fresh, vibrant world. Maybe I’d done wrong by her when I kept her focused on school and hard work. I should have told her more about life. Now she had to learn the hard way. That was the case for most people, I knew. Learning through mistakes. Only this mistake might have cost Sabrina her life. This wasn’t just a simple stupid thing a teenager might do when they were testing their limits.
    Eventually, I gave up trying to sleep, going down to practice on the piano instead. Playing always soothed me. Some people ran to clear their heads. I played music.
    I was only messing around, letting the sounds from my fingers on the keys speak my troubled thoughts. I stayed down in the lower octaves. It was dark, brooding music.
    I remembered how it felt to make out with Gabriel, what it was like to be in his presence. I could see how it was easy to fall into this world if someone had kissed Sabrina the way Gabriel had kissed me. In that last moment, before I pulled away, I was ready to give myself over to him. I had felt the same way at the bar, like I was a split second away from stepping over the line. I wanted to see how far he could take me. I hadn’t felt passion like that ever before in my life. It was almost too much to handle. It had hurt, the ache I felt from his mouth and hands on me. My lips were still a little sore from his rough treatment.
    It was intoxicating, like a drug. Was it like that for her? If so, I could at least partially understand why she wouldn’t stay away. I wondered vaguely if it was Gabriel she’d been hooking up with—after all, he was the person anyone saw her with. Were they together? If so, and he had lied to my face, he was even colder than I’d originally thought.
    I played on, remembering the moments between us. The way my pulse had raced, the blood rushing in my ears. He oozed sex appeal, and that sense of danger that followed him. Anything could happen at any moment when he was involved.
    Hadn’t I sworn off men like him years ago? I did my best to be a good example to Sabrina. I’d wanted to show her that a mother figure could be totally dedicated to her, the way our mother never was. So even though I always felt drawn to the excitement and sexiness of bad boys, I’d told myself to stay away from them at all costs.
    Here I was again, turned on by a man worse than all of those boys put together.
    I played harder, fingers pounding the keys. Like the storm that was in my soul. Disgusted by him, turned on by him. Wanting him, wanting to destroy him and everything he stood for.
    I slammed my hands on the keys, then slammed the lid shut. It was no use.
    ***
    I didn’t have any students that day, which was good since I was even more distracted than I’d been when Ivy came in the day before. My students deserved my attention, and they were getting less and less of it the longer Sabrina was missing.
    There was only one thing I could imagine doing that night. Going back to the bar.
    Gabriel’s warnings repeated in my head over and over like they were on a loop. I should keep my nose out of business that didn’t concern me. I should stay away before it was too late. I could get myself hurt, or worse.
    I still didn’t understand how anyone could consider this not being my business. This was my sister, my family. The only family I had. Gabriel told me he would have killed the person who hurt one of his guys. Why didn’t he understand how I had to feel the same way? Though I wasn’t sure I could kill a person if it came down to that. But I understood the rage. Some of it had come out when I was kissing Gabriel in the car. If I couldn’t break him down with my words, I’d use everything else in me to get him