Vow to Protect Read Free

You’ll only make things worse.”
    â€œListen, I’ve seen what guys like this can do, what they enjoy doing. It ain’t nothing nice.”
    â€œLeave me alone.”
    â€œI’m not leaving until I know you’ll be safe.”
    She glanced down the street again. Behind a blue minivan and a white sedan, the bright yellow school bus barreled toward them.
    â€œWhat are you looking for?”
    A thick ache lodged in her throat. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” The school bus rumbled up the street, desperation drilling deeper into her bones the closer it came.

Chapter Three
    Lines dug into Mel’s smooth forehead as the school bus’s brakes squealed to a stop at the bottom of her driveway.
    Cord had expected her to be upset to see him. He’d expected her to be scared. He hadn’t expected her to be more nervous about a damn yellow bus than she was about Dryden Kane.
    The red stop sign swung out from the driver’s side, and the door opened. A skinny boy shouldered a backpack far too big for him and clomped down the bus steps. He hopped onto the pavement and started up the drive’s slope. Looking up at Melanie, he offered her a little smile, a playful light twinkling in his ice-blue eyes.
    Eyes identical to Cord’s.
    Identical to Dryden Kane’s.
    Cord jerked back as if he’d been kicked in thegrill. He fought to regain breath, to regain thought. “How old is he?”
    Melanie tensed beside him, but she didn’t answer.
    â€œHow old is he, Mel?”
    â€œTen.”
    Ten years old. He didn’t have to ask if the boy was his son. He knew. Down to the marrow of his bones, he knew.
    â€œI found out the day you killed Snake.”
    And she hadn’t told him. She hadn’t come to see him in jail. She hadn’t come to his trial. She hadn’t even answered his phone calls.
    The boy ambled up the driveway toward them. Lanky and skinny, he moved as if he was growing too fast for his coordination to catch up. Eight more years, and he’d be eighteen. Legally a man. The age Cord was when the kid had been conceived. When Cord had been thrown in prison.
    He tried to speak, to move, to do anything that didn’t involve standing and staring, but he came up empty.
    â€œI had to get him away from the neighborhood. I didn’t want him to live that life, to spend his Sundays in a prison visiting room like I did. I didn’t want him to follow that path. I—”
    He held up a hand to cut her off. She didn’t have to explain. “You were right not to tell me. You were right to give him a better life.” The life they’dplanned together before he was arrested. The life Melanie had dreamed for them both.
    Her gaze burned hot on the side of his face. “Don’t say anything. Please. He doesn’t know you’re his father. I told him his father died.”
    Cord had died in prison. He’d died every day since he’d killed Snake. “He won’t learn it from me.”
    The boy crested the drive and started up the walk. The afternoon sun slanted down on his face and illuminated the dusting of freckles sprinkling the bridge of his nose, almost invisible under the remnants of his summer tan. His sandy-brown hair fell low on his forehead, straight as straw, refusing to cooperate with its new back-to-school cut. And though not large, his ears perked out from the sides of his head as if on alert.
    It was like staring at a photo of himself as a child.
    Numbness gave way to heat swirling in his head and burning down the back of his neck. An empty feeling hollowed out under his rib cage.
    â€œHey, Mom.” The kid gave Melanie another small smile, as if the two of them shared a funny secret, a special joke. Then he looked at Cord, focusing on the tattoos ringing Cord’s biceps and stretching down his arms. Barbed wire. A headless snake. The writhing forms of dragons. The lines thick and chunky, more symbols