Battered Not Broken by Ranae Rose

Author:Ranae Rose [Rose, Ranae]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Contemporary, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9781481164733
Published: 2012-12-13T23:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

“When I was little I used to be terrified that I’d fall in and a shark would eat me.” Ally peered down at the water that lapped along the Inner Harbor’s walkway, where the pavement met the water. There was no railing, just a little drop off to the dark expanse below.

“Did your parents let you watch Jaws or something?” Ryan raised an eyebrow, his lips turning up just the tiniest bit at the corners.

“Not exactly,” Ally replied, interlacing her fingers a little more tightly with his. “But my brother and I watched it anyway, when they weren’t looking. We got about halfway through the movie before we were caught. By then, the damage was done – I was terrified.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yeah, he’s…” A small-time gangster who’d betrayed their family and spent the years since selling drugs and doing other things she didn’t even want to think about. “We don’t talk anymore. You could say we’ve gone our separate ways.”

Ryan nodded. “I know what you mean.”

“What – you have a sibling you don’t talk to anymore?”

“Yeah, a brother. And a whole family, really.”

“You don’t talk to your parents?”

“I haven’t for quite a while.”

“What are they like?” She dared to ask just like she dared to walk a few scant feet from the edge of the pavement, where it dropped off into deep water.

“They’re the type of people who think that the world was made just for them. They’re incredibly closed-minded and they don’t like it when anyone does anything that defies how they think things should be done, whether it’s good or bad.”

She didn’t press him for details – she believed him. Why else would he have started fresh and alone in Baltimore after returning injured from war? It seemed like anyone with a decent family and no other connections would have returned home after what he’d been through.

“Hey, see those?” She pointed toward a fleet of brightly-painted, dragon-shaped paddle boats that sat bobbing in the harbor, waiting to be rented. Cartoonish and almost garish, they were a perfect excuse to change the subject.

“The dragons?”

“Yeah. My father took me out on one once when I was a kid. I’d been begging him for months to rent one. When we finally did, I was so scared I could hardly enjoy it.”

“Because you’d watched Jaws?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t stop thinking about how a megalodon would be able to swallow the paddleboat whole.”

“Megalodon?”

“It’s an extinct species of giant shark. That’s what the shark in the movies was inspired by. I also wanted to be a marine biologist when I was a kid.”

“Even though you were afraid of sharks?”

She shrugged. “Yep.”

“That’s still more practical than what I wanted to be.”

“Which was?”

“A ninja.”

“A marine is a little bit like a ninja.” At least, it was more like a ninja than being a nail technician was like being a marine biologist.

“Maybe that’s it – maybe I chose the Marine Corps because it was the branch that used swords in their advertising.

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