Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (20 page)

I nodded slowly, her words prodding at those numb pieces of me that were lying inside my shattered psyche.

She nodded too, pulling the car back onto the highway. “Since that’s sorted, it’s cheeseburger time.”

And just like that, I was taken back to a family I hadn’t asked for, but one I craved just the same.

And taken back to the man I hadn’t asked for, but breathed for, just the same.

I stared at my reflection with effort. I had made a point of avoiding reflective surfaces for the past month. Avoided looking directly at them. At me. Or whatever was left.

They say—whoever the proverbial assholes
they
are—that the addict looks in the mirror one day and does not recognize the face of the drug-stricken loser before them. I had a lot of free time in the junkie house, so I set about reading every addict autobiography and memoir out there.

Depressing shit.

That’s where I got that particular theory. Maybe that’s not exactly what
they
say, but I took some artistic liberties. I recognized myself every day I was high.
Every time
. Sometimes I was blurry around the edges. Sometimes I couldn’t tell where the reflection ended and I began. Another time, when I was seriously fucked-up, I thought I was trapped in the mirror.

All of these times, I couldn’t mistake myself. Not on the outside, at least. The inside may have been twisted, gnarly, and positively ugly, but I couldn’t see that from my glorious spot on my rainbow high. I could only see what the mirror showed me. Nothing underneath. Drugs gave me a wonderful little blind spot to my true self.

Now, stone-cold, horribly sober, I couldn’t place this… thing. Even worse, I could see the gnarly, thorny edges of my insides. My blind spot was gone.

I blinked at the sallow face staring back at me. Makeup-less, I hardly recognized myself. I was always wearing my war paint, whether it was waking up with residue of the night before or a fresh coat. It was my armor. Another thing to add to the persona I had created. Black hair, usually with sharp streaks of color which changed routinely. Black combat boots were a staple. I had four pairs in various states of disarray. My eyeliner was always thick and black. I was always on. Always a construction. Never just me. I needed all that stuff, to cover the dirt.

I didn’t have any of it right now. My hair hung limp around my shoulders, dipping almost to my bra strap. It was stringy because I couldn’t remember the last time I washed it. The ends were such a faded pink they just looked orange now. My face was pale, almost transparent under the bathroom lights. My frame looked skeletal and my face had angles I didn’t recognize. Quite simply, I looked like shit. But the outside was nothing like the charred and broken inside. I felt like my body was this empty shell and the ashes of me lay in a pile, rotting with every passing day.

“Get yourself together,” I whispered to the sad and pathetic-looking girl in front of me.

I couldn’t stay like this forever. The problem was I didn’t know what else I could do. How I could change. It was as if I was locked in place, my mind a stark wasteland, my identity stripped away from me ever since I’d finally left the drug addled ocean five weeks ago.

But how did I change? How did I get clean when the dirt set like concrete on my soul? How did I shake the craving, the utter desperation for that escape, that nothingness the needle offered?

I eyed my hair, directing all my anger at those greasy strands. My hands moved of their own accord, opening the bathroom cabinet behind the mirror, momentarily taking away the image of the girl I didn’t know. She quickly came back when I found what I needed and slammed the little door shut.

I didn’t think. Just started cutting.

“
I
desire
things which will destroy me in the end.”

-Sylvia Plath

“
W
ow
, diggin’ the pixie cut, babe,” Rosie declared when I walked into the room. She was sitting cross legged on the floor flipping through a glossy magazine.

I gave her a look. Unlike many movies, when the heroine has some sort of moment of fierceness and decides to assert that independence by giving herself some fabulous new ’do, mine did not look fabulous. I was not a hairdresser. I had never cut hair in my life. I was a mess, so right now, my hair served as some sort of communicator for the utter disaster of my insides.

Rosie put down her pen and pushed herself off the floor, eyeing my hair as she approached me. “Okay, so we’re not going to be letting you enter any hairstyling competitions, but I like the spirit of the idea,” she said, circling me like some sort of predator.

After some deliberation, she walked to the breakfast bar to drag a bar stool into the middle of the room.

“Sit,” she commanded.

I raised my brow at her.

“Are you thinking I can make this any worse?” she asked with a small grin.

“Good point,” I answered with no returning grin. I didn’t grin, smile, or smirk anymore. I wondered if it was physically impossible. That I had finally gone through enough horrors to make my body chemically unable to produce anything resembling happiness.

“Okay, you stay there while I get the scissors and we’ll make this fabulous,” Rosie declared, squeezing my shoulder.

That was the only form of recognition for the reason behind my rash hair decision. There was no sad look, no probing questions. Not with Rosie. I was beyond thankful for that. She acted like such actions were completely normal. Though, she was slightly insane, so maybe things like this
were
normal in her world.

I doubted having an ex-junkie, ex-stripper, ex-human as a roommate was normal. One who barely spoke these days, one who had turned into some kind of zombie who sat on the sofa watching documentaries on serial killers. But she didn’t make it feel any worse. I didn’t think it would be possible to feel worse anyway.

“Okay, I’m thinking early 2000s Halle Berry meets 2015 JLaw at the Oscars,” Rosie declared, reentering the room with scissors and styling implements. “What do we think?”

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

She didn’t seem perturbed at my lack of answer considering she’d had enough experience with it. Her eyes lit up. “Free rein, excellent.”

I let myself relax as much as was possible as she ran her hands and then scissors through my newly short locks. I gritted my teeth against the occasional touch of her fingers against my scalp. The touch. I didn’t do well with that. The sounds of the chopping seemed to work as some sort of meditative instrument, my mind wandering out of the room and over the events of the past month.

Well, not too far. I didn’t like to think of those first few days back to
reality
, if that’s what this was. The days before I spirited myself off to rehab as fast as my boots would take me.

I couldn’t remember parts, which I was thankful for. It took days for me to fully come off whatever cocktail of drugs I had been given. That I had taken. The withdrawals of those had been bad.

Bad.

Worse than the first time I went off, and that had been horrible enough. I had thought my body would shut down without the poison it had grown accustomed to, come to rely on.

At that point, one month ago, I was certain of death. If not my physical body, then my mind. It felt like someone was forcibly ripping it apart from the inside. Images would tear through the shields that I had built up since birth. Images of that room. Of that bed. Of what they did to me in that bed. I had scratched my arms raw at one point, desperate to open my veins, to see if the filth of those memories would pour out with my blood.

Then they had tied me down. That was worse. Being immobile. My mind was already surrendering to helplessness, crippled, and my body was now too.

I had come down enough to realize the reason for it. To gain some sort of coherent thought.

Lily’s hand was tight on mine, resting just above the makeshift bindings they had tied with scarves. Those scarves struck me as ridiculously funny.

I was unable to contain the hysterical bubble of laugher that came out when I saw the vibrant designs.

Lily’s head had snapped up at the sound, her eyes instantly alert as she took me in. Sleep didn’t seem to hide behind them.

“Bex?” she asked cautiously, hand not letting go of mine.

The way she looked at me, the hesitation behind it, punctured me. It didn’t make me stop laughing, though.

“It’s the scarves,” I choked out finally, not recognizing my scratchy voice.

“The scarves?” she repeated, sitting up a little straighter.

I nodded. “Doesn’t it strike you as just… silly? I’m tied to a bed with vintage scarves. With ones that should be on the neck of some fashionista or tied around some stupidly expensive handbag, not used to restrain… me.”

A small, sad grin crept at the side of Lily’s mouth. I suspected it might be for my benefit more than anything else. This suspicion was due to the utter despair which was poorly hidden behind her ice-blue eyes.

“I guess it is quite…
silly
. I didn’t exactly have anything else lying around the house, and it was necessary.” Her eyes touched on my upper arms.

I glanced down at my forearms, which had been wrapped in bandages. I vaguely recalled some dull pain at some point in the murky past. Scratching. I’d been scratching my arms, the intention of ripping off my filthy skin and letting them out. The insects crawling under my skin.

To the outsider I guessed that looked pretty fucked-up.

Hence the scarves.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t really expect you to have bondage gear on hand, kid.” I winked at her. “Unless you’ve got some real dark side you’ve hidden from your best friend.”

My teasing tone fell flat, even to me. Maybe because the moment I said the words I wanted to swallow them right back up. Lily, my innocent and all-around good best friend, wasn’t the one with a hidden dark side. No, that was me. Only it wasn’t a side, a slice of me corrupted by the black. It was the entirety of me. It
was
me.

She squeezed my hand and tears welled in her eyes. “Bex, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry,” she choked out, the raw pain in her voice making me flinch.

I couldn’t watch that, couldn’t look at the pain in my best friend’s eyes. I didn’t get respite from the consequences of my dark side corrupting the only person stupid enough to care about me. My eyes rested on the glove on Lily’s hand. The medical one.

Cloudy memories assaulted me at that moment.

I had been fighting. Fighting hard. With every inch of me. Then all of a sudden my limbs didn’t work anymore and every part of me was still. Apart from my mind, pounding at the outer reaches of my skull, desperate to get out.

Dylan’s face dipped close to mine, his eyes alert with something I recognized—arousal, and narcotics.

“We got you now, bitch,” he hissed, grinning. He moved to touch my body, I saw him do it, but I couldn’t feel it. “We’ve got you. We’re going to break you,” he informed me, his eyes darting around as if he couldn’t keep them still from excitement. “It’s going to be brilliant,” he declared.

“Ghuoh phuck yoourseelf,” I managed to blurt out through numb lips.

He didn’t stop grinning. “I knew you’d fight. Just knew it. Pity your little mouse didn’t put up much of a fight. Your biker dog neither. They both burned with little effort,” he told me with satisfaction.

Every inch of my mind stilled. I stopped pounding on the corners of my skull. Dread. Pure dread had me paralyzed in my mind.

Dylan grinned. “That hit a nerve, didn’t it? You’ll get to live with that. Know they burned because you’re a stupid whore who didn’t do what she was told,” he sneered.

Then he did things. Did things I couldn’t feel physically, that I couldn’t stop.

“Your hand,” I croaked, trying to push up.

Lily glanced at it. “It’s nothing,” she tried to soothe me.

“It’s not,” I gritted out, wincing at the pain that was utterly foreign to me. The physical pain at least. My mental pain was a constant companion. “They did that to you,” I stated flatly.

“I’m fine,” Lily said firmly.

I pursed my lips. My body stilled. “Who else? Who else got hurt because of me? Did someone…? Did
he…?
” My voice trailed off into despair.

“He’s fine,” Lily said quickly, chasing away my thoughts. At least some of them. “Lucky’s fine.” She swallowed, eyes weary. “It was touch and go. He got shot, in the chest, but he’s too stubborn to let that slow him down.”

My heart stuttered. The air left my lungs.

Shot.

In the chest.

“But he’s okay?” I croaked.

Lily nodded. “He’s okay.” She made to stand up. “In fact, he’s asleep on the sofa right now. It’s quite difficult to make him do such things like sleep, eat, leave your side. It’s a rare moment right now. I’ll get him.”

My hand tightened around hers like a vise. “No,” I hissed frantically. I used every ounce of my meager strength to keep her in place. Like my life depended on it. Not
like
it did—my life
did
depend on it.

She frowned at me but sat back down.

“I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him around, not anywhere near me,” I declared.

Lily gazed at me. “Bex—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Promise me. Promise me you’ll make him go away. Lily, I can’t—” I sucked in a breath. “I can’t have him anywhere near me. Around this. I don’t want you to have to be around this either, though I know you’ll stay, despite everything I’ve put you through. I love you more than words for that. I’m so sorry I have to put this on you, tarnish your life even more.”

Lily’s face turned hard. “No,” she ground out. “No. You do not say anything like that, not now, not ever,” she commanded. “You do not lay any blame at your own feet. This is not your fault. They took you. They—” Her voice broke and I knew she knew about what
they
did. “This is not your fault,” she said finally.

“But—” I argued.

“No buts. You don’t want to break my heart by trying to find some way to blame yourself for this. There is no one to blame but the
animals
that don’t deserve to exist in this world. The only thing you need to do is focus on getting better,” she instructed, as if that were possible. “On letting other people, people who love you, help you get better.”

I relented. I had to. Arguing with the woman who was the only family I had was pointless. She may be convinced she was weak, but I knew she was strong. Stronger than me by bounds. So I no longer verbalized my absolute certainty that all of this was because of me.

That she had almost died because of me.

That she was scarred for life because of me.

That
he
almost died because of me. That he was shot because of me.

That I had been further ingrained with dirt as a result of my own choices.

I didn’t verbalize it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t always on my mind.

But I stayed there. For Lily’s sake. I wouldn’t harm her any more than I already had. Harming myself, that was fine. Inevitable, inescapable. Her? That was unacceptable.

She did try to fight me on something else I wouldn’t budge on. Not even for her.

“He loves you,” she said quietly after silence had descended, cloaked us for a long while.

I sucked in a painful breath.

“You can’t shut him out,” she continued. “I’ve never seen anyone like that. The way he was. I’ve never seen someone that destroyed. Never. Especially not someone as strong as that. Someone like Lucky,” she whispered. “He’s been here, every moment, as much as me, Bex. He won’t go anywhere. I don’t think a nuclear missile would move him from your side.”

Her words punctured me like a million little needles on my soul. It took great pains to hide that from Lily. “He doesn’t love me,” I stated in an empty voice. “He feels responsible. That’s what these bikers do, it seems. Take on every hit that poor defenseless women are suffering, take it as some personal affront. We were nothing,” I lied. “It was just fun for us both. Had this not happened, it would have fizzled out at some point. Now I’ve been… used. Sullied. That’s a hit on these alpha-male types. He thought since we were fucking that meant I was blanketed in an invisible testosterone blanket. They breached that.”

Lily looked at me for a long time. Long enough to know she didn’t buy my blasé attitude. “That’s not true. You forget you’re my sister. What you feel, I feel.” Her voice broke. “You went through hell, and I feel that, Bex. It hurts me. I also know what you feel for him. You can’t hide that, not from me. I know you care,” she said firmly.

I closed my eyes a moment, contemplating further protests. I opened them, making my decision. “I can’t,” I choked out. “I can’t have him near me, Lils. I can’t see myself through his eyes. I can’t. It’ll kill me,” I confessed. “It’ll destroy whatever’s left.”

Lily’s frame jolted and her face softened immediately. Her small bandaged hand came up to stroke a hair from my face. “Okay,” she whispered in a tortured voice. “Okay.”

She’d done it. Somehow, she’d made it so I didn’t have to lay eyes on him. I heard it, though. The moment she’d spoken to him. I’d heard the shouts, the curses, the smashing of some unknown furniture.

I heard it all and felt it all. Just more wounds to add to my bleeding soul.

I was selfish, I knew that. And possibly cruel for not seeing him.

But I was being cruel to be kind.

As much as the decision not to see his face was for me, it was also for him. He needed to be as far away from me as possible. I seemed to be like some contagious disease. Get close to me and you’re tainted with my affliction. I fucked up every life I came into contact with.

I didn’t miss the fact there was always a Harley outside Lily’s house. Lily and Asher’s house. That’s where they’d taken me after I had been treated in the clubhouse, not that I remembered.