Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (21 page)

I knew I had not been taken to a hospital. I was thankful for that. Being somewhere so sterile, so full of bright lights, where my filth would be magnified, might’ve made me go insane.

“There,” Rosie proclaimed, standing back to inspect her work. “Beautiful.”

I highly doubted that, but I let myself be directed to the mirror above the dining table.

“Wow,” I said when I saw my reflection.

Despite the sallow, almost gray skin, sunken cheeks, and lifeless eyes, my hair looked good. It was slightly longer on top and she’d put some sort of goop in it to spike it up. It looked funky and edgy, reminding me of Pink.

“I know, you’re a knockout. Not many people can rock short hair,” she informed me with a grin.

“Let’s not go crazy. You’ve managed to make my hair look a lot less scary, and I thank you for that, but knockout I am not,” I replied, turning.

Rosie frowned at me, her hazel eyes hardening. “We can agree to disagree there,” she said sharply.

I rolled my eyes, unable to muster the energy to fight with her. It was impossible. I was saved from any further conversation on this particular topic with a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” Rosie declared.

As if there was a question. Since I got back I didn’t do things like answer the door.

Or leave the house.

I wanted to. I didn’t want to become a hermit and stew in my own misery. That was just fucking depressing.

But the one time I’d tried to leave the house, my foot had hovered over the threshold, my lungs seizing up as the sunlight hit my face. Every single molecule of air in my chest had been stolen and I’d been sure that was how I was going to go. Suffocating on the doorstep.

There were worse ways to die. I’d survived them.

Unfortunately.

Lily had been there and had been able to convince me I wasn’t, in fact, dying, just suffering from a panic attack.

She had enough experience with them to talk to me in soft tones and let me know that I wasn’t alone and this wasn’t permanent.

It helped, a lot. I also had a renewed respect for my best friend. She struggled with that every day and still managed to function, to live?

I’d known I couldn’t escape the events of those three weeks unscathed, nightmares and constant itching beneath my skin evidence of that. But I hadn’t realized the depth of the terror that would clutch me in its blackened grip.

How it would sequester me indoors for a fucking week, watching grim documentaries which failed to scare me.

I didn’t think anything would scare me now.

I didn’t answer the door either, because he’d taken to knocking on it.

Every day.

Rosie got rid of him. Or Lily did.

Every day.

So I was staying far, far away from that door and the multitude of terrors it held at bay.

Because that’s what I was most afraid of. Seeing him. What he’d turned into because of me. Seeing myself reflected in his eyes. My true self. It would be more confronting than any reflective surface. I so wasn’t ready for that.

I was planning on avoiding him until I was ready. So, until the end of time.

“Wow, Bex, your hair. It looks… amazing,” Lily said, her eyes widening as she walked into the room.

Rosie followed her. “Yes, it’s my genius. I’m the Leonardo Da Vinci of hair.”

Lily grinned at Rosie. It didn’t reach her eyes. Didn’t convince me. That killed me. The haunted gaze poorly hidden behind a crooked smile.

She reached forward and squeezed my hand. “You look good, better,” she lied. She quickly released my hand, knowing how I felt about human contact these days.

Avoided it all cost.

I rubbed my hands on my leggings. They felt even dirtier after Lily touched them. “I am,” I lied back. “Feeling great.”

She gave me a sad smile and started unpacking snacks from her bag. “What are we watching today?”

Rosie snatched a Twinkie and sank on the sofa. “Okay, we’ve either got the world’s deadliest women or real life inspiration for the most famous horror movies,” she said, squinting at the screen. “I’m voting for the world’s deadliest women. Might give me some tools to escape the latest clinger.” She winked at me. Rosie had only just resumed her dating routine since I got back, and it took serious urging from me before she did so.

“Sounds good to me,” Lily agreed, taking her place on Rosie’s floral armchair and placing a hefty textbook on her lap.

I regarded them both. “Don’t you guys have something better to do than babysit me and watch this crap?” I nodded to the TV. “Lily, you’ve got school and a husband to ravish you.” I looked to Rosie. “You’ve got a job and a population of men to conquer. You don’t need to be here waiting for me to break down. Just keep the loony bin on speed dial, leave me the number, and I’m set.”

Rosie frowned at me, then Lily. “I happen to like finding out how various serial killers evaded capture and their murder techniques. It’s valuable information. I don’t have work today, and my conquering will wait. Lily?”

Lily looked at Rosie. “I like it too. And it serves as a valuable study tool for my current subject.” She held up the textbook on psychology. “Plus, my husband is busy so he can’t ravish me. I’m exactly where I need to be.”

I looked between them, sighing. There was no convincing them when they were ganging up on me.

I rolled my eyes and sank beside Rosie. “Okay, serial killers it is.”

My tone may have been nonchalant but I was selfishly thankful for each woman’s presence, despite the fact I was disrupting their lives. I didn’t quite trust myself with solitude just yet.

* * *

“
T
his is unacceptable
,” I said, sitting up from my reclined position on the sofa.

Rosie kept her gaze on the TV. “If you’re talking about that dress with those shoes, I totally agree.”

We’d moved on from serial killers to real housewives. Not much of a change, though there were less severed limbs in this one.

“No, not that.” I glanced to the TV. “Okay, not
just
that. This.” I gestured down to my body. The oversized and stained tee I was wearing, the blanket I was clutching like a five-year-old held onto a safety blanket. I let it go and it fell to the floor. “Me hiding inside like a… coward,” I declared.

Lily sat up, her face hard. “You’re not a coward, Bex. You’re the strongest person I know,” she argued.

I gazed at her. “Because sitting here binge-watching TV shows and not changing my shirt for two days is brave?”

“Breathing is brave after what you went through, babe,” Rosie put in, her attention no longer on the TV.

“Yeah, well, life’s more than just breathing,” I said to both of them. “Let’s do something.”

Lily looked concerned. “What?”

I rolled my eyes. “Calm down, Lils. I’m not suggesting we go and score some hard drugs.”

She didn’t look amused at my joke, although Rosie grinned because she was insane.

I thought for a second. “I want to get a tattoo.”

“I’m in,” Rosie said immediately. She stood. “I’ll text my guy and put on my tattoo-getting outfit.” Then she left the room, presumably to put on her ‘tattoo-getting outfit.’

Insanity loved company.

Lily looked less keen. She chewed her lip. “Do you think this is the best idea?” she asked softly. “Making such a permanent decision when you’re so….”

“Such a fucking mess?” I finished for her.

She leaned forward to squeeze my hand. “That’s not what I was going to say. When you’re still recovering.”

I looked at her. “I’m always gonna be recovering, babe. That’s my life now. I can wallow in it, or I can live in it.” I paused. “I need something permanent when everything else feels so temporary. When I feel so temporary.”

Her eyes flickered with understanding. “Okay, we’ll do it.”

I raised a brow. “We?”

She grinned. “You’re my best friend, my sister. You think I’d let you do anything alone?”

* * *

“
O
kay
, when your husband kills me, can you tell him to keep away from the face? I want an open casket,” I spoke over the buzzing of the tattoo gun.

Lily scowled at me. “He’s not going to kill you.” Apart from the scowl, she looked relatively relaxed. Who would have thought little Lily wouldn’t even blink as a man injected ink into her skin.

I gazed down at the design. “Um, yes, I think he will. You’re his ‘delicate little flower.’ I’m leading you astray and marking your pretty virgin skin. He’s totally going to kill me.”

Lily regarded me. “If Asher’s going to kill you, then Lucky’s going to kill me.”

I stiffened. Actually froze.

“He’s not going to anything,” I replied, trying to stop my voice from shaking. “Because he’s not going to see this.” I glanced down at the fresh tattoo that was bright pink around the edges.

It was on the inside of my arm, covering my favorite vein. ‘
Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim.’
Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you. Underneath the sloping script was an intricate and beautifully lifelike skull. It had taken hours and four cans of Coke. For me, that is, not Lex, the artist. Winding, growing from the skull were dark roses. Not red but black, torn and frayed and almost dead.

Almost.

I looked up from the ink. “He’s not going to see it because he’s not going to see me.”

She frowned at me. “You can’t hide from him forever.”

“I can try.”

“
T
he scariest monsters
are the ones that lurk within our souls.”

-Edgar Allan Poe

T
ime is poison
. Toxic. It doesn’t stop for anyone, unyielding, unchanging. Time was my enemy. It didn’t change the desperate need for a fix, didn’t lessen my cravings; if anything, it made them worse. It didn’t chase away the demons that no one could see, the ones that promised to be conquered with one little needle. It didn’t wash off the dirt on every part of me. Amongst all of this, time didn’t make me forget
him
either. My traitorous mind would not even give me that. Wouldn’t let me kid myself into thinking I wanted to see him, that I needed to see him.

It was crumbling willpower that stopped me. The determination not to go anywhere near the man who held what was left of my ashy heart. The man who led the dirty life but was squeaky clean. I couldn’t see him. Look at his easy smile, get hypnotized by his eyes, let his strong arms touch me. It would make the dirt visible, unbearable.

I was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, sucking on a Diet Coke with my eyes glued to the TV. I was doing my best to ignore the constant itch and focus on the dull burning in my arm from the tattoo. It was comforting, having constant pain to focus on.

Lily had managed to text me after we’d dropped her off at home.

L
ily
: Asher is not going to kill you. In fact, he says he’s eternally grateful to you for being so impulsive and rash.

I
’d grinned
at the phone. So the biker didn’t mind his little flower getting marked. Though it wasn’t surprising since she’d inked their wedding date on her wrist in roman numerals.

Rosie had gotten a peace sign, made from birch and flowers, with a gun pointed at it, also threaded with roses. That’s something a therapist would have loved to dissect. Me, I gave her a thumbs-up and let her be. If she wanted to tell me, she would.

Because my attention was so transfixed on meerkat mating rituals, I didn’t even notice the door opening and closing, or the footsteps in the hall. Well, I noticed but I didn’t decipher that the footfalls were not gentle clicks from Rosie’s heels, but hard thumps from motorcycle boots.

Given my track record, it was probably a bad thing being that unaware, but whatever.

“Get up,” a deep voice ordered.

I jumped, or more likely crawled, out of my skin and spilled Diet Coke everywhere at the unexpected presence.

My heartbeat returned to normal when I realized it was not a murderer standing in front of me.

I glared at him. “What’s your fucking trauma? Ever heard of knocking?” I hissed. “Or announcing yourself when you enter a room?” I added, standing and trying to wipe the sticky soda off my hoodie.

Gage stood at the edge of the room, arms crossed. “I thought the slamming of the door might have given you notice that someone was entering the house.”

I glared at him. “I assumed it was Rosie—you know, the woman who actually
lives
here? Most other, normal humans who don’t reside in a dwelling
knock
to alert their presence.” I stomped into the kitchen to get a cloth to wipe up my mess.

Gage’s eyes followed me. “Would you have answered if I knocked?” he asked in a flat voice.

Good point.

Since I had gotten back from my little holiday at Thousand Acres or New Beginnings or whatever the fuck it was called, I had sequestered myself in Rosie’s house. Luckily she was totally down with that, and dutifully watched David Attenborough documentaries—I’d moved on from serial killers—with me whenever she was home, which was a lot. When she wasn’t here, it was Lily.

Now and then, it was Gwen and Amy, or Lizzie, with her two weird kids, who I kind of liked. Despite the fact I hated kids.

Other than that, I did not see anyone else. I knew there was a Harley constantly parked outside Rosie’s house, though I didn’t peek often, just in case I caught a glimpse of
him
.

“That’s the whole point of knocking,” I informed him. “You give the person inside the choice to answer or not.”

“You don’t need that choice. You’re coming with me. We’re going to a meeting,” he declared.

My eyebrow rose, the only outward reaction to his words. Inside, my stomach dropped and my mouth went dry. “A meeting?” I repeated.

He nodded. “Yep. Get shoes on.”

I didn’t move. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to go to a meeting,” I informed him sharply.

He didn’t move. “I didn’t ask whether you wanted to or not. I said we’re going.”

I felt my hackles rise at yet another alpha throwing his weight around. It was better than the shame of every single one of these people knowing about me. Knowing what I was. An addict.

“You can’t make me,” I declared, crossing my arms and regarding him with defiance. With confidence I was faking.

He could. He mostly certainly could make me do whatever he wanted me to do. The thought soured in my stomach and made my skin crawl. He was big. Every biker in the goddamn club was big. Not all were tall like this motherfucker but almost all were built like brick shithouses. Some of the older members had let themselves go and a beer belly covered what would’ve been a healthy six-pack in their heyday, But even with the extra pounds they held muscle. I could only think of two men who didn’t conform to the ‘must be muscled and menacing to enter badass club’ rule. Wire, the skinny guy who constantly had an energy drink in his hands and spent most of his times with computers, and Skid, the gangly prospect I’d met what felt like years before.

Gage was like neither of them. He was much taller than me, but that wasn’t saying much.

He was attractive, another rule of the club. Though it was in a darker way than most of the other men. They were badass motherfuckers, don’t get me wrong, but there was a hardness to Gage that I recognized. His muscled arms were decorated with various ribbons of scars, a hint at the reason for the dark that lay beyond those eyes.

“I could,” he answered, reading my mind. “But I won’t,” he added and, despite myself, I deflated slightly. “You need to go.”

I scowled at him. “You have no fucking idea what I need,” I hissed, anger starting to bubble past everything else in my mind, which was good.

“Got some idea,” he replied mildly.

I stepped forward. “What? Those eyes have some kind of magical mind-reading power?”

“Nope.” He moved his hand to his pocket and threw me the small item.

I caught it on reflex. I stared at him a beat, then moved my attention to the small plastic object in my hand.

“Four years sober,” he said quietly.

My head snapped up at his words.

“No one’s demons are the same. Helps to know that people other than you are fighting their own, though.”

I continued to stare at him in disbelief. Then I moved my gaze back down to the chip in my hands, contemplating it. I couldn’t fathom it. Since Lily had hooked up with Asher—and, by extension, the Sons of Templar MC—I had met almost all of the men in the club. Got to know them. One rather intimately. They were all strong, solid. Dauntless. And most could be romance cover models. That was neither here nor there. I never considered any one of them having the weakness that I was ashamed to possess.

And if I could have picked one, Gage would have been my last. Granted, his icy eyes were unsettling, and sometimes almost devoid of anything human, but he seemed stoic, unflappable.

“Shoes,” he repeated.

I wanted to argue, throw sass. Stamp my feet. Anything but actually agree to go. But something in his gaze, in his admission, had me throwing the chip back to him and soundlessly padding to my room to put on shoes.

* * *

“
D
oes anyone else know
? About you?” I asked after we’d been driving in silence for a good ten minutes.

Gage had silently waited for me to put on my wedged sneakers—not for everyone, but I thought they were kick-ass—and quickly change my top.

I wanted to swamp myself in another huge baggy hoodie like the one I had been wearing before Gage made me spill soda all over it. I wanted to cover every inch of my body in something shapeless that I could hide behind.

I didn’t.

I wouldn’t.

I wouldn’t give those men power over me. What they did to me irrevocably scarred my soul, my insides. There was no changing that. But I would not let them stop me from at least outwardly being who I used to be. Even if the tight black jeans and cropped racer-back tee were an illusion of strength, a way of denying the depth of those scars, so be it.

I hadn’t been able to look in the mirror. I couldn’t be confronted with myself again. I felt dirty looking at my scantily clad body. The shower was the worst, naked and exposed to it all. I fixed that by putting the water to scalding and scrubbing myself until I was raw. I had three showers a day. It was an improvement on a week before when I damn near lived in the thing. Rosie and Lily hadn’t said a word about it.

“No,” Gage replied roughly, his voice jerking me back to the present.

I glanced at his profile in the cab of his truck. “It’s a secret?”

Gage kept his eyes on the road. “No secret. My shit’s my shit. I keep it tight,” he replied.

“Are you going to tell me that if I tell anyone, you’ll have to kill me?” I asked, only half joking. I had an inkling that Gage wouldn’t hesitate in killing someone. Maybe not people he cared about, but something about him was chilling. At the same moment, I felt weirdly at ease around him. Maybe because I, like him, was fucked-up. In a way there was no going back from.

Gage looked at me sideways. “Tell people. Don’t tell people. I don’t give a fuck. Though, I doubt you’re around anyone to be runnin’ your mouth. You’ve shut yourself off from everyone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I get it.” He paused. “It’s just harder being alone with your problems. Took me a fuck of a long time to realize that.”

I chewed over his words. “Why are you taking me? Why are you here?” I asked finally, deciding not to talk about the being alone part. That I’d be going it alone as soon as I could muster the courage to get back on stage again. Earn again.

He met my eyes. “Been through a lot of shit, babe. Shit that would give most normal people nightmares rest of their life.” He moved his gaze to the windshield, seeing something other than the road in front of us. “That day. A month ago. It was some shit. The worst kind. I admire the hell outta you. You’ve managed to somehow get back on your feet after that. But I’ve been worried ’bout how long you’re gonna stay upright without someone steppin’ in,” he paused again. “Not talkin’ ’bout your girls, know they’ve got your back. I’m talkin’ ’bout someone who knows what it’s like to crave the needle. The fix. Crave it more than your next breath. Don’t know what the other hell you’re going through is like.” He visibly flinched. “Can’t imagine it in my own nightmares. I can’t see how dealing with those demons, plus the hunger for the fix, is taking you anyplace good. So I’m here,” he explained.

I stared at him for a long moment, a prickly sensation under my skin at the fact he’d taken it upon himself to help me. To be there for me. It was foreign. Unwelcome. And at the same time, it filled me with warmth.

“Thank you,” I whispered finally, looking out the window. “I’m not closing my eyes or chanting, and if anyone tries to hug me I’ll throat-punch them,” I added defiantly as we pulled into the parking lot of a church.

Gage surprised me by chuckling. “Wouldn’t expect anything less.” There was a small silence as he parked beside a beat-up Camaro. He turned to me. “I don’t expect anything from you in there.” He nodded towards the building. “No one does. You choose how this works for you. You sit, you watch, you listen. You feel like it, you talk. You don’t want to, fine. But you will come with me every week, we clear?”

I swallowed the angry retort that was almost instinct at anyone ordering me around, especially an alpha male. This wasn’t someone ordering me around because of some freak gene. “Okay,” I said quietly.

Gage seemed surprised at my placid response, but then he nodded. “And don’t worry. No one’s getting close enough to breathe on you,” he declared fiercely, surprising me with the intensity in his voice. He opened his door. “Let’s go.”

“We finally found the connection between Carlos, the Tuckers, and how they’ve suddenly got enough resources to start a war and then turn to fuckin’ ghosts,” Cade declared, leaning forward and clasping his knuckles together. His hard gaze flickered around the table and settled on Lucky.

Lucky didn’t have a reaction, not visibly at least. He might have clenched his fists, gritted his teeth hard enough to shatter, but nothing else. Inside, the fire of his fury blazed as hot as it had for the past month.

“Devlin,” Cade continued simply, and the entire room turned wired.

Brock’s face turned into a mask of fury. Obviously this was the first the VP had heard of this. Only Steg, sitting on the other side of Cade, looked like he wasn’t shocked at this knowledge.