Thrash (12 page)

He says nothing at first.
He just walks to the dresser in the corner and places his hands on
the edge, shoulder-width apart, and leans in. When he finally stops
huffing and puffing like he’s a character out of
The Three Little Pigs
,
he says, “My bike. He scratched my fucking bike.”

“
He fucked up, and I’ll
bet he’s paying for it,” I say. I feel like such a traitor, but
really, how many times can I cover for his ass?

“
My bike,” he says slowly.
“There’s no paying for that shit. It’s about respect.” If I wasn’t
so infuriated by how dense he is, I would tell him how hypocritical
that is with a few choice curse words. Instead, I remain silent
because I can’t even get my vocal chords to work right now.
Dick.

“
Have you taught him
nothing?” he snaps. My fists ball up at my sides, and I squeeze my
eyes closed for a minute to let out a silent scream.

“
I’m
trying here,” I say. I can’t stand here and talk about respect with
him right now. Try as I might, I
still
see Dawn in my head, riding
his dick, and smirking at me.

“
What?” he grinds out and
turns toward me with anger still in his eyes. Pushing off the
dresser, he closes the distance between us and presses himself up
against me while keeping his arms at his sides. “You got something
to say, so say it.”

I keep myself steady and
refuse to bend to his heavy frame as it pushes against me. “Your
bike can be replaced, the scratch can come out. But that shit you
pulled last night?
That
shit won’t come out.”

Looking down, his face
softens, and he takes a step back. Screaming, he slams his fist
into the exposed brick just once before pulling back and flopping
himself onto the bed. He wipes his now bloody knuckles on his jeans
and flexes his hand. With his elbows on his knees, he puts his face
in his hands. I want to go to him, and comfort him, but I don’t.
All of this frustration he feels needs to happen. He has to feel
how much it hurt me to see that shit, how much it’s going to
continue to fuck with my mind, and what that means for us. So
instead, I stand here and watch as he freaks out.

It starts with the tapping of his foot,
and then migrates to the shaking of his leg eventually becomes the
scrubbing of his face with his hands. Outside in the forecourt he
was losing his shit, but in here, he’s unraveling. When he gets a
hold of himself, he stares up at me, elbows still on his knees, and
says, “I fucked up.”

“
Yeah, you did,” I say,
but the words have no real venom to them. He lifts an arm for me to
go to him, but I don’t. Keeping my eyes trained on his, I shake my
head. He drops his arm and says nothing. He just stares at me. One
of us has to give in, and since I know damn well it’s not going to
be him, I go first.

“
We both
fucked up, but that was
not
okay,” I say, crossing my arms over my
chest.

“
Yeah,” he says and stands
to his full height. He comes to me and  places his hands on my
hips. “Past is the past.”

“
No, that’s a fucking cop
out,” I say. I’m not screaming and I’m not whispering. I’m neither
livid nor afraid; I just feel kind of dead inside. “What you did
was wrong.”

“
Tried to call you, got no
answer. Last I heard from you, you told me I’d never touch you
again.”

“
Since when do you listen
to what I want or what I say? It’s awful convenient for you to
start now.”

“
I was pissed, okay? That
shit you pulled pissed me off, and I fucked up, did something I
regret,” he says, giving my hips a squeeze. “You shouldn’t have
seen that shit.”

“
Say it,” I demand and
take a step backward. He pulls me back to him, and even though
we’re quasi-fighting—I’m not sure this counts as fighting since
nobody is screaming and no punches are being thrownI like being in
his arms. It feels right and safe.

“
Say you’re sorry,” I say
again. His jaw tenses, and he stands stone still. I stand resolved
even though I doubt this is going to end well. Forsaken don’t
apologize, and they don’t beg. The silence in the room eats me
alive while I wait for words he’s determined never to
say.

“
You have to trust me,” he
says. “You gotta trust that from here on out I’m gonna do right by
you.”

“
I can’t,” I say. Trusting
him isn’t that simple, not after what I saw. Leaning down, he
kisses the shell of my ear and basks my neck in his warm
breath.

“
I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“I’m really fucking sorry that you had to see that shit.” I almost
feel the victory of getting him to say he’s sorry, but it doesn’t
happen.

“
I don’t want you to be
sorry that I saw it. I want you to be sorry that you did it,” I
whisper. Letting my head fall against the crook of his neck, I
close my eyes and breathe him in. Everything about him and this
situation is painful. From the first time I saw him and he looked
right through me, to the years he spent sleeping around and
bragging about every Brenda and Amy and Mandie he hooked up with,
to us finally hooking up, to every fight, and every soft moment. It
just hurts. And I don’t think relationships are supposed to be this
hard or this painful, so I give up.

“
And that’s why I can’t
trust you,” I say and pull back. The disappointment tears at my
open wounds and sends me reeling for something—anything—to make me
feel better. He fights me, trying to keep a grip on my hips, but I
shove him off while whispering the word no until it’s the only
thing I understand about what’s going on.

Finally, he steps back and slowly
shakes his head. “Don’t do this,” he says in a pained
voice.

“
This only works one way,”
I say, feeding him his own club’s bullshit lines. “We have to
respect each other, and I don’t respect you enough to be your
woman.” I move around him, but don’t get very far. He reaches out
and grabs my wrist. I don’t look back when I beg, “Please, just let
me go.”

I asked for it, but still
my stomach sinks when he drops my hand and doesn’t protest anymore
as I walk out of the door. I walk quickly down the hall and into
the main room. A crowd at the bar catches my eye. In the center is
Jeremy and he wears a solemn expression on his face. Around him is
Ryan, Grady, Chief, Diesel, and Wyatt. All their heads rise when I
stop in the center of the room and turn toward them. Diesel lifts
his chin in silent question and I just shake my head in response.
Every emotion I’ve been keeping at bay wells in my chest, but I
fight it back.

Diesel stands from his
seat and grabs Jeremy by the back of his neck, escorting him out of
the clubhouse. I follow behind, and when Diesel releases Jeremy and
shoves him toward the car, I give Diesel a sad smile. He grunts and
says, “Got his ass beat and he still fucks it up?”

“
Nah,” I say quietly, “I’m
just not his girl.” Diesel shakes his head and narrows his eyes.
Turning around, I reach out for Jeremy, who’s stalled in place, and
tug him toward the car and then peel out like there’s no tomorrow.
Grocery shopping long forgotten, I speed back toward the house and
come up with a game plan. Jeremy sits in his seat in perfect
silence as I drive. He doesn’t dare utter a single word until we’re
a block from the house.

“
Was he serious about my
kneecaps?”

“
Yes,” I say, unable to
lie to him.

“
When he says I’m going to
pay for it, he means with cash, right?” Jeremy asks. “A scratch
can’t cost that much to fix, right?”

My eyes nearly bug out of
my head, but I don’t say anything. There’s nothing I can say.
Jeremy’s fucking clueless about how much it costs to fix that
scratch. Granted, I know for a fact that Duke did the work on his
Harley himself and he used club tools to do it, so for him it can’t
be pricey. But that’s not the point. It’s Duke’s, and somebody
dared to mess up something that’s his.

Passing one ranch house after another,
on a street that looks exactly the same as every other, I bite my
lower lip to keep from letting the pain of knowing that after all
of this, that it’s not my attitude that’s screwed it up. I just was
not enough.

I’m done with the club and
all of this shit. I’m done with the macho crap. I’m done with
parties and hooking up. I’m just done, and I need to keep it that
way. Duke can have Dawn and every other whore in this entire
fucking town. I have my brother and my job, and I remind myself for
the thousandth time that it’s enough. But for the thousandth time I
still don’t believe it. I only have Jeremy for a little while
longer, and pretty soon I might not even have my job anymore. One
day I might have nothing. At least when I was a Lost Girl I had the
club, in a way. But not anymore. It’s too dangerous, and everything
is so fucked up. All it’s done is stress me out, and tear me apart,
and make me feel like shit, so I’m done.

Chapter 10

From my position on the
sofa in Jim’s living room, I can see Alex at the kitchen table.
She’s hunched over a bowl of cereal, and her eyes are down. Looking
down at the floor at the collection of tennis balls the dogs have
dropped by my feet, I consider throwing one at her. Ever since the
fourth of July party the other night, she hasn’t really spoken to
me. I guess she’s upset about the finger fucking.

I don’t know why. Her tight as fuck
pussy practically broke my finger with how hard she came. Wasn’t
right though, but it had to be done.

“
Hey asswipe,” Ian says
and throws a roll of toilet paper at my head. I narrowly dodge it
and turn to give him a disgruntled look. I cast the toilet paper
roll a sideways glance and dart my eyes across the room to look at
Jim.

“
Do you get the sudden
urge to wipe your ass while watching TV?” I ask.

“
Mom’s run us out of
tissues,” Ian says somberly. I nod my head thoughtfully and rub my
hands together.

“
Still?”

“
She feels guilty about
Michael,” Jim mutters. Unfortunately, there’s no way around that.
When Jim called Church and sat us down, telling us what was going
on and asking the club what he did, I couldn’t fucking believe it.
I still can’t fucking believe it. The shit we pulled off in
Brooklyn to get Alex away from her father and out of danger was
crazy, and all that time I spent on babysitting duty really fucked
things up for me with Nic—not that I didn’t manage to fuck that
shit up on my own again later.

Pumping Mancuso’s house
full of bullets was a highlight. If the trip wasn’t so personal it
might have been enjoyable. But it is personal. Princess isn’t my
family in the way she’s Ian and Jim’s, but she’s Forsaken whether
she wants to be or not, and that means something. She was Forsaken
the moment Ruby made Jim promise that he’d always keep her children
safe, and she’ll be Forsaken even when she’s old and gray and wants
nothing to do with us anymore. And even though I voted against it
and I was completely fucking pissed that Jim even asked us to risk
so much for Ruby’s kid, I don’t regret it. It just took me a little
while to remind myself what it means to be a part of this
club.

It means I never have to stand alone
again.

“
No way around that,” I
say quietly. I cast a quick glance at Alex. She’s still slowly
shoveling cereal into her mouth with her eyes fixated on the table.
I look back at Ian to find that he’s also looking at Alex. He
almost looks like he’s in pain somehow. Both Ian and Alex have the
same widow’s peak at the center of their forehead, which they
inherited from their mother. I would have thought that he’d be
relieved to have his sister here, but it seems to be fucking him up
more than anything. I grab the toilet paper roll and throw it back
at him and ask, “You talk to her?”

Without any emotion he
says quickly, “No”.

“
She’s
your sister,” I say at a lower volume. Alex doesn’t know she’s
Ruby’s kid yet. She still thinks her long lost aunt rescued her.
I’ve almost slipped a few times, but we all made a promise that I
can’t bring myself to break. If I’d promised Jim, I might be
inclined to say
‘fuck it’
because I think she needs to know, but I didn’t..
On our last fuel stop before we hit Brooklyn, Ruby got us all
around and begged us not to tell Alex who she is. With tears
pooling in her eyes and fear covering her face, I couldn’t tell her
no. Ruby’s a good mom, and if she needs time then I’ll give her
that, regardless of what I think.