Thrash (26 page)

33

I put Thrash's truck in park and walked up to the door of my apartment. DeMarcus’ apartment. Our apartment. It made me feel so amazing to know we were together, really together.

I had never belonged anywhere in my life like I did here. In his home, in his arms, among his allies. Joy pulsed through my veins, lightening my heart.

I was almost skipping as I took the stairs to our apartment.

My eyes narrowed when I caught sight of the little white note taped to the door.

I’ll be back
, Nora. I am not going to give up until you come home. - Mom

Her words should have been comforting
. They just felt like a threat. Maybe because that was what they were. A “Do what I say or else I’ll make your life a living hell.”

“Fuck you,” I snarled at the note.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
. I repeated it in my head. I jerked the key in the lock and threw the door open, crumbling the note and tossing it into the trash.

I was never going ‘home’ to them. They weren’t my home. As far as I was concerned, they weren’t even my family, not the sort that mattered anyway.

They were distant memories, a past long gone. At least that was what I tried to tell myself.

I was not going to let them back into my life. Not again.

I sunk onto the couch and closed my eyes. Even shut, my eyelids felt so heavy. I had a slight headache, and welcomed the warmth of the room.

I fell asleep easily enough, but I didn’t get to enjoy the rest long. I woke to the unpleasant pounding of someone banging on the door.

“Open this door right this instant.”

This time it was my father’s voice. He sounded personally offended that it was locked and that he did not have a key. The man had never understood privacy unless it was his own.

The way he was going at the door, he was either going to break it or my neighbors would call the police.

I didn’t realize that the locals were more likely to call Fire and Steel than the cops for this kind of thing. But it didn’t matter then. Because I did the right thing anyway.

I grabbed my cellphone and texted the first person I could think of, the only one who would understand. Layla. I needed her help. I needed the club to come and get me.

Come get me
, please? I need your help. Now.

All I could do now was
wait and hope he got tired of banging. Maybe he would leave. Maybe he didn’t know I was home.

My phone dinged as Layla replied, and I cursed, trying to quiet it.

Coming

“Nora
, are you in there?” My father’s curious voice sounded eerie after the banging. He sounded like he knew the answer, but he asked again. “Nora?” He was nothing if not persistent.

I shut my eyes and refused to move.

I didn’t understand why it mattered where I was or how I was living. They didn’t need me.

My mother had her protégées who had always surpassed me on the society front. My father had my brother, who would carry on the family name and take on the family legacy.

Edward was older than me by ten years, the child of my father’s first marriage. We only knew one another from occasional family events. I didn’t doubt my father spent plenty of time with him, but my mother silently warred against him entering our home, and the boys had long ago decided to humor her on that count.

The fact that she couldn’t scrub the earth of her predecessor was the only battle my mother had ever lost. At least that was the only one I knew of. She had hidden any others the way clever murders hide the bodies of their victims.

There was an image to uphold, and I was the dark spot staining the carefully kept name. I’d assumed they would want to let me fade into obscurity, and I had been happy to cooperate.

It occurred to me that there were other ways they could have dealt with my annoying existence, but if they had intended any of it, they wouldn’t have walked up to my apartment and started hollering for me. Money could do a lot, but they weren’t stupid.

What did they want?

After a while, the knocking died down. Then it stopped entirely, and I didn’t hear anything further from them for a while.

I took a deep breath and then another, gulping them down, tears stinging my eyes.

I never wanted to see that man again. I didn’t want to see those cold dead eyes that told me things I never wanted to hear. I didn’t want to feel the back of that hand, the only part of himself he had ever been willing to share with me.

I knew why he hated me. He had wanted another boy. How he was disappointed in me my entire life. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I could never live up to his expectations.

I had tried to be tough and good at the things everyone said boys did because I wanted him to love me. Then, when I realized I wasn’t going to win any battles there, I tried to be myself and charm him into thinking that maybe I was worth something to the family.

A girl didn’t have to be social to be charming. She just had to be clever and nice and make people believe they were important.

Trying to earn my father’s love had taught me a lot of important skills, skills I had been putting to good use lately. But it hadn’t gotten his approval.

Fuck him and his expectations.

I reached for the throw blanket that was sitting on the couch and clutched it to me. It smelled like Thrash. The whole apartment did. I wanted to bury myself in him. Wanted him to wrap his arms around me and help me remember that none of this garbage was important. All that was important was our future. Whether we died tomorrow or lived to be old together, I believed him when he said I was his everything. I believed him when he said he wanted me always.

I’d never seen a man look a woman like that, not even in movies. And I had never imagined I could feel so good, so comfortable, and so peacefully blissful.

I realized, laying there, that no matter happened, I could never regret this. I couldn’t regret any of it. Leaving home. Going hungry. Struggling to make ends meet. The confusion and embarrassment of dealing with the real world. I didn’t even regret DeMarcus going undercover. Not now. Because it had driven us closer, forced us to figure out what really mattered to us.

Everything in my life since I had left my parents had led me to DeMarcus and the club and my passion.

The apartment was littered with my paintings. There was some genuinely good work in there, pieces I could display at, say, Ohiopyle if I dared.

The only thing I regretted was not telling him about my parents. Suddenly, I wanted to know what he thought about the things they did, the things they said. Suddenly, I realized how foolish I had been.

I had kept that part of me shut away, and as a result I was facing it on my own when I didn’t have to.

Another knock on the door made me jump.

I stayed there for a moment and waited. Was he back? Had
they
called the cops? There were a million things awful people could say and do to flush a person out. I knew that if the cops came, my parents could threaten to leave me with them.

I remembered what my mother was capable of and nearly screamed as the tears welled up again.

“Nora? You in there?”

An overwhelming rush of relief flooded through me as Emma’s voice came through the door. She sounded frightened.

“I’m coming in.”

She must’ve had an extra key because I heard the lock give and the door open with a creak. When she saw me, she slipped in and closed the door behind her, making sure to lock it.

I was still too scared to move, and it was then that I realized I was shaking. My father still had the ability to make me shake without touching me. I was fighting the urge to fall apart, but I was losing. I needed Thrash. I needed DeMarcus. Oh god, I needed to
get away
.

When Emma hurried over to me, I burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” I blubbered.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“They came here. My parents.” I didn’t want to freak Emma out about Bones or his men. That wasn’t the problem. I wanted a real solution to my very real problem and that meant being honest.

I told her. I told her everything. I knew she might call Layla. I knew they might choose to shut me out for not telling them the truth. But I told the truth anyway, and I hoped it would be enough.

* * *

Emma wasn’t interested in judging me.

She had stopped me early on and called Layla. Once she’d explained what she knew, she put the phone on speaker and they’d listened to the rest, one of them beside me, the other as good as.

“Have you told DeMarcus?” Layla asked, finally.

They had listened to it all. I had rambled badly, quick to talk about the years of schooling, the unrealistic expectations, the constant disappointment. Then the rest trickled out: the vicious threats and cold dismissals; the pressure; my father’s hand and the way my mother turned a blind eye, waving it away as though I had only gotten what I deserved. And finally being cast away.

Being cast out had been only kind thing they had ever done for me. And now that I was making it on my own, they were back, trying to drive me back into their miserable hole.

I shook my head. “I didn’t want to tell DeMarcus. It was over, done with. Their money isn’t mine. And I really didn’t think they would bother us.”

When I was honest with myself, though, it went deeper than that. I didn’t want him to know that I was trash. That I’d been thrown away.

“How do they get away with that shit?” Emma baulked. “These days, a call to CPS is all it takes to turn a family upside down, whether it’s right or wrong.”

I laughed, choking on my tears. CPS? It had never occurred to me to call for help. I’d been taught from a young age that what I had was ideal. That if something was wrong, it was me. My parents were ‘perfect.’ They only ‘did what was best for me.’ When we heard rumors about some trouble in another family, it was because they were flawed. Not good enough.

For years, I had really believed we didn’t have a problem. Never mind my mother’s drinking, or the fact that no one batted an eye about it. Never mind the bruises my mother covered for my debut.

Good heavens. You don’t want to walk out like a piece of trash, darling. Here.

My mother had covered the marks perfectly.

At least you listened. If it had been an eye or your lips, there would be nothing I could do to help you.

I sat there, cold tears drying on my face. I felt as if a black hole had formed inside my belly, sucking at everything inside me, causing aches and pain.

I just rode the feeling, the way someone without limbs would ride a current to their death.

Emma put her hand on my shoulder tentatively. Whatever she sensed in me, it scared her.

“They have no right to harass you like this,” Layla said over the speaker.

I shook my head, answering automatically. “You don’t understand. The entire purpose for my existence is to continue the family legacy. To keep the fortune going. I was my mother’s last hope.”

She had been determined to remain relevant. If she had never produced a child, when my father died, my half-brother could have shut her away somewhere with a little money.

So she had grasped at investments and connections. She had built a staggering network through society that bowed to her wishes, but she had needed more. So she had gone through one last IVF cycle. I was the disappointing result.

A girl was better than nothing, so they kept me. But my mother never let me forget that I was not what she had wanted. My father had made it clear that I was nothing more than a nuisance he had to put up with.

I whispered, “Why did they have to show up now? I was finally starting to feel… free.”

I looked down at my hands, feeling small and vulnerable. I didn’t feel like the strong woman DeMarcus thought I was.

“You are free,” Emma said, blunt and honest as ever. “You probably don’t need to hear this from me, but I’m going to say it anyway. You are an adult, Nora. They don’t own you. They can’t do anything to you that you don’t want. Not anymore.”

It wasn’t true, but I understood what she meant. And in a way, she was right. My family could hurt me if they were determined to. But they couldn’t make me obey.

I suddenly remembered DeMarcus telling me to touch myself and giggled. I wasn’t sure why doing what he said hadn’t bothered me. It just hadn’t. And I was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that I had genuinely had a choice whether I was going to do it or not.

Choice. Real choice. That was what had kept DeMarcus’ titillating commands from making me feel worthless. The freedom to stop, to say no, and the fact that I could have walked out, unmolested, had given me the space to play. To feel desire. To trust him.

The results were glorious.