by E. C. Land
“Tyres,” I start, but he shakes his head, stopping me as he keeps going with what he has to say.
“I don’t know what all you went through and I get you don’t want to talk about it. Shit, if you knew the hell Brake and I went through before Ryder took us in . . .” He stops speaking, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. When he opens them again, I can see the demons torturing him. “Not many people here can understand even a small amount of what you endured. Everyone’s demons are different, Ly, but I’m telling you I get them. What you need to get, though, is you have to find a way to release them. Being in here, not going out of this house, you’re letting those fuckers still hold you prisoner.”
At his words, I stop breathing altogether because he’s right.
“You need to have someone to talk to. Whether it’s a neutral party, like a doctor or some shit, or you can talk to someone you trust. I talk to my brothers. They’re there for me when I need it. Shit, even know they’re there for me. Fuse asked me to come talk to you after I told him that it guts me to know I’m partially responsible,” Tyres states as the first tear spills down my cheek.
“Tyres, you didn’t do anything to me. You can’t be responsible for it,” I utter, finally finding my voice.
“It was my daughter you protected until right before we got there and they’d taken you away,” Tyres grumbles.
“And for that sweet girl, I’d do anything. She’s just a baby and they wanted to hurt her. I couldn’t let them do that. I did what I did to keep her safe.” And this is the truth. I allowed them to do it to keep Wren safe and even knowing what I’d go through, I’d do it again without hesitation because that little girl didn’t need to go through what I did or, worse, be sold.
I remember those men talking about the options of what they could do with Wren and how she could be sold, or held on to and trained for a master to own her and use her as he saw fit when she got older.
“Ly, it was my baby girl that you were protecting. Regardless of if you did what you did to keep her safe, that shit still comes back at me because it was my own fuckin’ fault they took her in the first place.”
“Tyres, you can’t know what they had planned for her or that she’d be in danger. No one did. I sure didn’t think I was. But I was taken and used as nothing but a toy to do as they pleased.” My voice is barely loud enough to hear on the last part of what I say, but I hold Tyres’ eyes for the first time as I continue ‘cause out of everyone besides Fuse, I feel a connection to him because of what I sacrificed for his daughter.
“For months, I was raped constantly. Some days chained to a bed, other times, I had a chain around my neck. I was never allowed far from Leonard or Allen. I hated those men and wished for death on more than one occasion. I lost hope of being found, then I did something that would guarantee me my wish. I killed Allen in his sleep. He’d been foolish to keep his hunting knife out after he’d used it to slice into my skin. I stabbed him multiple times before Leonard walked into the room and found me straddling his second in command. Leonard ordered his men to beat me near to death after he took his fill one last time.”
I close my eyes, shake my head, and let out a raspy breath.
“When Mountain and his men found me, I begged for them to leave me be. Let me die. I couldn’t take it anymore. They succeeded in finally breaking me and I knew it because heaven help me that someone would find me, I’d be dead on the inside, which I am. I’m broken and covered in so much filth it’s stifling. Even if I wanted to go on with my life, I couldn’t. Not only do I fear them taking me again, but I fear my heart crumbling to pieces that are already shattered. I dare not dream or allow myself to take a chance. It’s better to simply be dead than go out there and live my life only to have it taken from me again.” I finally finish and open my eyes once again, but it’s not Tyres I notice when I do, it’s the man standing behind him.
Fuse.
He’d heard me and from the look on his face, he looked ready to snap.
Chapter Seven
Fuse
When Tyres finally came to me about wanting to speak with Lyrica, to tell her he’s sorry for his part in what happened to her, I wanted to tell him he didn’t have a hand in it. But I know my VP, he gets something in his head, there’s no getting it out.
I followed behind him a few minutes later, wanting to be there in case my woman needed me. I know she thinks I don’t know about her nearly scrubbing her skin off in the shower. I’d seen the redness of her skin when she thinks she’s alone. But unbeknownst to her, there are cameras in the house that feeds to my room in the clubhouse where I work. This gives me peace of mind that I can see her if need be and it’s a good thing because I’ve seen the turmoil inside her.
The seclusion she forces on herself. Angelina is bringing the doctor, that will check out her arm and leg, to the house tomorrow in order to take a look at them.
After listening to her open up to Tyres, I knew why she did this, but it still fuckin’ sucked because I hated she went through the shit at all. My woman suffered and I agree with Tyres when he’s said she needed to find someone to talk to.
Did I think she’d start right then? No, but that doesn’t mean it pisses me off she’s finally talking.
I just wish I could have kept this from happening to her.
Over the past two months, I’ve rarely heard her speak to anyone else. And only a handful of words to me. At night I’ve held her to me while she fought through her nightmares. Each night I’ve laid there hearing her cries and pleas for them to stop.
Not once have I let on to her knowing she speaks of these things in her sleep. I know if I told her, she’d shut down in a heartbeat and that’s not something I want to happen. She’s already too far away.
The only thing that she’s asking for is a sketchbook to doodle in and each morning before heading to the clubhouse to do what I’ve gotta do, I take a peek and some of the shit is fuckin’ epic.
“Fuse,” Lyrica calls my name and draws me out of my head. My thoughts drifting back to what she’d just said.
“Hey, ma douce,” I murmur and make my way closer. Since she’s come home, I’ve not gone back to the fights, but after that shit, I’m gonna have to do something. It’s not like I can go find some bitch to fuck and release the pent-up energy swarming inside me. No, instead, I’ll fight some asshole in the ring to do that. I won’t risk Lyrica in any way and this also includes keeping my needs at bay. The fights will give me what I need for the time being and that’s all I need until she’s ready.
“I . . . Um . . . I’m sorry,” she whispers. This pisses me off because she has nothing to be sorry for and I’ve got to get her to understand she’s got nothing to worry about.
“Why are you sorry?” I ask, doing my best not to show her just how pissed I am with what she’s been through this past year.
Yeah, I think it’s definitely time for me to get in on some of those fights.
“Because of everything,” she utters, casting her gaze to the sketch pad in her lap.
Looking from her to Tyres, I speak again. “You mind giving us a bit?’
“Naw, you do what you gotta do. I gotta get back to Wren anyway,” Tyres says, standing and looks to Lyrica. “Remember what I said. You need to talk to someone and if it’s not a professional or one of the ol’ ladies, you can always talk to one of the brothers. We all care for you as one of our own. You’re like a kid sister some of us didn’t have.” With his parting words, my VP turns and leaves, meeting my gaze on the way out. He still feels like shit for what happened to her.
He’ll get over that feeling soon enough. Or at least he will once we get Lyrica past it all.
When the front door shuts, I move in and stand next to the bay window seat. I’m fuckin’ glad to have put it in at the advice of Faith and Angelina both. This is Lyrica’s favorite place to sit.
I pull her sketch pad from her hands and put it down on the seat next to her. I then do something I haven’t done since we’v
e been back. Reaching out, I scoot her forward, being watchful of her casted leg and arm. I then sit behind her and pull her against my chest, wrapping my arms around her chest, holding her to me the way I would in our sleep. When I have her in my arms this way, it’s one of the only times I feel a sense of peace.
“I know you’re having trouble with being back home. I get it. When I’d been in the military, coming home had been hard to re-adapt to. I struggled with it. If it weren’t for my brothers helping me find a focus, I don’t know what I’d have done. I saw a lot of shit when I’d been deployed and still to this day suffer from the night terrors. I may have only done two tours over there, but that had been enough for me.” I don’t know why I brought this up, but I figured it might help her understand she’s not alone in fighting her demons.
“I didn’t know you were in the military,” she murmurs.
“Yeah, Ly, I’d been a part of the Army Aviation Branch,” I mutter and press my lips to the side of her head. Lyrica seems to settle further into me the more I hold her.
“That’s cool. My dad, he’d been a Marine. I thought it was cool. When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like him,” she whispers, bringing up her family for the first time since I met her.
“Did you have any siblings?” I ask her cautiously.
“Yeah, I have a twin who died. I barely remember her, but I feel the part of her that should be with me. We’d been adopted and when she’d died, my parents moved and didn’t say another word about it. They wanted to protect me from the heartache I’m sure they felt,” she says, and I’m glad she can’t see my face at this point. If she did, she’d probably run out of fear.
I need to figure out what the fuck happened to her and Simone before I tell her her sister is alive. They’d been adopted and from some information Angelina brought to my attention the other week after some testing came back. We now know both girls have a rare blood disease called thalassemia.
This explained why she’d get cold so easily due to anemia brought on by this and why she’d ended up getting a blood transfusion Angelina finally told me she’d ended up having. Along with getting a serious round of antibiotics. I still don’t understand the whole ordeal, but I knew she needed to avoid iron-rich foods, do her best not to get an infection, and eat healthy.
“That’s got to suck,” I mutter, clearing my throat.
“I guess.” Lyrica shrugs. “But let’s change the subject, please. I don’t like talking about my parents or my sister that much.”
I can imagine why.
“Alright, baby, I’ll get back to what I was getting at before we got off-topic,” I say, feeling her sink fully into me in gratitude. “I want you to know you don’t have to hide in the house and look out the window. You want to go out and don’t want to do it alone, I’ll be there for you. All you have to do is ask. The ol’ ladies, they’ll be there for you. Every last one of my brothers will be there for you. Need only ask them and they’ll be there.”
“I know, but I’m scared,” she utters the words, and I don’t miss the shiver that runs through her.
“That’s why you have me, Ly. You’re my woman, and I’m not about to lose you again. I’ll admit and I’ll say this once, I fucked up where it comes to you. I never should have let you get away from me the first time around or push you away. Now I’ve got you back, I’m not taking any chances. You’re with me, and I’ll fuckin’ die before allowing something else to happen to you. This being said, baby, you go out, start living, you do it knowing I’m next to you and so is everyone else that is a part of your life.” I finish this by giving her yet another kiss to the side of her head.
She’ll soon realize that it’s time to move forward and when she does, it’ll be beautiful to her. For me, it’s time to release the pent-up energy as well as find out as much as possible about my woman’s past as I can. I also need to find the men who took her, kill them and feed them to Bart. That last needs to happen sooner rather than later. With them fully out of the way, I will feel better knowing she has nothing to fear from anyone.
Chapter Eight
Nora
“I think we need to do something fun in order to get Lyrica out of her funk,” Faith suggests.
Glancing around the room, I notice my friends nodding their heads in agreement. However, I don’t. I get why Lyrica does not want to be around any of us. I get it completely. Ly doesn’t complain when we’re over there spending time with her. But she doesn’t speak much.
Over the past three months, now that she’s been home, Lyrica’s made some progress though not much. She at least comes outside of the house and will sit with Fuse or one of the other guys. Ly’s also not having to wear a cast anymore on her wrist or leg, though she does have a boot that she wears. According to Angelina, the break had been bad and once that heals, she’d be put into a boot until it can fully heal.
This makes me wonder about all the things she’d experienced at the hands of those monsters who held her captive for months on end. After talking with Emerson and her telling me some of the shit going on up there, my mind started racing. Then she reminded me of the bitch who’d stalked Cleo after she’d already been through hell. If not for Rage pulling his head out of his ass and helping her overcome the pain, she’d still be suffering. I’d forgotten about that one. Then again, during the shit with my best friend, I’d nearly died. Emerson went on to tell me about some other things going on up there in Virginia that I’d been missing. It makes me miss home but not enough to want to leave here. I love my little family, even if here recently I’ve felt something is off. Something I can’t put my finger on. I don’t know.
What I do know right now is that we need to give Lyrica her space and she’ll come to us when she’s ready.
Deciding to speak up before my friends make plans that we can’t stick to, I interrupt. “It’s not a good idea. We need to go at her pace. Let Fuse do his thing in helping her.”
“We’ve got to do something, though. I mean, I miss my friend,” Angelina mutters, her hand going to the small bump she now has.
“I know and I do too, but we push her, and it could very well backfire,” I say, shaking my head slightly.
“Well, what do you suggest we do?” Tiny murmurs, cuddling Ian to her. Her other two were down for a nap in the other room with Owen and Lucy.
“I don’t . . .” I stop when an idea pops into my head. “I’ve got it, but I need to see if there’s anyway possible that it’ll be doable. I’ll go talk with Breaker and Fuse first, then I’ll tell you all what it is,” I say, getting to my feet. “Can you keep an eye on Owen for me?”
“Yeah, he’s fine where he is,” Brielle says with a nod.
“Thanks.” I leave them to go in search of Breaker at the clubhouse.
Inside, I find him instantly and nearly lose my head as he laughs at something one of the strays is saying. He must sense me and looks in my direction. His laughter turned into him smiling at me the way he’s known to do. “Hey, Spitfire,” he murmurs as he comes to me, leaving the stray behind.
“Hey,” I mutter in annoyance.
“Thought you were with the other ol’ ladies.” I just bet he did.
“I was, but I had a thought about something and wanted to talk to you along with Fuse about it,” I huff. I don’t like this feeling of jealousy starting to consume me, but it hurts seeing him talking to the strays the way he’d been when I walked in.
“You okay?” he asks, pulling me closer to him.
“Just dandy,” I mutter with a shrug.
“Now I know you’re not, so tell me what’s going on.” That’s not going to happen.
“I’m fine. I just wanted to see if there was any way possible Burner could come down here. I think he and Ally could help Lyrica. And if anyone could help her through what she went through, it would be them,” I ramble, not wanting to get into it with Breaker. He has a hot temper and I’m stubborn. This makes us the perfect match for each other, I guess you can say.
“
Why do you think they’d be able to help?” he asks, his hands tensing around me. I know he’s not one for bringing others into resolving things in the club.
“Because Ally is Hades’ sister. She spent most of her life in captivity and until shit went down with Emerson, they thought she was dead. The horrors she went through weren’t just horrible, they were downright horrifying. Burner is like a tattoo guru that, if you can believe it or not, helps to heal a person through a tattoo gun,” I ramble once again.
“Nora, baby, you know I love you, but I don’t know if this is a good idea. We might be cool with the DRMC, but that doesn’t mean we want them in our business,” Breaker says coolly.
And this is why I knew though I brought the suggestion up to him, he’d shoot it down.
Nodding, I pull out of his arms.
“Well, that’s all I wanted to say, so I’m just gonna let you get back to it and go get our son,” I mutter, not wanting him to know the fact he’s hurt my feelings.
“Spitfire.” His tone seems to be alert. “Something’s going on with you and I want to know what it is.”
“There’s nothing going on.” I shrug.
“Right,” he mutters, narrowing his gaze on me.
Shaking my head, I turn to leave, but he catches hold of me again, pulls me back into him, and slams his mouth down on mine while picking me up. I immediately wrap my legs around his waist as he begins to carry me to our room here in the clubhouse.
Breaking his mouth from mine, he stares into my eyes. “You’re gonna tell me what the fuck’s up with you and you’re gonna do it with my cock inside you, Spitfire. I’m not playing games with you and I sure as hell ain’t putting up with you thinking I’d fuck around on you. Because, baby, you know that shit ain’t me.”
My stomach clenches at the growling tone in his voice. This right here is what I’ve felt missing and to have him do this feels amazing.