I rolled the cigar between my fingers, fighting against the urge to throw it as far away from my body as possible. I felt Jamie’s chest against my back, saw his legs on either side of mine.
He’d made himself a human shield.
For me.
“They’ll try to trip me up… get me to do something stupid. You said that before…”
“They won’t have to try hard. Everybody that’s sat at a table with you knows that you ain’t the same as before. That’ll get back to them. If they know your weaknesses, they know how to break you.” His arms moved around my torso. “They knew how to break me.”
I was his weakness… and that night was mine.
Jamie had pushed me to cry; to grieve the things we’d lost, but he couldn’t stop the war from raging in my mind. That was something only I could do.
“What do the books say about this?” He’d offered them to me several times over the last year, but I refused to crack the spine on anything that repeatedly used the word victim to describe me.
I was so much more than that.
I’d likened killing Manny to an addict getting a fix; leaving me feeling invincible.
Euphoric.
Desperate for my next hit.
Mistakenly, I’d thought the high would last, but the world was full of reminders, each one of them just waiting to knock me back down to the ground.
Jamie’s body went rigid, and his grip tightened. “They suggested exposure therapy, but it’s obvious you ain’t ready, princess.”
I took a shaky breath and turned to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. It was time to face the demons head-on. “I’m ready. How does this work?”
Chapter Seventeen
Celia: 2006
I jerked my head up off the pillow at the sound of raised voices coming from the living room and blinked at the clock.
It was just after eleven.
I’d hoped for another few hours of sleep before going to pick the girls up from school, but it sounded as if Angel had decided to hang out and catch up on his daytime television at the only volume he seemed to know—loud.
After driving me home, Jamie had retired to the hammock in the backyard. By the time I got up to get the girls out the door, he was already gone again.
Kicking the blankets off with a groan, I padded into the bathroom and studied my bloodshot and still-swollen eyes in the mirror before splashing cold water onto my face. Jamie ran on little to no sleep and looked like a million bucks. I did it and looked like the undead.
With rocks weighing heavily on my chest, I’d pushed myself past the panic and anxiety, as I relived the events of that night, over and over, into the early hours of the morning.
When I started slipping away, Jamie would turn it back to blackjack, rapidly firing questions to pull me toward reality.
After back to back panic attacks and another fainting spell, he’d been prepared to call it off, apologizing and insisting again that I wasn’t ready.
It only made me want to fight harder.
My body screamed for me to run, but I stayed; inhaling the smoke from the cigar… tracing my fingers over a diamond thirteen ring and remembering how the hot metal had felt like a thousand bees stinging my skin.
The worst part was putting myself through the emotionally and physically draining exercises without fully knowing if they’d worked.
Voices reached a fever pitch as I left the bedroom, and I pushed my exhaustion to the side, ready to lay into Angel until I happened to glance toward the front door and realized it wasn’t the television.
“Mother? What are you doing here?” I’d managed to avoid her for the better part of five years, dealing only with my father when necessary.
She pushed past Angel. “Why are you still in bed in the middle of the day—why do your eyes look like that? Are you high, Celia?”
I pressed the pads of my fingers under my eyes and shook my head. “No, I’m just tired—”
“Where are the girls?” She forced her chin up, jerkily turning her head as if Kate and Dakota might pop up from behind the furniture at any second.
Leaving his post by the front door, Angel came over to stand at my side. My mother looked him up and down with a sneer. “I thought Dakota was joking when she said you had a vagrant living here—”
“A vagrant?” My voice shot up several octaves, and while Angel stayed silent, I could feel the rage coming off of him in waves. “First of all, as usual, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Second, when were you around my daughter?”
She waved her manicured nails flippantly. “Your father and I have lunch with her once a week at school, and thank the saints for that because otherwise, I’m afraid we’d never see her.”
Angel’s hand on my shoulder was the only thing that kept me from launching myself at her. “There was a reason for that,” I bit out.
“Apparently.” The judgment in her eyes made it evident that she thought it had something to do with Angel. “She admitted that you’d been leaving her and Mary Katherine alone with a perfect stranger for quite some time now. I told your father that we’ve ignored your poor choices, but I can’t sit back and watch you ruin their lives too.”
“Get out,” I growled, stabbing my finger toward the door. “Get out and never come back here again. You are not welcome around me, and you are not welcome around my girls. What we do is none of your goddamn business!”
Instead of cowering, my mother brought her hand up to her mouth with a soft laugh. “Oh, but it is my goddamn business. You see, I hired someone to look into it, and this man…” she pointed at Angel. “Has quite the record. Let’s see… there was drug possession—”
“It was weed,” he interjected. “My arthritis gets bad and—”
She nodded condescendingly, and I brought my arm around his waist, each of us keeping the other from losing control.
“Sure it is. And I’m sure the weapons charges were for a health reason too, right? Trafficking, was it? There were so many that it’s hard to get it all straight. Anyway, that wasn’t the most interesting thing I learned.”
She paused dramatically, clearly waiting for us to begin taking guesses. “It’s the fact that you belong to a notorious outlaw motorcycle gang. What happened, Celia? Lost one trash biker and needed another to take his place? Didn’t you learn anything after they beat you up? You had so much potential when you were younger. Everyone just knew your smarts were going to take you somewhere amazing. Now, look at you.”
The fire in my belly worked its way up into my chest and wrapped its tendrils around my heart, fighting to remind me of how far I’d come. My pulse pounded, leaving my head throbbing, but I refused to break in front of her. Not anymore.
Keeping a tight hold on Angel’s shirt, I straightened to my full height and faced her head-on. “So, you figured out he’s a member of Silent Phoenix. Good for you. It doesn’t change a thing for me. I won’t have you near my girls ever again—”
“See, I thought you might say that, so I talked to a good friend of mine. Do you remember Judge Lucas? He gave you a very sizable gift for your graduation.” I briefly remembered the name, but instead of waiting for a response, she continued. “When it came to light that your new man friend had been convicted of child molestation, he agreed that we couldn’t push this under the rug. Not when the girls’ safety is at stake—”
Angel broke free from my hold and stalked toward my mother, sending her scurrying back toward the sofa. “What did you just accuse me of?” he snarled. “Those girls are like granddaughters to me. I ain’t ever touched them or any other kid, and you know it”—
“Now, you listen here.” My mother raised her finger again. “I know every judge in this town—”
“Stop!” My lungs narrowed, shortening my breaths into pants. “You don’t know anyone! If you’ve shown up here, hoping to intimidate me into letting you see my girls, you’ve failed!”
She perched against the back of the sofa; hands folded priml
y in her lap. “How do you think I kept your father out of jail when he barreled nose-first into a godless lifestyle? I didn’t come here to intimidate you. I came here to tell you that I’m taking the girls—”
As I fought to take a breath, Angel clenched his hands into fists and slowly approached her. “Over my dead body. Those girls belong with their mama. You had a chance to get to know them, and you blew it. Don’t make me call their daddy in to handle you.”
“Their daddy,” my mother snorted. “From where? The cemetery?”
“Jamie’s alive,” I stated flatly. “Didn’t Daddy tell you?”
“He? No, that’s impossible,” she faltered, before regaining her composure. “Even if that were true, it wouldn’t change things. I have an emergency custody order in my purse. The girls are going to be living with me and your father from now on.”
“No,” I ground out. “I will fight you with everything I have—”
“You won’t. Because if you do, your friend here will be locked up on child pornography charges, and you know how they treat those men behind bars. He’s no spring chicken either—”
“Celia, do it.” Angel ran a hand roughly over his face. “I don’t give a fuck where I end up as long as I know they’re safe with you.”
“I wasn’t finished,” she snapped. “Celia, it’s obvious you’re strung out. God only knows on what. I doubt you’d fare much better behind bars either. You can’t care for them—look at the state you’re in. They’d both end up just like you—knocked up before graduation and forced into the same life—”
“That’s enough,” Angel growled. “You ain’t threatenin’ her. You wanna lock me up, fine. I got people on the inside same as I do on the outside. But, leave Celia out of this.”
My mother eyed him defiantly. “I’ll take down your entire gang. Maybe it’ll come to light that you weren’t trafficking weapons, after all. Maybe this entire time, you’ve all been running a child prostitution ring—”
I was going to lose them.
Angel yanked his gun from a hidden holster on his hip and brought it to her head. “Maybe I’ll put you down right here—”
Her throat bobbed up and down in a nervous swallow before she found her voice again. “That might’ve worked had I not alerted several friends of mine that I was coming here. You might want to check out front. I bet they’d be interested in hearing that the leader of a gang they’ve been tracking for years faked his death.”
With every shaky step toward the front window, the ache in my chest intensified, the pressure leaving me gasping for air. Two squad cars sat in the driveway, drawing the attention of every nosy neighbor on the block.
“There’s cops outside, Angel,” my voice cut off in a sob, and this time, I didn’t fight it. “How can you do this to me? To them? I’m doing everything to keep them safe!”
“You’re leaving them to gamble!” My mouth fell open, and I didn’t miss the triumphant grin on her face. “Yes, I know about that. Several prominent friends of ours have spotted you at the casinos, throwing your money away.”
I’d never once gambled in a casino, only underground games. If my mother’s friends had seen me, I could fathom a guess as to how they’d risen to a position of power.
“I can’t lose them,” I begged.
“Then you and all of your outlaw buddies can enjoy prison together. I wonder how the girls would react to that being on the news. What would their friends think?”
She pushed off the sofa and adjusted her linen slacks before heading for the door. “You’ll drop them off by four o’clock sharp today, or I’ll have the entire police department in your front yard, and they can watch as you’re placed in handcuffs. Your choice.”
The front door slammed shut behind her, and the uncontrollable shaking in my body grew until I was down on the carpet, clawing at my throat and feeling as if I was going to die.
Angel sank down to his knees and pulled me into his arms, giving me permission to fall apart. My hiccupping sobs were punctuated only by my gasps for air. This was worse than the pain I’d endured last night. This was the kind of hurt that consumed a soul.
I would’ve taken on a thousand Cobras for them; would’ve let them break my body apart again if it meant my little girls were safe. I’d thought that afternoon in the orchard was my breaking point, but it was here.
The dam inside my chest broke open, and the pain that I’d carried for six years came rushing out in the form of tears. Every drop a cruel reminder that life would never be what I wanted it to be; no matter how hard I fought.
“I got you, girl,” Angel murmured, rocking me back and forth like a small child.
“I—can’t,” I whimpered. “I can’t—lose them.”
He sniffed. “I let Jamie know… he’ll know what to do.”
The tears eventually stopped, leaving me numb again. I kept my head down, focusing on a small blue stain on the carpet left behind by Dakota’s marker. It didn’t matter how many times I said that they were only to be used at the kitchen table, any given day I could walk in and find her happily coloring on the floor.
“How do I do it? How do I tell them they can’t live with me anymore?”
“You don’t.”
I jerked my head up to see Jamie standing at the back door, chest rising and falling rapidly.
“You’re here,” I whispered.
“Got here quick,” Angel stated flatly. “It ain’t good, kid. What she doesn’t have on us, she’s willing to get her rich friends to say she does.”
“She’s going to take them,” I whispered. “And I can’t do anything to stop it.”
Angel got to his feet and stomped toward the door.
“Where the hell you goin’?” Jamie snapped.
“Ain’t fuckin’ sittin’ around twiddling my thumbs. I’m gonna reach out to Wolverine and see who we know. Then, I’m bustin’ my girls out of class and takin’ them for ice cream and a movie. Fuck what that cunt says!”
The door slammed shut behind him, rattling the glass in the picture window.
“Come here.” Jamie lifted me into his arms and walked down the hall to our bedroom. After placing me on the bed, he rocked back onto his heels. “Tell me everything.”
His blue eyes seemed to darken more with every word I said until his body was taut with fury. I scrambled back toward the headboard when he went for his gun, checking the chamber and clicking various things into place.
“Uh, Jamie? What are you doing?”
“Gonna blow their brains out, darlin’.”
I swallowed. “Well, she sort of accounted for that and has police protection—”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he roared before shoving it back into the holster. “I’ve always had the right people in my pocket, until now. And if she had this kind of power all along, why the fuck didn’t she use it to keep you away from me?”
Regardless of what my mother thought about me, I knew the things I’d sacrificed for my daughters. I knew the lengths I would go to just to keep them safe.
Why hadn’t my parents done the same for me?
Until now, I’d been holding back my tears in my struggle to stay in control. As the severity of what she was doing hit me, I slumped against the pillows behind me, feeling myself slipping away again, back into the darkness I’d desperately fought to escape.
My mind had become a narrow hallway with no clear exit, churning my stomach with the realization that I was trapped.
“Celia?” He was right in front of me, but his voice sounded as if it was miles away.
I was pulled from my stupor when the backs of Jamie’s boots connected with my slippers, sending him stumbling into the dresser. A bottle of perfume fell to the carpet and rolled toward the wall, and I watched it curiously before looking up at him.
He carefully studied my face with an unreadable expression before storming into the bathroom to turn on the faucets above the tub.
“What are you doing?” I asked calmly.
He grabbed the bottle of bubble bath and flipped it upside down, squeezing until it was empty before tossing it onto the tile with a growl. “What’s it look like I’m doin’? I’m takin’ a bath.”
I mashed my lips together in an attempt not to laugh as I watched my biker run himself a bubble bath. “You don’t take baths. Like ever.”
“Maybe I do now.”
I nodded as if it made all the sense in the world before making my way over to him. “How is that going to help us exactly?”
He stripped off his leather vest and t-shirt before whipping them onto the vanity. “Won’t, but you’re slippin’ away on me. That, and it’ll stop me from goin’ over there and killin’ ‘em both with my bare hands.”
“Believe me, I wish you could. But the people she knows want nothing more than to take down the club—”
“Fuck the club,” he roared, and I shrank back against the doorway. “Fuck all of it! Jesus fuckin’ Christ, just when I think we’re close to bein’ together again, everything goes to shit. I’m so fuckin’ sick of not havin’ my family under the same roof, and that cunt—” The muscles strained against his skin as his chest heaved.
With a growl, he reached for the drawstring on my pants, letting them fall to the floor. I stepped out of them like an obedient child before he went for my shirt, carefully peeling it up over my head until I stood like an offering before the god of death.
“What are you doing?” I asked quietly.
“Bringin’ you back to me,” he panted. “You need to relax, and I need to not shed blood right now.”
Bubbles began to flow over the side of the tub, like the head on a beer poured way too fast. He’d added enough soap for twenty baths, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
I checked the temperature and shut the taps off before stepping in. “You coming?”
Jamie ran a hand over his face and nodded before stripping out of his jeans and joining me. I settled between his legs with a deep sigh and he gripped my shoulders, tugging my back up against his chest and sending another cascade of bubbles down onto the tile.
Protector: Silent Phoenix MC Series: Book Four Page 21