by K. A. Ware
A hand clamped around my forearm, firm, but not painful, and spun me back toward the bike.
“That’s it?” he asked.
I blinked down at Baz, the discarded helmet hanging from the handlebars as he straddled his Harley, scowling up at me. “What do you mean?”
His brows rose on his forehead almost comically. “Rabbit, you honestly think I’m gonna let you walk away just like that?”
I looked back up at the darkened windows of my home and bit my lip. He knew where I lived, and if what he’d said earlier was any indication, he wasn’t going to forget that information anytime soon.
“Yes?” I offered, trying to inject attitude I didn’t feel into my voice, but it still came out as a question. I was too exposed, he knew my name, and where I lived, I could practically see the defensive walls I’d built around myself crumbling.
His glare intensified. “Try again.”
“What do you want from me?” I snapped, feeling like a wild animal backed into a corner. My only defense was to attack.
Those green eyes I’d been obsessing over for far too long burned bright. “Everything.”
My body stilled, my heart stopped pumping, and the blood in my veins froze, suspended at that moment. Caught in his gaze, my resolve faltered, and I gave him the truth.
“I don’t have that to give.” I hated how small my voice sounded to my own ears, how weak it made me feel. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I was stronger than that.
It felt like he saw right past my walls and directly into the fucked-up mess of pain and secrets where my heart used to belong. Maybe he was trying to figure out if I was worth the trouble, perhaps he was deciding how far to push me. Whatever I thought was going on in his head, I sure as hell didn’t expect the words that came out of his mouth next.
“Give me your phone.”
I blinked, stunned and utterly confused. “What? Why?”
Chuckling, he shook his head and smiled up at me. It was disarmingly charming. “Relax, I’m not going to steal it. I’m just gonna text myself, so I have your number.”
“Oh,” I said quietly, unzipping my wristlet and handing it over.
This was good, at least that’s what I told myself. If he had my phone number maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to drop in on me. I could field a few texts and put him off until he lost interest, which he undoubtedly would. Men like Baz didn’t have to work for pussy. If I played my cards right, I could wait him out without pissing him off and incurring the wrath of yet another MC.
Baz punched out a quick text and handed the phone back to me. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Practically painless,” I cooed.
Turning on my heel, I took off for the safety of my front door. I made it four steps this time before the same warm roughened hand clasped around my forearm. He’d climbed off his bike during my attempt at a retreat, so when he spun me around, I had to crane my neck to look him in the eye.
His free hand came around to the small of my back, and he pulled me in close until our bodies were pressed against each other from knee to chest. My nipples pebbled at the contact, and I silently cursed my traitorous body for the way it kept responding to him.
Reaching up, he curled a loose strand of hair around his finger before tucking it securely behind my ear. “Why are you always in such a rush to run away from me, Rabbit?”
Blame it on our proximity or the fact that my brain was still scrambled from the night’s events, but for the first time in a long time, I didn’t think ten steps ahead. I was just honest.
“Because you scare me,” I breathed.
Baz’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t seem mad, more confused if anything. I couldn’t blame him. I was all over the map.
“You don’t seem like the type of woman that would be afraid of the cut.”
I took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears that were suddenly threatening to spill over. “Maybe it’s not about the cut so much as what the cut represents.”
He raised a dark eyebrow, and I knew he wasn’t going to let my comment slide. “And what’s that?”
Again, I didn’t think before I answered. “Pain.”
Baz opened his mouth but stopped when his eyes caught on something behind me. “Do you live alone?”
My head jerked at the sudden change of subject. “No, with my sister. Why?”
Panic seized my chest, and I turned to see what he was looking at, but he caught my chin and guided my eyes back to his. “No reason, just curious.”
“Oh,” I said, trying desperately to calm my racing heart.
When the fuck did I turn into a meek little girl?
I cleared my throat and stood a little taller. “Sorry, big guy, no round three for you.”
Baz grinned, his eyes shining in the moonlight. “There she is.”
Before I had a chance to ask what he meant, he leaned forward and captured my mouth in a toe-curling kiss. My lips parted automatically, and he took full advantage. Sliding his hot tongue against mine, he made me wish we had time for a round three so I could be reminded what else that talented tongue was capable of.
He pulled away too soon, and I had to force myself not to lean in for another taste. Baz stayed close, his eyes on mine as his thumb glided over my still wet lips. “I want to see you again,” he murmured, voice gruff with desire.
I swallowed hard and let myself be honest one last time. “I’d like that.”
Baz grinned and leaned in, placing a firm but chaste kiss to my lips before stepping back.
“Go get some sleep, it’s been a long night,” he called as he slung a leg over his bike.
Turning, I made my way up the front steps. Baz waited as I fumbled with my keys, starting his bike up and riding away only after I’d shut and locked the door behind me. I waited on the other side of the door until the sound of his Harley pipes faded away.
What the fuck am I doing?
I wanted to smile at the possibility of seeing Baz again, but every time I let my thoughts wander in the direction of what if, Butcher’s pale gray eyes pushed into my mind and a new sense of dread blanketed me. My stomach churned, and my mouth felt dry whenever I let myself explore the scenarios of what would happen now that Butcher had spotted me.
Would he come for us?
I knew the answer as certainly as I knew I needed air to breathe. The gleam in his eye when I’d turned around told me all I needed to know. He would come for us. There was no doubt.
There was a possibility that Baz’s club would strike back and get him before he got to us, but even I knew that was a long shot. The Sinners had become something different since my father had been killed. A distorted shadow of what they had once been. They followed no code other than brotherhood, and even that was hanging on by a thread. Corruption and greed had spread through the club like cancer, pushing out the lingering good and leaving it rife with moralless bastards.
The club, the family I’d grown up with, was gone. Had been for a long time.
I crept up the stairs and down the hall, easing Stella’s door open slightly. She was passed out, lying sideways on her bed, earbuds still in place and books spread out around her.
Must’ve been studying for finals.
Quietly, I edged inside, stacking the books on her desk and covering her with a blanket before retreating to the doorway. She looked peaceful. Her wild mess of blonde hair spread out on her pillow, and an arm flung over her eyes.
I couldn’t tell her that despite changing our names and moving to a new town where no one knew who we were, Butcher had still managed to find us. She’d come too far to be dragged back into that hell. Every day was a struggle, but she’d been coping and doing better than ever the past few months. I couldn’t bring her this shit after she’d just stopped looking over her shoulder, it wasn’t fair.
She hadn’t asked for any of what had happened to her, none of it had been her fault and yet she was forced to deal with the consequences and aftermath of all of it.
NORAH
Four Years Ago
“Hi, you’ve reached Nat, you know what to do.” The tinny sound of the recording grated on my nerves, and I tossed the phone back into the passenger’s seat, willing my little piece of shit Integra to go faster.
Something was wrong. I could feel it all the way down to my bones. Natalie’s calls had been getting shorter and less frequent over the past year, maybe even longer. Cursing myself for not noticing that something was wrong with my little sister sooner, I checked the clock on the dash, it was just after five. That should put me in Tacoma by eight, earlier if traffic let up.
She seemed off yesterday, her speech was slurred, and then the call had just disconnected. I figured she was at a party or something, but I hadn’t been able to get a hold of her since. When I finally broke down and called our mother, Charese, she told me Natalie was sleeping off the night before, like it was no big deal. When I’d asked her what the fuck my little sister had been doing that she was still asleep at four in the afternoon, she’d told me Nat had spent the night at the clubhouse.
The motherfucking clubhouse.
She said it as if a seventeen-year-old girl being at a clubhouse full of bikers wasn’t cause for concern. A seventeen-year-old girl that wasn’t family, that wasn’t protected. There was no telling what could happen, and if Charese’s blasé attitude was any indication, it wasn’t the first time Nat had found herself in that situation.
Since my father’s death, things with the Sinners had gone downhill fast. Bomber had kept me up to date on what he could and warned me about the shit show that was brewing back at home for a while after he went nomad, but we’d lost touch over the past year.
Nat wasn’t a part of the club, and besides the fact that she was underage, she didn’t have any reason to be at the club. At least not a good one.
When my father was alive, Nat might have been protected, but not anymore. Even though she wasn’t his, she was my sister, and Papa had been okay with letting her tag along on my visits to see him. I think he felt bad for her, not knowing her father and being stuck with our whackjob of a mother. Papa and Nat were never close, but he’d always accepted us as a package deal, much to our mother’s dismay.
Charese was a crazy ass cut slut who’d managed to sink her claws into my father when she was still young, before the weight of the life she’d chosen had etched itself into her skin. But she’d fucked it up when she got pregnant with Natalie. I was little at the time, but I’d heard the story more times than I cared to count.
She blamed Nat for everything bad in her life. When she was with my father, life had been good—at least according to her. Over the years I’d surmised that things hadn’t been all unicorns and rainbows like she’d made them out to be.
My father was doing a stint in lock-up, some bullshit charge that got him two months in county, and my mom, being the upstanding old lady she was, had been sleeping around. Lucky O’Brien wasn’t a stupid man, so when he came home, and she announced she was pregnant, shit hit the fan. Instead of owning up like an adult, it had been an out and out war. My father kicked her to the curb without a second thought, and she’d never gotten over it.
We still didn’t know who Natalie’s birth father was. No one ever came forward to claim her, which just gave my mother more ammunition. It wasn’t all horrible, Charese hadn’t always been such a shitty person.
It didn’t take long after starting my psych classes for me to realize that our mother was textbook bipolar. There were moments throughout our childhood when she’d been good to us, but even if at her best, she still wasn’t a great mom.
Sometimes she’d wake us up in the middle of the night to get ice-cream and then take us to the park to look at the stars. If she’d managed to get her shit together long enough to get a job, usually stripping, she’d take us to the mall and buy us whatever we wanted. But when things were bad, she turned into a completely different person. She’d get on a tear about something, all coked out, and remind us how much we fucked up her life.
She wasn’t physically abusive, at least not usually. A slap across the face wasn’t exactly a common occurrence, but it wasn’t an anomaly either. She liked to throw things, rarely at anyone, the pure pleasure of destruction for the sake of destruction seemed to be enough for her most of the time.
The more I thought about it, the sicker I felt. I’d been gone for three years, living my own life, pursuing my dreams, and my sister was stuck in perpetual hell. Sure, I checked in, video chatting with Nat at least once a week, but my visits home had gotten fewer and farther between. I hadn’t been back up to Tacoma in nearly six months. My stomach churned at the realization that I’d been so self-absorbed I hadn’t even thought about the time that had passed since I’d last seen my baby sister face to face.
I should’ve never left her alone with that bitch. I knew what she was like, I knew the hate she’d spew, but I’d been selfish. I wanted to escape, to get out from under the weight of it all, and now Nat was alone in the wolf’s den, and it was my fault. When we were young, I’d been her shield, the one who stood in front of her and deflected the garbage our mother flung, but then I’d up and left her adrift in a sea of hate with barely a lifeline.
A number of scenarios raced through my mind the rest of the trip up north, each one more disturbing than the last. I was a wreck by the time my GPS guided me into the parking lot of what had to be the most run-down apartment complex I’d ever seen. My mother did always have a knack for finding cheap, barely inhabitable places to live.
I inspected the three-story, U-shaped building as I guided my car into an open parking space. A large discolored sign with several bullet holes clued me into the fact that the building had once been a motel. Like many places in this particular shithole neighborhood, it had at some point, been converted into low-income housing. The place made even the worst apartment we’d lived in when I was a kid look like a fucking palace.
What happened to the money I sent every month?
I wondered if Charese had caught on. If she had, I was almost certain I’d have heard about it, if not from our mother, at least from Nat. But I was beginning to think there were more than a few things my sister wasn’t telling me during our weekly calls.
Not wasting time, I peeled myself off the vinyl seat and climbed from the car. The ride had been bad enough with my mind conjuring up every terrible thing that could’ve happened to my baby sister. Suffering through rush hour without A/C in the middle of August had just been the cherry on the shit sundae.
I headed for the stairs, my bladder screaming at me the whole way. I hadn’t stopped at all during the almost four-hour drive, too worried to waste even five minutes. The walkways were cracked and littered with crap, sacks of garbage sat out beside more than one door, the summer heat doing a bang-up job of ripening whatever was inside.
As I pounded on the door to Unit 32 for the third time, I wished I would’ve at least stopped to pee since it didn’t seem like anyone was home.
I took a step back, intent on finding a bathroom and coming back to camp out until someone showed when I heard a loud thud from inside the room.
“Nat?” I called through the door. No answer. I tried the handle, but it was locked, so I went back to slamming my fist against the flimsy wood. “Nat! Open the door! It’s Norah!”
I stepped over to the window, shielding my eyes from the setting sun and tried to see inside. The thin curtains were drawn, I could still see two messy beds, but no Nat. Moving back to the door, I beat on it until my knuckles ached.
“Nat! Open the door!”
I heard a moan from inside, the sound long and low. It chilled me to the bone. Something was wrong. Something was seriously fucking wrong. Using my shoulder, I tried to bust through the door. Unlike in the movies, I bounced off, only succeeding in giving myself what was sure to be a nasty bruise in the morning.
As I rubbed at my injured shoulder, another moan came from inside, this one sounding e
ven worse than the last if that was possible.
“Nat!” I screamed, kicking at the door to no avail.
I had to get to her. I wondered if the place had a manager on site. Probably not. Nat was still a minor and since CPS would take one look at this place and shit a brick, calling the cops was the absolute last resort.
Moving back to the window, I popped off the screen that was barely hanging on and said a little prayer. The old tracks resisted but eventually gave way, the window cracking just enough to get my fingers between the frame for a better grip. It took some effort, but I managed to get the window all the way open.
I didn’t immediately see her when I pushed aside the curtains. I didn’t see any sign of her until I was straddling the window frame. A pale hand with chipped pink nail polish poking out from behind the bed closest to the window lay lifeless on the matted green carpet.
“NAT!” I screamed again, hopping on one foot as I pulled my other leg through the window.
Stumbling, I hurriedly rounded the first bed and what I found was worse than any of the thousand things I’d imagined. My baby sister, the girl with the brightest smile in any room. The girl who used to sing the “Can We Fix It?” song from Bob the Builder whenever I was upset, the same girl who refused to wear pants until she was thirteen because dresses made her feel like a princess, was sprawled out on the ground, not moving, a needle and rubber tourniquet forgotten on the floor beside her.
Dropping to my knees, I pulled her head into my lap and shoved a shaky hand under her nose. Her breath was shallow, but at least she was breathing. I checked her pulse next, it was sluggish but steady.
“Nat! Baby, wake up. It’s me, Norah.” I patted her face, trying to rouse her without hurting her, but she was out. I glanced around the room, searching for evidence of what she took even though the feeling in the pit of my stomach told me I already knew.
Spotting a spoon on the edge of the nightstand, I gently lowered her head back to the floor and stood, carefully stepping over Nat’s prone form. Another spoon, this one with the handle bent back into a makeshift handle lay beside the first, a soaked cotton ball and lighter next to it. I spotted a small plastic bag and picked it up with trembling fingers. Just a bit of the chunky light brown substance remained. Squeezing my eyes shut, I felt my heart splinter.