"There isn't enough time, Nala, you need to pack and get out of here before any of those men come back."
"WHO IS YOUR SON?"
"George"
"George? As in George, George?" As in the man who helped my dad bring me here? The man who pinned me to the wall, tried to make me sleep with him a few years ago.
"Why did you never say….." I had so many questions, and suddenly I knew that she was right. I needed to get as far away from here as possible. While I still could.
Would they come back soon, or at all? If he was… if my dad died, would they come back here?
What would happen to me, to my mom?
"Where do I go?"
She gave me this look. This look that held a thousand words that she didn't need to say out loud, him.
"He never responded to my letters, Lizzy. He doesn't want me anymore," my voice cracking made her wince slightly. A brief flash of doubt in her eyes before they turned to stone.
"He can protect you" It had been five years since I had last seen him, maybe even longer than that now. I was losing track of time. It moved differently when you couldn't go anywhere, when you couldn't do anything.
She was delusional. There was no chance in hell he would protect me. Going back to White Church Creek was not a smart idea, not if I ran from here. He can't go back.
I knew that my dad would not be able to go back to America. Not without being picked up as soon as his feet stepped on American soil, but his men…. They could come and go whenever they pleased. If she was wrong and he, if he lived then he would send them for me. Without a shadow of a doubt.
There is no way that he, that Ashby Bronx, would care about me enough to protect me, not anymore. There was a time I wouldn't have believed those words, but now I knew better. Now I knew that he didn't care about me if he ever had at all. Doubt of every moment began to creep into my thoughts again, and I had to stop. I could not afford to slip into that hole again. I was broken beyond hope, and that mostly was from losing him.
"And If he doesn't want too" It had been so long since I had last seen him, felt his skin on my own.
"Trust me," she begged, her British accent had brought me comfort for the last few years. She was the closest thing I had in the world to a real family. One that cared and cherished one another, unlike my own. A slither of doubt began to creep in. She had lied to me about George though, or I guess, technically, she had just omitted the truth. Whichever way it was, that doubt was only going to grow.
A dull thud sounded from below, bringing me out of my internal turmoil.
"What about her?" My mom's pale face flashed behind my eyes. She was far less than a shell of who she was over the last few years, now she was a skeleton of the woman she used to be. At times I didn't even recognize her as the woman who had drugged me, the woman who would spend over an hour every morning slathering makeup on. Having Botox parties and spa trips with her friends. That woman was long gone.
"She made her own bed many years ago, Nala, she can lie in it."
My stomach twisted, fear, and panic causing nausea to rise in my throat.
"If we hurry, we can be at the airport before he even notices" George?
"What are you going to do?" Leaving her here was not a good idea. I had never known this place to have no guards around. Not one single armed man in the hall, no guns following every step I took. Watching over my shoulder as I did online classes for college. These men were not protecting me. They were keeping me inside of this prison while protecting my dad. The very same man who was currently on his way to the hospital.
Was he really dying?
Was he already dead?
"You do not have a lot of time, Nala," knowing that she was right, my hands clenched around the small stack of bills she had placed in them along with the passport I had not seen since arriving in this Country. She must have stolen them from his office.
Nala Reeves.
Seeing my name in print sent flutters in my stomach. For the last few years, I had only seen the name he had given me, the fake name. The money he would know was missing if he ever got out of that hospital.
Was it wrong of me to hope that never happened?
Did that make me a bad person?
No.
He was the bad person; he was a drug dealer king by all accounts, there was more blood on his hands than a surgeons. Probably more than even a serial killer.
"What are you going to do, Lizzy?"
"I'll be fine, baby girl" her cold hands held my face still. Those steel-gray eyes were holding back tears, much like my own "You need to get away from here before they come back."
"What about George?"
"He's….occupied".
I didn't have to ask what she meant by that. He was with my mom. The same thing he had tried, unsuccessfully with me once upon a time, and when he realised I was not going to, he moved onto her. I still couldn't believe that he was her son.
I may only be twenty-three years old now, but I think Lizzy would always see me as a child. I was younger than her own children, maybe that was why. She had been more of a mother to me than anyone else I had ever met. My own had not of even been a tenth of what she was to me. Part of me never wanted to leave her because if I did, what did I really have left in this world? Claire?
Nodding my head, I dropped the cash into the open duffle bag she had been frantically begun packing half an hour ago.
"We need to go now."
Airports and airplanes were quite possibly one of the worse places on earth. Way too many people, all crammed into tight spaces, like chickens on a farm piling on top of one another. Suffocation was what most people must feel in them, especially when you felt as though you were on the run. I guess with what I was doing, I was running.
"And I told Anne-Marie, I said you need to lay down the law, that girl of hers, Lisa-Marie will be a terror of a teenager if she doesn't do it now" another photo was shoved into my line of sight, and while my face formed a smile, internally I was holding in a groan.
Lady, I don't care.
If it wasn't for the fact that this was semi distracting me from the fact the plane was less than ten minutes away from landing, I would tell her, point-blank, to shut the hell up.
The first plane that left Heathrow was to New York, so I was currently on my second flight home. To White Church Creek.
I knew more about this woman sat next to me and her family, her extended family, and what the neighbours got up to behind their closed doors than I knew about anyone I was even related to.
Just then, the flight attendant came down the aisle, reminding people to put their seatbelts on. Taking the opportunity, I closed my eyes. Hoping she wouldn't talk to me again if she thought I had fallen asleep, maybe she would finally take a damn breath.
Thankfully she turned her attention to the man who sat on her other side.
Meanwhile, the nerves that had been threatening to take me over felt like they were pouring out of my very soul.
Could I do this?
Could I go home, to White Church Creek?
I was unsure of everything about being here, back in America. Coming back home, though……. was this about to be the biggest mistake I had ever made?
I was finally free of that house, my prison, and I was potentially walking straight back into another hell.
Maybe I should get on another plane, go as far away from here as I could. Where though… Australia?
The money I had exchanged for dollars felt like it was burning in my pocket. I needed to get from the airport to White Church Creek.
Knowing that I could not just rent a car, not without my license that I hadn't seen since I had left five years ago.
My feet dragged slightly as I made my way to the bus stop outside of the airport.
My already long journey was about to take even longer as I waited for a greyhound to take me home.
Driving down main street, my stomach tightened as the bus slowed. I had never been as nervous as this t
o be in my hometown, my blood began to run cold seeing buildings that I hadn’t seen for such a long time.
What would I do if I saw him?
Just breath.
In and out, in and out.
My eyes and ears were both on high alert. Waiting to hear the sound of a motorcycle at any given moment. Even if it wasn't him, it could be any of The Unholy Confession bikers. I was terrified to set my eyes on any of them right now.
Fuck him.
He was the one who didn't write back.
Fuck him to hell.
I hated him.
The fucking jerk.
It’s what I called him whenever he crossed my mind. His name brought too much pain in my heart. Why hadn't he reached out to me after getting my letters?
Why hadn't he…. rescued me from the house, from my dad's clutches?
As the greyhound turned down a road that I had not been down for in, well, in what felt like forever. My breath hitched at the exacted moment that my eyes instantly fell on where his, where The Unholy Confessions clubhouse had been, had been. Now it was just a burnt out building. Metal fencing surrounding it, like a small prison of its own. Instead of keeping people inside, though, this one was there to keep people out.
"What happened?" I hadn't meant to speak out loud. The old man sat across from me didn't even break from eating the bag of Doritos he had been demolishing for the last hour, just looked at me out of the corner of his eye. I don't know how they were lasting him so long. I don't think a bag had lasted me more than ten or fifteen minutes.
What had happened to the clubhouse… there had been some kind of a fire?
When the bus finally came to a stop, my stop, I found myself frozen on the sidewalk with people moving around me, knowing exactly what their destination was.
With the clubhouse burnt out, I didn't know where to go.
Not that I really would have had the guts to go there anyway, even if it had been standing there just as it had been before I had left.
The apartment complex that Claire used to live in with her family was gone. The entire building, as though it had never existed in the first place. In its place stood a Matthews Car Dealership. Seeing that name in ten-foot letters only made my stomach churn all the more.
Blowing out a breath and clutching the only bag I had in the world, I found myself walking with no destination in mind. Walking until I found myself on a bench, one that I had not seen for so many years. The one by the hospital. It was by all accounts, our spot.
Sitting down and watching as people walked by, I felt like I was in one of my daydreams. None of this felt real. As though I couldn't be sat right here, being in White Church Creek. This entire thing felt about as far from reality as you could get.
I needed to find a place to stay.
Claire came to mind again.
Would she even want to see me?
I had spent so many years debating writing to her, just like Lizzy had wanted me to. How could I go to her now? The Claire I knew would have been on the plane as soon as she had read the last sentence of that letter. She would not have thought about the consequences of her actions until it was too late. She would have either ended up locked in the prison with me or worse.
I know that he would not have second-guessed himself if he put a bullet through her head, just like he had done to that biker so many years ago. That was unthinkable. I would never have been able to forgive myself if that happened, not because of me.
Luke, her brother, had been working at the new bar in town, not far from here before I had left. Well, it had been new back then, five years ago.
Maybe he was still there?
Luke had always been the brother I'd never had. Maybe if I saw him first, I would be able to see her. My best friend, former best friend, I guess.
Before I knew it, I was standing across the street from The Diamond Bar. It felt so surreal to be here, to be home.
On the one hand, it felt exactly the same, as though I was still eighteen years old. On the other hand, it felt completely different. As though I was a stranger in this town.
A row of motorcycles outside stopped me in my tracks. The sleek black and silver machines all lined up neatly in a row.
Was one of them his?
I didn't see that matte black one he'd had, but it had been so long. Five years. He could have a different one by now. Probably.
Swallowing a heavy lump in my throat. I could feel bile rising, my empty stomach felt a though it was about to explode, all over the god damned sidewalk.
What if Luke wasn't in there?
What if he was working somewhere else in this town now?
What if he had moved and was living in another town, state altogether?
What was I going to do then?
Where would I go?
It's not like I had a car that I could sleep in like I’d attempted to many years ago, twice.
With trepidation, I moved across the street. Forcing myself to walk in through the doorway of the bar, sucking in a deep breath. There were a few people sat inside of it, but I kept my eyes on the bar and as they focused, my mouth dropped open slightly. Holy shit.
There he was working behind the bar, his back was to me, but I knew that it was him. That mop of blond hair was a giveaway, even if he was smaller than he had been back when I had last seen him. Luke.
Taking one more step forward, I heard a chair scrape behind me, but I couldn't move to see who it was. I knew who I wanted it to be. Who I begged for it to be, deep inside.
Luke turned suddenly and as his eyes, eyes identical to those of his sister, connected to mine. His face paled, several shades at the same time as the pint glass he had been holding slid through his fingers straight onto the floor at his feet, shattering into dozens of small pieces.
"Nala?"
My eyes were fixed on him. He really looked nothing like the Luke I had known when I had been at school. He had beefed up and lost a lot of weight; and he now had a long beard. He looked like one of those lumberjacks you see modelling, advertising an aftershave, or a beer. Damn.
"Holy shit," he looked over my shoulder, before running around the bar and wrapping those big arms around me. As soon as he touched me, tears began to fall from my tired eyes "What, how?"
Unable to stop myself, I burst into a sob as he held on to me.
"Where have you been, Nala?"
Steps sounded behind me, followed by more scraping stools.
Turning my head slightly, I should have been more shocked than I was to see someone I knew.
Pinky.
At the same time, though, I felt a wave of sadness that it wasn't him. He wasn't here. My eyes ran over the men Pinky was with, and there was no sign. My mouth dropped open at the sign of one of the Bronx men though. Mr. Bronx. Harley, he was with them, wearing a black leather vest. He looked older, granted we all did, but he somehow looked ashen and hollow almost.
What had happened to him?
Why was he back with the crew?
It didn't make sense.
Why was Harley here, with them?
Just as Pinky was about to speak, Luke all but dragged me out of the bar. His hand encased around my wrist as he pulled me up some stairs, into what looked like an apartment.
As soon as we stepped inside, Luke closed the door, locking it behind him. There were photos of him and Claire covering the walls. They looked so happy. This must be his home. Stepping closer, I found myself running a finger over a picture of my best friend. Claire looked so grown up. She was beautiful. She always had been but now she looked absolutely stunning. Apart from this look in her eyes, they almost looked haunted.
Turing my head as Luke cleared his throat, I noted that he had moved closer to me once again. Grabbing my shoulders with both hands, as though he was afraid that I was about to disappear if he wasn’t touching me.
"You look like hell."
A Small laugh fell from my lips, "Long haul flights will do the to you" that was not why. It was becau
se I had been living in hell since I’d left this town. Maybe I had been living in it before that even.
"Long haul? Where have you been?" his blue eyes pinched together.
"England"
"England? How long?" When I stayed silent, he continued to talk, "We looked for you for years, Nala."
Peaches: MC Romance (The Unholy Confessions Book 1) Page 13