“I’d never say a word. You don’t have to tell me anything more, but it might help to get it off your chest.”
“I want to tell you. It’s the only way for you to understand why I have always kept you at arm’s length, and it feels good to finally tell someone.” She inhaled a deep breath and trained her eyes on the sand as she said, “When I was fourteen, my mother brought a guy home after work. Serena was spending the night at Mira’s, and I was sitting on the couch watching television and scrapbooking. My mother went upstairs to change because they were going out, and he tried to make small talk about how old I was and what kinds of things I liked to do. But I knew better than to engage with her men, and I just focused on my project. He sat beside me on the couch, pretending to be interested in what I was making. But I had learned to recognize the look of a guy who thought he could get away with anything, and he had that look in his eyes. I tried to get up and leave the room, but he yanked me back down and shoved his hand between my legs.”
Justin clenched his jaw tighter to keep his anger from roaring out.
Chloe looked out at the water and said, “I punched that guy harder than I’d ever hit anyone in my life, and it gave me just enough time to get to my feet. But he was right behind me, and he grabbed me.” She pressed her hand to her chest and said, “Sorry, my heart is racing.”
Justin kept her side against his chest and kissed her temple. “I’ve got you, Chloe. You’re safe with me. You’ve always been safe with me.”
She put her hands over his arm, which was belted around her stomach, and held on tight as she said, “I remember the way my stomach clenched, and for a split second I thought I was going to freeze again, like I had when the guy trapped me in the kitchen, but I didn’t. I stomped on his foot and elbowed him in the gut. But I was a scrawny fourteen-year-old, and he was a big man. My mother came downstairs as I was struggling to get free, and he started laughing. I’ll never forget that sinister sound. He let me go and I went ballistic, yelling at him, telling my mother what he’d done, begging her to call the police. But he told her he was just tickling me, and even though I was screaming and crying, telling her he was lying, it was like she never even heard me. He said they had to leave or they’d be late, and they took off as if it had never happened. On his way out the door, he looked over his shoulder and winked. I tore a lamp right out of the wall and threw it at him. But they were already gone by the time it crashed to the floor.”
“I’d like to tear that arrogant fucker to shreds. Do you know who he is?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter. Hurting him now wouldn’t change what happened then.”
He ground out a curse. “Did you ever talk to your mother about it again?”
“Yes, but like the other times, she just said something about me wanting attention, and she said it didn’t matter because she wasn’t seeing him anymore—”
“Times, Chloe? There were more?”
She nodded. “I don’t want to talk about them. They all pretty much went the same way. Some creep would try to touch me, I’d fight back, and my mother would play it off like no big deal. But that time on the couch was the last time. After that I didn’t take any chances. I locked myself and Serena in a room when they were there. But here’s the kicker. Not much has changed. My mother still chooses men over us. She did it just last weekend when she asked us to come down and meet one of her boyfriends. Actually, one thing has changed. I’m done meeting the men in her life. I always thought I owed it to her for being our mother, but not anymore.”
“We don’t owe our parents anything for creating us. That was their choice.”
“I know, and this is pathetic to admit, but while I’ve made the decision not to go through that again, I know that when the time comes, it’ll be hard to silence that hopeful little girl in me that always wonders if maybe this time it’ll be different.”
“Aw, babe,” he said softly. He knew all about trying to silence that hopeful child.
Neither one of them said a word for a long time, and when Chloe spoke, her voice was less pained, more thoughtful. “Lately I’ve been wondering what I’d be like if I hadn’t grown up with my mother, if I hadn’t been neglected or had those awful experiences. Would I have looked at you differently from the start?” She met his gaze and said, “I think I would have, and I wish I would have.”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I told you all that,” Chloe said, shocked that she’d dumped her dirty laundry on Justin of all people. “I’m sorry. You must have a zillion red flags waving in your head right now. It’s bad enough that I ever thought you could be like the men my mother goes out with, when you’ve never been anything but good to me, even if you do flirt like crazy.”
“I only flirt with you like that, babe. And don’t feel bad. You trust me, Chloe, and that’s a good thing. You know I would never hurt you.”
“I do know that,” she said honestly. “But everything I just told you makes me sound like a damsel in distress, and it’s embarrassing. Why were we even talking about me?”
“You were explaining why you assumed I was bad news, and it all makes sense now. But if anyone should be embarrassed, it’s your mother. You were a young girl who never should have been put in those situations. But the guys you call bikers? They’re not anything like me, and I assure you, they are not members of the Dark Knights.”
“I actually asked the guy we met last weekend if he was a member. He was awful.”
“I know you think we’re all leather-wearing, tattooed roughnecks who probably drink and swear too much and go around looking for trouble. But we’re not like that. We do go looking for trouble, but not the type of trouble you assumed. And yes, I’m a leather-wearing tattooed biker, and I definitely swear like a sailor. But I make a habit of not drinking too much. Dark Knights are always on call, so to speak. We need to be ready to get on our bikes and go if someone needs us at any hour, day or night. Our members are doctors, lawyers, teachers, blue-collar workers, fathers, and grandfathers. It doesn’t matter what clothes a person wears or how eloquently they speak. What matters is how they live their life, the moral code they live by. It’s easy to say you’re a good person or that you’d give your life for another. But living that way? Proving it to yourself and everyone around you with everything you do and say? That’s not easy, Chloe. And I’m not talking about being perfect, because I’m so far from perfect, it’s ridiculous. But I try to be the best man I can, whether it’s stepping in when I see a guy manhandling a woman or child, or redirecting young kids’ negative energy, or even carrying groceries for someone who’s struggling. It’s about being honest with yourself and with others, being a friend who listens for the sole purpose of offering solace. Those are the things that make a good, consistently trustworthy person. And maybe you think becoming a Dark Knight is easy, but it’s not. Ours isn’t the type of club where anyone can walk off the street and walk out with patches. It can take years to prospect and earn a place among the brotherhood. During that time, every single thing you do is judged and measured in terms of loyalty and respect—to yourself and to others—and not just by Preacher or Con, who founded the club and are the president and vice president, but by every single member. I’m proud to have earned the right to be a Dark Knight. We fight to keep our communities safe, and we don’t put up with, or turn our backs on, the mistreatment of anyone or anything. If you’d told a Dark Knight about any part of what you’d gone through when you were going through it—even being left alone by your mother—it would have been taken care of. You would have been taken care of. That’s the type of bikers we are, Chloe. That’s the type of man I am.”
Chloe was struck momentarily speechless as she processed everything he’d said. It was all making sense now. His protectiveness, his walking out the night of the storm when she’d hesitated to kiss him, his watching over her with Beckett. When she finally wrapped her head around it all, she said, “I had no idea there was so much to being a Dark Knight, or that it was that much a part of who you are. I
had heard about the club doing good things for the community, but everything you just said makes the members sound like an army of really good men.”
“They are. That’s exactly what I’m saying. And that’s not to say we’re special or anything like that. We’re just people who want to help others.”
“That makes you special, Justin. I always knew you were a good person, but I didn’t give you credit for how good. I didn’t have all those pieces to understand why you did the things you did. As I said, my past clouded my clarity.”
“Some judgments are harder to let go of than others.”
She turned so they were facing each other and sat cross-legged between his legs. “I don’t know much about your family, and that leaves room for guessing.”
“Then let’s take the guesswork out of the equation. You and I have a lot in common, Chloe. I always knew we would, but I never knew why. I just had this feeling the whole time I’ve known you that we were meant to be together. Now I understand. Your mother was more interested in men than in parenting, and my father was more interested in stealing than in being a father.”
“Rob is a thief?”
“No. Rob and Reba are my adoptive parents, and they’re two of the best people I know. They saved me from myself. My real father is in prison.”
“Okay, whoa. Way to drop an info bomb on me. I had no idea you were adopted, but that’s not important. Prison? For how long? Do you ever see him? What about your mother?”
“My mother committed suicide when I was seven.” His voice was low and tinged with sadness.
Her heart broke for him. “Oh, Justin. I’m so sorry. That must have been devastating. Do you remember her?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “I don’t know how much of what I remember is real and how much is what I want to believe she was like. I have a picture of her.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and withdrew an old cracked and frayed photograph. He looked at it, and his lips curved into a warm smile. He handed it to her and said, “Her name was Mary.”
Chloe looked at the young dark-haired woman. She was pretty, with delicate features, a slightly pointy chin, and an upturned nose. She had the same blue eyes and full lips as Justin, but her eyes brimmed with sadness. Chloe felt like she’d seen her face before, but she had a feeling it was because Justin looked so much like her. She handed him the picture and said, “She was beautiful. You look a lot like her.”
“Thanks.” He looked at the picture for a long time before finally putting it back in his wallet.
“What was she like?”
“She was sweet, timid, kind. I think she had a pretty voice. I remember her singing to me at night. I know she loved me, but she just wasn’t strong enough to deal with our lives.”
“Because your father was in prison?”
“No. Because my father knocked her around. I don’t have a lot of memories of their relationship, but the one thing I’ll never forget was hearing him tell her that if she left him, he’d kill us both. I’m sure that’s why she didn’t try to run away with me. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.”
“That’s terrible.” She scooted closer, tucking her legs under his.
“It was. It is. My father didn’t go to prison until years after she was gone. He pretty much treated me like your mother treated you. I was lucky if he remembered to buy food for me to eat.” His brow wrinkled. “You sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes. I’ve spent enough time misjudging you and going out with guys who I just ended up comparing to you. I want to know who you are, Justin—the good, the bad, what you’ve been through. All of you.”
He nodded solemnly and said, “After my mother died, I was terrified that my father would kill me since my mother had chosen to leave us, or that he’d start knocking me around now that she was gone. And I was just a kid. I missed her like crazy. She was the only person who loved me, so I bawled my eyes out a lot at first. That’s when my father got real mean.”
“He hit you?” she asked with a lump in her throat.
“Knocked me around a bit, hollered a lot. I learned to hide my emotions, to keep my mouth shut and stay out of his way. I found that picture of my mother in a drawer one night when he was out, and I swear, it made me so happy, you’d think I’d found a million bucks.” He sounded choked up, and his jaw clenched as he looked down the beach, out at the water, anywhere but into Chloe’s eyes.
Her stomach hurt watching him struggle. She touched his arm, bringing his eyes back to hers, and said, “We don’t have to talk about this if it’s too hard.”
He cleared his throat and stretched his neck to either side the way guys did in movies before they got in fights. “It’s okay,” he said in a stronger voice. “I hid the picture under my mattress, and every night when I was sure my old man wouldn’t come back into my room, I’d take it out and look at it, wishing she’d taken me with her.”
“Justin” came out strangled. Tears burned Chloe’s eyes as she went up on her knees and wrapped her arms around him. “Thank God she didn’t,” she said against his neck.
His arms circled her. They held each other for a long time, the silence broken by the sounds of the waves rolling up the shore. Even after he loosened his hold on her, Chloe hugged him tighter, holding him for the loss of his mother and for the little boy he’d once been, who must have felt so alone. And then she continued embracing him for the friend—the man—she’d wrongly kept her distance from.
When she finally sat back on her knees, eyes damp for all Justin had gone through, she took his face between her hands and gazed into his eyes, feeling guilty for having read the haunting in them as something that should scare her, rather than realizing it was from wounds that had cut him so deep, he might never heal.
“Are you rethinking getting to know me? Are there alarms going off in your head?” he asked.
“No, and it makes me sad that you’d think that. I know how unfair life can be. I’m thinking about how sorry I am for letting my past cloud my vision of you, how lucky I am that you stuck around, and how much you must have missed your mother. I can’t…” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “You were so little.” She leaned forward, hugging him again.
“It was a long time ago, darlin’,” he said against her cheek.
She felt him sit up straighter, his back and chest expanding, becoming stronger, as if he realized he’d shown his tender underbelly and was intent on reclaiming his alpha status. Didn’t he know that the best and strongest men had soft underbellies? She hadn’t met many of them, but her closest friends’ significant others all had them.
She sat back on the sand between his legs, and he put his arms around her waist, pulling her closer. He flashed that crooked smile that sometimes looked boyish and charming and other times got her so hot she feared she’d melt into a puddle. Tonight that lopsided grin tugged at her heartstrings.
“I’m sorry for getting so emotional.”
“Don’t be. It’s a hard subject. What else would you like to know?”
“God, I don’t know. Part of me doesn’t want to know more, because it makes me so sad, but a bigger part wants to know all of your truths.”
“Ask me, sweetheart. Let’s do this right.”
She sighed. “Okay. Did it ever get easier living with your real father?”
Justin shook his head. “Not really. He didn’t knock me around as much once I learned to shut my mouth. But then things got bad in other ways. There were times he’d take me with him in the car when he robbed convenience stores and other places. He’d tell me to get down on the floor of the car and wait for him. I didn’t know what he was doing. He made a game out of it the first couple of times, telling me to stay down and not to peek because he was getting me a surprise. When he’d get back in the car, he’d drive real fast, hootin’ and hollerin’, totally hyped up, and we’d end up in some strange place. Probably in another town. I was too little to know for sure. I’d wait all frigging night to see what my surprise was, but I knew b
etter than to ask. Eventually he’d buy me a burger or pizza.”
The anger and disgust in Justin’s voice made it even harder to hear.
“During another robbery, he told me if anyone saw me, they’d take me away from him and put him in jail. I knew my life wasn’t great, but he was all I had. By the time I was nine or ten, I knew what he was doing. But he’d brainwashed me to believe the world was a shitty place, cops were bad, and we were due the money and other things he stole. I was a badass little prick by then, getting in fights, skipping school. I had no idea what friends were, and I was so broken, I didn’t want to know. I had just turned eleven when he finally got arrested. I wasn’t with him that night. He said he’d hooked up with some other guys and they were pulling a big job. That we’d be rich. I remember sitting at home in a crappy little apartment making plans, thinking of all the things we’d do when we were living like kings.” He lowered his gaze and said, “He killed an innocent man that night. Shot him over a few hundred bucks. That was when I went into foster care.”
“Did you know he’d killed a man?”
He nodded, his jaw tight, eyes still on the sand. “Eventually. The police and social services showed up at the apartment and said he’d been arrested and I had to go with them. Sometime after that I was told what he’d done.”
“Oh God, Justin. Did they let you see him? That’s so young to be taken away. Even though things were horrible with him, it must have been so hard for you.”
“I was too busy trying to figure out how to live in a new place with people I didn’t know or understand to think about him much. My world had been fucked up for so long, I didn’t know what normal was. I didn’t trust people who tried to be nice. I was awful to my foster families and went through two homes before I ended up with Rob and Reba.” He lifted grateful eyes to her and said, “They took me in, and from day one they treated me like I was their kid, while I did everything I could to get the hell away from them. I ran away a hundred times, trying to outrun the hate I had for my life, my father, myself. I felt like it was me against the world, like it always had been. But there was no escape. The Wickeds came after me every damn time I ran—so did the Dark Knights. Blaine was always there with Rob, which shocked the hell out of me because Blaine and I had knock-down, drag-out fights on a near-daily basis. I didn’t trust him, and he sure as hell didn’t trust me.”
A Little Bit Wicked (The Wickeds Page 11