ONE MORE RIDE

by Sophia Gray

  I met his eyes, but somehow, I couldn’t make myself answer.

  “Answer me,” Isaac demanded. His voice was harsh, like a growl. A ripple of adrenaline went through my body. “Tell me why,” he growled again. “Tell me why you did this!”

  “I didn’t do anything!” I protested. “I…” I was going to lie again, but then I looked in Isaac’s eyes and for the first time saw the depth of pain there. I realized just how badly I’d hurt him. Suddenly, I knew I couldn’t lie any longer. “I had to,” I said softly. “I had to lie.” Tears filled my eyes and I turned my face towards the ceiling, willing them to disappear. “I had to lie, Isaac. Something…” My voice cracked and broke. “Something horrible happened, and I had to get away from you. I had to get away from everything, I had to change.”

  Isaac dropped to his knees and grabbed one of my hands, pressing it against his chest. My body was so filled with powerful emotion that I thought I’d break as he squeezed my fingers with his own. Closing my eyes, I tried to pull my hand free but Isaac held me firm.

  “You need to tell me exactly what happened,” Isaac said in a low voice. He squeezed my fingers again and I felt my body begin to shake. I could feel Isaac’s heart thudding through his chest and the sensation was strangely more intimate than anything we’d shared together: the sex, the handholding, everything.

  I stared straight at him, finally managing to yank my hand back and rest it in my lap with my other hand. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” I said softly. “I really don’t, and you know that.”

  Isaac shook his head sadly. "I know," he said in a forlorn voice. "But you made me hurt for so long." He screwed up his eyes. For a moment, I thought he was going to say my old name, the name he'd known me as before. But instead, he let out a long sigh. "Go," he said suddenly. "If you're not going to tell me why you left, just go. I never want to see you again," he added. "So don't fucking come around here no more."

  I stood up and walked over to the other side of the room where my clothes lay in a discarded heap. Isaac stared straight ahead, not even noticing when I bent over and reached down to pick up my shirt. My heart was clanging like an alarm bell as I dressed slowly and carefully. Isaac was silent, not even the sound of hard breathing came from him.

  “I didn’t want it to be like this,” I said finally as I stood in the doorway. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Isaac looked at me. His face was a mask of pain, his features distorted. “You did,” he said in a low voice. “You hurt me more than I ever could have imagined.”

  Another tear came to my eye and I reached up to wipe it away. “Isaac,” I said softly. I stepped forward and something inside of me twisted and broke. You can’t lie anymore, I told myself grimly. You have to tell him the truth. Even if that means causing him more pain. You have to tell him.

  “What?” Isaac was staring at me, his eyes dull. “What the fuck do you want? You’re leaving, right? So you don’t get to ask questions,” he added in a nasty voice. “You don’t get to talk to me like that anymore.”

  I shook my head and walked forward. My legs felt like lead but somehow I got all the way to the bed and sat down gingerly on the end. “No,” I said softly. “I’ll tell you the truth.”

  Isaac looked at me. His face didn't change, but after a moment, he gave a brief nod. "I'm waiting," he growled. "...I've been waiting for years.”

  “I know,” I said heavily. “And I’m sorry.” Isaac glared at me. “I never wanted to hurt you, Isaac,” I said, feeling weak. “I’m so sorry this had to happen.”

  “Unless you can do better than that, you need to go,” he said gruffly. “I don’t have the fucking time to sit around and listen to your empty apologies, Candace.”

  The name stung like a brand. I winced, looking down at my feet. They were nervously tapping on the floor, a frantic rhythm that matched the rapid beating of my heart. “I had to get away from you because someone killed my parents,” I said finally. It was the first time I’d ever spoken the words out loud and one of the most painful sentences that I’d ever managed to say. “Someone killed them, Isaac.” I swallowed hard, the pain from years ago coming back to me like a knife twisting in my gut. “He faked it, the man who did it, and he made it look like a car crash. I had to identify their bodies,” I added, my voice breaking. “It was right around my nineteenth birthday, when we got engaged.”

  Isaac nodded. “I remember all too well when it happened,” he said in a cruel, cold voice. “Keep going.”

  I swallowed hard and shifted my weight on the soft mattress. "Well, the person who killed my family got in touch with me," I said. "That night, after you'd fallen asleep. I got up and went downstairs to get a drink of water and the phone rang." My voice quivered and shook. "It was a man, saying that if I didn't do exactly as he said, he'd come and murder everyone I cared about, making it look like an accident."

  Isaac’s face twisted into a scowl. “And you expect me to believe that?” He laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I swallowed hard. “It’s the truth!” I protested hotly. “He had a list of names, Isaac. Full names, like last names, too. Yours was on there! So were my other family members, my cousins, my aunts. Everyone I loved,” I said softly. “Everyone that I cared for. He said he’d kill them all.”

  Isaac blinked. “Why?” he asked. His voice was softer than it had been before, but his face was still contorted with grief and loss. It was like talking to a man who had just lost the love of his life.

  Deep down, I felt my panic and anxiety begin to go into overdrive. If Isaac couldn’t forgive me for this, if we couldn’t work together…everything will be lost. Everything will be lost and gone forever and you’ll have failed.

  “He had a vendetta against our family,” I said softly. “Isaac, please believe me!”

  Isaac stared at me, expressionless. “And then what?”

  “I couldn’t leave,” I confessed. “But I was afraid that he’d find me if I didn’t find him first.” I swallowed hard. This was my least favorite part of the story, the part that I really didn’t want to mention to Isaac. “So I had to change my name and everything else about me.” I grabbed a hank of my hair and showed it to Isaac. “I had to dye my hair, obviously. And I had to completely disappear from everything that I’d been involved in.”

  Isaac’s green eyes glowed dully with pain. “And you’re telling me that you knew someone wanted to hurt me, and you didn’t warn me?”

  Desperation twisted inside of me sharply. “Because I was afraid that I’d lead him right to you,” I said, my voice rising to a high, anxious pitch. “I was afraid that he’d follow me and kill you as soon as I’d gone! Isaac, I was so fucking scared! I did it to protect you,” I said softly. “Don’t you understand that?”

  Isaac’s jaw twitched. “I don’t see it that way,” he said shortly. There was a long pause. “And then what happened?”

  I swallowed hard. “Well, I formed my group,” I said softly. “That’s where the Succubi came from. I formed an MC to get a strong group of women around me, and take revenge against the asshole who killed my parents.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  I nodded. “I did. I got to him before he could hurt anyone else.”

  Isaac’s eyes flashed pain and anger and I wondered why, until he said, “And you couldn’t have come back for me? After you killed him, you couldn’t have reached out and contacted me? Jesus fucking Christ, I thought you were dead!”

  My heart sank. This wasn’t going the way I’d wanted it to go. Not at all.

  Chapter Twenty

  Isaac stayed at the foot of the bed, glaring down at his feet. When he finally looked up at me, I could tell that he was still as angry as ever.

  “So you formed your MC,” he said slowly. “And you found killers for members. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  I nodded. “I had to do a lot of research,” I said. “Especially to find people like Val.” Just saying her name put a bad taste
in my mouth. Val was dangerous, and I was starting to realize that just because I was her leader I wasn’t guaranteed protection from her heinous schemes. “I had to pay a lot of money to find names like that.”

  Isaac laughed humorlessly. “You paid to find that big dyke?” He shook his head. “She’s fuckin’ trouble, Stephanie.” The name sounded unreal from him now that he knew who I really was, but I didn’t really want to ask him to call me Candace. “Stay away from her.”

  I shook my head. “She was necessary,” I argued. “And we used to be best friends.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I was actually grooming her to take over the Succubi, until recently.”

  Isaac coughed. “Why? What happened?”

  The air between us had settled a little bit, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

  “It’s none of your business,” I said quietly.

  Isaac frowned. “What was that?”

  I spread my legs out on the bed and rested my elbows on my knees. I was hyper aware of being close to Isaac again—I could still catch the faint whiff of my musk on his face whenever he talked. “Nothing,” I mumbled. “Look, Isaac, about the past—”

  Isaac held up his hand. His face was deadly serious, and the anxiety came crawling back down my spine. I realized that he was still angry with me, but that he’d somehow managed to turn it inside. This was a trick Isaac used to pull all the time back in the old days. He wasn’t ever comfortable being emotional so he always made himself bottle everything up and keep it inside. But it rarely worked, and I knew that once he’d started, he’d keep things in until he couldn’t bear to bottle it up any longer. And when Isaac exploded, I knew it would happen fast and hard. Isaac had a hell of a temper, and I could only imagine that leading an MC for years had made it sharper than ever before.

  “I don’t wanna talk about that right now,” Isaac said slowly. He stared at me, as if beginning to realize something. Suddenly, I got a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Isaac,” I said slowly. “You remember I told you about Jessica’s assault? How it happened the night of the party we threw to celebrate our independence?”

  Isaac nodded. He frowned at me. “Yeah. So what?”

  I bit my lip and swallowed. “So,” I said slowly. “Some of your guys came to the party. Nick and TJ and Kyle, they were all there.”

  “Yeah,” Isaac said. He ran a hand through his hair and stared at me. “So what? You fucking told me this already, Stephanie,” he added, his voice grating with irritation. “There’s nothing else to discuss. I said I was sorry, I don’t fucking own my guys. I can’t tell them where or where not to go.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “It isn’t about that. This is different, I think it’s important.” My heart began to thud against my chest and I felt my torso tensing up with anxiety. Raking a shaky hand through my hair, I looked at the ceiling. “Well, Jessica didn’t see her attacker,” I said. “The room was dark, she only said that it was definitely a man.”

  “Men rape women all the time,” Isaac said. He sneered. “It’s fucking disgusting, but it’s a fact of life.”

  “No,” I said forcefully, holding up my hand. “It’s not that. It’s…it's what Val told me afterward. She told me that she saw a guy sneaking out of the clubhouse, wearing a Jungle’s Thorns jacket. She told me it was one of your guys."

  Isaac looked at me with a stunned expression on his chiseled face. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “That’s fucking impossible. One of my guys wouldn’t do that.”

  I felt sick inside as Isaac’s face turned from red to white to almost green. I felt the same way, like I was going to puke everywhere. Something clicked in my brain and I realized that not for the first time, I’d gotten everything wrong. Still, I wasn’t ready to let Isaac off the hook.

  “Can you prove it?” I asked finally. “Can you prove that your guys weren’t involved?”

  Isaac thought for a second. He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I can prove it because they all came back to the clubhouse,” he added. He wrinkled his forehead. “Except for Kyle,” Isaac added. “He must have stayed out somewhere that night.”

  My heart sank. If he didn’t have an alibi for every single one of his guys, I didn’t think we’d be able to prove anything.

  “Wait,” I said slowly. “Do you think he stayed with Alexa? I mean, is there a chance? Do you know if they were dating a few weeks ago?”

  Isaac nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense,” he said. “Can you call her and ask her?”

  With shaking fingers, I pulled out my phone and dialed Alexa’s number. Working with Isaac felt better than I’d expected it to, almost like old times again. Even though my anxiety was rising by the minute, I didn’t want to waste any time. Not with Val on the warpath and Kyle in the hands of the Russians.

  “Hey,” Alexa said. I frowned. There was something odd about her voice, something about panicked. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Just wondering about something. The night of the party, did Kyle stay with you?”

  “What?”

  I groaned. “The night of the party, the party we had in the clubhouse a few weeks back, did Kyle stay with you? You were dating by then,” I added for emphasis. “Just tell me the truth, Alexa.”

  Alexa stuttered. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I mean, can you ask him?”

  “No,” I practically exploded. “I can’t ask him, as you know, because he’s being held by the fucking Russians! This is really important, Alexa, some innocent lives are at stake here. I need to know where he stayed.”

  “I really don’t remember,” Alexa said. “You know, I had so much to drink that I can barely remember a thing about that night.” She paused. “You do mean the night that Jessica was attacked, right?”

  Rage and irritation seared through my mind and I tried to take a deep breath and calm down as best I could. Don’t yell at her, don’t yell at her, don’t yell at her, I tried to tell myself. But then I started remembering some other things that made me even angrier. Alexa hadn’t been too drunk the night of the party; she’d told me that she was getting over a cold and she was still taking antibiotics. And when the guys had arrived, Nick and TJ had hung out and harassed Val. Kyle had disappeared. So had Alexa. They’d likely gone to a room and spent the whole night fucking. Why wouldn’t she just admit it?

  “Stephy,” Alexa said, her voice sounding nervous. “Are you still there? Did you hang up?”

  “I’m right here,” I snapped callously. “You have five fucking seconds to tell me the truth,” I said angrily. “You have five fucking seconds or I’m coming over there and beating it out of you myself. Don’t lie, Alexa. I know Val’s been manipulating you from the start and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

  Alexa let out a sound, something like a little, shocked, gasp. It was the kind of cry that someone would make when stepping into an icy pool, or when burning themselves on the stove. And in that cry, I suddenly knew everything. Alexa was lying to me. Val had been lying to me the whole fucking time, and she was playing Alexa like a cheap fiddle. Val hadn't seen a member of the Jungle’s Thorns sneaking out of the clubhouse because Kyle had never left. He hadn't even been in Jessica's room; he'd spent the whole night with Alexa. And now, Val wanted to blame the attack on him. I shook my head, feeling more bitter and upset than I had in a long time.

  “I know Val is getting you to lie,” I said slowly. “But you really need to think about what you’re doing, okay, Alexa? If you lie to me like this again and I catch you, you’re out for good. And your name is fucking mud,” I added. “Val isn’t doing this to be your friend. Val’s doing this because she wants to lead the Succubi.”

  “Val wouldn’t hurt me,” Alexa said. I was pleased to note that she sounded incredibly uncertain. “Val cares about me. She cares a lot more than you do, Steph.”

  I burst out laughing. It was a harsh, dry sound. From the bed, Isaac glanced up at me in alarm. “You’re fucking mental,
” I told Alexa. “Val is trying to blame the attack on Kyle, don’t you get that? He was the only member of Jungle’s Thorns who stayed the night, the only member who could have hurt Jessica. And she made you lie and say that you were drunk just to get you out of having to admit that he spent the night in your room! Don’t you fucking get it? Val is using your boyfriend as a scapegoat,” I said confidently. “She doesn’t give a shit about you. She just cares because you’re dating someone in the MC she wants to smear.”

  Alexa was silent for a long time. “I don’t believe you,” she said finally. “Val was the one who told me it was okay if Kyle stayed in the first place,” she argued vehemently. “And if she was trying to fuck me over, don’t you think she would have lied?”