by Monroe, Evie
He shrugged. “You said it.” He started to slip on his helmet and stopped. “I mean, Jesus. He’s your father? You couldn’t have told me that before?”
“Oh. Yeah. I always talk about my father to the men I fuck. It’s a real turn-on.”
He frowned at me. “Where do you live?”
“The Wall,” I countered.
He planted both feet on the sides of his bike and crossed his arms. “You want this bike to move, or not?”
Stubborn son-of-a-bitch. I sighed. “Fine. Twenty-two West Haven.”
He nodded, tightened his gloves on his wrists, and gripped the handlebars. “All right. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Drake,” I started. I knew that with the roar of the bike’s engine, we wouldn’t be able to carry on a conversation. And when he dropped me off, it would be the end of the line. I wanted to tell him something. Sorry. I regret the way this has to end. Thank you for the best sex of my life. I wish things could’ve been different.
But he just turned his back to me and gunned the engine. I wrapped my arms around him and he pulled out of the warehouse parking lot.
I wished I wasn’t so attracted to him. That he hadn’t just made my body sing in the best of ways last night. The Cobras had tried to intimidate me, but the sea of testosterone of a whole bunch of big, brawny men holding church had always just bored me. With Drake there, my body was on high alert, and I felt something I’d never felt before during one of those meetings.
Turned on.
Who could blame me? He was hot, perfect, smart and a sex God. And I had him. Again, and again last night. We fucked like rabbits in heat. As scared as I was about going home, a part of me was still giddy from the way he’d made me feel.
As I wrapped my arms tighter around his broad chest, I couldn’t deny the fact that I wanted to do it all over again.
If only. But it was impossible. He was a Cobra. I was a Fury. He needed to drop me off, preferably far away from where my father might see, say goodbye, have a nice life, the end.
He didn’t need directions to my place. He pulled down the street I grew up on, which was full of fifties’ style ranch-houses with lawns of scrub brush.
I crossed my fingers and held my breath as we drew closer.
My house, a mint-green piece of shit that was nearly overgrown with vegetation, looked quiet. I peeked under the carport, near the magnolia tree and in front of my mother’s old Pontiac Firebird, where my daddy usually kept his bike. It wasn’t there.
I let out a sigh of relief. Thank God. If he had been home, things could’ve been real bad.
Drake slowed across the street. “Looks like he’s not there,” I said.
“Let me turn around,” he said.
He drove off into the cul-de-sac and turned around. As he did, I caught a glimpse of my father’s bike, riding toward us.
My heart leapt into my throat.
I pounded on Drake’s back to get him to pull over. I thanked the lucky stars above that our street was always choked with cars. Drake pulled behind a truck and cut his engine as my daddy sailed up into the driveway, put his boots on the ground, and turned off the engine. He slipped off his Harley, looking around as he unstrapped and slipped off his helmet. I could almost see the question in a thought-bubble over his head: “Where’d that little slut go off to now?”
I shivered as I heard the screen door creak open and slam shut.
“Fuck,” I murmured, wondering whether my mom would be caught in the crossfire.
Stupid question. She was always caught in the crossfire.
Drake’s jaw tightened. He said, “I should make myself scarce before he sees me.”
I fought back the urge to say what was on the tip of my tongue. What I desperately wished I could say, but knew I wouldn’t, because I couldn’t leave my mother. Take me with you. “Okay.”
I slipped off the back of the bike and walked to the sidewalk, not looking at Drake. Looking back would be too hard. Like looking at a normal life and all the things I couldn’t have.
As I walked toward the house, Drake followed behind me on the street. I expected him to take off, but maybe he didn’t want to let Slade hear him start the engine. So he walked his bike at a safe distance behind me. Since I’d have to forget him, I willed myself not to think of it as sweet, but it felt that way. Like Drake was looking out for me. Like maybe I was more than a one-night-stand.
Suddenly I heard something crash through the open windows of my house. My body jolted upright and I stood stick straight, shuddering.
It was starting again…
I jumped and heard the most frightening sound on earth . . . my father’s voice, raised in anger. “You fucking bitch!” he thundered, and I shook with every syllable. “You just let her go?”
I ran a few steps, cutting across the lawn, stopping in my tracks and my father was standing there, framed by the living room window, holding his fist in the air. He brought it down, and the slap of skin against skin sounded out. My mother let out a heart-wrenching, strangled cry.
My father leaned over my mother and barked out, “I’m going to kill that bitch when I get my hands on her!”
I let out a whimper and covered my face in my hands.
Before I knew it, there were hands around my waist, and I was being pulled away. I stumbled back a few steps before I realized Drake was behind me, tugging me toward his motorcycle.
I shook my head. “I can’t,” I cried out. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You stay here and in the mood he’s in, he’ll fucking kill you,” he growled out, wrapping both arms around me and yanking me over to his motorcycle. I tried to break free, but he stood in front of me and lifted me up into his arms.
“Cait,” he said, depositing me on the back of his bike. “I’m not leaving here without you. So sit still and let’s go.”
Tears started falling down my face as he gunned the engine and drove me away from my poor, poor mother, who was getting another ass beating.
All because of me.
Chapter Thirteen
Drake
“Let me go! You have to turn around and let me go!” she shrieked at me, the whole way back to my apartment.
I drove faster, drowning the sound out.
No fucking way was I going to let her go into that house, with Slade the Asshole on a rampage.
“You think he saw me?” I asked as we sped away, knowing that would be the icing on the cake. Slade finding out his daughter was with a Cobra. Perfect.
But Cait didn’t answer. She was too busy pounding on my fucking back and telling me to let her go.
That was the first time I’d ever seen Slade, the mysterious dude that he was. I was surprised that he wasn’t seven feet tall with arms the size of tree trunks. I’d heard the stories about people he’d supposedly messed with. The man who’d touched his property and was now drinking all his meals through a straw. The guy he’d practically lobotomized with the pool stick. There were dozens of stories about what an insane son of a bitch he was. All of them had made him seem superhuman.
But the guy I saw looked like nothing but a has-been. Sure, he was jacked, but his face was grizzled with age and white whiskers. He was balding on top with a long, graying ponytail that went halfway down his back. His arms might’ve been solid muscle, but he had the telltale beer belly from just a few too many long nights at the watering hole. He didn’t impress me.
It sure didn’t impress me to see him raise his hand to the woman screaming in the house. He had to be a real fucking asshole to hit a woman. What did that prove, beating up on someone weaker than he was? And if he’d rearranged a man’s internal organs with a pool stick, there was no telling what he could do to a woman, even if that woman was his own daughter.
So the second I saw him in the front window, face red and hands raised in fury, there was no fucking way I was going to just drive off without her.
“Shut up,” I muttered to her when I stopped at a light. She was still trying t
o get off the bike, but I had my hand clamped around her wrist, my body pushed back on the seat to pin her on it. Adrenaline pumping through me.
Sure, I’d gotten Cait out. But that other woman was still there. I should’ve gone in the house. Confronted him. I should have killed that mother fucker.
We finally pulled up at my apartment, and I cut the engine. “I’m not staying here,” she huffed. “I have to get back.”
I shook my head. “Come upstairs first.”
As she scowled at me, I saw the tracks of dried tears on her face. “Fine. The Wall is around here, right? I’ll just walk over there and get my car.”
She started to march off, but I grabbed her wrist. “Don’t.”
“Why? You don’t understand. I have to help her.”
“I do understand,” I muttered. It was mid-day Sunday, and the parking lot outside my apartment was full. We were about to create a scene, something I didn’t want. I came up close to her ear to mutter something about calming down. I saw the anger in her eyes a second too late.
She reared up her knee with force and caught me square in the balls.
I doubled over, seeing fireworks as I tried to catch my breath. She started to run away but by then, I’d had enough.
“You really fucking think I’m the enemy here, don’t you?” I went for her middle, grabbing her around the backs of the legs so she toppled over my shoulder. She was about as heavy as a sack of potatoes. She pounded on my back with her fists as I carried her upstairs, screaming and carrying on the whole way. When I got her inside, I threw her on the couch for the second time that day.
“Well, thanks, baby. Now all my neighbors think I’m a fucking serial killer,” I growled, trying to ignore the fact that her skirt was now up around her hips, showing her pussy. Didn’t she fucking wear underwear? Right. I tore them off of her last night. Shit. “The knee to the balls was especially fun.”
She sat up, pulling her skirt down, and crossed her arms. “Serves you right! Carrying me up here like a fucking caveman! Why didn’t you just drag me by my hair?”
“Maybe next time. If you don’t tell me what the fuck’s going on. What was that all about, with Slade? Is he like that all the time to you?”
She stared at me, breathing hard, her eyes full of rage.
I paced in front of her. She started to move for the door but then I leaned over her, caging her on the sofa between my arms. Seeing her bare like that had made my cock pulse to life. Now, I wanted to kiss that defiant little snarl off her face.
“Who was that, in there? Was that your mom?” When she didn’t answer again, I was ready to punch a fist through the wall. Instead, I counted to ten, taking deep breaths. Then I sat down on the corner of the coffee table and looked into her eyes. “I’m trying to help you.”
“You can’t help me,” she snapped. “No one can. Especially you. You’re a Cobra.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I might be a Cobra. And I might be your father’s enemy. But I’m not your enemy, Cait.”
Her eyes softened. She let out a ragged breath. “Your friend seems to think that you should be.”
“Fuck what Jet says. I’m not saying I can, but I might be able to help you,” I said gently, touching her bare knee. Her skirt was riding up, so I could see the bruises on her thighs. They sure as hell weren’t nothing. “And to me that looks like your best shot right now.”
She swallowed hard. “It’s been like this too long. I can’t believe that anyone can help me.”
“Well, like I said, maybe I can’t,” I told her. “But I sure as hell can’t do shit until you tell me what’s going on. You’ve got to trust me and tell me what’s happening.”
She threw her head back against the sofa, and she stared up at the ceiling. Like she was looking for angels to help her or saying a prayer.
Then she nodded. “Okay. I will.”
Chapter Fourteen
Caitlyn
Drake went to the kitchen to make us coffee. As he did, I thought of the time when I was younger, and my father had taken me and my mom to Disneyland. We’d been so happy. In the old days, he hadn’t even been part of Hell’s Fury. He worked as a welder in the machine shop, made a good living, and took care of his girls. That was what he used to call us, his girls. We were the most important things in his life. The reason he got out of bed in the morning.
It wasn’t until I was seven or eight that he started getting entangled with the Fury. As he got more and more involved, he became more and more removed from us. My mom said it had to be drugs and drug addicts have a disease and we couldn’t fault someone for being sick.
I cringed at the thought of the first time I’d seen him striking my mother. I was nine. I remembered that day like it was yesterday.
We’d been making BLTs for dinner in the kitchen, wearing our pajamas and ready for movie night, which we always had on Fridays. He’d come in with this weird look in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong. I smelled the stench of sweat and alcohol. I knew it was wrong, that he was wrong. He took one look at the bacon, said it wasn’t crispy enough, and when she told him he’d just have to make do, he smacked her across the face so hard she fell down.
I remembered that thin line of red blood that ran from her nose, down over her pink silky robe, even as she tried to stop me from crying.
After that, my mother was always careful not to tell my father to make do. No, if he wanted something one way, she was damned sure to make it that way. She did her best, trying to anticipate exactly what might set him off. I thought she spent her days trying to be a mind reader, trying to arrange everything in the house perfectly so he wouldn’t find fault.
Didn’t ever work.
There were many more nights, after that BLT night, where he came home with buggy eyes and smelling like alcohol. More than I could count. Sometimes he’d be overly sweet during those times, and I thought I had my regular dad back. Other times, he’d just be nasty. And it only got worse, until he didn’t even need to be drunk or high to be full of rage.
It was kind of like a snowball. Small at first, but once it got rolling, it gathered up strength and speed until nothing could stop it. He found more and more fault with everything as the years went on. Nothing was safe.
But that one trip to Disneyland? I had a picture on my dresser at home of the three of us, with Mickey and Minnie in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. My daddy was holding a pig-tailed me and I was holding a Mickey balloon and leaning into him, cheek to cheek. My mother was so beautiful, with long glistening red hair and a smile on her face like she was standing next to the loves of her life. I loved my mother’s smile, even though it’d been all but erased over the years.
In that picture, we all looked so happy. So normal. So much like an ordinary family.
It’d been so long since I’d had normal, I didn’t even think I’d know what it was if it hit me in the face.
Drake sat down across from me, and for the hundredth time in the eighteen hours I’d known him, I was struck by how sexy he was. How masculine and impossibly handsome, making my insides flutter with an intensity that almost made everything else fall away. Packed with muscle and larger than life, I could almost believe he’d be a match for my father, that one super-heroic figure who could stand up to Slade and not back down when the going got tough, like every other man out there.
And the way he stared at me, his amber eyes holding me trapped through those heavy dark lashes, made me wish he’d just corner me, lift me into his arms, and take me to his bed. Fuck talking.
But then he tilted his head, eyebrows lifting up to his hairline in question, and I knew he was waiting for something else.
I wrapped my fingers around the warm mug of coffee. “I don’t even know where to start. You see him as a monster, right? Someone who has no good qualities. Who the world would be better off without.”
Almost as if reading my mind, he said, “But he’s your dad.”
I nodded, and the tears really started to flow. “Yes. Yes,”
I murmured, and right then I was there as a child, in my father’s arms, on the Dumbo ride, feeling safe and loved and treasured. I just wanted to feel that again. It’d been so long.
He handed me a tissue, and I wiped at my eyes. “He wasn’t always like this. He took care of me and my mom when I was little. He was actually a good dad. Loved my mother and treated her like gold. I know you can’t believe it, but it’s true. And then he started getting more and more involved with the motorcycle club, rising in the ranks, and I saw him less and less. We knew he was an important guy, so we let him do what he needed to do.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. “I think being in the Fury stressed him out. It took away what humanity he had, Drake. He started coming home and finding fault with my mom. Nothing she did was good enough and she started walking on eggshells around him. I’d see him hit her, once or twice, not too often, usually just when he’d come home drunk or high after a really hard day. He drank a lot. Then he started using as well and Mom knew to stay out of his way, but every once in a while, he just went looking for it. So he’d hit her, and things would get ugly for a while, and then it’d blow over, and my mother would come to me with the same old excuses. ‘He’s a good man. He just has a lot of stress. He takes good care of us. We should be thankful.’”
I sighed. “But it wasn’t until I was twelve or thirteen that I realized that she did everything she could to shield me from the brunt of what he was doing. You know, thick, caked on make-up, wearing baggy clothes to hide the bruises, staying in bed late sometimes with a ‘headache’ he’d given her with his fists. I started noticing more and more. We were always losing furnishings around the house. My mother had this antique porcelain doll, and one day it was just gone, or I’d go outside to find the coffee table, broken to pieces, out on the curb for the trash collectors. No explanation. But as I grew up, I knew.”
A headache was beginning to slice through my skull. I vised the bridge of my nose between my fingers and leaned my elbow on the table, bowing my head so I couldn’t look into his eyes. His eyes, which I knew were on me. I could feel their sheer intensity. I took in a deep breath and continued.