by Nikki Groom
“I told you to put me down,” she huffs in defense of sinking her teeth into me. A feeble apology and totally fucking useless to me now.
I narrow my eyes at her, wishing like hell I’d left her to drive away earlier this evening. But there’s something about her, the way she moves, the way she carries herself, the way she’s so fiercely passionate about what she’s doing and the justification for killing Donny.
But it doesn’t take a wise man to see that she’s trouble.
The guys are quiet, watching me, watching her, waiting for one of us to make our move, but I’m not fuelling this fire any longer. I silently turn and walk away.
“Wait,” I hear her call out behind me. “Ramsey!”
Hearing her call my name like that, with a sense of urgency touched with desperation, makes me want to turn around, and for a second my gait slows. Then I shake my head and continue until I get to the door of my room.
I don’t need this. Any of it.
She comes hurtling down the corridor after me, but I ignore her and enter my room, slamming the door behind me and locking it. I lean against the frame, dropping my head back and letting out a deep breath. It took guts for her to follow me down here like that. Most women would have run when I told them to. But she’s not like most women, and that’s been the problem all night long.
What a fuck up.
I drop a text to Ruck telling him to take the girl home, or anywhere. I don’t care where the fuck he dumps her, as long as she’s not here. Silly bitch asks too many questions for me to get information from her, and who am I kidding anyway, did I really need to know why she was there? Or was I sold on the way she carried herself. The confidence she oozed when she shot Donny in the head. I'd be lying if I said it didn't turn me on.
After lying on my bed, still able to smell her perfume on my pillow, and staring at the ceiling like a spaced-out psych patient for almost two hours, I take a shower. I try to calm my mind, to quiet my racing thoughts and all the shit going on in my brain, but to no avail.
There’s so much happening around here at the moment. The guys know there’s shit brewing, you don’t have to be a fucking genius to see that, but I’ve not told them the whole story yet. I know it’s going to have to come out sooner rather than later, but I want to get everything straight in my head before I shoot from the hip. Then there’s Ruck. There’s something going on with him. I’ve asked him what's up. I've watched the way he retreats into his head when life is getting too much for him—which is getting more and more often lately, and I know he’s not right. I know, but he insists everything is okay. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be happy with a normal life, nine-to-five day job, dutiful wife, a couple of screaming kids, a little house outside the city, and a vacation in the Keys every summer. Then I laugh. Normal isn’t on the radar for me. Never has been. Give me my bike, my brothers, and whiskey, and I’m a happy man. When there isn’t a raven-haired bitch fucking it up, that is.
As I come out of the bathroom, there’s a hard knock at my door, and I contemplate ignoring it. Tonight is one of those nights where I want to be left alone—just me and a bottle of Jack.
“Bro, you there?” Ruck’s voice comes through the door, and I swing it open, making him jump back.
“Did you take her home?” I snap.
“Yep.” He stands there with his hands in his pockets. “She got me to drop her at some random place though.”
“And …”
“And what? You don’t even bother to invite me in, but you want me to give you all the information? You’re a real fucking asshole sometimes, Ram, you know that?” He turns to walk away, but I grab him by the shoulder.
“For fuck’s sake. Do you need to be invited in? You’re acting like a sulky little bitch, Ruck.” I pull him backward, and he turns with a huff and follows me inside. “Sit down,” I order. I open my cabinet and pull out two glasses before pouring large measures of Bourbon without waiting for a reply. “Where did you take the girl?” I hand him a glass.
“She had me drop her off out near Arrow Creek. I turned around in the road and drove back a little way, then Tex followed her for a while on foot. She walked for a couple of miles to a gated house up in the hills.”
“A couple of miles? Stubborn bitch,” I mutter. I knock back the bourbon, and despite trying to convince myself that I didn’t need to know more about her, I’m pleased to at least know of a contact point for her. Now I just need to find out if that’s where she lives and who she’s there with. I can’t see her living up there in one of those big houses on her own. I mean, she’s young, how could that work for her? “I’ll drive out with Tex tomorrow and check it out. She didn’t notice him on her tail?”
Ruck rolls his eyes at me and huffs, annoyed that he even has to answer that. “No, she didn't notice him.”
“Good. She say much on the ride?” I stand and drop my towel before tugging on a clean pair of black jeans and slipping my feet into my boots.
“Jeez, bro, you think I need to see your hairy ass every time I come in this room?” Ruck, screws up his face and shakes his head in disgust.
“Well,” I continue, ignoring his comments. “Did she say much?”
“Only that you’re a douchewank,” he grumbles and drains his glass. “I’m inclined to agree with her.”
“Just what is your problem?” I stand in front of him, hands on my hips and kick his boot to get his attention. He looks at me as if I’m being unreasonable, but just lately he’s been a fucking nightmare to be around, snappy, irritable, and always spoiling for a fight. “You still pining over that chick that came around the other week? Carter King’s daughter? Because, bro, I’d tap that too, but she’s not worth—”
Ruck jumps to his feet as quick as a cat, taking me by surprise and grabs me around the throat, squeezing the breath out of me. “Don’t you even fucking dare. Don’t think about her like that. Don’t think about her at all. You don’t get to talk about her, okay?” he yells in my face, a feral look in his eyes. I try to speak—to reason with him, but he has such a tight grip on my airway, I can barely choke out a breath. He’s always had a temper. Always got himself into scrapes and fights as a kid, hence his nickname, Ruck. But something has been slowly changing with him, and since the drive-by shooting a couple of weeks ago, he’s slipped away. It’s like he can’t control it, or that he doesn’t even care anymore. I send my clenched fist flying into the inside of his elbow, making him release his grip on my neck as his arm drops back.
“What’s your fucking problem, Ruck?” I shove hard at his chest, forcing him to take a step back to maintain his balance. “Come on, spit it out …” I keep a fighting stance, ready for him to rush me again. Conflict fires up in his eyes, a war between what he wants to say and what he knows he should do. “Now’s your chance, tell me what the fuck is eating you, or grow the fuck up and get over it. What’s it to be?”
The hard look in his eyes softens, and he drops his chin to his chest with a loud exhale. “Ruck,” I say softly, taking a step closer to him. I place my hand on his shoulder, something I’ve done many times before, but this feels different. This time I’m not getting through. Whatever is going on with him is too deep for me to touch. He looks up at me sadly, and for the first time in our lives, I see such a hollow of despair that I don’t know how I can help him. He scrubs a hand over his chin, heaving out a sigh like it’s held down with the weight of the world.
“I can’t do this, Ramsey,” he says quietly as he pushes my hand from his shoulder and starts to leave.
“Ruck,” I call out after him.
“I can’t do this,’ he yells back, slamming the door behind him.
Despite his tough exterior, Ruck is the most sensitive, caring guy you’ll ever meet—if you’re on the right side of him. If you happen to be on the wrong side of him, he won’t think twice about putting a bullet in your head and spitting on your dead body.
Ever since I can remember, it’s been him and me against the world. With just eigh
teen months difference in age, we were always close. And with a drunken asshole for a father and a junkie whore mother, we turned to each other from an early age and stuck together like glue.
For my sixteenth birthday, my parents gave me a whore. I knew what sex was all about long before then. It was such common occurrence in our house with men coming and going at all hours of the day and night, some staying for hours, some just a few minutes. But hearing my mother’s headboard banging against the wall when I was trying to do homework or trying to sleep, put me off wanting to have sex for the first time, so much so, my father beat me to a pulp because he thought I was gay. That beating kept me off school for two weeks.
Everything changed after my birthday—after the whore. She was brash and dirty, like my mother. She was high, too, her eyes as wide as saucers, with a look on her face that was wild and unhinged. I sat on the edge of my bed and watched as she knelt between my legs, wearing nothing but a thong and a pair of patent black stilettos, and she sucked my cock as if her life depended on it. I didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t want it, even though I know most teenage boys would have killed to have a whore take their cock like a seasoned pro. But for me, it solidified everything I already knew but didn’t want to admit. My parents weren’t parents at all. They were selfish sons of bitches, and no one mattered to them as much as they mattered to themselves. That whore took my virginity in our dingy bedroom as my brother buried his head under the covers on the other side of the room so he didn’t have to watch. I could hear him counting out loud to drown out the fake cries from the whore bouncing up and down on my semi hard cock. I had taught him that coping mechanism from a young age when he couldn’t sleep due to the excessive sex noises in the house, and I wondered if it was still ingrained in him when things got loud and volatile here at the clubhouse. When it got too bad at home, I would curl up with him, and we would count together. But I couldn’t do it for him that one time, the time it mattered the most. And it meant that when it came down to the wire, he really was on his own, and I’ve never felt so helpless. The minute she left, Ruck sat up from under his covers and gave me a solemn look. One that spoke of resigned despair and fear that it would be his turn next. In that second, I knew that we had to leave. I didn’t know where we would go, how we would survive, or where we would end up, but I knew that if we stayed, it would drag us both down. My parents might not have cared about what happened to us. But I cared. I cared what happened to my brother, and I wasn’t going to let them ruin his life any more than they already had. We packed what few belongings we had in our school rucksacks and left that night as soon as the house was quiet. We crept past my mother’s bedroom door and tiptoed past my father who was blind drunk, and snoring loudly on the couch, and we never looked back.
Chapter 5
The house is quiet when I get back from that long-assed walk. It never seemed that far in the car, and getting them to drop me off to walk to the house seemed like a good idea at the time so that they didn’t know how to find me. As if I needed a two-mile hike after everything that's happened this evening, and in fucking heeled boots, too.
Fuckers.
I kick off my boots in the entryway and grab a bottle of water from the kitchen before heading up to my room. My tired eyes struggle to focus with nothing but the low light from the stairway lighting my path, and my feet feel like they’re weighted down with concrete blocks.
“Where have you been?” Vaughn’s low voice breaks through the silence as I tiptoe past his study.
I wince as I push the door open fully to find him at his desk. “Hi,” my voice cracks as I wait for him to look up from the papers he's studying. “Sorry, were you waiting up for me?”
He takes off his dark-rimmed glasses, folds the arms inward, and unhurriedly places them on the desk. He then leans back in his chair, narrowing his eyes at me. “Where have you been?” His voice is curious but tinged with a coolness I’ve been seeing more of lately. His job is stressful. He worries about work, he worries about me, and although I try to not give him anything to concern himself with, I’m fighting to be independent, and I’m beginning to think that’s hard for him after giving up so much for me over the years.
“Nowhere really, just into town.” I shrug nonchalantly, hoping it’s casual enough to appease him. Before we moved here last year from Santa Cruz, he never seemed to mind what time I came home. Maybe that was because I never really went anywhere, and if I did, I was back at a reasonable time and not in the middle of the night like I am tonight.
He places his hands on the desk and stands slowly. Something about his unhurried, deliberate actions makes me shudder, and I swallow loudly. He places careful, calculated footsteps on the deep pile carpet, coming around his desk that's littered with papers and across his study to stand in front of me. I lower my gaze, uneasy at his silence and calm exterior, my nerves from everything that’s happened tonight playing tricks on me, and still feeling that I’m in fight or flight mode. He places his index finger under my chin, pushing into my skin just a touch harder than is comfortable, sweeping his gaze over the bruising and road rash on my face before meeting my eyes.
“What has happened to you and where have you been?” He doesn’t raise his voice; he doesn’t have to. The tone is enough to make my skin prickle with nervousness.
This is ridiculous.
Just a few hours ago I killed a man, unforgivingly, brutally by most standards, and I didn’t feel a drop of remorse when I did it. I still don’t. The bastard scum deserved far worse. But now, here, under Vaughn’s scrutiny, a man that I care so deeply for, a man that means so much to me, I’m nervous. I open my mouth to speak, but I don’t know what to tell him. I can’t tell him the truth. I won’t tell him the truth. How could I? It’s bad enough that Ramsey saw what I did. But Vaughn, he can’t know that side of me. “I—” I start to whisper, but he interrupts.
“You look just like your mother,” he says, brushing a stray wisp of hair from my forehead and giving me a moment’s reprieve. “She was so beautiful …” His eyes soften as he remembers her.
I was just ten years old when they met. My mom was working long nightshifts in a bar to try and make ends meet. But with the cost of a sitter for both me and my baby brother, Jace, she couldn’t make enough to cover rent and everything else that two growing children needed. So she sold herself. There were men knocking on the door day and night, and strangers in the house more times than I cared to count. Gradually my mom stopped being the person I knew and trusted, and turned distant and broken. She hated herself for what she was doing, yet she had no choice but to do it to keep a roof over our head. Eventually, I’m sure she resented us as much as the life that she felt she had been forced into. Vaughn was a friend of hers for a long time. Her only friend—their relationship seemed different to all of the other men that came around, and despite his constant offers, she was too proud to accept his help. He was clever though. Instead of offering her money, which she would always refuse, he would bring groceries, take us all for family days out, and offer to babysit us on the evenings she worked to save her paying the teenage girl from three doors down to sit with us. I loved it when Vaughn was there, so it was easy for him to look after us and he seemed to enjoy it too. My brother was coming up to two years old and slept well, and Vaughn always made me a huge bowl of popcorn when Jace went to sleep, and he would let me stay up later than mom did. We’d watch cartoons until I fell asleep on the couch, then he would carry me to my bed. I felt safe when he was around, I liked him being there, and he made my mom smile too. Sometimes she’d blush when he spoke to her in hushed tones. Sometimes her eyes twinkled with so much happiness that I thought, eventually, it would all work out, and we’d be okay. I started to believe that nothing bad could touch us.
But it did.
One night, a week after my eleventh birthday, I was brutally raped by a masked intruder, his hand forced hard over my mouth as he pushed up my thin cotton nightdress and tore me open from behind. I cried out to my mom
for help, but she never came. I begged for Vaughn to come and save me but my mom hadn’t been working that night and he hadn’t come around. No one came because my mom and baby brother had been murdered while they slept. The only one to hear my screams was the man behind the pain, the man that took everything from me.
“Don’t cry, sweet girl,” Vaughn says softly bringing me out of my painful memories and back to the here and now, brushing his thumb over my cheeks to wipe away the tears making tracks down my skin. “Shh, quiet, sweet girl. I know. I miss them too.” He cradles my head against his chest, tenderly stroking my hair, and I breathe in the comforting, familiar scent of spice and cognac. He steps back and holds my shoulders gently with his big, safe hands. “Now, tell me,” he starts, his voice softer now. “What happened to your face, and where is your car?”
Oh shit. I can’t come up with anything believable on the spot, so I decide to tell him a partial truth. “I took a corner too fast and rolled it. I’m so sorry, Vaughn, I—”
“Did you go to the hospital? Is that where you’ve been all this time?” He searches my face for more injuries but thankfully, Lia had cleaned me up well, so I don’t look nearly as bad as I did just a few hours earlier.
“Y-y-yes,” I stutter and lie.
“And where is your car now?”
“It got towed to a garage. I’ll sort it out in the morning. Please don’t worry about it. I know you have lots on your mind.”
“Which one?” he asks his tone hardening again as he scrutinizes me as if he knows I’m lying. I know he will persist to try and find out.
“I can’t remember the name right now, I … I had a pretty nasty knock to my head and …” I let my shoulders drop lazily, and my head roll back on my neck. “I’m not feeling too good. Oh god, I think I’m gonna be sick,” I warn him, clamping a hand over my mouth and turning out of his grasp to run along the corridor to my bathroom. I slam the door behind me, locking it as fast as I can.