Relentless (Skulls Renegade Book 4)

by Elizabeth Knox

This is my girl.

  She may not know it, but she’s my fuckin’ girl.

  Chapter 14

  The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. -Unknown

  Bellamy

  He fucked me in a dirty closet at a rave like I was his little ragdoll…and I loved every second of it. An hour in the shower after he grabbed us a taxi and brought us back to the hotel, wasn’t enough time to cool down from everything that he did to me. I’m still hot and bothered as I towel dry the last bit of my wet hair standing in front of the bathroom mirror.

  I wipe the wet residue from the mirror and take a long look at myself. It’s at this moment that I realize I’ve felt more alive today than I have in a very long time. So much has been holding me down, making me feel suffocated. Like I constantly have to look over my shoulder. If someone had said that to me a few weeks ago, I would have denied it, but I see everything so clearly now. I’ve been holding back a little bit because of everything that’s going on in the press, afraid that one small slip up could ruin my career before it even started. Honestly, I’m surprised that it didn’t happen quite yet.

  I grab my phone from the counter and see it’s just past two in the morning. Butch and I both had a great time tonight, he brought out something in me that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. The last man that I even showed that to was Zac – and he made damn sure I’d never trust another in that way again, yet here I am, bringing out that side of me. A side that I had missed for far too long.

  It’s funny how when you realize when you’ve been caging a part of you that you don’t hate the person who made you reserved in the first place. You end up hating yourself for allowing that person to silence your spirit.

  A light rap on the door startles me. “You alright in there?” His voice is soft, low and caring – something that I’d never heard from him before.

  I put my hand on the door, turn the bronze knob and open it. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just wanted a nice…hot shower.” I fumble over my last few words, which causes me to laugh. From the corner of my eye, I see a small smirk dragging across his face.

  “You know what time it is, don’t you?”

  “Ah. It’s time to pour out all of the deepest darkest secrets from my little soul, is it?” I tease, taking a step closer to him in the door frame.

  “You come closer to me, and I’m not liable for my actions, Sugar.”

  “Maybe I want to get a little closer,” I whisper, opening my silk robe up a little more, giving him a grand look at my body.

  “You have no idea how badly I want to fuck you all the time, do you? You’re constantly on my mind, the way your perfect ruby red lips quiver. The way you crinkle your nose when you’re thinking too hard. Fuck, even that angelic laugh, especially when you throw your head back and smile, it’s that damn glimmer in your eyes. You have no idea how captivating you are, Bellamy Mason.”

  Just like that, I’m thrown for a loop, trying to process everything he just said to me. Butch was nothing more than a one-night stand. That is exactly what I told myself the first time I set my eyes on him, but now we’re here, and I can’t help but want a little more from him. I don’t know what it is that I want, I just know that I want to…oh fudge. I don’t know what I want. “You haven’t told me about when you were a kid.”

  Butch pulls me out of my own thoughts, reminding me of our agreement. Every morning, and every night we each share something with one another, something that the other doesn’t know. At first, when he suggested the idea I wasn’t too keen, but now I find that we’re both learning quite a bit about one another, and I like that. He was right, we wouldn’t be strangers for long.

  “Uh, well that’s a bit complicated. I don’t exactly have the fairytale childhood, as I’m sure you could imagine,” I mutter, walking through the doorway past Butch, going over to the minibar in the hotel room. I pull out a small glass sized bottle of Sutter Home Moscato and open the top. If we’re going to talk about this, then I need to have a good bit of alcohol to get me through it. I take a hefty sip, place the bottle down on the tv stand and grab my luggage, yanking out a pair of sweats and a tee shirt. I don’t even care enough to tell Butch to turn around, in the background I can hear Slash’s snoring, telling me the big lug is fast asleep.

  After I’m dressed I grab the bottle and sit on the bed, leaning up against the headboard. “I had a pretty normal life you know, it was suburbia central. Everyone knew everyone, the preacher’s daughter was in my same girl scout troop. It was a small, tight knit community. I loved it back then, and I even still do now. I had a mom who loved me more than anything, and a dad who was just as great.” I smile big, remembering the both of them. At this moment, right now. I feel everything that inspired my newest song “If I had One More Day”. It’s a slow melody, about a girl who lives with regret for not telling her parents she loved them enough. If she had one more day, she would’ve changed a lot. She would’ve been a lot more vocal. “My parents died when I was a kid,” I say it like it doesn’t still hurt as much as it does. There’s no getting over what I went through, or how they died.

  “I’m so sorry. That must’ve been hard to lose them so young. Was it a car accident?” he asks, he’d be right to assume that it was something so natural, so…accidental, something that no one could’ve ever seen coming.

  “No, no it wasn’t,” I tell him, shaking my head, while I take the bottle to my lips and take another sip. I feel the bed dip, and when I look to the left I see Butch sprawled out next to me in a pair of green plaid pajama pants. His tattoos are on full display, and I can’t help but stare at every single one of them plastered across his chest and shoulders. The detail is truly impeccable.

  “Then what happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “No, I don’t mind at all,” I say, thinking of how I should word the reality of what I came home to that day. “I can remember it like it was yesterday. I came home from school and it was sunny, for the first time in weeks it wasn’t pouring with rain. We’d had a particularly wet season that year. I remember the way everyone was complaining about it in the weeks prior. I got off the bus and walked up the sidewalk until I reached my house. We lived in this pretty four-bedroom home, my parents had just done renovations, and I had thought maybe they’d changed their mind and were remodeling again. The door didn’t look right, so I walked up and realized the front window was busted in. I thought that I shouldn’t go in the front because of the glass….so I went around back. I had a key to the gate, so I unlocked it and went in, latching the gate behind me. Everything looked normal, it was oddly quiet, but normal. I think now that maybe I should’ve realized something wasn’t quite right, but when you’re a kid you don’t think about things like that. Anyways, I went in through the back door, put my backpack up in the closet, took my shoes off, and headed up the stairs, and then I saw the blood.”

  I don’t say anything for a moment, letting the memory sink in, and trying my hardest not to let it get me too emotional. “It was something small on the wall. They were freshly painted, so I knew it wasn’t a smudge or anything. Instead of calling my mom and dad, I walked closer and saw more. Long story short, I followed the trail until it led me into my parents’ room with both of their bodies saturating the carpet in blood. They were murdered. In my safe, suburban haven, they were murdered.”

  “Shit. I had no idea…I’m –.” I cut Butch off before he can say anything else. This is the same thing I hear every time I tell someone about my parents. I don’t need anyone else giving their condolences. It’s in the past. I can only move on from it.

  “It is what it is. Long story short, their murder was never solved. It’s a cold case. The police found no fingerprints, no nothing. Anyways, I ended up going in the foster care system for a while until my Uncle Erik, who’s my dad’s best friend could adopt me, but that took a bit. So, I’m not the poster child for great childhood memories,” I joke. When I finally have the courage to look back up to Butch, things seem different. He
’s not looking at me with pity. It’s something else.

  “You and your sister are very similar.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I ask, tucking my legs under my body, continuing to look at him.

  “You and Elena didn’t have the greatest childhoods, and yet you both don’t let it slow you down. You take life by the balls and make it your bitch, not letting your past dictate your future. I admire that.” I don’t know anything about Elena, really. To hear from Butch that we’re similar…it just makes me happy. It gives me hope that Elena and I can have some sort of normal sisterly bond whenever the time comes.

  “Thank you. That means a lot.”

  “I’m just telling you how it is. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I ask, curiously.

  “We’re going back to Tennessee in a few days for the Halloween party.” He says it like I should’ve known, but the cave man didn’t even tell me about it.

  “You could’ve told me.”

  “I did, just now,” he mutters, and I can’t help but roll my eyes.

  Men. They never change.

  Chapter 15

  We only get one shot in this life, make it count. -Elena

  Bellamy

  I woke up to being held firmly in Butch’s arms. I can’t even remember falling asleep, to be honest. We talked and talked for hours, ending up drinking most of what was in the mini bar.

  I found out a little bit about Butch last night. His story is the complete opposite of mine. His Momma lives out in the boondocks of Tennessee, pretty close to the club, and he usually sees her once every week. He ended up telling me how pissed she was that he hadn’t been around the last few days, telling him that he wasn’t even going to get any Banana Pudding on his birthday – which just so happens to be his favorite dessert. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Banana Pudding didn’t classify as a dessert. It was just neat getting to learn these things about him, the small things.

  I had to slip out from under Butch’s arms, so I wouldn’t wake him. Slash was already outside of the room, standing against the door, or at his “post” like he preferred to call it. I knew that they were here on Elena’s orders to watch over me, given the risks associated with her lifestyle, which I guess is also theirs, but so far nothing out of the ordinary has happened. It just seems like a precaution that didn’t necessarily need to be taken.

  “Sleeping Beauty still zonked out?” Slash asks me as I’m taking my first step out of the hotel room.

  “Yep, and we should leave him that way. Let him get some sleep, just because I have to wake up at the wee hours in the morning, doesn’t mean he has to.”

  Slasher laughs, “We’re both supposed to be watching you, missy. Not just taking shifts.”

  “Butch does plenty of watching me, Slash, and we all know it,” I add, laughing with the last bit.

  He busts out, keeling over into his laughter. Dang, I didn’t think it was that funny.

  “He told me not to touch you.” I glance over to Slash, processing what he just said to me. “The bastard told me you were off limits. He hasn’t ever said that shit to me, Bells. If you ask me, he’s got it bad for you.”

  What Slash just told me made me smile. It also was a confirmation of what I already felt between the two of us. I don’t know Butch enough to know exactly what I want from him, but what I do know is that when I’m with him, I’m happy. I don’t know if it’s his presence, his personality, or maybe just the way he makes my entire body shiver. It could be a combination of all of the above.

  I glance at my phone, realizing that it’s going to be downpouring most of the day. While I ride on the tour bus with the guys, Slash and Butch ride their Harleys. “It’s going to rain…are you sure you don’t want to hitch a ride on the bus?”

  Slash chuckles lightly, walking down the hallway with me. “Sweetheart, we live and breathe on the back of those bikes. We’re not the green witch from Wizard of Oz, we’re not gonna melt. We’ve ridden in hurricanes, babe.”

  I look at him like he’s lost his freaking mind.

  “I didn’t say I recommend it. I’m just sayin’ we’ve ridden in hurricanes and survived; a little bit of water isn’t gonna kill us.”

  “Please tell me you have jackets or something,” I beg, already knowing the answer before it leaves his mouth.

  “We’ve got our leather babe, and that’s all we need.”

  I roll my eyes. Men are stubborn and bullheaded, and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. It’s almost like it’s burned into their DNA, completely unremovable. They should come with a warning label that reads ‘does not have common sense’. I freaking know one of those two is going to end up with a cold in just a few short days.

  Slash walks me to the back door of the hotel, into the parking lot where the tour bus happens to be parked. I know Rocky and Syd stayed in the hotel last night, but I’m not sure about Jase and Miles. “You’re leaving in an hour, right?” he asks me, and I nod. “Alright. If you leave sooner, text me and we’ll be right behind you. Got it?”

  “Aye, aye, Major Slashie.” I give him a salute and walk up to the bus. When I look back Slash is giving me the finger and sticking his tongue out like a five-year-old.

  I laughed so hard boarding the bus, who would’ve known where I’d be right now. There was no preparing me for this, and I’m loving every minute of it.

  ***

  “Alrighty folks, let’s get cracking about our schedule.” I look up from my cell to see Evie standing in the middle of the room, demanding all our attention. “Shit is getting real, okay? Like…super real. We’ve sold out every show.”

  “Wait…what?” I say, smiling from ear to ear.

  “You heard me right, Bells. We’re a full house, bitches!” Evie laughs, I clap excitedly for not only the guys but for Evie as well. She does so much work and barely gets enough credit for any of it. Even though she is a massive bitch sometimes.

  “We’ll be in Baltimore in about…. about 5 hours, and we’ve got a show to prepare for. Right after the show, we’ll leave for Philadelphia and then we all get an entire week off. Who’s excited?”

  All the guys plus I hoot and holler. Don’t get me wrong, I love being on tour, but I love having a break too.

  “After our lovely week break, we’re back and closing out this tour strong with our last two stops in Camden and New York. Now, Bell, your interview with Summer is going to be while we’re in Camden. Okay?” Crapmundo, Batman. I already forgot about the interview Evie set up with Summer.

  An interview where Summer can ask me anything, absolutely nothing is off limits and it’s going to be a live feed, so that’s just great. It’s not like I’m nervous about this interview at all.

  “Sounds great,” I tell her, lying through my teeth. No matter what, I just have to go in and be myself. Summer is nothing but a bitch who profited from trying to take me down, and she didn’t even win ‘cause guess what, look who’s still shining bright, bitch! I’ll prepare myself as much as I can, but I don’t want to sound rehearsed or cold during my interview. That wouldn’t go over too well with the viewers I don’t think.

  “Have you decided on the name for your cover yet?” Evie grumbles, taking a few steps in my direction and sinking in on the chair across from me.

  “I think so…I’ve got a couple idea’s floating around in my head.”

  “Finally. I need to know colors and all that too.”

  “Pink, but a bold pink.”

  “Got it.”

  “And maybe flowers on vines, but a classy kind…. nothing that screams Barbie.”

  “Got it…” Evie mutters, sounding more and more annoyed as I don’t tell her the name I’m going with.

  “Relentless.”

  There just happens to be this guy who thinks I’m pretty relentless, and until he said it…I didn’t really think I was.

  I plan on everyone knowing the real me, and now they will.

 
; Chapter 16

  I won’t abandon you, and you can damn well know that I’m going to fight for you. -Lomasoope.tumblr.com

  Butch

  The trip to Baltimore was long and grueling, but it wasn’t the first time I’d rode in the rain and I highly doubt it would be my last. By the time we got settled to the hotel and warmed up, it was time for Bellamy’s show. It seemed more and more like our time together was passing by in the blink of an eye. Every time I saw her on stage I became more amazed with her raw and undeniable talent. She’s shared bits and pieces with me, last night even showing me some lyrics she’s been writing, unsure of what she’ll do with them. I don’t know much about songwriting, but every time Bellamy and I talk I learn more about her process. For instance, it doesn’t just magically flow together like you’d think. She gets bits and pieces and then creates a song out of many moving parts. That truly fascinated me, as I didn’t understand the complexity of what she does.

  It’s beautiful when she hums to a melody as she’s writing. I pointed it out to her and she didn’t even realize what she was doing, she tried to stop, but I told her not to, that it was part of her and that I admired it. Truth is, I admire a lot about this girl. I haven’t found one thing I don’t like about her, and I doubt that I will. I’ve never met someone who’s perfect, but Bellamy is pretty damn close to it.

  She crashed early tonight, right after the show. Instead of just opening for The Stones like she normally does, she ended up staying onstage all-night long. I had to make sure she got a good bit of food in her system before she hit the pillow. It’s funny, normally I wouldn’t give two shits if a bitch ate…this girl though, fuck if she isn’t different than any other woman I’ve ever crossed paths with. When she works, I’ve come to realize that she doesn’t always eat. She gets to absorbed in what needs to be done and insists on finishing the task at hand. I understand it, I’m just like her in that sense, but I’ll be damned if I don’t eat. Fuck, I turn into the world’s biggest dick whenever I’m hungry. Ask anyone at the club, they’re sure to confirm my statement.