by Joanna Wylde
What do you think about that?
I mean, do you think that a guy should be asking that after such a short time? I know, I should probably talk to Loni about it, but she totally worries all the time, and . . . anyway . . . I just wanted to know your opinion.
Should I start dating him for real? Any reason I shouldn’t?
Melanie
PS—thanks for the drawing you sent—it almost feels like I’ve been there. Every time I see one of your sketches it blows me away. I can’t imagine being able to create something like that.
I folded the letter carefully, looking out across the yard. The air was warm—perfect, really—and I thought about Idaho, where you couldn’t sit outside like this for most of the year.
The only good thing about prison was I hadn’t frozen my ass off last winter. People back home saved all year to try and find some sun during the cold months, but I’d gotten my snowbird “vacation” for free. In the distance, Puck wandered toward me, his path apparently aimless. I knew better. He had shit to distribute, and it was my job to watch his back and make sure nobody noticed anything while he made his rounds.
That’s when Prince Fester of the Fuckwits ran up to me, grinning.
“You get a new letter from Melanie?” he asked, eyes bright. I shrugged my shoulders, trying to ignore him. This idiot was me and Puck’s cellmate, and I gave serious thought to shanking his ass at least twice a day.
“She send any pictures?” he asked, licking his lips. I fought back a snarl.
“Shut your fuckin’ mouth. I catch you touching her picture again, I’ll kill you. That’s not a joke, Fester. Puck and I already planned out exactly how we’re gonna do it.”
His smile faded, his feelings obviously hurt. Jesus help me, just one little slice . . . that’s all I want. Just one swipe of the knife to take out his tongue. “You don’t mean that.”
I didn’t answer, because the man had the brain of an eight-year-old. A vicious, dangerous eight-year-old who’d been committing armed robbery half his life, but trust me—he was seriously lacking in the IQ area. Puck was always telling me to be patient with him, and I tried. Seriously. I tried fuckin’ hard, but sometimes it took everything I had not to cut his tongue out for real.
“So, I had this idea,” he said, leaning up against the wall next to me.
“Shut the fuck up and go away.”
He frowned. I ignored him until he shuffled off like a kicked puppy, keeping my eyes on Puck as he drifted toward a cluster of skinheads. Always thought that was funny. They called him a mongrel behind his back, but when he had product they were happy to forgive Mr. Redhouse for his many sins against the Aryan race. I’d have laughed if I wasn’t so busy making sure nobody murdered him.
Just two more weeks.
Two more weeks in this shithole, then I’d be headed home to Coeur d’Alene. Back to my bike and my club. My brothers.
Melanie.
Pretty Melanie, driving around in my car because I’d felt guilty about leaving her alone without transportation that last night . . . Christ, thought I’d be loaning it to her for a couple days, and now she’d had it for a year. Ridiculous, but who was I kidding? I liked the idea of her in my car—of her thinking of me every day. Of her owing me.
Not like I needed the damned thing in prison.
I reached down, feeling the letter in my pocket, wondering what the hell I should tell her about the asshole trying to get into her pants. Wanted to say she should blow him off—he wasn’t good enough for her. She was too young, too soft, and too pretty for some twenty-year-old cocksucker looking to get his rocks off. He didn’t care about her, either—he just wanted to get laid. They all did. Maybe he’d grow out of it someday, although I had five years on him and I hadn’t yet.
I had no right to an opinion, though. She hardly knew me. We’d spent maybe eight hours together total, and trust me when I say there weren’t any happy endings. I’d given her a ride home, watched a movie with her. Taken her to dinner to get her out of the club’s way—it wasn’t even a particularly nice dinner, not like she deserved. She was nothing to me.
Fucking hell.
Puck glanced in my direction, offering a jerk of his chin. Deal was done. I pushed off the wall, wandering slowly toward him. Fester tried to follow me, but I shut him down with a dirty look. Just another day, exactly like every other I’d spent in here the last thirteen months.
Except it wasn’t.
Today I’d learned some prick was sniffing around Mellie, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it. For all I knew he was fucking her right now, balls deep, telling her how much he loved her.
Jesus.
She’d probably fall for it, too.
Mel,
You know, I write these fuckin’ letters to you, but they’re fake. I ask about your friends and your school and whether you’re meeting people. It’s bullshit, Mel.
Here’s my reality.
Yesterday I stabbed someone before he could stab me. Puck and I sold some shit to a bunch of white supremacists and we turned around and sold the same damned thing to some Mexicans. We had pudding with our dinner for dessert.
Then I jacked off three times thinking about you.
Those are the highlights. Like a fairy tale, right?
Remembering you keeps me going, which makes no fucking sense at all. I hardly touched you. I still think about what you smelled like when you sat next to me on the couch, though. You were just this little thing and you shivered under my arm. I know you were scared of the movie and I could’ve picked something else, but I wanted the excuse to hold you.
That’s when I started thinking seriously about us fucking.
I had this vision of shoving you into the cushions face-first, then ripping down your jeans and pushing so deep you’d feel it in the back of your throat. That’s the kind of guy I am, Mel, and that’s why you should stay the fuck away from me.
You give me the chance, I’ll pin you down and keep pumping no matter how hard you try to get away. I dream about it every night, I jerk off to it, and today I gave serious thought to killing a man because he has the same fantasies about you as me. That first night, I promised London I wouldn’t touch you, but my cock had already been hard for hours. Good thing she showed up when she did—saved your ass. How’s that for luck?
When I took you to dinner, I was going to be good. Tried to be good. I know you didn’t understand why I asked you out or what it meant. They needed you out of the way, Mel. That was my job—to keep you busy. And I promised London I wouldn’t pull shit on you but she’d been lying to us all along and I kept wondering if that meant my promise didn’t count anymore.
Pretty damned sure it hasn’t counted for a while now.
You were talking and smiling and blushing. My dick was so stiff it nearly snapped in half when I tried to stand up. Took everything I had not to throw you on my bike and ride off with you . . . I want to tie you up and come in your ass and shove my cock down your throat until you choke. I want your hair in little-girl pigtails so I can hold on tight while I fuck your face. I want you to cry and scream and give me everything. I want to fucking OWN you. How’s that for reality, Mel? You still want my advice about boys?
I’m coming home soon. You should run away while you still can, Mel. I’ll make you dirty, so dirty you’ll never be clean again. I’ll make you pay me back the hard way. You think you’re all grown up, but you’re not. There’s so much I could teach you . . . do to you. Jesus, if you only knew, you’d never write to me again.
You should move to Alaska.
Change your name.
Good luck, though, because I’ll find you and take you and—
Fucking hell.
I dropped my pencil, wondering why I’d thought this was a good idea. I wasn’t going to send it, of course. I’d send her some friendly little note and tell her she should be dating and having fun. But some part of me thought writing my real thoughts out might fix my obsession. Instead my dick was like
a rock. Again.
Still.
Always.
I started shredding the paper into thin strips, because no fuckin’ way I wanted Fester to read it. He always scrabbled through our garbage like a rat. Puck didn’t need to see it, either. He was my brother—best brother I could have, and he’d proven it a thousand ways since they locked us up—but damn if he needed to know how pussy-whipped I’d gotten.
Right . . . Who was I kidding?
Puck was probably laughing his ass off about it right now.
I grabbed another piece of paper, thinking I should write her a real letter. Congratulate her on her grades and then tell her she should find a decent boyfriend. The words wouldn’t come, though. Too busy thinking about her lips, I guess. They were round and pouty. Created by God expressly to suck cock. My cock. Right on cue, it went from hard to painful, a pillar of concrete in my pants, desperate for some action.
“I drew you a picture,” Fester said, offering me a goofy grin from his bunk. He held up a piece of paper covered in bright orange and red crayon. The red was blood seeping out of stick-figure bodies he’d drawn. I had no fuckin’ idea what the orange spirals were supposed to be. Maybe the voices in his head?
He liked to talk about his art with me, like we had something in common. Sometimes I could almost see where he was coming from. Scary fuckin’ thought.
“Leave my brother alone,” Puck told Fester, his voice hard. He was already down for the night, reading some history book. World War II snipers—he loved that shit. “Lights out soon anyway. Put away your crayons and go to bed, cocksucker.”
Fester giggled, and I stood painfully. My bunk was only three steps away, but each one hurt worse than the last. Felt like my dick might split wide open, there was so much blood trapped in there. I collapsed onto my back, waiting for the lights to go out.
That’s when I’d jerk off.
Again.
We all would.
Fester better not get jizz on my pictures of Mel. I really would kill him. The lights went off with a thudding noise, like something out of a movie. Never understood that—didn’t seem like flipping a switch should be so loud.
Downright ominous.
Seconds later my hands were on my pants, shoving them down as I lifted my hips. My dick sprang free and I wondered for the thousandth time how I’d be able to keep my hands off her when I got home.
Fester grunted in the darkness as I grabbed my meat.
Christ.
Two more weeks.
If I had any decency at all, I’d leave her alone. Yeah. I could do it. I’d probably imagined how beautiful she was anyway. Men built all kinds of crazy fantasies on the inside—always fell to shit when they got out again. Mel was just another bitch, one with too much baggage. I didn’t really want her. Sure as hell didn’t need her.
Right. Who the fuck was I kidding?
CHAPTER TWO
ONE MONTH LATER
COEUR D’ALENE
MELANIE
“So he never even called you?” Kit asked, eyes wide. “I mean, I get that guys can be confusing, but to loan you his car for a fucking year, write you tons of letters from prison, and then have you drop his keys off with my dad so he doesn’t have to see you? That’s bizarre.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered, shooting a death glare across the table at Jessica, the rat. My soon-to-be former best friend seemed deeply unconcerned by the fact that she’d betrayed me.
Wench.
“I don’t blame you,” Em announced, reaching for the wine bottle. “I don’t like talking about Painter, either. He fucked with my head for way too long. I had the biggest crush on him when he was a prospect.”
“You let him mess with you,” Kit said, shoving her glass in front of Em’s for a refill. Em smacked at her hand, and suddenly the sisters were wrestling over the bottle like kindergartners with a cookie.
I glanced over at Jessica¸ wondering how our Friday afternoon had turned into a random drunkfest with two women I barely knew, because Kit and Emmy Hayes were a trip. Jess gave me a “don’t look at me” kind of shrug before draining her own glass of wine. I reached for some crackers off the little round cheese/meat platter thing Em had been carrying when she’d shown up at our house out of nowhere. (Kit had been in charge of booze.)
“Ha!” Em gloated, holding up the bottle triumphantly. “Suck it, Kit. Back to business—we have to figure out the perfect thing for London’s bachelorette party. So far we’ve got a night out dancing and surprise strippers.”
“I don’t think Reese is going to like her having strippers,” I mumbled, spraying crumbs because I’d forgotten about the cracker I’d just popped into my mouth. Ick. I grabbed my water glass, chugging. Liquid fire poured down my throat. I choked and then Jess was thumping my back while they all stared at me. Slowly I caught my breath, knowing my face must be beet red.
“That was straight vodka,” I gasped, staring down into the green plastic tumbler. I’d grabbed Kit’s cup instead of mine—obviously she wasn’t a water drinker.
“I know,” Kit said, nodding her head earnestly. “It’s more efficient that way.”
“So you’re chasing your vodka with wine?” Em asked.
“No, I’m chasing my wine with vodka,” Kit explained. “Saves time. Talking about Dad getting married again is creepy—the booze helps.”
I sat back in my chair, looking between the two sisters, pondering the situation. Jessica and I had just moved in here a week ago. Our new apartment was actually one side of an older, two-story house downtown. The place was falling apart, and sooner or later someone would tear it down and build something new and spectacular. Until then, it’d been divided into four apartments—two down in the basement and two splitting the house in half, town house–style.
I loved it.
We had a giant porch out front, and there was a door off the kitchen leading into a shady yard surrounded by trees. We’d found an old wooden wire spool by the Dumpster to use as a picnic table. That’s where we were now—clustered around it, sitting in old camp chairs. Handy, seeing as we didn’t have a table for the dining room yet. Maybe we’d bring this one inside when it got cold . . . Like our new home itself, we considered the table a total score. London—Jessica’s aunt, who’d raised her and taken me in, too—and her old man, Reese Hayes, insisted the place was a shithole.
Technically, they were probably right.
The house was a hundred years old at least, with peeling paint and a slant to the porch roof unsettling enough that I’d made a conscious decision not to think about it—especially since my bedroom (an old sleeping porch that’d been enclosed) perched on top of the rickety structure. The hot water worked only half the time, and it turned super cold if someone ran a faucet anywhere in the house during your shower. The walls were thin, so thin that they could hardly hold the tacks we used to put up posters, and the fridge made a creepy wheezing noise that sounded like the cold breath of a murderer in the night. (Not that I’d ever heard the cold breath of a murderer in the night, but I had a vivid imagination.)
It was still ours, though.
Our first real home as adults.
We had great neighbors for the most part, too. The other half of the house held three guys who went to North Idaho College, just like us. They were loud and rude, but so far they’d been willing to share the grill they kept on the porch, and they’d killed a snake for the girl who lived in one of the basement apartments. The second downstairs apartment held a guy who seemed a little sketchier than the rest of us. Jessica thought he might be a drug dealer. I hated to judge, but we’d been here a full week now and I’d never seen anyone have so much company coming and going late at night—there were cars pulling up for quick stops until two or three every morning.
We’d decided not to tell Reese—he’d probably kill the guy . . . well, unless he was on the Reapers MC payroll or something. Reese was the motorcycle club’s president, and I’d never fully pinned down what it was he
did for a living.
Sometimes it’s best not to know.
Kit and Em were his daughters, and apparently now they were our new best friends. Jess had mentioned that they’d be in town—the Reapers were having some sort of big party for Labor Day, and people rode in from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana for the festivities. They’d even invited us, as London’s . . . what the hell were we, anyway?
Jessica was London’s niece, so that made her family. I’d been Jessica’s friend for years and London had half raised me, so I guess I was part of her family in some way, too.
There just wasn’t a quick and easy name for a configuration like ours, although that didn’t make it any less substantial. This really hit home when Loni asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. Now that she’d hooked up with the president of the Reapers motorcycle club, I was realizing that meant the whole club was somehow part of our larger world. I supposed under other circumstances, I might’ve even considered going out to the party. I couldn’t, though—Jess hated the clubhouse and she flat out refused to visit. Something bad had happened to her out there last year. I wasn’t entirely sure about the details, and I didn’t care, either. If she didn’t want to go, then I didn’t want to, either. We’d just stay home and get a leg up on our homework while they all partied. Or at least, that’d been the plan before Kit and Em and their booze showed up out of nowhere to talk bachelorette-party plans.
“Okay, we’re completely off track here,” Jessica said. I blinked at her, feeling the world around me spin just a little. That last big swallow had hit me hard. “Does London even want a bachelorette party? I just can’t see her enjoying it.”
“Every woman wants a bachelorette party,” Kit announced. “And we’re gonna do this right. I’ll admit—I wasn’t on board with them together at first. I still get creeped out thinking she’s sleeping with Dad night after night . . .”