We all knew that the relentless spoiling had to stop at some point, but for now it was all good. We were good.
Prosper’s wife, Pinky, stood close by his side. Dolly, Pinky’s sister-in-law and best friend, sat at the kitchen table and smiled at the scene before her. Diego leaned back into the deep cushions of the couch with his arm casually draped around his pretty wife. The proud papa looked relaxed and content.
I thought for the millionth time that my sister had never looked more beautiful. Motherhood had turned my sister’s thin frame into something lush and womanly. Raine’s naturally slender hips had grown slightly wider and her breasts were still round and full. An air of peace and contentment radiated from her these days. I was eternally thankful the burden that my sister had carried for so long had been replaced with the comfort and ease that comes from being well loved.
And so it begins, I thought to myself. The next chapter.
Hearing the screen door slam behind me, I felt a whoosh of air and saw flashes of white-blond hair and elegant long limbs enter the circle of admirers. As Glory rushed past me, I stepped back and exchanged a look with my sister. Raine smiled—we all loved Glory—but I saw the familiar lines of worry crease Raine’s brow as my sister looked down at my belted jeans. The slight straightening of her spine told me that Raine had missed nothing. I knew it was just a matter of time before she would demand the conversation that I was unwilling to have.
Sighing, I turned my gaze once again to the precious baby girl and gave silent thanks that it had all worked out the way it had.
It had seemed like forever that Raine and I had been hanging on to the tail end of a very long shit storm. But, thank you Jesus, we had finally gotten through the other side of it. And, if being on the other side of it brought this happy place of grinning fools and gurgling babies, then I was good with the events that led us here.
Almost.
I was almost good with it.
I just wished the nightmares would stop.
Because that not-sleeping-well thing was really beginning to take its toll.
The minute my head hit the pillow, it was there.
It was still there.
I could see it.
Hear it.
Smell it.
The sick thud of metal meeting tree. The ping of bullets shot too close to my head. The smell of burning oil, burning leather, burning flesh. The sights, smells, and sounds of death and destruction permeating right through to my soul.
And it hadn’t even been my first trip down the fright-fest highway.
Not by a long shot.
But, this time I was stuck.
And unlike ever, ever before, I was trapped in that place all alone.
CHAPTER 4
Raine watched as Claire moved toward the door of the crowded little trailer. Apparently, Glory had found a new online store, and together the two roommates had bought everything in pink that the shop had to offer. Claire was going out to Glory’s car to bring in the rest of the gifts.
As she heard the door slam behind her younger sister, Raine let out a worried sigh.
Raine was happier than she had ever thought possible. Her life with Diego and their child was more than she had ever dared to hope for. Life was damn near perfect for her.
But she knew that it wasn’t that way for Claire. Life was far from perfect for Claire.
Raine was worried about her.
And not just a little.
In the past months, that worry had moved from a general concern for her sister’s well-being, to a deep and growing suspicion that something was very wrong.
Ever vigilant, Raine had watched Claire, and what she saw scared the hell right out of her.
She knew that something dark was sitting heavy in her sister’s heart. And she knew that whatever it was, it was pushing her into a state of isolating despair.
Whatever it was that was lurking deep in the dark recesses of Claire’s mind, she wasn’t talking about it.
Whatever it was, Raine was watching it eat her little sister alive.
Sighing deeply, she stood and stared at the doorway. Glory’s eyes met Dolly’s from across the room. Diego immediately got up and wrapped his arms around his wife. The scowl on Prosper’s face gave way to the worry that he felt in his heart.
“She’ll be okay, Babe,” Diego said softly to her.
Raine wasn’t so sure.
“Does Claire ever sleep?” She turned to Glory. Glory hesitated, then looked at the sea of faces now staring back at her. “Some. She’s sleeping some.”
“Bullshit,” snarled Prosper.
Sensing the shift in tension, Willow began to fuss and reach for her mother. After he placed a soft kiss on her forehead, Prosper relinquished Willow to Raine’s arms. The walls of the small trailer seemed to shake as the big man’s voice hit every corner of the room.
“The girl looks like the fucking walking dead. She’s back to skinny, and those circles under her eyes . . . goddammit.”
He paused, then asked, “Christ, she ain’t using, is she?”
Raine felt herself wince.
“No!” A chorus of women’s voices let out a loud protest.
“Jesus, Prosper,” Pinky hissed at her big husband. “Don’t you dare go there.”
“Woman, you know better than to talk to me about how to handle my girls.” He arched an eyebrow at her and glared.
Pinky, undeterred, glared right back at her husband. She put her hand on his arm and shook her head slightly in warning.
Prosper ignored that warning.
“Goddammit. Somebody’s got to go there. I am sick of pussyfooting around this bullshit. She needs to talk it out. Whatever it is. This shit needs to come out before it swallows her whole.”
Raine felt a sudden shiver move right through her.
Someone has just walked over my grave, her mother used to say.
She felt Diego’s muscled arms move tighter around her, warming her. Frowning deeply, she leaned in against her husband. Then Raine turned to Prosper. Her worried eyes met his determined ones. Prosper was not asking for anyone’s permission, but with a slight nod she gave it to him anyway.
He was not wrong.
And if anyone could get to the bottom of whatever was causing the change in her funny, caring, loving little sister, Prosper was the man for the job. No doubt about it.
CHAPTER 5
What did I miss?”
I had heard them through the screen door—those badass women protesting. Prosper made his way toward me. His big body cast a shadow against the wall.
“Claire, honey, you don’t look so good. I know you ain’t been sleeping. Can’t help but wonder if you’ve been putting powder anywhere but on that pretty face of yours?”
And there it was.
“Christ,” I heard Diego mutter under his breath.
My sister stood beside Diego, suddenly very busy with a drowsy Willow.
“Damn it, Prosper.” Dolly pushed him out of the way and started to walk toward me. I guess what she saw on my face made her stop.
I stared hard at my family. One by one. “You think I’m doing blow, Prosper?” I pushed those words out and sent them to swarm around their heads like angry wasps. “Is that what all of you think?”
At least they had the grace to look embarrassed.
Well. Not all of them.
Prosper was coming right at me. Fast.
When he linked his tattooed arm around mine, I stiffened in protest. But he just held on tighter, pulled me right out the door and dragged me across the wide expanse of grassy field. Then he sat my ass down hard on a big boulder.
Damn him.
Not only had he just humiliated me in front of our entire family, but now the big man made me wait. He slowly pulled out a fresh pack of smokes, tapped them lightly against his palm, unwound the thin cellophane strip, dragged one out, and lit up.
Then Prosper drew deep.
Twice.
“Jesus, Claire, you look like sh
it,” he said, one eye squinting as he slowly exhaled a thin streak of white smoke.
“Yeah, heard that the first time.” My voice shook with anger and my eyes burned bright. I thought about the concealer, the mascara, and the In the Midnight Garden effort that I had put forth just a short time ago in hopes of avoiding a scene exactly like this.
Game. Over.
I brought a hand up to smooth my hair.
Prosper took it and covered it with his own.
“What the fuck is it?” Prosper’s words were harsh, but his tone was gentle. The touch of his big, callused hand on mine warmed me.
“It’s not coke,” I whispered raggedly. The accusation sat heavy on my heart.
Prosper was the hero in my story. In my eyes, he was everything a man should be: a provider, a protector, and a teacher. Prosper was everything that my birth father, Jack Winston, had not been. Long before my father’s death he had become nothing more than a sad shadow to me. Prosper was my dad by choice. Having his love and respect didn’t mean just a little something to me. It meant everything.
Despite everything I had fought my way through. I could not believe that it had come down to this.
Was I that girl to him now? The ex-junkie daughter living on borrowed time?
Great. Just fucking great.
“So tell me, Prosper, is relapse the family go-to now? Is this where it lands every time I lose a few pounds or spend a couple of restless nights?” I looked at him hard and felt the sting of unshed tears.
I didn’t deserve this.
Not even a little bit.
Prosper took a full minute before he answered me.
“No, Claire. It’s not. If you tell me it’s fucking not, then it’s not.” He looked at me, assessing.
“It’s not.” I met his gaze straight on.
When my father moved to pull me into his big strong arms, I let him.
Sighing against his chest, I inhaled the clean, soapy scent of his skin. I settled into him like a child, taking strength from the raw power that radiated from deep within this man.
He was my safe place. I wanted to blow out a wish that would find me small enough to be tucked into his pocket, nestled tightly and close to his heart.
“Is it that bad, honey?”
“Yeah, it’s that bad.” I breathed it out. Finally, finally releasing it.
“Give it to me, honey. Give it to your ol’ Prosper. You need to talk this shit out. It’s eating you up. I can see it. We all can see it. Open up and let it out. There’s nothing you can’t tell me. Nothing I can’t fix.”
I sighed, knowing that Prosper was right.
There was nothing he couldn’t fix.
I knew that he would take whatever I gave to him. Then, he would twist it, turn it, and stomp all over it, just to make sure it all came out for the good.
I knew that Prosper would do whatever he had to do, or needed to do, to protect me.
I knew that Prosper was the lay down your life for the ones you love, kind of guy.
I knew that he was the kind of guy, definitely the kind of guy, who would lie to protect the ones he loved.
And I knew that he had lied to me.
CHAPTER 6
The man I considered my father pushed me away from him then. But he kept a tight hold on me with both his hands, and he looked straight into my eyes.
“You not letting it out to Raine or Glory, I get. Maybe you don’t want to lay whatever this is at their door. But shit, Claire, it’s me you’re talking to now. Yeah?” He spoke from his heart.
“Yeah,” I said. My heart answering his.
“So talk to me, honey. Let’s get rid of this shit today and move the fuck on.”
He sighed deeply, his eyes dark with worry.
Prosper was throwing me a lifeline. But I couldn’t find the words that would lift me up out of those dark waters. I didn’t know how to describe the fear I felt. I didn’t have a name for what happened when I closed my eyes.
I sat for a minute, my mind searching for those words. Then, having found them, it took some time before I gathered the courage to reach down and pull them out.
Prosper gave me that time.
“They’re dead because of me.” I fought the urge to clap my hands over my ears at the sound of my own voice.
Prosper’s gaze grew hard.
“Who is dead, Claire?” Prosper asked.
“You know who’s dead, Prosper.” My gaze grew hard in return.
“That’s what it is? You’re burning daylight worrying about that piece of shit and his murderous she-bitch?” Prosper growled.
Yep, that was it. That sure as hell was it.
How could that not be it?
I nodded while images of eternal damnation played out in my mind.
“I killed Manny, didn’t I?” I forced my voice into steadiness.
And there it was.
The sum of all my fears.
When Raine and I had left Manny Rieldo, he was lying on the ground with his balls pinned to the top of his thigh by a nail gun and his head dented in from a claw hammer. In a desperate attempt at escape, my sister and I had attacked him the minute he had opened the van door.
My plan had been to save our lives. And it had worked. We were alive. But in the process of saving our own lives, had I cost Manny his?
I hadn’t known for certain. Not until the night after the big meet. Prosper had come to tell me and Raine that all was well. He had assured us that Manny had been taken care of.
He had assured us without looking at me.
Prosper had delivered his all is well message without a glance in my direction.
And that’s when I knew.
In my heart, I knew.
Manny had been taken care of all right.
By me.
CHAPTER 7
Prosper looked at me for a long time.
“I need to know,” I whispered. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I felt that cold black shadow move over me again.
He sighed deeply and put his hand up to smooth my hair.
“It’s done, Claire. What does it matter who did it? It needed doing, and it’s done.”
“It matters,” I said, desperate to make him understand. “I can’t stay in this dark place of not knowing, Prosper. It follows me, like a monster that I can’t get away from. I need to face it to move on. I need to face it to somehow move past it and into whatever light there is left for me.”
Then simply:
“If I killed him, Prosper, if Manny was dead when you found him, then I have a right to know.”
Prosper’s eyes met mine with such searching intensity that I had to force myself not to look away. After what seemed like forever, he nodded once, then lit up another smoke. He drew deep three, maybe four times before he spoke.
“Yeah, honey. That claw hammer cracked the sonofabitch’s skull open. And so fucking what? He was going to kill you, your sister, and the baby she was carrying. Manny Rieldo was a piece of shit who had a death wish,” Prosper growled.
“No one wishes for that, Prosper.” I could feel the beat of my own guilt-ridden heart.
“That’s bullshit. Bullshit, Claire. Men like Manny Rieldo make a decision to die every day. He marked his fate the minute he got involved with that psycho snatch, Ellie,” Prosper said.
“He had a life, Prosper,” I countered. “He had people that he mattered to. He had a mother.”
Prosper glared at me.
“Everyone has a mother, Claire. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, they all had mothers. This cocksucker, Manny? His mother’s name is Luisa Sievas. Bitch is meaner than a junkyard dog. That whole family is crazier than a bunch of shit house rats.”
“But still, Prosper.” A tear escaped down my cheek.
“But still nothing,” Prosper growled and he wiped that tear away. “Jesus, Claire. You have got to stop doing this to yourself.”
A pause from Prosper, and then:
“Did you mean to kill him?
” Prosper drew deep from the cigarette, his eyes squinting over the curl of smoke.
“What? No! God no! We had to get away. From him and that crazy woman.” I took a deep, ragged breath. The pounding of my heart would not let me speak.
I tried again.
“Raine and the baby . . .” my voice grew weak and trailed off.
Thinking back to that night, I honestly had never been so scared in my life, and I had a long list of scared to choose from.
Prosper’s eyes crashed and burned into mine. Then he nodded and inhaled deeply. He crushed the cigarette between his fingers, threw down the butt, and stomped it out. Hard.
“Goddammit, Claire. Look at you. You’re still so freaked, you can’t even say the words. Manny Rieldo and his bitch were going to kill you and Raine. Then that she-wolf, Ellie, was going to straight-up carve that baby right out of your sister’s belly. Make no mistake about that.”
He paused to let that awful truth sink in.
“Why are you making yourself sick over that piece of shit? Do you ever lie awake nights thinking about what would have happened if you had not had the balls to lay that sonofabitch out?” he asked me. “That’s the kind of shit that should keep you up nights. Not putting that piece of crap to ground. Believe me when I tell you, you did him a fucking favor, Claire.”
“A favor?” I stumbled over the words.
“Yeah. A big one. Rieldo’s name was high on everyone’s shit list. Among the other desperate acts of random violence that the stupid fuck let himself repeatedly get talked into committing, he was a goddamn canary. He had just cut his time short by three years, and that was not for good behavior,” Prosper continued. “The Italians are all over shit like that. It was just a matter of time before Manny Rieldo’s wagging tongue flushed this whole uneasy alliance down the shitter. If that had happened, the body count would have been a lot higher than two. Claire, this was not Manny’s first time at the crazy snatch rodeo. Fucker was a magnet for desperate and disturbed. And everyone, including that mother of his who you are so concerned with, knew it. From what I hear, Manny Rieldo’s dick has been leading him on a merry chase of bad decisions since puberty. Because of that tendency and a whole lot of stupid, he has been living on borrowed time.”
Chasing Claire (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club) Page 2