The last thing I remembered doing with any kind of conscious thought was tensing my body ready for an attack while shouting out the word 'bastards' as loudly as I could.
Then everything went dark when a fucking burlap sack was thrown over my head in one swift motion, the string pulled tight enough around my neck so it would stay in place but not stop me breathing. It stank like rotten shit.
My body jumped forward in the seat, scrambling away to fight off the attack as best I could, but I was as useful as a limp dick in a brothel. Within seconds, there were more pairs of thick hands grabbing at my skin, my t-shirt and my hair. Before I knew it, my armpits were hooked and I was being dragged over the seat until my body was dumped hard on the empty floor space behind me.
All the air in my lungs came out in a heavy grunt as I tried to find my bearings and not lash out.
It was only when the rocking of the van started to abate that I allowed myself to just lay there and try to catch my breath.
That's when I felt the boot on my chest and heard the creaking of a knee as someone crouched down over me. I was waiting for them to speak, but the sound of Harry's raspy laughter in the front caught me off guard and had me frowning hard.
“Let me hear it, Tucks,” the gravelly voice of the man holding me in place ordered quietly.
“Is this really fucking necessary?” I growled from beneath the open weave material.
“You know the rules.”
“Fuck the rules.”
He didn't answer right away. I knew my response had made him pause for thought and look back at the other guys around him. I could feel the shift in his body weight as he did, the idiot.
Knowing his concentration had slipped so quickly and so easily, I swiped my arm across the floor where he was resting his one good leg and knocked his balance out from beneath him. The second the fucker crashed to the ground beneath me, I swung my legs up and twisted my body around until I was the one on top of him. Then I yanked that fucking burlap sack off my head and tossed it to the side quicker than the five of them had put it on. The others didn't react to the shift in power. They didn't even react when I leaned over the person who had led them for the last five years and curled my fingers around his neck.
My overgrown hair fell over my face as the slow, sadistic, one-sided smile started to creep up into one cheek and I growled.
“If you wanted to hear my call, Jedd, all you had to do was ask.”
Then I raised my chin up to the sky and made that one sound I hadn't been able to make since I walked into prison all that time ago.
I howled.
Because I was back with my brothers again. I was with my pack.
And it didn't take long for the slaps of my family to land on my back before I was tugged and pulled around that van like I was Santa fucking Claus himself.
This was why I belonged here. This was what had made it all worthwhile inside.
CHAPTER THREE
Ayda
“You have to be shitting me.”
“I’m sorry. I hate to do it. You’re the best worker I have, Ayda, but these high school kids work for pennies, they don’t make a noise about uniforms and they always come in for extra shifts. You’re overqualified for this job.”
Rolling my feet forward and backward, I snapped my head side to side and planted my hands on my hips before looking down at the floor in consternation. I wouldn’t let them see me cry. I wasn’t that easily defeated and I wouldn’t give this punk the satisfaction of my tears. I’d worked my ass off every day for the last three years, and all they wanted was some mindless kid that would skate around in short shorts, pop gum and flirt with the other kids. She could have the fucking job. That was a line I firmly refused to cross, especially for the money they were offering me.
Babylon was a stop between one big city and another. Gas prices were decent, and that was about all we had going for us. Those of us who lived here tended to have been born here and fought for the few jobs there were. If you were lucky, the oil and gas companies that were littered around would offer you a job.
I wasn’t lucky. Not in any capacity.
My dad had been an engineer for one of the larger companies, which was exactly why we’d moved to Babylon to begin with.
While Mom and Dad were alive, life had been good. I’d loved my friends, I’d loved my school and I’d loved my boyfriend, Jacob. They’d been smart enough to get out while they could. Me? Well, I was called back and now found myself stuck with no other direction to go in.
I’d been so close to that complete freedom that I could have sworn I’d tasted it. I'd had big dreams – the same dreams most women my age had – but I'd had to learn to let them all go.
Standing there in front of a manager who was a year younger than I was, I felt the control start to slip from my fingers. I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t sign up for any of it. I wasn’t cut out to be a parent or guardian. I could barely look after myself. Most days I forgot to eat, and when I did it was a crappy microwave burrito, which I drowned in hot sauce. How was I supposed to ensure the healthy nutrition of a growing boy? How was I supposed to know how to make sure he didn’t kill himself playing football, or when was a good time to talk to him about sex, which I suspected I was a year too late for? And how the fuck did health insurance cost that much?
It was never ending. When I fixed one problem, another one came along. The moment that was taken care of, something else happened. Any extra cash we had was greedily grabbed by the next shitty handout life gave us, and I couldn’t even blame Tate. He was in the same boat that I was – he was just a little more optimistic and had grabbed a paddle, whereas I was swimming, and my arms were tiring to the point I constantly felt as though I would drown.
“Ayda?”
Steering my skates away from the manager, I pushed one to the side and allowed myself some forward momentum as I waved over my shoulder. “Yeah, I got it. You’ll send me my last check, right?”
“I really am sorry.”
I pushed out again with more enthusiasm as I felt the tears prickle against my eyes. I needed to be in my car and away from there before they started. The moment I was out of the kitchen, the life force that was Roller Freeze took over. The excited chatter and laughter of the teens as they relaxed after school wrapped itself around me, insulating me from the overwhelming emotions that had threatened to break free only seconds earlier.
“Hey. You! Where’s my chili cheese fries?” Joey shouted from his car. I’d gone to high school with him and we had a mutual hate thing going on. He was a slimy greaseball asshole, and with one look at my face he’d have known something was up. The opportunity to turn my bad day into an astronomically shitty one probably tipped the scale for him.
I kept moving toward my car, parked under the live oak that was the only thing between Roller Freeze and acres upon acres of farmland, the whir of the wheels drowning out my heavy breaths as I fought back hysterics. I could fix this. I could make this work. I could work all day at Rusty’s before going to the food mart, or I could start earlier at the food mart and maybe pick up some overtime. It wasn’t the end of the world. Not yet, anyway.
I wished I believed my own words, because the sense of dread I'd been feeling all day spread out from my stomach and didn’t stop there. When I eventually fell in behind the steering wheel, I clawed at the skates on my feet and dropped them in the foot-well behind me, my head banging against the steering wheel as the tears finally came.
Half of it was self-pity, the other half anger and frustration at myself. I was stronger than I was behaving. Circumstances had changed; I just had to adapt and change with them.
Gripping the wheel at ten and two, I lifted my head slowly and stared out at the Roller Freeze, letting my chin rest on top of it. Just beyond the restaurant was the interstate, and beyond that was freedom. How many nights had I spent sitting in that very spot and staring at the headlights rushing by as the traffic passed? My ex, Jacob, had sat with me on the hood of
his car, reading off every stop we’d hit on our way out of there – the towns, the sights, the distance between us and Babylon; he’d mapped it all out.
I’d had so many dreams, and although I hadn’t let go of all of them, there were a few that had to be pushed aside. A few I would be too old to do when I actually had the time and money. My first priority was Tate right now. He wasn’t going to take this well at all. He would blame himself like he had when I had to take on three jobs. I couldn’t let him know yet, but what I could do was food shop and wash his damn jeans for him now that I had some extra time on my hands.
Starting up the engine, I took one last look at the lanes of traffic heading toward the unknown and smiled. I hoped Mrs. Bridgefort was ready to fight for that tub of ice cream because, tonight, I needed it more than she did.
After doing a food shop and spending more than I probably should have, I went home and started the laundry. This inevitably snowballed and I found myself starting to scrub every surface within my reach. My music was so loud, it swept me into its embrace and moved me around to its beat on auto-pilot until there was nothing more to do, other than Tate’s room, which was a hell no. I wasn’t up-to-date on my tetanus shot.
Tate knew that something was wrong the moment he walked through the door. His eyes bounced from surface to surface, his eyebrows rising further with each one they found clear, disinfected and sterilized. They didn’t stop until they came across me, stood outside the bathroom with rubber gloves up to my elbows and my hair clinging to my sweaty forehead, looking like some deranged surgeon from the horror movies he liked so much.
“Okay, what happened?”
My mouth opened, closed, then opened again, but there were no words. I should have stopped at laundry and watched some shitty daytime talk shows.
“Ayda, you only clean like this when something bad’s happened.”
Point made.
“No, I don’t.”
“Liar. Spill it.”
Standing with my mouth open, I finally realized that the kid knew me better than I knew myself most days. Flapping my hands about until the gloves fell to the ground, I bent to pick them up, nodded to the couch and made my way over to him.
“Tate,” I started, pacing back and forth in front of the couch, the words formulating in my head with each step I took. “I don’t want you worrying about this. I’ll find a solution, but the Roller Freeze let me go.”
“What? Why? You were the only one who actually did something there.”
I stopped pacing and let my head fall back on my shoulders, studying the ceiling. At least someone noticed. “Apparently that’s where I went wrong, kid. That and I actually wore clothes that didn’t show my coochy. Go figure, right?”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Tate. Please. Make me feel like I’m doing something right and stop swearing in front of me.”
“Sorry, A. I just hate that it’s gotta be like this. I hate that you have no life because you’re working so much. I can quit football–”
“Stop!” I put up my hands and dropped my head, shaking it almost violently. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you. This is for me to worry about, not you. I can pick up extra shifts at Rusty’s and the food mart until I find something else. We’re going to be just fine.”
“No, Ayda. The royal we doesn’t work here. You can’t do this anymore. You don’t take days off anymore. I never see you, you’re never at the games and you’re tired all the time. I can help you.”
“You wanna know how you can help?” I asked, pushing my hair back and ignoring the tight feeling in my fingers as I balled them. “Help by keeping your grades up and getting a scholarship. That’s what I need you to do, Tate. That’s it.”
My brother threw himself against the couch with such force that it moved against the wooden floor with a scream of complaint. He folded his thick arms over his chest and stared in my direction in an attempt to intimidate me. He seemed to forget I changed his diapers fifteen years ago. He didn’t scare me.
Huffing out a breath, he dropped the feigned anger and scrubbed his face with both hands, looking up at me from between them. “I feel guilty all the time.”
“Don’t.”
“Like it’s ever that easy? Ayda, this isn’t living. You know that, right?”
I dropped the gloves on the coffee table before firmly planting my ass on it with a sigh that rivaled his. Of course I knew this wasn’t living, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make to give him a better life.
“Listen to me, Tate. I know things have been shit since Mom and Dad died. I know I haven’t been around much, but you can’t worry about me. Not now. I did the high school thing. I did the college thing. Now it’s your turn. When I know you’re set, then I can do what I need to. I’m not conceding to this. I’m not letting us get separated. I’m your sister and we stick together, always.”
Leaning forward, I patted his knee as though closing the debate on the topic. He really was a good kid, and I supposed I was lucky in that respect. If he’d been a little asshole, all of this would have been much harder to deal with.
I wasn’t his parent, but I was the closest thing he had and I felt responsible for him in every way a sister could.
Pushing to my feet, I gave him a smile and held my knuckle out for him to bump. It stopped him from being embarrassed by my emotional hugs after talks like these. I still squeezed him like I did when he was a kid, which was ridiculous considering he was much bigger than I was, but times like this called for diplomacy.
“We good?”
He nodded in response, spurring me on to pick up the gloves and go back to cleaning. He was right, it was almost compulsive for me to do it. It gave me some order in an otherwise disorderly world. Brushing my hair from my face as I reached the hall, I stopped when I heard my name.
“Ayda?”
“Yeah?”
“I always thought it was Mom and Dad that I looked up to and admired. I don’t know when it happened, but I realize now that it’s been you for a while. You’re my role-model, and you’re damn good at it.”
My stomach flipped and my heart fluttered in my chest. I was about to cry, but managed to smile at him anyway. “Even if I cuss like a sailor?”
“Are you kidding? That’s a huge part of it. My vocabulary has broadened colorfully thanks to you.” He smiled and shrugged. “Love you, sis.”
“Love you, too, T.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Drew
The burn of the liquor was something I couldn't get enough of. The first glass had gone down the hole without much fuss, the second the same. The third and fourth were no different, just from bigger tumblers. The fifth, I was made to share with a fucking mixer. For a scary looking bastard, Harry could make me fall asleep with his rules at times. I made it to ten before I started staring down the chest of the bar woman, promising her a good time if she gave it to me neat.
“Your blood ain't used to it. Trust me, you'll go into shock,” Harry warned me on the side.
Shame it was drowned out by the calls of my brothers as they pulled me to lay back on the pool table so they could pour that shit straight from the bottle into my mouth.
The wheels would have to wait until tomorrow. The whiskey had been served, the women, too, to an extent. I'd had three chicks grinding up against me, wearing nothing but g-strings and oil on their skin as I sat sipping from a beer bottle, just watching my dick grow hard beneath my jeans.
Gurgling on the last of the whiskey I could take, I raised my head off the table, coughing and spluttering as it went everywhere. It burned like a son of a bitch when it flowed back up my nostrils and before I knew it, I was rolling off of that three foot high surface and my ass was crashing on the floor.
“Alright, alright, boys. I think he's done enough of the sensory knockout shit. Unless you want him either dead or back in the joint, I'd say it's time to get him home.” I tried to glance up at the barman as he spoke, but whether it was from the boo
ze, the fall or both, I wasn’t sure which version of him, out of the three I saw, I was meant to direct my glare at.
Dropping my head back down, I pulled my knees up and rested my arms on top of them as I tried to stop my head from spinning.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed before there was a man on each bicep, dragging me up until my arms were draped around both their shoulders.
“He's right, Drew. We should get you home.” My head rolled lazily to the side as I squinted and gave the youngest rider in our pack a toothy, drunken grin. Kenny was a few years younger than me and had shaved his eyebrows into zigzags. Moron.
He laughed as he looked over my head to whoever was on the other side of him. My attention followed his in a half circle, my chin rising and my head rolling up to the ceiling as though I was watching a bird flying over before it fell again and I locked eyes with my best pal – the one guy I'd known since before I knew how to say the word fuck.
“You…” I paused, swallowing harshly as my stomach rolled. “I swear you've grown taller, Slater.”
“Not for ten years.” He smirked, looking down at me from the corner of his eye as though he wasn't sure if I was really there with him or not. His long, black beard was tinged with red at the ends and he looked older than I remembered him. Probably 'cause he was. I had to stop forgetting time had passed by. They were making slipping back into the old routine too easy.
“Don't you ever get vertigo up there? I'd just want to jump the fuck off.”
Slater's laughter broke free, but only because he'd let it slip by accident. “No, Drew. I'm not the pussy who's scared of heights. That's all on you.”
“Hey! That was meant to stay between you and me.”
“Oops,” Slater said sarcastically, half turning his body to the side as he tried to maneuver all three of us out of the door, back into the open air.
“Quit pretending you haven't missed me and just take me the fuck to Maisey already,” I grumbled, my chin falling to my chest again as I sucked in a big breath of the night air.
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