by Debra Kayn
The last thing she wanted to do was send Bear a text and ask if she could see him. Some things were better off said in person. Besides, she was proud of herself, and she wanted him to know how important it was for her to make the decision to leave Red Light.
Besides, she refused to give Bear a chance to turn her away or tell her goodbye without handing over her explanation and her apology first.
"Okay, hang on. Don't move or you'll probably get shot." The man's gaze slid down her in appreciation before he walked away and disappeared between the two motel buildings.
Her bravado left. Her skin crawled. She glanced around the area. The first man had disappeared, but she couldn't shake the feeling there were people watching her. There were only two reasons why she stayed instead of running away.
One: Bear was here, and she would find him.
Two: Tiff, Desiree, Amy, and Christina were obviously in love with the men here, and she trusted their opinion. She might not agree with them, but if they were safe with the men of Moroad, she hoped they'd extend the same courtesy to her.
A man walked out from between the buildings. She squinted for a closer inspection. Relief flooded her at the sight of Jeremy approaching her.
She knew him.
She liked him.
He knew Bear was seeing her.
She met him in the middle of the parking lot and scribbled Bear's name on a new piece of paper, handing it to Jeremy.
Jeremy's mouth firmed, and he exhaled loudly through his nose. "Not many women would walk onto the property of a motorcycle club," mumbled Jeremy.
She made another message and passed him the paper.
"Only one biker would hang out in a bordello, break the rules, and go against his president. If Bear can do all that, I can walk into a gang looking for him."
Jeremy chuckled.
She clutched her hands in front of her and mouthed, "Please."
Several awkward, painful seconds ticked by. She balled her hands at her side wanting to beat against Jeremy's chest to prove her point she wasn't afraid and force him to get Bear like she asked. The club dynamics escaped her, but the fact they were felons kept her from abusing the president.
"Follow me." Jeremy turned and walked off without looking back at her.
She hurried to keep up with his longer pace and came to an abrupt stop in front of the second door from the end of the building. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew the hair out of her overheated face. The early morning temperature already hinting at the scorcher of a day she could expect and it wasn't even ten o'clock in the morning.
Jeremy knocked on the door. Before she prepared herself, Bear stood in the doorway, his gaze swinging from Jeremy to Madison, and staying on her.
Madison stepped forward while Jeremy walked away. Her heart raced, and she greedily stared, taking Bear in. She'd had few chances to see him in the daylight at Red Light, and he always appeared taller, broader, and more beautiful to her in the sunshine. She moistened her lips and reached out for him.
Bear stiffened at the touch of her hand. She jerked back. He had never avoided her before. If anything, he was the one who confidently assured her they belonged together.
She bowed her head and peeled off the pre-written pages of her notepad she'd stayed up late into the night to finish. Her need to fix the problems she'd caused by leaving without explaining left her hands shaking and doubting her ability to communicate in a way he'd understand. She only knew she wouldn't leave until he read her words.
Bear leaned against the open doorway, reading the papers, flipping one over to read the next, and the next. She crossed her arms and cupped her elbows to keep from touching him. It seemed like months since she'd had his thick arms comforting her.
The papers clutched in his hands rustled, and he folded them, ignoring the rest of the unread pages. She swallowed hard, searching his eyes for any sign of forgiveness.
Bear looked down at her notes in his hand. "I'll pick you up at eight o'clock at the inn."
She waited until he lifted his gaze to her again and nodded.
"I read enough. I'll read the rest later." He whispered. "I think you best be going back to your room at the inn, sweetheart."
She'd spilled her heart to him. She wanted to stay with him or ask him to come back to her room at the inn with her. While she told him everything about the last two weeks, she had more to tell him. There were details about his life she wanted to understand.
More pressing at the moment, she wanted to know why he stopped reading her letter before he got to the end.
He lifted his hand to cup her cheek and stopped before he touched her, dropping his arm to his side. "What you're telling me? What I'm now learning? I don't want you anywhere near here with the others around or with me. Let me take today to...well, I need today."
She wrote on her notepad and held it up to him. "You don't want me?"
Bear whistled low and softly. "I wanted you from the first day I caught you smiling, and I promised you I'm never leaving. Nothing has changed. But, you don't go telling a man all that you're telling me in this letter and expect me to like what you've said. Let me have today, and when I come to you tonight, there's nothing standing between us. Can you do that, sweetheart?"
He wore the pain of truth in his eyes. The familiar mask she'd developed to perfection over the years. The only way to face something so brutally harsh, he had to do it on his own.
She backed away, turned, and hurried across the parking lot. She replayed everything he said over and over, never wanting to forget the words, holding him to his promise. Giving him the short amount of time to accept what he couldn't change, she walked away. It'd taken her twenty-four years to understand herself.
She could give him a day.
Chapter Thirty Two
Bear watched Madison cross the parking lot of the Moroad Motel and leave him. He caught Gunner standing nearby and lifted his chin to have his MC brother follow Madison back to the inn.
His head pounded, and he reached out and braced his weight on the doorframe. As soon as he grasped the situation, read the rest of the letter, and the anger balled up inside of him left, he'd take care of Madison himself and never leave her side.
Sweat broke out over his face. He'd read enough. He'd learned enough. Three pages into her letter, he understood without reading any more.
Madison strolled out of sight. Gunner started his bike. Bear stumbled inside the room, slamming the door. His body shook with pent up fury and disgust. Pulling at his vest, he ripped it off, tearing at his shirt. The rage boiling inside increased and his muscles heated.
He picked up a chair and hurled it across the room. Broken wooden legs bounced off the wall.
Desperate to destroy the truth of what he couldn't change, he charged forward and sent the table crashing against the refrigerator. Sweat burned his eyes. He clamped his teeth, searching for everything in his fucked-up life to tear apart.
Unable to go back in time to save Madison from the abuse and devastation she'd lived through, he punched the wall helplessly and roared in pain for her,
The door swung open, and Jeremy stepped inside. Bear zeroed in on his president, brought back his head and threw himself forehead, clashing forehead to forehead.
"God damnit." Jeremy swung Bear into a headlock. "Someone get in here."
Bear bucked against the hold, breaking loose. He eyed the blood dripping down Jeremy's forehead and his lip curled in satisfaction.
"Bear, check yourself." Jeremy put his hands out and blocked the open doorway.
Bear growled stepping forward. His thoughts on a young girl, powerless, frightened, and alone. He wanted to kill the person responsible for hurting Madison. Rip the throat out of the man responsible for ruining Madison's life.
Johnson ran into the room. "What the fuck, man?"
Jeremy and Johnson moved forward, pushing in on Bear. He glanced from one to the other, looking for his opening. He outweighed both of them. They'd never take him down.
"Look at me, brother." Jeremy ignored the blood on his face and circled to the right.
Bear followed him with his gaze, fisting his hands.
"That's it, Bear. You want me. I'm right here." Jeremy held out his arms. "Give it to me, brother."
Bear lunged and came to a jerking stop. His head snapped back with a force that knocked Bear flat on his back. He gasped and choked struggling for the breath he'd lost.
"Hold him down," ordered Jeremy.
Johnson grunted behind him, tightening the arm hold on Bear's neck. The release of anger took the stiffness out of his body, and Bear laid there on top of Johnson, catching his breath.
Jeremy swept his forehead with his forearm and fingered the two-inch split in the skin. "Damn."
Bear coughed, cleared his throat, and attempted a pathetic laugh. "Christina's gonna kill me."
"Yeah, and if she doesn't, I will." Jeremy squatted down beside him. "What the fuck is wrong with you, huh?"
Bear pushed against Johnson's hold on him. "Fuck, let me go. I'm done."
He heaved himself to his ass, shook the dizziness out of his head, and stood, groaning under the aches already developing. Weak as a baby, he stumbled forward, scooping up the array of scattered papers littering the floor.
"You can take the damages I caused to the room out of my money." Bear stacked the multi-page letter. "While you're doing that, I need to withdraw half my savings."
He understood what he had to do. Everything made sense. His waiting time over, he'd move forward at his speed.
"I'll have it for you in the morning." Jeremy gazed around the room. "I hope you're not thinking about skipping out of Idaho wearing a Moroad patch."
"I'm not going anywhere." Bear leaned against the wall, pressing the papers against his thigh and using his hand to iron out the wrinkles.
By the time he'd put the papers in order, Johnson and Jeremy had left the room and shut the door. Alone, he walked over to the bed and sat on the edge, rereading the letter Madison gave him.
Bear,
You're probably wondering why I quit Red Light and left without explaining myself. Before I tell you why I made those decisions, I want to tell you how sorry I am for any anger and confusion I caused you. In a roundabout way, I left for you. But, I'll get to that later. Right now, I need to tell you what I've done for the last two weeks, so you understand how terribly wrong I was to leave.
My intent was to change everything about me in two weeks, so I could make myself lovable. So, you'd never be disappointed. I planned to quit selling myself, try to become a normal woman in a town that might except me. Every morning, I'd wake and go out on the town. I'd do ordinary things I never had a chance to do before like shopping, relax at the park, buy coffee, and smile at strangers who noticed me. It'd been a long time since I had to rely on myself for the most basic of things.
About a week of living on my own, I realized I'd made an awful mistake. You see, I didn't like the person I was pretending to be. I walked around trying to convince myself I could live in a speaking world. It sounds silly now, but for the first time in my life, I wanted better for myself. In the process, I became angry at the life handed to me.
Remember when I told you I lost my ability to speak when I was twelve years old? What I told you about having a crushed vocal box is true. My mother's boyfriend choked me when he heard me singing too loud in my bedroom. He squeezed my neck so badly, I thought I'd die. I could feel my neck snapping and popping, and all I could do was fight to keep breathing while my body collapsed. Looking back, I know he would've killed me if my mom hadn't come home and managed to get him away from me.
I woke up in the hospital alone. For several days, while I recovered, the nurses and doctor would come in and try to explain what happened to my voice. How I had an operation to fix the part that gave me the ability to make a sound. A week later, my mom came to visit me for the first time since she took me to the hospital. I remember her arguing with the nurse in the hallway about how she thought they would fix me and demanding to know why I couldn't talk yet. I spent another week in the hospital alone, and the doctor taught me how to do exercises to keep the scar tissue from the surgery at a minimum.
You see, I needed to learn how to talk again. I had to exercise my vocal cords and keep them limber. Without therapy, scar tissue would grow, immobilizing my vocal box, and make me mute. The doctor told me it would be a long, painful recovery of at least a year before I would be able to manage a few words. If I failed to go through therapy and exercise, I would never talk again.
My mother wasn't around when the doctor was giving me his verdict. She finally showed up to take me home, and the only thing she was concerned about was that I didn't upset her boyfriend again. She acted irritated that I was even coming home to make her life more difficult, so my twelve-year-old self swore I'd never speak at home again. Mostly, because I was afraid of her boyfriend hurting me again, but now I think I refused to do my exercises at home because I believed it would hurt my mom and Del more if I couldn't talk, and I wanted them to hurt as much as they had hurt me.
It wasn't hard for me to go silent because I had no one to care enough about me. My mom never took me back to the doctor to go through physical therapy and stated many times I deserved the ugly scar for misbehaving. What she failed to understand or maybe she simply didn't care, it was the scar tissue inside me she couldn't see that grew and became ugly, until I couldn't even make a sound, no matter how hard I tried.
Several years passed and my home life never improved. For the most part, I was ignored. At other times, instead of violence, I was the subject of my mother's boyfriend telling me that I would never amount to anything more than a pussy for men because I couldn't talk. The first chance I got, I left home, worked at several entry-level jobs, and scraped by. None of the jobs lasted long. While my employers never fired me because I was mute, I knew that was the reason they let me go. After a year of struggling, I knew my mom's boyfriend was right about me.
I understood my limits, and instead of going back home, I met someone at the same motel I was staying at who introduced me to selling my body for money. She belonged to a Network, who sent women to different parts of the country to work in illegal bordellos.
I've sold my body since I was eighteen years old.
I put a roof over my head, money into my bank account, and I don't think of myself as surviving, but I guess that's what I did. During that time, I was able to shut off all my feelings. I know that sounds strange, but the routine, the meaningless acts I performed, the constant change of scenery, I never experienced any pain again. Neither did I have any joy. I could forget about my mom, my childhood, and my disability.
I was content.
Until you whistled underneath my balcony.
You gave me emotions I'd buried deep inside of me and thought I'd lost. I found myself crying for no reason whenever I was alone and when I was with customers, I found myself thinking about you when you weren't around. It became harder and harder to get through each appointment, and I couldn’t understand what changed for me. Slowly, I fell apart. The night I left Red Light, Tiff found me in the bathroom getting sick and an emotional mess. I could barely face her because the guilt of her seeing and knowing what I was doing every single day in the Blue Room while being the only person who knew you had feelings for me made me feel awful. I left that night ready to prove to you I was worth loving.
What I discovered instead was that I am not ashamed of the choices I made in the past. I can't tell you I won't make choices that are questionable in my future. This is who I am, and I'm not going to pretend to be someone else to please another person, or pretend and rebel like I did as a child when I made a life-long irreversible change to my voice to hide my pain.
It took me two weeks to believe the person I am today deserves to be loved, and more importantly I can and should allow myself to trust, depend on others, and love you.
Bear, you have no idea what you've done for me. W
ithout pressuring me, you gave me time to accept myself and all my faults, and I think that's the one thing I needed my whole life. Whether you decide to continue with our plans to find out if we belong together, or you've changed your mind, I can never thank you enough for making me brave.
Love, Madison
As long as Bear lived, he would never be able to justify the reasons behind Madison's mom not giving a shit about her daughter. If he had known what she'd gone through before he'd fallen in love with her, he would've...
He let his chin fall to his chest. He wouldn't have changed a damn thing.
The moment he spotted her smiling, he'd gone against the rules of Red Light and approached her, doing whatever she wanted in the chance she'd smile at him. He whistled for her and patiently waited, knowing he could wait a lifetime until she was ready to come to him.
Somehow, his attraction to her at the beginning took a backseat. He found himself falling in love with Madison.
The woman behind the silence.
The woman who smiled for him.
Chapter Thirty Three
A string of eighties music played in Rail Point Bar. Madison sat beside Bear in the booth in front of the tall, glass windows. She couldn't quit staring at him.
When he picked her up on his motorcycle—exhilarating, and told her they were going to eat out, she'd put her trust in him that if he wanted to walk out of her life, he wouldn't take her to dinner first.
She dragged her gaze off him and to the phone she held in her hand and typed to him. "I want to keep asking you questions, so I can relax and believe that we're sitting here, where we had our first date, and you still want me."
Bear grinned. "If you don't eat, I'm going to start on your hamburger next."
"Really? You're going to talk about food right now when both of our futures are right in front of us?" She held the phone up for him to read.
"Yep." He patted his chest. "I've got a job now. I'll need my strength."