I won't let myself have it. Not anymore.
Then again, I'm not sure that I could ever call the things that happened between those men and me joy. It was passion and pain and heartache and cocks, mouths and hands and hate and want. It was lust. It was agony. It was …
Crown leaps into the water and splashes me from head to toe, dragging dark hair around my face. Fortunately for him, I'm not wearing any makeup. If I were, I would finally give in and give him that cock punch that he deserves.
“Oh, are you having a pool party?” Nellie says from behind me.
I glance over my shoulder at my mother, smoking a cigarette in a dress that costs more than Reba's mother's car. It's fancy, but it doesn't make her look fancy. It doesn't take away the lines on either side of her mouth from smoking too much, or the haunted glaze in her eyes from burying her daughters' still bodies. It doesn't cover the scars on her inner elbows from the drugs or the tightness of her face from too much drinking.
Nope. Nellie Kesselring won't fool a soul, not even with an Alexander McQueen gown on her thin frame.
“No, Nellie, I'm not having a pool party,” I say, and deep down, right behind all that bone and sinew and hot red beating pulses of my heart, I feel bad for treating her like shit. She looks so sad right now, her blue eyes like pools of tears, just sitting in the middle of a face that says hard, tough, awful little life with every blink.
But then I remember that she made me sit outside the room once while she screwed one of dad's club buddies. I remember her laughing and blowing smoke in my face as I coughed and cried and told her I didn't want to sit at the clubhouse anymore, that I wanted to go home. If she'd cared about me then even one tenth as much as I want to care about her, then things would be different. Things would be good. Maybe Queenie and Posey would still be alive?
“Please go away,” I tell her as I snatch the smoke from her fingers and walk the edge of the pool, watching Crown's big, thick body part the water as easily … as easily …
I sit down on the chair next to Reba, hard.
“I can't do it,” I tell her, feeling my breath pick up, my skin tingle. “I can't be surrounded by them every goddamn day and not think about it, Reba.”
Reba pauses and puts her magazine in her lap, glancing over at the three girls fawning over Crown in the water. He's eating it up, giving Amiya, Chardou, and Dena a ridiculous amount of attention and praise for their stupid lip licking, hair tossing, and giggling. He'd probably fuck them all, too, if they really wanted it.
I hate him. Them. All of them.
“Sweetheart, you need to calm down and listen to me,” she starts, plucking the cigarette from my hand and stabbing it into the ashtray on the side table. Reba turns to me and throws her legs over the side of her chair, planting her bare feet on the pavement.
She's the only one who knows what happened that night between me and Crown, Sin, Beast, and Grainger. The only person who knows the truth.
“Do you remember what happened last time?” she asks, and I feel this shivery heat take over my skin, like a blast of hot, desert wind.
“Yes.”
I certainly do.
Only, maybe not in the way that Reba's intending me to. Of course I remember the awful aftermath, the way I fell to pieces, the way my body ached and craved and dreamed. I remember how hard it was to walk away, to distance myself. I remember being afraid that Cat would find out, that I'd get my heart broken. I remember … everything else.
But I also remember mouths as hot as the sun, thick curved cocks of velvet and steel.
Hands on my hips.
Stubble against my thighs.
Heat, heat, heat.
“Are you even listenin', sugar?” Reba asks me as I blink red-brown eyes at her and sit back, my black bikini studded with small silver skulls. Annoyingly enough, it sort of matches Crown's boxer shorts.
“I need a fucking break,” I tell her. It sounds almost like I'm pleading, but I don't plead. Sorry. Just not in my DNA. “I feel like I'm living in a cage, Reba.” Yeah, a cage of muscles and lust and the sweet smell of tobacco.
“Come with me to the Christian Youth Retreat,” she says, and I raise my eyebrows. “Oh, don't give me that look, Gidget. You could use Jesus in your life right now—badly. And we both know it.”
“I don't know about Jesus,” I say as I glance over and see Crown swim to the edge of the pool, folding his tattooed arms on the bricks. His ink is bright and crazy, popping off his skin like a comic strip. I hear his whole body tells a story—at least that's what the club-whores say—but I've never actually seen him naked with the lights on. “But a weekend in the woods? Away from men in leather vests? That sounds like fucking heaven. I'll convert if it means I get to go.”
“Well, my daddy is still angry about us skippin' out on the sermon last week, but maybe if I tell him you've decided to drag your heathen butt over to the bright side, he'll let you come.” Reba leans back, watching as my eyes lock on Crown and stay there. “Heck, never mind: you're coming whether he likes it or not.”
“It's this weekend?” I ask, my voice quiet enough that there's no way Crown can hear me over the girls' splashing. A quick glance over my shoulder shows that Nellie is still there, smoking a new cigarette and watching my friends with a wistful look, like maybe they remind her of the daughters that won't be swimming in this pool ever again. The daughters whose laughter will never ring inside these walls.
Pain and anger wash over me in a tidal wave, a tsunami of emotion that I toss aside like trash. I have no need for it. What good will it do me, to think about Queenie and Posey? The only thing those memories make me do is hate. Hate my mom, my dad, the club, the guys. The world.
“It is. So, what's the plan? And you'd best come up with one because I swear on the name I shall not take, that if Grainger ends up at this retreat, I will skin you like a hog.”
I give Reba a look and try not to laugh. Her smile says she's only half serious.
“I can't have any of them there, Reba. A weekend in the woods is perfect. It's away from the boys and …” I pause because I can't make my lips say it. Grey Wolfe. Grey Wolfe. Grey Wolfe.
Murderers. Rapists. Thieves.
I want to puke.
But they won't find me there, not in the woods on some Christian youth camping trip.
No fucking way.
I so wish I'd been wrong about that.
“Don't think I don't know you're planning something,” Crown says when I open the door to my bathroom and step out, cloaked in pajamas and wishing he wasn't standing just inches from me. How the fuck am I supposed to deal with that?
He flashes a sharp smile, mischievous and playful.
What a bunch of crap.
I move around him, and I swear, I can feel the molecules vibrating in the air between us.
“Why do you guys always say that shit? You act like I'm some sort of escape artist.”
“You are an escape artist,” Crown says, following me into the hallway and pausing outside my bedroom door. When I move to close him out, he blocks the swing of the wood with his shoulder. “You're a teenage girl. Don't your kind specialize in escape plans?”
“Maybe I wouldn't have to come up with an escape plan if you guys and Cat would just leave me the hell alone.”
Crown purses his lips as I step into the room and grab my iPhone off the nightstand. Maybe if I plug my earbuds in and turn my music up, I can drive him out of here. Crown is not a big fan of Eminem.
“Isn't it time for you to switch shifts with Beast?” I ask, giving him a look as I flop down on the edge of my bed and try not to think of … that. That. Fucking that. I just can't seem to stop fantasizing about that night.
I felt worshipped.
Powerful.
In charge.
Right now … I feel like a prisoner.
“Grey Wolfe isn't a joke,” Crown says, crossing his arms over his chest in what I call 'bad boy biker pose'. It's ridi
culous; they all do it. Every single one of them. I feel like it's almost part of the uniform. “Gidget, you know this is for your own good.”
“Really?” I ask, patting my bed and trying to encourage Feminist to join me up on the mattress. The snotty little black and white husky takes his time, stretching and yawning and padding over—but not before pausing to growl and lift his lip in Crown's direction. “Good boy,” I say before I refocus back on Crown. “Because 'for your own good' is one of those patriarchal bullshit phrases that say I'm not independent enough, not smart enough to think for myself.”
“Not everything is an attack on you, Gidge,” he says, getting irritated with me. As jovial as he is, as friendly as he pretends to be, he's an asshole. Just like the rest of them. “This isn't about you, or women, or even your age.”
“No, this is about a war that my dad started that he doesn't know how to finish,” I reply with cool indifference, putting my earbuds in and cranking the music up before Crown can say another word. He watches me from eyes as pale and beautiful as the pond behind the high school, the one that's always mossy and crowded with water plants. They're organic, those eyes, so at odds with the rest of him.
I turn toward the wall and stare at the purple paint, determined, determined, determined not to cry.
Grey Wolfe.
I know they're not a joke. I was there, hiding in a pantry when my sisters lost their lives.
No, better than anyone else, I know how real this all is.
By the end of the week, I'm starting to get suspicious. I know Gaz is still fuming about the bonfire thing (luckily nobody knows about the lake except Grainger and, obviously, Cat). But my brother is not the type to let things go. No, that man holds a grudge like nobody's business.
On Friday, just before the youth group retreat, I come home and find him waiting in the living room for me, draped over Nellie's perfect white couch in his greasy jeans and dirty leather vest.
“Fuck,” I say as soon as I walk in. Gaz barely comes over here anymore, mostly only if Mom cooks something and guilts him into it. More often than not, he's at the clubhouse fucking groupie girls and snorting coke. “What do you want?”
My brother ignores me for a moment, taking a drink of his beer. He thinks he's better than me, and he doesn't do a damn thing to hide it. Gaz drinks from the club's anti-woman Kool-Aid on a regular basis.
I hate him almost as much as I hate Cat, and much, much more than I hate Grainger (which is a whole fuck of a lot).
I don't wait around—if he wants to talk to me, then he can open his fucking mouth and speak—and head for the stairs. Beast follows slowly along behind me, checking the street briefly before he closes the door.
He doesn't follow me up the stairs.
But Gaz does.
“I don't have time for this,” I say as I throw my backpack on my bed and start pulling things out of it. Really, I'm planning on packing for the retreat, but my lips summon a lie as easily as I breathe. Sometimes, I wonder if I was destined for hell from the day of my birth. What chance do I really have with a family like this? A family that lies and cheats and murders and parties like the devil himself. “I have a research paper I need to get started on.”
“Well, make time,” Gaz says, like I owe him the world. “Grainger told me what happened the other day.”
I pause and my skin goes cold.
A hot warm hand, drenched in ink, covered in the wet heat of my desire. Clutched in my own fingers, the velvet curve of a cock. The air punctuated by grunts and growls and moans.
“You mean the lake,” I say, refusing to break stride, pausing only to pat Fem on the head. My brother hates my dog almost as much as my dog hates him. “What about it? Grainge was there.”
“According to him, you snuck off.”
Footsteps sound behind me, but I don't care. Gaz has been trying to intimidate me for years. He says I don’t know my place. What he doesn't realize is that I know it all too well. To him, to my dad, to the club, I'm just a piece of property, a pawn on a chessboard to be moved at will. I have no decisions to make or goals to aspire to. I simply am. Any action I take is just an extension of my brother and father.
You'd never know by asking my male relatives what century we're living in.
A hand grabs my shoulder and spins me around, the grip so rough and painful that I actually cry out.
“What the hell, Gaz?” I ask as he shoves me violently against the desk.
Fem goes completely batshit, launching himself at my brother's leg. With one easy backhand, Gaz sends the husky flying against the closet doors.
“Leave him the fuck alone!” I scream, but my brother's already dragging me forward by the arm, leaving bruises in his wake. As Fem struggles to stand, shaking his head like he's really taken a serious blow, Gaz shakes me so violently that my teeth rattle in my skull.
“I am done with your shit,” he snarls, and I can see from his pupils that he's completely strung out. “This rebellious crap? It's over, Gidge. You hear me?”
I jerk my arm from his grip and hit him, closed knuckles and all, right in the face.
At the same moment, Fem finally gets his feet and savagely lunges for Gaz. Before I can stop him, my brother pulls his gun out, takes aim at the husky and puts his finger on the trigger.
My scream is deafening.
“That's about enough o' that,” Beast says in that quiet, menacing way of his, grabbing Gaz's arm and twisting it so that the pistol falls uselessly to the floor. Fem's snarling and barking soothes when I drop to my knees and throw my arms around his neck, burying my face in his fur. “Get on your bike and go, brother,” he says, releasing Gaz and taking a small step back.
My heart is thundering and my arms are aching like they've been locked between the harsh metal teeth of a vise-grip. Sweat pours down my back and suddenly, I'm just panicking. Shaking, trembling, quivering. I can't stop my mind from rolling through the thoughts, those thoughts, those awful thoughts.
I slump away from Fem and put my back to the wall, covering my ears with my palms.
Memories rush over me like flames, consuming the last of my tentative sanity.
Two years ago …
I'm standing in the kitchen wearing a black pleated miniskirt, black lipstick, and a pleather vest that barely zips up over my padded tits. I've got nice, healthy A cups that I wish I could trade for Queenie's G cups. Why do I get small boobs and my sisters are both rocking massive racks?
“When is this goth phase gonna end?” Posey asks, bouncing into the kitchen in a pair of Daisy Dukes and a yellow tank with no bra. Now that she's turned twenty-one, she's spending all her time at the clubhouse, flirting with bikers and drinking. I can see her becoming Nellie right before my eyes and it's scaring me.
I don't want that for my sisters.
I don't want that for me.
“It's not a phase; it's an identity,” I tell her because I'm fifteen years old and I know everything. Everything. That's how most teenagers feel, right? But when I'm surrounded by people like Cat and Gaz and Nellie and Posey, it's hard not to see it as pure truth. The decisions they all make are just … ludicrous. I feel like Queenie and I are the only normal ones in the family.
“Um, okay, and even that sounds weird and goth.”
“Fuck off, Pose,” I say, and those are the last words I ever say to my sister.
Fuck off.
Fuck off.
Fuck off.
How can those be the last words? How can those be the final syllables that fall from my lips and squirm into her ears? They're so awful, like snakes. Like a venomous bite that I'll have to carry the scars of for the rest of my life.
Posey grabs a beer from the fridge and disappears into the backyard, throwing her legs into the pool and popping some shades on her face. That's my last image of her alive, but it's not the one that sticks in my brain when I close my eyes and call up her name.
Like a ghost, a specter from the past, I can only see the way she died.
&
nbsp; “I'm home!” Queenie calls, letting herself in the front door. She's twenty-three now and finally looking for a place of her own to move into. She found an apartment last week and even went so far as to put down a security deposit, but Cat didn't like it. He said that part of town was too sketchy, that a ground floor apartment was too dangerous.
If he'd only let her move, if he'd only let her go, maybe she wouldn't have died that day.
There's not a second that passes that I don't wish it was me.
“Have you started dinner yet?” she asks me when she walks into the kitchen and raises her brows at my outfit. Could be the spiked boots with the three inch platforms, the fishnet tights, or the black and pink feather eyelashes. I'm not sure.
“Have I started dinner yet?” I ask, picking crackers out of a red Ritz box and popping them into my mouth. Um. No. “I won't cook for those people.”
And by those people, I mean, of course, Gaz and Cat and Nellie and Posey.
I'd rather starve than cook for them.
Queenie twists her blonde hair up on the top of her head and sighs.
“Spaghetti or fettucine?” she asks, because she's totally into pasta right now. I think it's a pregnant thing, but I could be wrong. I don't know anything about pregnancy except for the fact that Queenie … she's getting ready to pop.
Her belly looks like a beanbag and she sighs a lot when she walks, putting her hands on her lower back and murmuring curses under her breath.
None of us know who the father is.
But I wish I did.
“I'll cook,” I say with a sigh, because although I'd rather starve than make food for my asshole family, I'd rather take care of Queenie than perpetuate my grudges and bullshit.
“Thank you, babe,” she says, giving me a kiss on the forehead and heading for the stairs. “I'm gonna go lie down for a bit.”
I nod and grab an apron off the wall, one that Queenie made herself. She's been really into sewing since she got pregnant. She says that she's nesting.
“Fine. But don't expect anything edible.”
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