Tru had grown up in the MC. She told me she’d run for years, and she’d come back for one single reason—the man she couldn’t get out of her mind.
She’d given up the outside for love. “And we’re not all that different inside Defiance than out.”
But for the outside world, Defiance was putting on a show. The fact that women actually did things here was a trade secret. And women still didn’t have a vote on major MC issues. When I pointed that out, she was quick to say, “That couldn’t work.”
“For our protection, right?” I asked semi-sarcastically.
“It’s more the guys’ hang-ups than yours. Women around here respect that.”
“Some women.”
Tru was watching me carefully. “Don’t, Jessa.”
“Don’t what?”
“Sit there and judge us. I can’t imagine you had that much of a say in your family, or with Charlie, right?”
I wanted to say it was different, except at that moment I could neither explain nor discern how. “You’ve been good to me. I don’t want to judge. I want to understand.”
“Sometimes, things can’t be explained or understood up here.” She tapped the side of her head. “Sometimes things just need to be felt.” Her hand moved to cover her heart. “I feel Defiance. And Caspar. And that makes everything else, including the despair of the Chaos, fall away.”
“You’re all prepared to go to war for me.”
She gave me a small smile. “You just made the inevitable happen sooner. You can’t make a decision about staying here—or about Mathias—out of guilt.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I drew a line for you
Jessa
I’d been singing when Mathias finally came to see me again, the next afternoon. I’d refused Tru and Amiee’s offer to go to the diner—or anywhere else—because I didn’t want to bear the weight of Defiance’s disapproval yet again. I didn’t want to hear anyone tell me that I should’ve spilled my secrets earlier. Now, I’d let everything out, and my leverage was gone.
I was strangely okay with that. Maybe I always would’ve been here.
I finished the song before I took the headphones off. Mathias had stood, watching me, his eyes in a faraway place. Bishop was with him, but the man was doing his usual fading into the background while he translated, which meant Mathias was about to have a serious conversation with me. I focused only on Mathias and asked him, “Is everything okay?”
He shrugged as he sat down across from me on the bed, mirroring my cross-legged seated position. Then he reached for my hands and I let him. And then he turned my wrists over to expose the scars I’d never hidden and he studied them, the way he had when he’d been preparing to tattoo me.
“Pre-Chaos, I’d have been taken right to the plastic surgeon,” I said dryly. “Since there are no more newspapers, there’s no worry they’ll be spotted.”
He tilted his head and mouthed something and I didn’t need to understand all of it. He wanted to know about my suicide attempt. In the past, I would’ve done anything to avoid going back to that dark place, but now, I wanted it off my chest. The past was an anchor and talking about it was the key to freeing myself.
“I tried to kill myself more than once, but this one, the one that left these scars, that was the most serious,” I admitted bluntly, relieved not to have to couch the words. “I was trapped. The doctors didn’t understand. They kept saying, ‘You feel trapped,’ but that’s something so different. I was trapped, really and truly. There was no way out of my world. And I wanted out so badly. I’d grown up in that fishbowl. There was no escape. I couldn’t do anything, because there was always someone willing to take a picture of it and sell it. Even my own classmates. The ones who pretended to be my friends.”
I gulped a deep breath. “The Chaos took all that away, but it took away any chance of freedom I had. And Charlie pretended he understood, after I cut my wrists. He was so nice to me.”
He’s a politician—they’re never nice, Jessa. You knew that. Lied to yourself because it was easier.
“Fuck you, Mathias,” I said, mainly because he was so damned right. “He seemed different. He was concerned when I told him what our fathers were doing and now suddenly, I find out he’s no different than the rest of them? Well that’s bullshit—he told me he’d go with me and we’d find someone to listen to us, someone to make it better.”
Mathias shook his head, looked at me like I was the most naive person he knew. You know this world’s different. There’s no more hiding. No more couching. You do what needs to be done.
“You agree with him?”
I agree with doing what it takes to survive. Just like you’re doing.
“I want to do more than survive. But that might be all there is in this world now.”
Bullshit. You don’t believe that. I know you don’t.
“I don’t know what to believe. I’ve tried, Mathias. I tried to do what they wanted but it didn’t work.”
So what do you want? What do you want to be?
I stared into his obsidian eyes—endless, they seemed. “Whoever I’m supposed to be. Whoever I want to be.”
There’s a big difference between living and living free. You finally realize that.
“Yes.”
Mathias smiled and I always wanted to be the one who made him smile. It didn’t happen often but when it did, it was real. And it made me alive inside, for maybe the first time ever. It’s not me, Jessa. It’s the freedom.
“That’s not true.”
You’ll see that it is.
He was using my own freedom to push me away and maybe I should listen. Take my freedom, throw off every ball and chain I’ve ever had.
But the man in front of me was my wings. And I finally had something—someone—worth fighting for. Mathias only saw Jessa the good girl. He had no idea what he was up against.
Mathias was right—I’d never lived for me. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want him for him.
As odd as it sounded, post-Chaos, I had opportunities I wouldn’t have before. The world was open to me. But my parents, and Charlie’s and the Secret Service, they were all specters in the background. They would come for me at some point.
And if they didn’t? Would that make me feel better or worse?
I refused to think about them again. They’d been in the way of my decisions for the last time. But I had to be able to do things for myself. And not because Mathias wouldn’t take care of me, but because he would. I knew that. But I needed to know I was with him because I wanted to be, not because I was scared.
I’d always been on the outside. Here, I could be free. And that’s exactly what Mathias was worried about, that I loved the freedom, not him.
Why couldn’t he understand that I loved both? When I told him all of this, he typed, You’ve never been free, Jessa. Never been on your own. I think you need that.
“I probably would’ve if I hadn’t met the one guy who gave me more freedom than I’d ever had, all while staying right by my side.”
Mathias’s cheeks flushed. I want to believe that.
“Then believe it.”
I want you to be happy. If that means finding yourself...or finding someone else, you deserve it, Jessa. I’d never want to be the one to hold you back, ever.
“We’ve barely started. I’m not letting this end now.”
A short story’s no less epic.
“I’m not letting you push me away. I know you won’t even teach me signs because me learning would mean you’d have to let me in. You couldn’t keep things from me.”
I’d hit it on the nose. His expression didn’t change but that’s how I knew. He put up a wall whenever he didn’t want to talk, went into soldier mode.
“Fine. If that’s the way you want to p
lay it, then fuck you. We don’t need to communicate at all.”
Let me go
Mathias
Jessa turned away from me then, and since I’d gotten what I’d wanted, I walked away. I looked back at her once, because I couldn’t help myself, but she hadn’t.
Fucked that up good.
“On purpose,” Bish agreed, and I shot him the finger. He’d walked out ahead of me, maybe hoping I’d change my mind. “If you don’t want her, you don’t want her, right? S’cool. But if you do, you’ve got some serious romancing to do.”
I’ve got something else in mind.
“Better not be what I think it is.”
I didn’t bother answering him.
Chapter Thirty
Wild horses...couldn’t drag me away
Jessa
Two days later, Mathias still hadn’t reconsidered his decision to let me go, but I was going to fight fire with fire. I was writing out a list of songs that I wanted to include on a tape for him. My plan was to talk Bishop into letting me use Mathias’s recorder one day, but for now, I needed the perfect mix of songs.
Tru and Aimee had refused to let me stay inside the guesthouse crying, and I didn’t fight them too hard on it. Because I had to prove to myself—and to Mathias—that he’d been wrong. And so I’d gone out to the bar with them, under the protection of Hammer and Rebel, and I’d sung. But I was always singing to him.
Defiance was on lockdown, because we were still waiting to hear from Keller. I’d heard rumors that the supply trucks were due to pull in tomorrow, and everyone was unsure if that would truly happen.
I pushed that out of my mind now, because I couldn’t control that. I was sitting outside, in the main part of the compound, near the tattoo shop, listening to some of Mathias’s tapes now, because he hadn’t asked for them back. Over the past week, he would come and borrow some of the tapes back and leave me new ones, always at night, when I was asleep, so he didn’t have to talk to me. But I always knew when he was there. I’d hold my breath, hoping he’d wake me up, but he never did.
I started writing down some lyrics, trying to make this tape perfect. A blend of my feelings and my freedom, and how I saw him as both those things. I was so into the music I was listening to that I didn’t see the men approaching until I was surrounded. I would’ve noticed sooner if the sun had been out, but it was dark, and even the lights in the compound didn’t give off enough light to create shadows.
Mathias wasn’t in the tattoo shop—Tru was working there today—but he was close, across the compound meeting with some Defiance members, and I’d felt safe here. Until right now.
I’d never seen the two men who were suddenly in front of me. I’d only been here for two weeks, and for about half that time, the storms were terrible enough to keep most of Defiance locked underground. And I still hadn’t been allowed in the tubes. I can’t say that bothered me, because I’d spent enough time underground to last me a lifetime.
I didn’t want to look up at the two Defiance members, didn’t want to add to the sense of panic that raced through me. I squeezed the pen hard and willed Mathias to somehow know this was happening. I prayed for another one of his signs.
“Hey. You’re the new bitch,” one of them said finally when I refused to look up, and I bristled at the tone. It was said like bitch was their everyday language, what they always called women, and that was far more in tune with what I’d expected from an MC.
I glanced up and past them, but no one seemed to be noticing this was happening. I didn’t want to make a scene, because their patches said they were Defiance members...but something wasn’t right.
“Hey, talkin’ to you.” The second man snapped his fingers in my face.
I looked up at him. “What?”
“Bitch’s got a mouth on her,” the first guy said. “There’s a reward out for you. We want to collect.”
Since Mathias had rescued me, I’d been carrying a knife with me all the time. No matter how much Mathias had taught me about self-defense, he couldn’t convince me that a knife wasn’t better. I slid my hand in my pocket and gripped the handle. “I think you’re mistaken.”
The second one snorted. “She talks fancy. You know she’s not from around here.”
“She also doesn’t know the rules,” the first said.
“I’m with Mathias,” I told them firmly.
“Mathias isn’t Defiance. That means you’re fair game. And if you don’t know what that means, I’ll tell ya. Means you’re fair game to be passed around, and we’re taking some passing before we collect our reward.”
“Don’t you touch her.” Luna, the angry girl with the tattoos, and her beautifully furious face, was standing behind me.
“You’re not anyone’s girl either, Lu. Know your place.”
“She thinks she’s Rebel’s,” the second said to the first and they both laughed.
I hated them. If this was the type of man Defiance cultivated, I didn’t think I could handle them.
Or could I?
I jumped up—they weren’t expecting it—and I had the knife to the second guy’s carotid, like Mathias taught me. “Keep talking. It won’t take much for you to bleed out.”
Luna smirked. “Guess we don’t need a man after all. Because she just made you her bitch.” And then... “He mentioned a reward.”
Luna was talking to Mathias and I didn’t dare turn around. I was scared to hurt the man I was threatening, but also too scared to take my eyes off him.
I shouldn’t have worried. Mathias had the one I’d been threatening by the hair.
“You can’t touch me, mute—you’re not Defiance.”
Mathias mouthed clearly, Fuck. The. Consequences. And then he jerked the man up and away from me. They were circling each other and Mathias actually motioned the second guy to come at him too. A fight to the death, two against one.
“Get Bishop,” I told Luna.
“Mathias can handle this.”
“That’s the problem. Please, Luna.”
A part of her didn’t care about the rules of Defiance any longer, but a part of her still loved the MC, wanted it better. I could see that war waging in her eyes. But finally, she nodded and ran off.
When Bishop came minutes later, at a dead run, Caspar was on his heels. I begged Bishop, “Don’t let him.”
“He’s defending your honor,” Bishop told me.
“But he’s not Defiance.”
Caspar brushed past me and the fighting stopped. Mathias took his hands off the first man’s throat and looked up.
“One of you talkin’ about reward money?”
Both shook their heads.
“Got two witnesses.”
“Because we’re listening to gash now, right, Caspar?”
“Questioning my leadership? You know your choices.”
The men blinked.
“Leave with your Defiance tattoo burned off or cut off. That’s what I’d do normally, but since you’re threatening a guest in my MC...”
“Lance’s gotta be rolling in his grave,” the second guy shouted.
Caspar looked at Mathias and nodded. Mathias jumped back in and the fight went from zero to brutal in seconds.
I couldn’t watch. I turned away and Luna caught me, a hand rubbing my hair, like a mom would do to a child. Any mom except mine, and that brought tears to my eyes again.
“This is what they do,” Luna told me. “This is what they do for you.”
I heard her words, interspersed with some howls from the men and the sounds of fists hitting flesh. I felt Bishop’s tension, palpable as the vibrations under my feet from the three big men fighting. I didn’t say anything, not until Luna said, “It’s done,” and then I broke away from her.
For a second, she glanced at m
e, and then at Bishop. I swore she was going to say something to him—something akin to loving him—because the look on her face was one I recognized. Tru wore the same expression when she looked at Caspar. But Luna said nothing, walked away, and Bishop stared after her.
I thought I’d walk away from what had happened behind me then, not turn around and just walk. But instead, I found myself turning, looking for Mathias, because he’d become my lifeline. My rock.
I realized, for the first time, that I might actually become his too. Maybe I was already close, because why else would he beat two men to death for me?
He stood there, bruised and bloodied, but definitely better off than the two men on the ground. Caspar was talking to Hammer and Rebel and I walked past them and stopped in front of him. I was shaken, yes, but not as badly as I thought I’d be.
I took his hands in mine. “We have to go ice them.”
He nodded warily, like he was waiting for whatever else I had to say. I figured I might as well get it over with. “Are you going to kill anytime someone threatens me?”
Yes. Because you’re mine.
“Yours? Like you own me?”
Like you don’t own me too? he asked and I stopped short, because that wasn’t something I’d considered. Well?
“I do.”
And you would’ve killed for me?
His hand went to the knife in my pocket.
“Yes.”
How’s that different? I don’t want you to have blood on your hands because of me, but I’d understand if you did what had to be done.
All I could do was hug him and realize we’d both always have blood on our hands. And that there wasn’t anything wrong with that.
I was wrong. You don’t need freedom. You need me. You’re mine. From the second I saw you, the second I took you in my van.
“Either Mathias has been in Defiance for too long or he was born with that possessive streak. Which means he was meant to be here,” I heard Tru tell Caspar, and I remembered her discussing how possessive Defiance men could be.
Mathias heard what she’d said too, nodding in acknowledgment and mouthed while signing, I won’t be wrong again, so you lost your chance to back out.
Redemption_A Defiance Novel Page 19