by Ivy Fox
I let out a breath, relieved that she’s giving us something, but each descriptive word she utters is more troubling than what came before, and I start to reconsider what my brothers and I are getting ourselves into.
As soon as I hear Gabriel’s bike roar to life in the distance, I make my way back to the porch. Cam is still wearing that goofy grin he gets when he sees something he likes.
I wait patiently until Gabriel is off his bike to summon both brothers to follow me.
“Where are we going?” Gabe asks, strolling hurriedly behind me. Cam’s smile is long gone once he sees my steady pace focused on the woods in front of us.
“We’re going for a little walk.”
“Why? Need the fresh air or something?” Cam asks teasingly. “The girl got to you too, huh?”
I pretended to ignore his little jab at my uncharacteristic behavior a few minutes ago. He witnessed firsthand, just like the girl had, how uneasy I was. Not a trait the VP of a motorcycle club should have.
“Michael?” Gabe asks, trailing on to my side now, suspicious but keeping up the pace.
The only explanation I can give them is, “The girl said the last thing she remembered was crawling up to the house from a ditch somewhere in the woods. I want to see if she left any clues on the way here.”
“You think she’s lying?” Cam queries, surprised I would even think such a thing.
“I don’t know what to think. Right now, all I want to do is check out if there is any weight to her story.”
Both of them feel my apprehension fuming from my pores. Luckily, they don’t ask any other questions, and start to walk alongside me, but with eyes wide open to any signs that can validate our guest’s story.
A good hour passes by, and nothing. No tire tracks, no foot trails, no human presence at all. Sure she could have come from anywhere, but considering her injuries, she would have stayed the course and followed as close to a straight line as possible. A prickly feeling starts to form on my spine, telling me maybe this girl is, in fact, a threat somehow. Maybe as Cam first thought, this is some sort of elaborate setup. I know Uri assured me that nothing is pointing at the club, but maybe his scouts missed something; I can’t put my faith in them that they didn’t.
Both Cam and Gabe can read me like an open book. Probably the only two souls who can. So there is no denying it to them, that I’m considering going back to the house and packing our guest out of there if she doesn’t cut the shit and tell us what’s going on for real this time.
The thing is, she looked genuine in her tortured, confused state. I believed her when she said she couldn’t recall what had happened to her. I also believe she’s got some damn-ass selective memory loss from the attack. Probably her brain trying to help her heal her body’s wounds first before tackling much deeper wounds.
“You missed quite a show, Gabe. Michael here was all tongue-tied with the girl for a bit. Thought he was going to swoon like a teenage girl,” Cam starts trying to fill in the silence, which is turning heavier with each step I take, not finding anything useful.
Gabe doesn’t say anything, but I feel his stare on my back wanting me to clarify what the fuck Cam is on about. Instead, I give him something else.
“Girl seems to have some sort of amnesia.”
“Amnesia?” he mimics, not sounding convinced. Yeah, a big part of me isn’t either, and this little afternoon walk is only solidifying my suspicions.
“Doesn’t even remember her name,” I retort back.
“Humm,” he mumbles. That’s Gabe code for ‘sounds like bullshit to me’. I give him one quick side-glance, noting how we’re both in sync with that one.
“We could give her one. How about Star?” Cam throws out, and it’s as if he refuses to see the big picture. We have walked for miles, with no signs of distress or anything indicating she had crawled from the woods to our house. She’s a liar, and this amnesia crap is just another chink in her well-fabricated tale.
“Girl has grit. Little firecracker, that one. I think Star suits her just fine. I like it. We should keep her,” he goes on, with a little pep in his step. When he gets this way, is the only time I remember how he’s still a naïve twenty-two-year-old who has never had a hard day in his life. Gabe and I only have a couple of years on Cam, but our childhoods made us both seem decades older, which, right now, is to our advantage. Being jaded has its rewards, I guess. Not falling for every lie a brown-eyed girl with rose petal colored lips will spill at you.
“First of all, we’re not keeping her. She’s not a lost puppy or some shit that we can call dibs on. And secondly, Star is a stripper name. Does she look like a stripper to you?” I throw back at Cam, hoping to knock some sense into him.
“She doesn’t look like shit to me. Too banged up to see,” Gabriel remarks.
“Oh, fuck off, the both of you. She isn’t too banged up now. Sure, maybe a bit bruised up, but it’s not enough to hide what a bombshell she is. Feel we have our own Mila Kunis in the house. Only taller,” Cam winks.
I feel Gabe’s back stiffen, and Cam’s smile only widens.
Cam’s about to say something else, but then suddenly Gabriel pulls him to the side. His eyes look a bit maniacal, and I follow its direction. That’s when I see it.
The girl said she was left in a ditch, but what is just a few feet in front of us is not a ditch.
It’s a fucking gravesite.
My palms start to get unnaturally sweaty with each step that we take closer to it. But there is no denying what we have stumbled upon. Someone took the time to dig this earth. Not with their hands, but with a goddamned shovel. Dug it deep and far enough into this forest, that no one would be any wiser about its existence.
This was premeditated; this was deliberate. But most important of all, this was meant to leave no survivors. The woman inside my house right now, breathing air into her lungs, was meant to die here. This was to be her final resting place. No tombstone. No family to know where to mourn her remains. This lot was built with one purpose—to make her death invisible.
We are all quietly still staring at her would-be fate when Gabriel takes a knee and recovers something from the dirt. From where I’m standing, I can see it looks like some sort of jewelry. A plain silver bracelet, which is now entwined in my brother’s menacing hands.
“You wanted a name?” Gabe asks, looking at the silver trinket one last time before throwing it over to me. I catch it with both hands and feel how fragile the ornament is. How remarkable that it was able to survive this assault and endure the horrific experience, as much as her owner seems to be. “There’s your name,” he adds, and that’s when I open my hands to see the engraved word, which marks this ornament as unique.
Only one word is carefully decorated to enhance the wrist of its owner. However, the meaning behind it is holding what was probably her only source of encouragement. Especially that night.
Only one word.
Her name.
Hope.
Chapter 9
Hope
They’ve given me a name now.
Hope.
The irony alone is laughable. What kind of name is that?
Hope.
What should I hope for?
Hope to regain some memory of who I am, only to find out that the person I was before had so little value to the world that someone left her beaten to die in some godforsaken forest in the middle of nowhere? Because that is exactly where Warren is. In the middle of fucking nowhere since I couldn’t even point it out on a map.
Hope.
Are they fucking kidding me?
That cannot be my name. Yet, for the past four days since their little outing, the men who have taken it upon themselves to take care of me seem to have the name tattooed on their tongues. Always so eager to mention and call it out at every turn.
They even brought back a keepsake of mine as proof to my namesake. A little silver bracelet that looks older than God and cheaper than anything I’ve seen in this humble home. I
don’t recognize it, although I try my best to place where I could have gotten it from. Maybe some secondhand store, or perhaps I won it in some sort of carnival game.
Hope.
I feel as if they’ve baptized me with a new identity every time I respond to it. The naïve part I keep hidden within myself actually likes hearing it. Wouldn’t it be glorious if it actually belonged to me? This one small, beautiful four-letter word, with so much meaning, being mine? I chide the foolish notion away, but in the dark, alone, I cherish it.
I could be a Hope. I could be a strong being of light, instead of this broken mess. I could be her.
But I’m not.
I don’t know who I am. I don’t know anything at all. But I do know I’m not from the light. If I am from anywhere at all, it’ll be from a very dark corner of this earth we live on. Someplace where beautiful things die without sunlight—even things as beautiful and courageous as hope.
Yet, I can’t seem to find it in me to make my hosts stop calling me by this name. It bounces back from the walls in my bare room as it’s whispered through the house, where they think I can’t hear them, bringing me a twisted sense of accomplishment. As if I’d spat in the devil’s face myself and came out on top. That I somehow found a way to cheat my way out of the murk, snuck right past the gloom without its notice, and now am protected just by carrying this new name. My own shield of sorts.
Hope.
It’s really all I have left.
All that remains is… Hope.
Each day, I learn a few new things about myself and those who stubbornly remain at my side. There is anger in me. Rage beyond comprehension. Although I tend to lash out from time to time, I know that the men of the house don’t deserve my fury or my resentment. Nor does their doctor, for whom I at least have a name for now, Aurora. Still, I do. It feels easier for me to show them this side of me. Liberating almost. As if I wasn’t allowed before to show my true feelings, be they discontentment or enmity.
Funny thing is, with every foul or bitter word that I bark out at them, they don’t even bat an eye. It’s comforting and strangely alluring. Their openness and willingness for me to use my fists and punch the air at my frustrations about everything, and still see me through my breakdown with all the care they can show me, is healing.
They might even be aware of how remedying their behavior toward me is. These three men, who watch over me like newborn fathers care for their young, are so distinctively different from each other, yet the care they provide has the same result. I feel it conciliating some unknown wound I have in my soul. Who did the damage first, is a total mystery to me, but who is trying their best to mend it, is as clear as day. Something tells me they would have shown the same kindness to anyone in the same situation, which causes an ugly jealousy to slash through me, as well a feeling of pride that they are built in such a way.
Sure, I might not remember much, but I’m still very much in tune with society’s perceptions of people. One look at my hosts and most people would run the other way before crossing them. All three are rough, ragged, and intimidating. Some more than the others, but no less threatening. I guess men who tend to wear leather jackets with angry angels’ wings on the back, sporting knives and gun holsters, wouldn’t be the first people some would think of as accommodating. Nor would you suspect them to care for someone they hardly know without an ulterior motive. Yet, this is what they have committed themselves to do. Each one is dedicated to me in their own way.
The leader of the group is unquestionably Michael. The blond, blue-eyed Viking of the house. So gruff and well-spoken that he would have most men trembling at his feet in fear, should he look side-eyed to them. I’m positive most women swoon at his feet for entirely different reasons.
Michael brings with him an arsenal at all times, and he uses it meticulously with me. Always trying to butcher my walls to the ground to have a sneak peek into my very being. He’s a calculating man, never taking a step he’s unsure of, questioning whether the ground is solid beneath him or not. He wants to unravel the truth about me probably as much as I do.
When he brought my bracelet back to me, I saw anger in his steel-blue eyes, but it wasn’t targeted at me. Whatever he found in those woods was enough for him to trust me implicitly. I just wish I could be as forthcoming with him, but I’m not. I can’t. Nor will I ever be—and not just with Michael. But he persists each day in trying to solve my puzzle. I secretly envy his resolve. How he’s put it to his mind that he will obtain answers for me, get to the bottom of my enigma. I pray he finds a clue to it just so I don’t have to live in this state of guessing all the time. It gives me a migraine every time I try to recall the tiniest detail. Remembering waking up in the forest—alone, bloody and bruised—was traumatic enough.
Sometimes, I don’t know if I want answers at all, but I know he’s searching for them nonstop and pissed off when he comes to me every day with none to provide. He doesn’t want the police involved, which I appreciate wholeheartedly. I don’t know why, but the very mention of the law makes my whole body revolt, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. My agreement with his decision to have him and his brothers take charge, instead of the local law enforcement, didn’t even faze him. Or if it did, he didn’t let on. Michael is a little bit like me in that way, only letting you see what he wants you to see. Maybe that’s why I feel he understands me the most and doesn’t push me to give him what I can’t even give myself.
Then there is Cam.
Cam doesn’t want anything from me but my full attention and, I think, my laughter. The sandy-haired young man has done everything to get it out of me—joy, that is. He wants me to find a feeling I don’t think exists. I hate not remembering my past life, but I also hate it when I do remember something. And Cam’s insistence on making me feel comfortable and happy brings a wave of feeling that I know, deep in my gut, I’ve never felt before. I hate it as much as I’m starting to care for it.
I don’t think anyone has ever cared enough about my well-being. There’s been no one who even thought twice whether I had laughed that day or not, yet here is Cam—a stranger to me, in every sense of the word, and this is his only concern—making me happy.
He’s the one in this house who has managed to gain my friendship without me even putting up much of a fight. Not that I’ll ever show it to him. It would only encourage his trademark cocky smile to be pranced around every room in this house, like the damn peacock he is.
That’s another thing Cam has going for him. He’s incredibly attractive. All-American smile, dimples in both cheeks, and hazel eyes that would make many a woman dream of him tearing their panties with his teeth, while staring into his eyes. He’s got that look about him—the little twinkle in his eyes that promises mischief and a hell of a good time. It’s far too tempting, especially when real life has so many pitfalls and ugliness coating it. Cam’s carefree aura and flirty behavior makes anyone forget their woes in his presence. But what’s more alluring in Cam is that it’s all genuine. None of it is fabricated for anyone’s benefit, not even my own. He’s who he is, unashamedly, and has embraced it in earnest. He’s starting to grow on me, and with every smile he steals, I think he’s starting to see just how much.
And then there is Gabriel.
My watcher.
The man who tends to me, to all the cuts and bruises I still have, with the utmost care and efficiency. Where Cam and Michael create ways to make me talk, Gabriel refuses to do so. He likes it quiet. He can easily spend a full hour looking after me without uttering one word, only increasing my curiosity and wanting to do the same for him. I don’t think he minds much when I talk to him. At least he hasn’t run out of the room when I try to, anyway. Usually, his replies consist of clipped yes-or-no answers. If I’m lucky, I’ll get an added two or three words, but what I find when I get those added bonuses instead of a grunt here and there, is the sense of victory. It feeds my curiosity about the brooding man.
If I find Michael intimidating at times, then Gabri
el is the poster child for dominance. His whole exterior screams out his nature. Bigger than the other two men of the house by a good fifteen inches, and broader, too, his silence is the only thing that conceals his presence. It’s almost as if he prefers to live like a shadow. But when he tends to me, I take stock in his every attribute. Tanned skin marks his whole body, even though we’ve barely left the cold winter behind, and you can find the same ink on his arms that Aurora showcases proudly. Some of their tattoos are similar in nature, others a bit more macabre, such as the skull with wildflowers coming out of its eye sockets on his left shoulder. He exhibits his short, dark brown hair, with just a bit of length to the top, with very little product on his head, telling me he has little time to worry about such shallow things. His hair is long enough though that errant strands fall to his caramel-brown eyes every so often. Such a rich color simmers in those eyes that you almost miss the menacing scar on his brow. Probably a cut obtained from childhood rough-housing, but deep enough to live on into adulthood. Many times I have stopped myself from wiping his hair away from the wound and placing my own finger on the whitened scar just to see how far it goes.
Gabriel’s silence doesn’t unnerve me, but it does create a craving I shouldn’t have under the circumstances I find myself in. I crave the words he doesn’t utter as much as the ones I’ve forgotten inside me. My pain is still in plain view for anyone to witness, but Gabriel’s is hidden away in locked storage units within his soul. Only the people who take the time to see him, truly see the man as he is, can taste the raw anger he conceals. I identify with Gabriel most of all. I feel his unspoken truth to reflect my forgotten one somehow. How we are both scarred souls in search of something we can’t put our fingers on. So we each keep our distance. Gabriel does this with his silence, and me with my cutting words and cold exterior. We both keep people at bay. A good arms’ length. There is safety in loneliness, after all.
Maybe that’s why Gabriel intrigues me so. He’s a puzzle, too. With lost pieces scattered on the floor, that any who attempt to gather them and put the pieces together will undoubtedly wish they hadn’t tried in the first place. It’s far from picture-perfect, and some images can never be unseen again.