“Use the slow lane and watch out for those idiot motorcyclists who think that road rules do not apply to them,” Mum said as she ducked into her sleek black BMW.
“Of course,” I said.
I watched her pull out of the parking lot before making my way over to the silver Mazda hatchback I’d named Optimus Prime. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was a zippy little machine and it was my very own. I absolutely adored it.
I was pulling open the door when I felt him behind me. I knew it was Reece before he said, “So, where are we going now that you got rid of mommy dearest?”
“The Youth Cancer Support Group in Vancouver,” I deadpanned, turning my head just slightly so that I could watch his expression fall out of the corner of my eye.
Strangely, he didn’t look disappointed. “Cool, let’s hit it.”
I watched him round my car and open the passenger door. “You’re actually going to go with me to group?”
He crossed his forearms over the roof of the car and leaned toward me. “If that’s where you want to go.”
I pursed my lips. I hated the support group. It was utterly depressing, especially given that of the nine kids in it, four were terminal and three had fought the good fight more than once to get to remission only to slide back into its clutches years later. Everyone there tried hard to be open and optimistic but the second came hard and struck a discordant note. They got something from the morbid camaraderie the group provided for them but I didn’t.
I was tired of pretending to be happy and group was just another stage for me to act out my false contentment.
“Not really,” I admitted. “Did you have something else in mind?”
“Yeah, friend of mine is having a kegger out in the boonies. You down for a party?”
I’d never been to a party before. My girlfriends hung out with a group of guys sometimes but we never partied. We hung out at Mary’s house mostly because her parents had an awesome home theatre bigger than most actual theatres, or at Joe’s because his family had an Olympic sized pool with a three-tiered diving board. None of us drank because we were all athletes and scholars. Well, I’d been an athlete, a dancer, before the cancer decimated my energy.
“I don’t have anything to wear,” I said.
The shift and sweater set weren’t exactly party clothes.
Reece cast a critical eye down my body and came to the same conclusion.
“Hudson has an older sister. She’s smaller than you but you could probably squeeze into something of hers.”
“Gee, thanks,” I muttered.
He laughed. “I meant in the chest region, Lila is a lot smaller than you.”
“Oh,” I said, less offended because that was a fair assumption.
“Lila is cool. You’ll like her.”
“Will she like me?” I couldn’t help but ask. Most of the kids at Entrance High thought I was a snob.
“They’ll like you,” he reassured me in a soft voice.
I wasn’t sure why he was being so nice but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I was too much of a coward to do any of this by myself so I was grateful for his bad influence.
“Okay, let’s do it,” I decided with a firm head nod, proud of my decision and my conviction.
“Cool,” Reece said before ducking into the car.
“Cool,” I echoed softly, a little deflated at his lack of enthusiasm, and then followed him into Optimus.
“So,” he began after we pulled out of the parking lot. “Let’s go over the basics, yeah?”
“Okay?”
I saw him grin in my periphery.
“Have you ever done drugs?”
“No!”
“Not even blazed?”
“What?”
“Blazed.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted.
There was a short, stunned silence.
“You mean to tell me, you were born and raised in BC and you don’t know what blazing means? What about taking a bong toke, getting high, greening out, doing dope, smoking grass, hot-boxing a car, rolling a joint?”
“Are you talking about marijuana?” I guessed.
I knew it was the leading albeit underground industry in British Columbia but that didn’t mean I knew anything else about it. Most people in high school smoked marijuana but I wasn’t most people and it kind of annoyed me that Reece was being condescending when he knew that. I was a paradigm of virtue. A paradigm of virtue did not know drug slang and they certainly did not do drugs.
“Yeah, Louise, I’m talking about Mary Jane,” he said, again, like I was a moron.
I figured Mary Jane was another slang term.
“You can’t even call yourself a British Columbian if you don’t know a thing about BC bud. Our weed is the best in the world.”
I shrugged.
“Fuck, you really are a good girl,” he said, echoing my thoughts.
“Yes,” I said, with a proud chin tilt.
Then I realized that being a good girl kind of sucked. I had friends, sure. A group of girls that called themselves the angels of Entrance High because they all came from established and, mostly, good Christian families, but more so because they were pretty, wealthy and they knew it. They weren’t bullies to the rest of the kids but there was a lot of in-fighting about who was prettier, brighter and better liked. Ironically, the angels did not support one another’s successes. Instead, they used guilt, manipulation and lies to hold each other back. I knew this because they had been my friends since birth just as our mothers had been. Old stock, I had come to learn, did not mean good stock.
I got good grades because I was, thank God, born smart and even if I didn’t try hard, which I did because I was a good girl, I would have done well.
I volunteered at the Autism Centre. It started out as an obligation because my mother made me pick a charity organization to patronize when I hit twelve years old, but now, I loved it, and I wished that I had more time to dedicate to both it and other charitable organizations. I loved the kids at the center even though some of them were really hard to love because they didn’t have the cognitive ability to discern social cues. One such kid, an adorable ginger-haired boy named Sammy, was one of my best friends. I still remembered the day that he informed me of our best-friends-for-life status. He’d written me a letter and asked me to sign it, officially making us bffs. I’d burst into tears.
So the volunteering was great, it made being a good girl worthwhile.
But the part where my parents showed me off like a prized pony and pretended that my illness didn’t exist because it didn’t fit in with their ideal life was beginning to consume me. I was fed up and repressed in a way that made me sick of spirit as well as of body.
I was seventeen years old. I was basically an adult; a fully formed human being. And I had no idea who I was outside of my parents expectations, outside of the mirror Entrance society held in front of me, more a painting of their own making than a true representation of myself.
“I don’t even know who I am. How cliché is that?” I whispered.
“Pretty fucking cliché,” Reece agreed easily.
We were silent as I chewed over my suitably teenage brooding thoughts and Reece stared out the window thinking about whatever Reece thought about.
“You know what else is cliché? Rebelling against your parents,” he finally said, leaning over the console so that he spoke right into my ear.
I shivered but my thoughts had led me down the same path. “Yeah.”
He grinned at me. “It’s going to be fun, Louise. You’ll like normal teenage life and all the bad decisions you get to make when you don’t give a fuck who you’ll disappoint.”
I frowned because that didn’t sound like fun. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. In truth, I was angry with them for a variety of reasons and all of them had to do with their response—or lack of one—to my cancer.
I didn’t want to
let myself down by making stupid decisions that could harm me or someone else.
Reece put a warm hand over mine on the gearshift, his voice gentle when he said, “I’ll watch out for you. I want you to have fun, get into just enough trouble to taste life, not end up dead in a gutter somewhere.”
“Okay,” I agreed, as if I wasn’t terrified.
“Okay,” he repeated.
The bass pulsed like a musical heart beat beneath my bare feet as I stomped them to the rhythm of the Kygo song that blasted through the massive speakers set up throughout the main level of the house. There was a red Solo cup in my hand filled with warm beer Reece had tapped from a massive keg of Blue Buck in the corner and the contents sloshed over my fingers as I tossed my sweaty hair back and forth over my exposed shoulders. I’d already had a few cups of beer as well as two shots of vodka that Lila, Hudson and Reece had poured for me to start the evening off.
Reece was right, I liked Lila and she liked me.
She was three years older than us and back from UBC for summer break. I’d never met such a graceful, willowy woman but her classic beauty and the good humor in her huge hazel eyes enthralled me. She had me laughing before I could remember to be awkward and when she had offered me clothes, she’d only laughed a little bit at the absurd fit of the jean skirt and crop top I’d tried on. Lila was maybe five foot four and one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. I was five foot nine and curvy.
After we’d both had a good laugh, we’d improvised. Now, I wore the fragile camisole that I’d been wearing under my shift and a stretchy black skirt that on Lila went to just below her knees but on me came up to mid-thigh. I wasn’t wearing shoes because my sensible, low heels were not party shoes. Lila had done my makeup, taking the time to teach me how so that I could do it in the future.
I didn’t know when I’d have the opportunity to wear red lipstick ever again but it looked pretty cool with all the blond hair I had, mussed with a bit of styling goop that smelled like coconuts. When I’d come downstairs to join Reece and his friend Hudson in the kitchen both of their mouths had fallen open like the hinges broke.
When the rest of Entrance Bay Acad—and it really seemed like the entire school minus my squad of preppy kids was there—showed up, they had similar reactions to my presence. Shock, awe and finally, laughter. Apparently, it was amusing to see Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes dressed like a teenage tramp, drinking warm beer and grinding up against the masses. I wasn’t insulted because sometimes I was so saccharine that it made even my teeth ache and because it was pretty funny and became funnier as the night grew long and I grew drunk.
The sun had set a long time ago but the air was still warm so a bunch of us were hanging in Hudson and Lila’s backyard. Reece, true to his word, hadn’t left my side all night and he made sure we always had booze. He was super handsome and actually pretty fun, always telling jokes and sharing stories so as the night wore on and he grew closer, a hand on my shoulder then an arm around my waist with his fingers settling intimately over my hip, I didn’t protest.
For the first time ever, I was having fun.
He brushed my hair over one shoulder and leaned into my neck, his breath hot on my exposed skin as he whispered, “Want to go inside, find a little quiet?”
I wasn’t really surprised by his question. I wasn’t totally naive.
Part of me didn’t want to go with him. I liked Reece but in the easy way of friends and partners-in-crime. I didn’t think I wanted his tongue in my mouth, let alone his hand down my pants. But I told myself I was being snobby and a little unreasonable. I’d never had a tongue in my mouth or a hand down my pants, so how could I know that I wouldn’t like his?
The answer was, I couldn’t.
I’d loved one person in my life thus far and I’d only ever seen him twice. What was I going to do? Cling to the idea of my childhood prison pen pal for the rest of my life? Pine after someone who didn’t want me and, I was fairly sure, wouldn’t be good for me even if he did?
No. Absolutely not.
So, reaching my drunken conclusion, I answered him by grabbing his hand and tugging him inside.
I saw Lila watching with a concerned frown and even Hudson looked a little wary, but I smiled sloppily at them in reassurance as Reece took the lead, ushering me inside and up the stairs to an empty bedroom.
As soon as the door was closed, he was on me.
The tongue that I’d been curious about was in my mouth and it tasted like yeast and hops. It was warm and slick, ickier than I’d expected as it thrust between my lips and ran over my teeth.
His hands though, I liked. One pressed between my shoulders so that I was tight against him and the other trailed down my back so that he cupped my butt. It felt good to have his large, hot hands on me. Even better to feel his response to my body in the groan that worked its way into my mouth from his. I could definitely get used to a man’s hands on me.
Slut, the conservative Louise cried.
The new me, an entirely new person without a name or family, without a care in the entire world but for what pleased her in that very moment, grinned at the name calling and kissed Reece back.
He had me pressed to the bed, his long body on mine and his hands under my shirt, palming and squeezing both of my breasts with unabashed fervor when the nausea hit me smack in the middle of my gut.
“Oh, no,” I mumbled against Reece’s lips.
He hesitated, pulling away slightly to ask, “You okay, sweetheart?”
I was scrambling away from him before he had even finished speaking but I only made it to the edge of the bed before I was throwing up.
“Shit,” I heard him curse over the sounds of my ceaseless vomiting.
I was mortified but so sick that my entire body ached with it. Belatedly, I realized that drinking was a terrible idea. Even though I’d just been diagnosed and hadn’t started any treatment yet, my body was worn down and I’d never been intoxicated before.
On the heels of my embarrassment, self-loathing came snapping.
“Idiot,” I managed to breathe between heaves.
“Okay, wait right here. I’m going to get Lila,” Reece said.
I groaned and he must have taken it as confirmation because he ducked out the door.
A minute or two later, I was puked out.
I lay there panting for what felt like ages but must have been only a few minutes because Reece didn’t return. My stomach had settled but I was still drunk as a skunk and probably just as stinky so I decided to head back outside to get some fresh air. My legs were surprisingly steady as they carried me down the crowded stairwell, past my peers who smiled and called to me with caution, maybe worried that I was a tattle-tale or that I was just a good girl playing bad. I ignored them, pushing through the front door and gulping in deep lungfuls of clean air.
There was nothing like the air on the coast of British Columbia. I’d been on a lot of family vacations across the globe and there was nothing as sweet as the air I breathed in after getting off the plane when I was back home.
I closed my eyes, leaning against the wall beside the door so I could figure myself out. There was still a heavy tread to my thoughts like they waded through thigh high swamp water but the urge to be sick had retreated.
I was almost asleep against the side of the house when the low rumble of approaching motorcycles roused me.
In Entrance, that thunderous growl was not uncommon. The Fallen MC had been a staple of the town almost since the MC was founded in 1960. I’d grown up seeing the leather-clad bikers swarm the streets in rigid formation on the backs of great metal beasts, their hair long, their beards wild and their skin covered in permanent art. I’d always watched them with a strange kind of envy because I’d never seen anything as free as those men seemed to be, riding off as a brotherhood into the sunset.
After the shooting, I’d watched for them wherever I went, desperate to catch sight of Zeus, even when I knew he was in prison but especially after I knew he got out. I
didn’t know if he was a part of the infamous gang because he had never answered my questions about his involvement that day at First Light Church and my memory was too hazy to recall if he’d been wearing the cut of The Fallen.
I deeply suspected he was a part of the rebel group and it thrilled me each time I heard the rumble of a bike, thinking that I might finally, after nearly ten years, see him again.
The thunder grew so close that I struggled to sit up from the wall and open my leaden eyes wider. Seconds later, three yellow-lighted bikes swung around the corner and slowly rolled down the street.
My eyes were riveted on the scene and I suddenly hated myself for getting drunk for the first time in my life because, though my traitorous eyes could have been deceiving me, I was certain that the powerful figure at the head of the trio was my guardian monster.
I watched, my heavy eyelids peeled back wide but I would have taped them wider if I could have. I didn’t want to miss a second.
I shot to my feet to say something or, maybe, to run to him but the effort was too much for my alcohol-muddled brain and I promptly passed out.
“What the fuck?” Zeus was growling somewhere very close to me.
I blinked as I came to, but my vision refused to clear so I lay still and focused on not throwing up again instead.
“She was letting loose, man. It’s not a big deal. Everyone gets like this before they understand their limits,” Reece responded.
Even from within the fog of my inebriation, I knew that was not a good thing to say to Zeus.
I was proven right when the wall I was lying against grew impossibly harder and I realized, as arms tightened brutally around me, that he was holding me against him.
“You brought her here, yeah? To party and get in her pants?” Zeus asked, deceptively casual.
There was a long pause.
Zeus took one step forward.
“Yes, yes, okay? So what?” Reece asked nervously.
“So, you got a girl with you, a girl you want a piece of and you let her get fuckin’ wasted like this? There are two types of men who do that shit. One, the pigs that need to get a woman drunk to stick their dicks in ’em willing or not. Two, the jackasses like you who don’t give a shit about ’em till your dick gets hard and you can use ’em to get off on or in. Which one are you?”
Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men Book 2) Page 6