Embarrassed by the fact this woman I didn’t even know, knew something so traumatic about me I’d shoved her with all my strength and ran out of the bathroom. I ran smack dab into the one man I tried to avoid at all cost when I was around the club.
Neo.
He demanded to know what was going on and I refused to tell him. I merely kept pleading for him to take me home. I needed to go home.
Away from him and everyone else.
After that day, I never went back to the clubhouse, or told anyone what happened in the bathroom. Not even when Shadow asked me about it.
Needing to get away from everything and everyone, I ended up changing my phone number and moving across town into a neighborhood I thought was safe. The area was quiet, my neighbors stayed to themselves, and I didn’t have to worry about them speaking to me other than the typical ‘hello’. I even quit my job at the school. I used to love working with first graders, but I couldn’t be the teacher they needed. So, I’d left without notice and started working from home as a freelance editor. I worked with several authors each month. It wasn’t easy to get into but I’m doing it for the time being.
Everything was okay. I didn’t mind the solitude. I enjoy it really. At least a majority of the time when I was awake and could keep the dreams at bay.
I’d had to start taking sleeping pills again due to the horrible event at the clubhouse that just brought everything back to light. I try not to take them, but I can’t sleep without them.
Here recently it’s all become so much. I couldn’t stand to look at myself before and it’s to the point I can’t stand the feel of my own hands against my skin. I throw up every day when I shower, as well as, turn my skin so red it looks like a tomato from scrubbing it so harshly.
The demons who have emerge within my head keep telling me what I need to do, how I should just let it all end. At first, I fought them off, by giving myself what I thought I needed to get through it. I broke my razor and started something I never thought I would do. Cutting into my skin leaving fine lines of blood seeping from my body. With each cut it went to my head making me feel I was in control of something for the first time in a very long time.
I wake up in the morning and it’s the first thing I do. When I finish the day, I end it in the same way.
Here recently it’s getting harder to get what I need from the simple little blade of a razor. I needed something different. I’d read about choking in one of my author’s books where the woman got off on being choked while the guy was screwing her.
I decided to try it, but by myself rather than during sex with someone because that was never going to happen.
Bringing my hands up to my neck, I wrap my fingers in the precise way the author wrote about and applied pressure. My breathing becomes harder to gather and my head grows light. I loosen my hands and immediately regret it as the high leaves me.
It’s not going to give me what I need in the same way the cutting does. Tears fill my gaze as I make a swift decision. I grab my grandpa’s old army knife. The blade on it was sharp and I could dig a little deeper with the tip. Stripping out of my yoga pants, I go into my bathroom and sit on the floor with a hand towel under my legs.
With my focus on the task at hand, I pierce the skin loving the burn that the cut makes. Lifting my head, I close my eyes feeling the blood trickle down my thigh.
Bliss.
Truly this is what I need in order to feel my life is in my control.
Chapter Two
Neo
This year has been one of the worst fuckin’ years since I was fifteen and I lost my mother when she committed suicide. To this day I still don’t understand what possessed her to kill herself knowing she had a son to look after. Then of course there was my uncle Rylan who didn’t want anything to do with me after he’d been shot. He was lucky, even if he’s in a wheelchair, he’s only lost the motion of his legs everything else on him works perfectly.
After that day in the hospital, he’d come to the clubhouse one day about four months later and apologized for the way he treated me. He understood I didn’t want to live with him, not after finally feeling a connection to someone again. A year later he’d married a nice lady who ended up being his nurse at the time and is the one who told him to get his head out of his ass.
I ended up staying with Bear and Momma B until I turned eighteen. I knew right away I wanted to prospect for the club, but I also wanted to go into the Marines.
I did one tour and got out. It was enough for me. I ended up seeing men, who I thought of as brothers, killed in front of me. If it wasn’t for Martin, a guy I’d become close with, I’d have died alongside all of my brothers that fateful day where more than one of my brothers were killed in an ambush. Martin fell on top of me when he’d been shot, and I can remember to this day, seven years later, the words that left his mouth. “Don’t let them take you out with us.”
I’d been fucked in the head for a long while after getting out. Even so when I finished my tour and came home, I immediately started prospecting alongside my brother Cane. The two of us even patched in at the same time together.
Everything seemed to be going great until about a year ago when things happened with Raven and Blaze. Their son, Mark, was kidnapped and while most of us went after those responsible, they’d been sending some of their ranks after those they really wanted. In the process of getting the women to safety, Momma B was killed. I was devastated right along with the rest of the club.
Rage, her son and a member of the club, who live at another charter, became undone. It took Cleo, his ol’ lady, to calm him down. At the funeral he’d told me to sit with them and Bear at the front of the church as I was family as well. I didn’t expect it, but I was damn proud to be considered a part of their family.
Once Momma B was laid to rest, Bear took off needing the time to himself. I hadn’t talked to him much, neither had Rage. Though he did check in once a week through text letting both of us know where he was each time. This last time he was down in Texas staying at the Satan’s Keepers MC for a couple days while he fixed his bike. I’d asked what was wrong with it, but he didn’t go into detail other than to say nothing important. He just had to wait on the part to get in.
Then on top of all of that we had the stuff go down with Ranger and Harlow.
“I don’t care, Shadow. I’m worried about her okay. She changed her number and moved without telling me. I want to see Harley.” My thoughts are interrupted by Luna’s voice as she fusses with her ol’ man, Shadow, our enforcer.
“Babygirl, I’ve already asked Nerd to find her, got her new number and address after she moved across town. I’m not going to fuck with her. Not this time. She’s fine that’s all you need to worry about. The woman knows if she needs anything, we’re here for her,” Shadow grumbles in annoyance. The man does a lot for his ol’ lady. Loves her to death. Didn’t matter to him what her past entailed. Luna is everything to him same goes for their son, Darren.
“But I miss her,” she whines giving Shadow a pout. One we’ve all seen her use on him to get her way.
“I know, babe,” he sighs pulling her into his chest. “However, you need to understand she’s in a dark place right now and doesn’t want to be around anyone. Especially those who remind her of what happened.” I feel for my brother as he has to bring up what happened to her and her friend Harley.