“No.” After the nightmare Thursday night and their talk out on the balcony, he seemed to be okay. Friday night, she had sat out on the balcony with him as he got stoned again before they went back in, had sex and fell asleep.
No tension at all had existed between them. The sex had been great, he seemed relaxed and nothing seemed off. She had no idea why he just up and left without telling her that he was leaving.
Maybe she should show them his last text to prove she wasn’t lying and that things had been good between them. That this was just as much a mystery to her as it was to them.
But she wasn’t ready to share that text yet. It was his private message to her. He might not want them to know how he felt about her. Shade had his secrets and his feelings for her might be another one.
Even though he didn’t let anyone know why he left or where he went, his two word admission wouldn’t help them find him, anyway.
“He’s been hurt badly once. At least, once that I know of. How do you know he’s not hurt again... or dead?”
Both men glanced at each other again.
That made her fear of Shade lying somewhere injured or dead—and no one knew where—turn to anger. “I don’t know what he’d been doing or had done to get injured like that. But whatever it was...” Her fingers curled into her palms and she pressed her fists into the tops of her thighs. “The getting jumped behind a bar in Williamsport story was bullshit. I don’t like that he had to lie about what happened.”
“Ain’t for you to like,” Judge muttered under his breath.
She bugged out her eyes at the man who wore the sergeant at arms patch. Wearing a pained expression, Deacon stepped between them with his palms raised. “We get it. You’re worried.”
“Well, you’re worried, too, if you’re here!” She failed at controlling the sharp rise in her voice. But his brothers not having a clue where Shade could be was making her start to unravel.
When the Army had shown up at her door all those years ago, they knew exactly where Brendan was. They knew exactly what happened. She had closure. Things weren’t just left in the air, making her wonder. Making her worry for him.
She closed her eyes.
Making her daughters worry, too. In truth, Josie and Maddie now knew Shade better than they knew their own father.
Shade and the girls had actually gotten close. It had warmed her heart to see that, but now it broke her heart to think they would feel his loss, too.
She lost the love of her life before.
She couldn’t lose another man she loved.
She couldn’t.
She barely survived the first time.
If it hadn’t been for her daughters being so young back then...
“Don’t I deserve to know the truth about where and why he was injured? Why he spent two weeks laid up in my bed? He couldn’t tell me because he didn’t want his colors stripped. But that’s bullshit. Maybe between us we can figure out where he is and whether he needs help. You can tell me the truth. For his sake.”
Judge’s scowl was dark. “That’s club business, Chelle. Gotta understand, we don’t share shit like that.”
Her brow dropped low. “Even with your ol’ ladies?”
Judge’s head jerked back and his nostrils flared as his dark eyes narrowed on her. “You ain’t his ol’ lady.”
She must have looked as wounded as she felt from Judge’s words because Deacon grimaced and quickly assured her, “Not even with our ol’ ladies.”
When he realized he had cut her deep, Judge’s next words were softer and not so harsh. “It’s just the way it is, Chelle. If you can’t accept that, maybe Shade ain’t for you.”
While those words hurt, too, she appreciated the truth.
With Shade’s past, and also with his MC, he would always have secrets. If she couldn’t accept certain things being kept from her, she needed to move on.
She planted her elbows on her thighs and dropped her head into her hands, digging her fingers into her hair.
She didn’t want to move on. She wanted to accept him as he was. Dark past, secrets, his brotherhood, all of it. Everything that made him who he was.
He didn’t keep things from her to hurt her, he kept them to himself because he had no choice. To keep his family, to keep his brotherhood, maybe even to keep his sanity.
For at least a decade he’d had no one to love him, to care for him, to nurture him, to treat him with dignity and respect. To see him as a human being and not a perverse play thing, a toy, a sexual outlet. Someone whose only worth was being a slave. A piece of property to be owned by another person.
His childhood and his will had been taken from him. So much had been stolen from him.
These men before her, his club, they cared. They gave him what he’d been missing in his life.
A home. A family. Support and loyalty.
She wanted to be that for him, too.
The only problem was, none of them could give him that if he was gone.
And where he went and whether he’d ever be back was a mystery.
A mystery only time would solve.
Shade glanced at the names on his list. The faded paper that held them had been folded into fourths, the edges of the folds now almost worn through.
He could decipher the letters and sound out the names now. He might not be able to do it quickly, but he could do it.
Thanks to Chelle.
Thanks to Josie and Maddie.
Thanks to their patience and understanding.
Almost every name had been written in a different handwriting. Some shakier than others, depending at what point during Shade’s visit he had the man write down the next name. Which actually was the one prior since Shade had been working backward from fourteen years old to four.
Every name on his list now had a line drawn through it. Except for one. The last person he needed to visit.
But it would.
There wasn’t much he wanted in life.
Chelle.
His brotherhood.
Revenge.
He needed to deal with that last want before he’d allow himself to have the first one. His gut instinct told him he’d be forever restless if he didn’t deal with his thirst for revenge first.
But it would soon be over.
He had one name to go. The original broker. The man who had invited a bunch of strange men into a big room in a big house. The man who ran that original auction where his mother stood naked on a wood platform while those strange men touched her and made her cry.
The room where Julian stood at the back with another man and watched his mother be sold. The room where he last saw her.
The room where he was forced to stand on that box and had his clothes cut from him until he was naked, too. The room where strange men also touched him.
The room in the house which was owned by the broker who sold him to the highest bidder.
The highest bidder whose name was now crossed off Shade’s list.
A straight line had been drawn through his name, similar to the straight line drawn across his throat, directly below the man’s bouncing Adam’s apple.
That man would not be buying any more little boys, abusing any more stolen toddlers, and he would not be the start of any child’s decade-long torturous nightmare.
No, he wouldn’t be doing any of those things anymore.
Shade was disappointed, but not surprised, to find his first “daddy’s” tastes hadn’t changed much over the last couple of decades. In fact, the little boy Shade found in his old “room” was maybe about three.