PART 1
“WHEN WOMEN GO WRONG, MEN GO RIGHT AFTER THEM.”
- MAE WEST
ONE
RACHEL: AGE 13
REMEMBERING SUNDAY - ALL TIME LOW
“My mom said hers is a slut.”
I tightened my arms around my knees, and though they couldn’t see me, tried to burrow deeper into the corner.
While I was catching the tail end of a conversation, I knew who they were talking about. Knew who everyone was talking about today—my mom.
Not the tragic dead girl. Nope. Just the bitch who no one liked.
On the good days, Mom braided my hair and baked cookies with me despite the fact that I’d long since grown out of both phases.
On the bad days, she let her temper get the better of her.
On the worst ones, she let that temper explode…
That was what had happened earlier.
At a wake of all places.
Humiliated, I thought about how she’d slapped Rene, the only nice Old Lady in the MC, the Prez’s woman, and I cringed.
But the floor hadn’t opened and swallowed me up the last time Mom had gotten into a fight where she was punching above her weight, so why I held out any hope this time was beyond me.
“You’re getting too big to hide out down here.”
The intrusion wasn’t an intrusion, but he was the last person I wanted to see.
King.
On anyone else, it’d be a weird name, but everyone knew that one day, he’d reign over this sinners’ paradise—as Axel, Mom’s boyfriend, called it—like an unofficial king.
I tilted my head to the side. “You outgrew it two years ago but you still come down.”
He shrugged. “Knew this was where I’d find you, and if you’re here, then I’m here.”
‘Here’ was a crawl space beneath the building.
It was hard to get into, harder still to get out of. Sometimes, I wished I could live in this tiny space, live like the Hobbit, amass a hoard of books that’d protect me from the outside world. From vicious voices and mean looks. But even I wasn’t weird enough to think this was a permanent solution.
I might be strange, but I wasn’t Tolkien-strange yet.
Dust winnowed down as the girls overhead stomped off to another part of the clubhouse. I could have turned my flashlight away from the pages of my book and passed it over his features, but instead, I peered through the shadows and found him watching me.
He was only a few years older than me, having already turned sixteen, but he wore his years around him like a cloak. Life at the MC had made him older. More mature.
“You came to find me?” I asked unsteadily, nerves and anxiety coalescing in a way that was worse than when I’d seen my mother hit Rene—his mom.
I’d thought he’d hate me.
I’d thought, God, I didn’t know what I’d thought.
Only, his words made it sound like nothing had changed, even though I knew this was the day everything changed. Mom wouldn’t be allowed to get away with this, and I was glad for that.
Axel couldn’t keep her under control, but that didn’t mean Rene wouldn’t.
“Wasn’t your fault your mom’s rabid.”
“No, but—” I swallowed.
Association was everything in the clubhouse.
“No ‘buts’ about it.” King shuffled nearer and his bony arm curved around my shoulder. He pressed an awkward kiss to my temple. “You’re my girl, ain’t you?”
A weird sensation fluttered through me.
He’d started calling me that recently.
I wasn’t sure what being his girl meant, aside from the fact he hugged me when no one else did and that he’d sit with me and read.
I liked being his girl, even if I didn’t understand why I was. I wasn’t innocent, thanks to being raised by a woman who made the clubwhores look like nuns, but King didn’t do anything men did with Mom.
If I was ‘his girl,’ I didn’t know why he didn’t shove his tongue into my mouth or why he didn’t touch my breasts.
That wasn’t a complaint, more an expression of my confusion.
Huddling into him, turning my knees into him, knowing he’d settle them on his lap, I whispered, “Some days, I wish she’d just go.”
“Maybe she will.”
“Then I’d miss her.”
“Nah.”
With a huff, I pulled back and asked, “How do you know that?”
“Because I know you. You read too many books. They fill your head with what a real mom should be, but there’s nothing real about fiction.”
I scowled at him. “You read too.” I threw the words at him like they were an insult. “And you can’t judge. You’ve got a real mom. She washes your clothes and feeds you. Heck, she feeds all your friends too.”
“She’d feed you if you came around,” he pointed out.
“They don’t like me.”
He snorted. “How would you know if my friends like you or not? You’re too busy crawling around down here for them to even see you. I only know you because I came looking for that coin that day.”
I bit my lip, knowing he was right.
I liked it here though.
I was a part of the world, while separate from it. I heard things, things I shouldn’t hear, things I shouldn’t know, but I filed it away. Kept it locked in my mind. Stored with all the other stuff I shouldn’t have tucked up there. Plus, I could read without anyone judging me.
Carly had been my only confidante before King had come along. Now she was gone and I was feeling pretty lost. King had friends who he hung out with, now I just had my books.
He was so cool and I wasn’t. I knew, one day, he’d realize that and would leave me to my Hobbit home and my misery.
But that wasn’t today.
“It was fate you dropped that coin,” I breathed, tucking my nose into his throat so I could suck in the scent of him.
He smelled like cake.
Always did.
I figured that was because he had a sweet tooth.
“It was fate I came and looked for it,” he retorted with a soft laugh, “and found you living down here like something from The Hobbit.”
Because I’d just made the comparison, I preened. “You know he’s my favorite.”
“I do. You gonna come up for something to eat?”
“No.” I cleared my throat. “Everyone’s still talking. I don’t…” I wriggled my shoulders. “I’m not—”
“That bastard.”
Both of us stilled at the sound of his dad’s voice.
Bear was hard, he was mean, but he had kind eyes.
Even when Mom had slapped Rene, he hadn’t had her beaten. He was letting Rene handle it.
King peered at me and raised a finger to his lips to tell me to be silent.
“How long?”
A voice sounded then. One that had my eyes rounding in surprise.
Young but throbbing with such hate that I felt it myself.
Nyx.
One of King’s best friends, and the only one with a road name at his age.
“Years,” Nyx rasped, sounding furious and miserable all at the same time. “H-He’s the reason Carly killed herself.”