If I’d been in my right mind, I’d have known to get the hell out of there.
Jackass behavior or not—I knew how Rachel worked.
And I wasn’t wrong.
The second her eyes opened and they clashed with my stunned ones, it began.
"Grizzly?" she asked rawly, with that one terrified word clawing her fingers into my chest so she could pluck my heart out.
Then, she blinked dazedly and started freezing me out.
I could see the ice forming between us, creeping into being like it was a tangible thing. Stacking higher and higher as she created those fucking walls that kept me out and that locked her in.
Walls that protected her from what my uncle had done to her.
“Grizzly did this to you?” I demanded.
She stiffened, her tension soaring. I thought she’d answer but all she managed to rattle off, in a voice hoarse from her screams, was, “Get. Out.”
SIXTEEN
RACHEL
When I told him to get out, I half expected him not to.
I thought he’d ram through my walls, force me to talk, to finally share my sordid secrets with him.
Maybe a part of me wanted him to do that?
Maybe I wanted to finally be liberated from my past?
Only, he didn’t do that.
He jolted as if he’d been shot, then he staggered to his feet, turned his back on me, and walked out of my living room.
Shock went to war with the ghostly hands of his uncle as they collided with my hair, as they touched my body against my will, as he took what I didn’t give.
“Just like your whore mother,” he’d said as he pinched my nose until I opened my mouth to suck in a quick breath.
The second I did, he snapped a hold of my chin, forced it open then he spat in there.
Later, he’d come on my face, and I’d been left, wiping the fluid away as it mingled with my tears.
I shuddered and leaped to my feet.
At that moment, my thoughts weren’t with Bear, the good brother, but with Grizzly.
One of the men who’d ruined me.
Dragging on my shirt and panties, I scampered toward the nearest bathroom, and dropping to my knees, I puked.
Those ghostly goddamn hands trailed along my body where he’d touched, and I retched some more. The only trouble was that I’d barely eaten today, so there wasn’t much to vomit.
Sagging against the toilet, my face against the seat, I didn’t even care that it was gross. I just sobbed.
The sobs and the retches seemed to go in turn as my body urged me to expel the poison once more, but the poison had gone too far.
It had hit my bloodstream.
It was everywhere.
I’d die with this inside me.
With him inside me.
Shivers wracked my spine as I wiped a tired hand over my face, and that was when I heard it—his engine revving.
As exhausted as I was, as twisted by the past, I jerked to my feet and rushed toward the front door.
Rex was in no fit state to ride!
Goddammit.
I moaned as I made it to the door, but it was too late.
Hauling on a pair of flats and a coat that didn’t belong to me, I shrieked, “REX!”
Either he didn’t hear me over the engine or he was purposely ignoring me as he headed out of the driveway.
Praying that he was just going to the clubhouse, I ran across the graveled path toward the road, but he was riding past the gates to the compound and onward to West Orange.
The guilt hit then.
God, if anything happened to him—I’d die.
I knew I would.
My balance hinged on him.
As unfair to him as that was, I couldn’t help it.
I couldn’t stop it.
That had happened years before I’d been attacked, and it wasn’t something I could unlearn—even if I wanted to.
As the lights from his hog faded into the distance, I leaned over as a memory struck me.
‘You should be careful when you tell me to get out. One day, I might not come back.’
The words pierced my skin and organs like a bullet would, and I puked again.
This time, bile came. It burned and it hurt, but that was good. I knew from experience that meant it’d stop soon.
I pressed a hand to the stone gatepost, and I leaned over to get it all out, so lost to my misery that I didn’t even register Rain’s car driving past me or his clambering out to help me.
“Oh, sis,” Rain hissed. “What the hell happened while I was at work?”
I stared at him with tortured eyes, unable to hide what I’d sheltered him from forever. The only thing I could do was lie.
“Bear died.”
His mouth gaped and he jerked, straightening up as my news hit him. “Bear’s… He can’t be! They said he was getting better.”
“What kind of better would that have been, Rain?” I rasped. “He’d have moved out of the ICU but still been stuck in there for another couple years?” I shook my head as I swiped my fingers over my burning lips. “A h-heart attack took him.” My face crumpled as the tears hit. Not just for Bear, but for Rex. For Rex and, selfishly, for me. “H-He… Rex and me… We were with him at the end.”
“I thought I saw Rex’s hog, but I didn’t imagine—” His brow puckered with confusion even as he swiped a hand over his eyes. “Where’s he going? Why didn’t he stay?”
I wished the answer I had was palatable, but it wasn’t.
“I-I’m … I don’t know.”
He blinked at me then slipped his arm around my waist so he could haul me against him. “Let’s get you inside,” he said gruffly, sniffing as he dealt with his own grief.
God, the next couple days were going to be hell…
SEVENTEEN
REX
WALKING AWAY - CRAIG DAVID
I felt drunk.
Like my faculties weren’t firing on all cylinders.
As if I’d been blasted in the chest with a shotgun but there was no blood.
So much shit made sense now. So many fucking things, and for the first time, I didn’t want there to be sense. Couldn’t handle there being reason.
When Rachel woke up after a nightmare, the reason she screamed when she saw me was because she thought I was my uncle.
I’d literally gone to hell.
Not for helping to end my dad’s misery, not for murder, but this was hell.
Actual fucking hell.
As I rode out of town, I went past the strip joint.
That blurry mind of mine worked against me because instead of riding on, instead of doing the smart fucking thing and maybe heading high into the hills where Lily and Link or Sin and Tiff lived and bedding down at one of theirs for the night, I parked.
I fucking parked.
Like a moron.
I was not a moron.
Rachel, however, had turned me into one.
It was Christmas Day but the place was open. It never fucking closed because there were always dumbfuck rich pricks who wanted to have some stranger’s pussy and ass waggled in their faces.
I knew Inked was on the roster because Sin had sent me the schedules a couple days ago, and as much as my mind was blurry, that memory was as clear as glass.