Page 13 of I Was Born Ruined (Death by Daybreak MC 1)
“Don't call her my religious friend,” I say, even though that doesn't really matter at all. “Her name is fucking Reba.”
Grainger's lip quirks up at the corner. It's not a smile though, just a smirk.
“Wow. Not even trying to deny it, are you?” he asks, dropping a hand to push some hair off my forehead. I wonder if I look different to him now, my face clean and clear and free of makeup, my clothes simple and unassuming. I wonder if he sees me differently like this.
“Since when do you give two actual fucks?” I whisper back, the sound of Preacher Wesley's voice echoing dully around the corner and down the hall toward me. “Back the hell off, Grainge.”
“Since your father entrusted me with your goddamn life, Gidget. So yeah, believe it or not: I really do give a hell of a lot of fucks,” he says, our gazes connected in this confusing tie of emotions. Two years and I've barely spoken to him, and now here he is, penning me in against the door of a church bathroom.
A woman with a crying baby passes by and Grainger pauses a second to glance back at her. I use that moment to duck under his arm, reaching for the door to the storage room. If I can slip in and lock it behind me … but he's right there, shoving his way in and slamming it closed.
“Mm, sorry Gidge, but you're not bailing on my watch,” he says, swiping his tattooed right hand down his equally tattooed left arm.
I take a step back, stirring dust motes in the dusky afternoon sunshine. It leaks through the stained glass windows and bathes the old wood floor at my feet in brilliant color. Behind me, rows of pews sit stacked haphazardly with boxes and bags, right next to an ancient organ with rusty pipes and two pulpits with flaking paint.
“You want to tell me what's going on?” I ask, even though I know it's futile. None of these guys give a shit about me—especially not compared to the club. Sin might've turned my words into a joke, but if their president, my own father, decided I needed to be hushed up and buried … I'd end up six feet under.
I can never let myself forget that.
“Not particularly, no,” he says, folding his bulky arms over his chest and looking at me with that … that fucking look. Like he knows he has an effect on me and he loves it. His rust-red hair is buzzed short on both sides of his head, slicked back down the middle. He runs a hand through it and smirks. Again. I'm surprised his face hasn't frozen that way.
With a sigh, I sit down hard on the edge of a dusty pew and hope that even though Dena and Chardou are bitchy cunts, that Reba will make them wait for me.
“I'm not an idiot, Grainger,” I say, sweeping my hair back from my face with both hands. “Dad's been a protective asshole since …” I don't have the energy to say it right now. No, I'm saving my energy for an escape to the lake instead. “But he hasn't plagued me with round the clock bodyguards either. You can't tell me details—fine. At least tell me how worried I should be.”
“Not at all,” he says, his voice just dripping this overconfidence that makes me sick. Out of the four of them, Grainger is the worst by far. The bossiest, stupidest alpha male prick to walk the planet in a Death by Daybreak cut. “As long as you stop trying to give us the slip.”
He runs his tongue over his lower lip and scrapes his hand across his red-brown stubble.
Grainger takes a few steps closer to me, leather riding boots stirring up more dust from the floor. He's the cockiest, the most willing to take risks, the least concerned about going up in flames.
“You've barely spoken to me in two years,” he says, but not like he's upset about it. Just observant.
I lift my head up, and suddenly, it just feels like he's close. Too close. Way too goddamn close.
Pain cuts through me like a knife, that night rising up inside me, a specter of the past that's both pain and pleasure, this awful hybrid that I despise the same time as I'm drawn to it.
“You've hardly looked like you cared,” I say, wondering if Grainger and Beast and Sin and Crown … if they talk about me when I'm not around. If they remember that night and the part they all played in my sinful, seductive ruin.
Grainger stares down at me from a face made of sin, that mouth of his a slash of heat that warms up all the cold places inside of me. And his eyes … the color is soft, but the set is stern, the faintest dusting of lines at the edges a testament to how goddamn hard this life is. His skin is tanned and slightly weathered from the sun, but all it does is make me painfully aware of his beauty, this wildness in him that can't be contained. That I wouldn't want to contain, even if I could.
