Page 25 of Wraith
“Anyway, she dumped me with my dad when I was twelve. I’ve lived there since, at his house. Steph and Ami were raised by their moms. He might have wished I never existed, but he was really strict and never let me do anything. He provided for me like my mother, but he never really wanted me or lovedme. That’s basically my life up until this point.” Her eyes flick to my face. “I want to know about you.”
What can I possibly say about the horrors of my childhood? If she suspects anything from what she saw on my back, she’s obviously too polite to come out and say it. To ask me if I was abused. To ask me what kind of fucking parents I had. To ask why I went so damn wrong with my club, drugs, getting shot. All that bullshit. Up until the last two years, my life has been nothing but a pile of steaming assfuckery and I’d rather spare her the details.
I compose my face into a blank mask, so she can’t see the turmoil that lies below the surface. I hate thinking about my childhood. I spent years trying to build a family and snort enough shit to erase it. It wasn’t until Steel sent me to rehab and I actually talked about the things that were done to me that I learned that healing won’t ever be found in the bottom of a bottle or up my nose. At the end of that high, you just go back to being your regular shit self.
The Riders saved my life in more ways than one.
Still. I don’t want to talk about that shit, to put it between us like a thick cloud of black poison.
Leena turns back to me while Abby pauses to sniff at a particularly well-groomed lawn of a cute little white house with a wrap-around porch and flower gardens extending along the driveway and sidewalk.
“You’re beautiful when you frown.” Her easy words catch me off-guard. She blushes after, like she didn’t really mean to let them out. “You have really nice eyes too,” she adds, like she doesn’t exactly mind digging herself a little deeper since she’s standing in the hole already.
“They’re just brown. Pretty ordinary.”
“They’re like velvet though. They’re so dark they’re almost black. I like them.” She swallows nervously. “I think you’re very good looking. I got very lucky. I know that you obviously like bikes and that you love your dog and that you’re good with your hands because…” she falters and blushes and my cock throbs thinking about what exactly I’d just done with my hands. Clearly, she is too. “Well… Um… I mean your house. It’s all renovated. Did you do the work yourself?”
“I did.”
“I like what you picked out. It’s all very nice. Do you do other carpentry?”
I think about telling her that I paint, as in paintings, not walls, but then I dismiss it. No one knows that. It’s something I started after I got home from rehab. An outlet for all the shit going on in my head and warring in my chest. The loft of the house is my sacred space, and I’m not ready to divulge it yet. Besides, it sounds fucking pussy, to say that I paint.
“I work on my bike.”
“And with other motors and stuff?”
“Sometimes the other guys’ bikes if they can’t figure out what the problem is. Never cars or anything. I don’t like cages. They’re too confining.”
“What do you do when it’s raining and you can’t ride your bike? How do you get around then?”
I chuckle softly. “I ride anyway.”
“But…”
“Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to enjoy bikes, understand the lifestyle, or ride with me, though if you want to do any of that, that’s great. If not, that’s fine too. I’ll look into helping you find a car or whatever you need. You’re not my prisoner and you shouldn’t have to rely on me for rides.”
“I…” Leena starts walking again when Abby is done with the lawn and tugs her along. “I don’t have much money saved. My father never made me pay him rent for living there even after school was done. I waitressed in high school and full time this year, even though my father made me quit a week ago, so I have some money saved from that, I wanted to save it for school. I’m good with walking or taking the bus, if there is one here. I don’t have anywhere to go really, anyway.”
“You’re not taking the bus,” I mutter. “Don’t worry about the car. I’ll get it for you. Don’t worry about money either. The club provides us with jobs and pays us accordingly. Steel is more than fair. I’m not rich, but I learned a long time ago that money generally means fuck all anyway. I never needed much.”
“I don’t either,” Leena assures me quickly, her eyes wide. “Your house is beautiful. My father owned a huge one and it was always very cold. Please don’t think you have to provide for me. I’ll get a job.”
“Fuck that shit. This is all new to us. Both of us. You’re enrolled in your classes already? In Jacksonville?”
For some reason the thought of Leena driving an hour to school every single day and an hour back raises the hair on the back of my neck. I don’t want her on the road, exhausted. Up early and home late.
I don’t know what the fuck I want. A few days ago, I didn’t want her in my life at all. How can I have such primitive thoughts about her not being beside me now, after just one day?
She nods, but her face is turned forward, so I can’t read her expression. “I am. It’s online though, for the most part. I didn’t see the point of spending all this time at some college when I could be spending that time working to pay for it. I think classrooms are boring anyway. I had enough of that in high school.”
I have to smile. “I couldn’t agree more.”
I don’t tell her that I never finished high school. That I don’t even have a GED. I could get one, but I haven’t needed it so far. Doing what I do, which is mostly monitoring our grow-ops and liaising with the people doing the growing, and sometimes the distributors here and there, I don’t exactly need that kind of skill set.
“Did you grow up in Jacksonville?” Leena asks, changing the subject on me so fast that I’m caught off guard.
All the shit that I’ve been trying to hold back comes to the surface like a deluge, flooding me with memories, an avalanche that buries me alive.
