Page 26 of Puck (The Lost Boys MC)
She peeked over at me. “I’m really glad you came to visit today. I thought for sure today was going to be a bad day.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Why’s that? Did something happen at breakfast?”
She shook her head as she stopped walking. “No. Just some nightmares last night.”
I turned to face her. “What kind of nightmares? Do you want to talk about them?”
And when she looked over at me with watery eyes, I quickly searched for a private place we could sit and talk.
“Over there,” I pointed, “we can sit under that tree and talk.”
Lori sniffled. “Perfect, okay. Yeah, yeah, that’s good.”
She grew tense as we moved to the concrete bench. We sat down underneath the shade of the weeping willow and Lori threaded her fingers through my own as her hand trembled. I grew worried for her. What in the world had her so damn scared from a nightmare?
Maybe it has something to do with the cartel.
“I’m here whenever you’re ready,” I said softly.
But Lori shook her head quickly. “I don’t—I don’t know if I can talk about it. It’s so—it hurts so much.”
I turned my body to face her. “Confronting your past will help you heal; you know this.”
Tears flooded her eyes. “Talking about Dean is always hard.”
I blinked. “Your husband?”
Her gaze fell to her lap. “He was always a rebel, my Dean. My parents didn’t like him, but I was infatuated, you know? Bad boy goes soft for his girl and all that. I fucking soaked that shit up.”
I giggled. “I know the feeling.”
She lifted her watery gaze to mine. “Be careful with men like that, Brigid.”
I furrowed my brow. “What happened, Lori? You’re safe here. You’re safe with me. You can talk about this.”
She swallowed hard. “If he finds out—”
I reached out and cupped her cheek. “You have my word that whoever you’re afraid of isn’t going to get to you. Ever. I swear it.”
And as she drew in a deep breath, she let her guard down. “I got pregnant with my twins my senior year of college and Dean convinced me to drop out. You know, finish my degree later while he took care of the kids after they were born. We got married soon after I entered my second trimester, and that’s around the time that Dean started getting involved with gangs.”
I shook my head. “Why gangs? Why not finish college?”
She snickered. “He wasn’t in college, Brigid. He barely finished high school. But he got involved with them in order to help pay for all of the medical bills with my pregnancy. Having twins is rough on the body and it came with a lot of care that regular pregnancies don’t come with initially. It took a toll on us, and I guess Dean felt it was his responsibility to provide no matter what. That’s how he—”
Bingo. “Your husband is the person you talk about when you talk about the fact that you know someone in the cartel, isn’t he?”
A tear slipped down her cheeks. “He dealt drugs for them for a long time and it more than paid for our bills. We were rolling in money, and because of his charm, he quickly moved up the ladder, you know?”
I took her hands within mine. “It’s okay, take a deep breath for me. You’re safe here. I swear it.”
She drew in a deep breath before she lowered her voice. “After the twins were born, I was in a hell of a lot of pain. Labor tore me to shreds, and when my postpartum depression set in, I was useless. The medications the doctors gave me didn’t cut it. I either felt so much pain it made me sick or felt so little that it made me angry. There wasn’t a happy medium no matter how much therapy I sought out, so I started using the drugs Dean supplied.”
I nodded slowly. “And you got hooked.”
She closed her eyes, as if relieving the story piece by piece. “He eventually found out when his selling stash kept coming up short and he forced me to start dealing as well to pay him back for all that I stole.”
“Jesus,” I whispered.
Her eyes snapped open. “He figured that if I was taking them, I might as well help earn some money from them in the process. And I was so desperate for more just to take the edge off the pain my brain kept putting me in that I dove in head-first. It’s how we hid my drug use from the cartel.”
“Why did you have to hide it in the first place? Wouldn’t they like someone using their stuff?”
Her voice muted itself to a whisper. “In the Banderas Cartel, you can’t use their stuff and still work for them. They stick to it like glue. And when I became more involved with the inner workings of the cartel because of Dean’s position, it was a constant struggle between my addiction and trying to keep the boys safe.”
