anger. The anger that he’d been drowning in since before Ray arrived, was gone. That’s why he seemed different. Lighter.
Calmer.
It freaked me the fuck out.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bear
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Maybe it was all the fucking blow or mainlining Jack for months, but I was really starting to question my sanity. The picture King had sent me of the girl had been blurry at best and I couldn’t make out her face, but I’d known it was the same girl from the gas station from the weird pink color of her hair.
Thia.
Her name was Thia, I remembered.
I thought I knew what to expect when I entered that room.
I was so fucking wrong.
Thia’s long hair was splayed out above her on the pillow and it wasn’t so much the pink I remembered, but more of a blonde with a hint of red. Her skin was pale, except for the dark bruising on the side of her lip and the butterfly stitch covering a cut on the side of her eye that was getting darker and darker as the seconds ticked by. The circles under her eyes were a deep purple underneath her thin skin.
She was beat the fuck to hell.
She was also so fucking beautiful. I was so taken aback by her that I felt like she wasn’t unconscious at all, but instead had just slapped me upside the fucking head.
When her lips parted she drew in a breath, arching her back off the bed, pushing out her tits against the thin blanket, before collapsing again.
My fucking cock sprang to life.
“Bad fucking timing, asshole,” I muttered to myself.
Whether she was a fucking trap or not, someone, probably my old man, had worked her over real good.
Seeing her in person was so different than looking at a picture. Being in the same room as her, watching as she wrestled in her sleep, the anger I felt minutes ago toward my old man amplified by a thousand. The cords in my neck strained and I balled my fists.
I wasn’t JUST going to kill Chop.
I was going to gut the motherfucker.
Thia thrashed about wildly, her arms and legs limp and useless as she rolled from side to side. Her mouth opened and closed, her nose wrinkled and her eyebrows drew in like she was having a heated conversation with someone in her dream. She thrashed about again, this time kicking the sheets and blankets off the bed.
I sucked in a breath.
She wasn’t wearing a shirt or a bra, her tits were full, high, rounded, and perfect. My cock hadn’t gotten my earlier message to tame the fuck down, because again it twitched in my pants as all the blood from my brain rushed to my dick until it was straining painfully against my zipper. Thia rolled over onto her side so she was facing me and I was able to get a better view of her light pink nipples. There was a mark on her left tit and when I leaned in to inspect it I saw red.
Bright fucking red rage.
Teeth.
A fucking bite mark on her fucking nipple.
I stood over Thia as a confused mixture of hate, rage, and lust swam around inside of me. I added decapitation to the list of things I was going to do to Chop and possibly burning off his own fucking nipples beforehand.
On the other hand, if the bitch was working for Chop, it was going to be a shame to have to finish what he’d started on such a perfect body.
I paced the room, cracking my knuckles and breathing fire. If this was King’s old place I’d probably have already punched a hole in the fucking drywall and suddenly wished that the old dilapidated garage that used to be covered with my Johnny Cash posters and Beach Bastards flags hadn’t been replaced by new, fresh, and white paint.
Thia sat up suddenly and opened her eyes revealing large round and doll-like emerald greens beneath the surface. “Bear,” she whispered, locking her gaze onto me. Her one hand flew up to her chest to grab my skull ring which was dangling on a chain between her tits.
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t have a chance to say anything, because her eyes rolled back in her head and she started to convulse.
CHAPTER NINE
Thia
Warmth. I was wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and comfort I never wanted to emerge from.
“You dead, Darlin’?” A deep voice penetrated the silence, calling me back from the darkness.
Warm water cascaded onto my skin. I was sitting down on the slippery surface of a shallow bathtub while strong arms cradled me against a broad hard chest. Something huge and hard prodded my back, causing my eyes to fly open.
Panic poured into my veins like I’d been shot in the heart with adrenaline.
I sat up and turned my head, staring directly into the sapphire blue pools that made my skin crawl and bile rise in my throat.
It couldn’t be. I thought I’d gotten away.
CHOP.
“Nooo!!!!” I screamed, scrambling away, trying to hoist my leg over the ledge, but only managing to lift my leg high enough to hit my knee directly into the side of the bathtub.
The same strong arms wrapped around me and tugged me back underneath the spray.
I couldn’t breathe.
This can’t be happening.
But it was.
It was happening all over again, and I couldn’t. Fucking. Breathe.
“Look at me!” the voice ordered, and when I didn’t comply he kept one hand wrapped around my shoulders and used the other to turn my chin to face him. I fought him using every ounce of strength I had, but it wasn’t enough. I was tired. Weak. The muscles in my neck gave out and I was forced to again look into the eyes of my captor.
There was a hardness and an anger, a violence, lurking in the bright eyes before me. A deep down exhaustion I could relate to, however there was no outright hatred, no malice.
It wasn’t him.
It wasn’t Chop.
I had gotten away after all.
But where had I gotten away to?
“Bear?” I asked. Despite being surrounded by water my throat was dry and scratchy, my words came out like I’d been in the desert for months breathing in sand. “How are you here?”
“No, you’ll answer my questions first,” Bear said, peering down at me like he’d never seen me before in his life. “Don’t worry about where you are or how I’m here. You need to be more concerned about telling me why you’re here and who sent you.” Trails of water ran down his face, dripping off of the bottom of his beard which was much longer than I remembered it being. He brushed some of the wet hair from my forehead. I jerked away from his touch, my body still in full panic mode.
Remembering the prodding on my back I looked down to where his jeans bulged. Bear’s eyes followed mine. “Can’t help that. All my cock knows is that I’m in the shower with someone who has a pussy.” I lifted my hands to cover my naked breasts, suddenly all too aware of my nakedness, but thankful I was still wearing my shorts.
My muscles felt like rubber that had been melting in the heat of the sun like a tire in the middle of the highway.
Used, spent, hot, useless.
Broken.
Bear wanted to know why I was there.
Why was I there?
Something had happened before I went to the MC. Before Chop. But my brain was foggy and I couldn’t see the images of the day that were just beyond my grasp.
“I don’t understand,” I said. This time when I spoke I felt a tug at the corner of my lip. I touched the spot with my fingertips, discovering a soft scab over a fresh wound.
“You don’t remember going to the MC?” Bear asked, raising a brow. I don’t know who the man sitting in front of me was because there was none of the charm and carefreeness that practically dripped off of the Bear from seven years ago. This man was like a vacant version of his younger self.
I closed my eyes and dropped my forehead to my knees. “I remember riding my bike. I remember the rain. I remember going up to the gate. A prospect named…Pick? Peck? No, Pecker let me in.”
“Never liked that little twat,” Bear scoffed.
>
Why did I go to the MC?
Think, Thia. Think. Why are you with Bear right now?
The images I’d been reaching for began to flash in my mind like Polaroid pictures being thrown into a stack, each one containing a flash of memory, one after the other.
My mother sitting in the rocking chair in Jesse’s old room.
The gun in her hand.
My father’s lifeless body.
The shotgun in my hand.
My mother’s blood against the white of the side of the house.
I gasped as the photos began to stack up higher and higher, filling my brain with images I never wanted to see again. This couldn’t be real. I had to be dead. Mama was right. I was going to hell. Because that’s exactly where it felt like I was.
My stomach rolled. Acid and bile rose in my throat. I covered my mouth with my hand.
“Hey! You still in there? Come back,” Bear asked, sounding like a far away echo as the pictures kept flashing in my brain.
A river of blood.
So much blood.
Bear grabbed hold of my shoulders and began shaking me. “Whose blood? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I killed my mother!” I blurted, leaning over the side of the tub just in time to heave the little I had left in my stomach into the porcelain toilet. “That’s why…that’s why I came to see you.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, opening the scab on my lip, fresh blood and vomit streaked my skin. “I…I killed her.”
Bear turned the shower off and leaned over me, grabbing his phone off the top of the toilet tank. “Where?” he asked, pressing a button on the phone. The screen lit up and he held it to his ear. “Damn it girl. Where?”
“Where what?” I asked into the toilet.
“Where? As in where is your mom’s body? Where is she right fucking now?” he asked angrily, sliding me forward so he could stand up.
My mother’s body.
“Uh. Um she’s…” I said, trying to catch my breath long enough to not be sick again. “Home. She’s home. In Jessep.” Without the hot water against my skin I started to shake violently. The skin on my fingers ached they were so pruned.
“Ray, is King up there?” he barked into the phone. “Tell him to get his ass down here.” He pressed a button on the phone and tossed it onto the counter. He stood, lifting me up under my shoulders as he stepped over the rim of the tub and onto the tile. He closed the lid on the toilet and set me down on it. Tearing a towel from the wall rack he tossed it to me and I immediately wrapped it around my shoulders.
“Your jeans are all wet,” I said flatly, staring at the soaked through dark denim sitting low on Bear’s hips, probably lower than they usually did with the weight of the water pulling them down further. There wasn’t a spot on his chest or arms that hadn’t been touched by the needle of a tattoo gun. Colorful and vibrant against his smooth muscular skin.
“Nurse said to put you under warm water if you freaked the fuck out, so I made a run for the shower,” he said. “Didn’t think much about what I was wearing.” He leaned over to pick me up off the toilet and I waved him off, freeing my arm from the towel I rewrapped it under my arms to cover my breasts.
“I can walk,” I assured him.
I stood up, shaky at first, holding onto the counter for stability. “I got it,” I said again, this time saying it more to convince myself when my knees buckled. “Just need a sec is all.” Bear growled and bent down, slinging my right arm over the back of his shoulder. “I said I got it!” I yelled, although clearly I hadn’t got anything.
“Fucking stubborn, bitch,” Bear muttered, walking me out of the bathroom and into a small bedroom. He sat me on the edge of the mattress and went back into the bathroom.
The door opened and a man appeared, his eyebrows knitted together, I could only assume this was the King person Bear had called. Short dark hair, a dark tight v-neck t-shirt stretched against his muscular chest. He was a huge wall of man. At least six feet tall, although Bear was about his height or even taller. He reached overhead and grabbed onto the molding of the door, his biceps and shoulders rippled as he leaned into the room. He was also covered in tattoos but whereas Bear was covered, this guy still had a few spots of bare skin visible amongst the ink. Leather studded thick bracelets wrapped around his forearms. He released the molding and folded his arms over his chest, his new position revealing the buckles, it was then I realized they weren’t bracelets or cuffs at all, but belts. His skin was dark and tanned, his eyes a unique fluorescent green.
He didn’t look at me. Not once.
“What do you need?” The man asked Bear as he came out of the bathroom, still shirtless but buttoning up a dry pair of jeans. He slicked back his wet hair with his hand.
“Gotta go to Jessep. I need you to help me stock up. I’m taking the bread truck. Too risky to ride,” Bear said, slinking past King he walked out of the room then reappeared a moment later.
“Cleanup?” King asked. “That why she’s here?” The slight chin tip in my direction, the only acknowledgement of my presence.
Cleanup? What’s a cleanup?
Every instinct in my body had told to me seek him out, but I didn’t think about what it was I was really asking of him.
Probably because I didn’t exactly know.
“Seems that way,” Bear said, rifling through a duffle bag on the floor and putting on a fresh pair of black socks. He shoved his feet into a pair of thick black boots. He turned to me. “What’s the address of the farm?”
“It doesn’t have a number. Just Andrews Farm on Andrews Farm Road.” Like a lot of the groves in Jessep that had been there for as long as ours, the roads came second and were usually named after the farms they connected. “It’s the only grove on the street. Mailbox at the end. Little white house. Blood,” I said, still hoping this was all a nightmare and that I wasn’t giving a biker my address to clean up the body of my mother.
“How long ago?” King asked and Bear again turned to me for the answer.
“I’m not sure,” I said because I didn’t know how long I was at the MC or when it was I came here. “Ummm… it was Friday after my shift at work. Around six pm, maybe seven?” I scrunched my nose, trying to remember exactly. “I think?” I added as I tried to recall when my life had forever changed.
“Is she inside or outside?” Bear asked again, and instantly I recalled the way her body looked slumped over the side of the house, my throat tightened.
“Outside,” I choked out remembering the moment when I convinced my mother to switch guns with me.
“I need to get out there before the smell…” Bear started and my stomach rolled again.
King nodded. “I got what you need in the garage. How many?” he asked and this time Bear didn’t turn to me for the answer.
“One.”
“No,” I said, tears pricking the back of my eyes. They both looked at me with confused expressions. “No.” I repeated, shaking my head vigorously. “Two. There are two,” I said, holding up two fingers while staring blankly at the ceiling.
“I’ll get started,” King said, disappearing from the doorway.