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He would always be beautiful to me.
I lift my hips and pull off my panties. His boxers tent as he gazes down at me. “Under the covers,” he says. I shift and raise up my comforter and sheet, scooting underneath. He pushes down his boxers and I lift up the covers so he can join me. I spread my legs and he settles himself on top of me, his arousal pressed up against my stomach.
For the first time in our lives we are skin to skin.
“Are you nervous?” Tanner asks. He could probably feel my heart pounding like a hammer and fluttering at break neck speeds in my chest. Because I feel his and it is doing the exact same thing.
“No,” I lie.
“Me either,” he lies.
Tanner kisses me and after a few minutes, he positions himself with his hand and slowly enters me. It hurts at first. Just a little pinch of pain, but then it’s gone. It doesn’t feel good, it’s uncomfortable at best, but it feels good to be sharing this with him.
It is over in just a few minutes. He collapses on top of me and kisses my neck. “I love you, Ray. I love you so much it hurts. ”
And it did hurt.
So much.
“Holy Shit!”
I clasped my hands over my mouth in surprise.
“What? Did you remember something?” Tanner asked eagerly, searching my eyes for his answer.
I nodded slowly, unable to explain to him what it was I just experienced.
Tanner shook my shoulders like he was trying to shake my answer from me. “Ray! What did you remember? What is it? Tell me!”
“I just remembered…”
“What? What did you just remember?”
“I just remembered—that I love you. ”
Chapter Twelve
King
I heard Bear before I saw him. His muffled scream ripped through the air, the breeze carrying it over the lake and right to my face as if he were standing there screaming at me.
I’d raided one of Preppy’s storage houses in the woods and found exactly what I’d needed.
Zombie apocalypse supply center, Preppy corrected.
I’d even found a charged burner in the shed, but when I’d called the MC and asked for Bear’s old man, the kid who answered told me Chop wasn’t taking calls. When I dialed Chop’s cell, it went to right to voicemail. I called every single member of Bear’s MC whose number I had memorized, but as soon as they heard it was me calling, they’d all hung up without even letting me explain that Bear was in trouble.
I left voicemails. I sent texts.
Nothing.
The Beach Bastards MC, with the exception of Bear, were working their way onto the top of my list of motherfuckers who need to be taught a lesson in manners.
In respect.
In fucking brotherhood.
We don’t need those motherfuckers, Boss Man. Preppy chimed in. We got this shit. Well, we’d have this shit if I could hold my gun, or had a body, or was fucking alive. Then we would sooooo totally have this shit.
“But you had to go and fucking die,” I snapped, angry that Preppy wasn’t there with me, and angry with myself for talking out loud to my dead best friend, and angry that I was angry at him for being fucking dead for Christ’s sake.
I loaded everything into a duffel bag that I rolled in a tarp. I carried it above my head as I waded back through the water, staying close to the edge so that I wouldn’t be spotted because even though it was dark out, the center of the open bay always looked as it were lit up, reflecting the light of the moon and stars.
I made my way back into the woods. I could see the light from the fire pit was almost as tall as the house. Bear’s scream once again tore through the air. When I finally had eyes on him, I found that what they were doing to him, was actually much, much worse than what I’d imagined.
Bear was tied up in sections. One rope kept his arms tucked into his sides. One kept his hands tied behind his back. One was tied around his head, tucked into his open mouth like a gag. Bear was biting down on it so hard his teeth were almost meeting in the middle of the thick rope. Tears of pain ran down the side of his face. He was on his stomach, laid out across several chairs. His pants pulled down around his ankles, his ass high up in the air. Eli’s men stood behind him and prodded at him with some sort of broken off handle. They laughed every time Bear screamed. One held Bear’s ass cheeks open as another forcefully rammed the object in and out of him.
Eli sat nearby in one of the folding chairs surrounding the pit that was usually occupied by bikers when I’d had parties. He was resting his head back against his interlocked hands. His legs were stretched out and resting on the ledge of the fire pit.
Eli was as if he was watching an opera, beholding something beautiful and wondrous, his eyes wide, as he intently watched the brutality taking place in front of him. I cracked my knuckles. As the assault continued, another guy, one with bright orange found his amusement by sprinkling the glowing embers of the fire onto Bear’s backside.
A bold motherfucker with thick black swastika tattoo on his shaved head, pulled his cock from his pants and stepped up to Bear, whose head was now hanging down off the chair, his chin almost touching the grass. The man pulled the rope from Bear’s mouth and yanked on his hair, lifting his head up. The man grabbed the base of his cock and rubbed the tip of it across Bear’s lips. Bear must have lost consciousness because he didn’t even move. It wasn’t until the motherfucker forcefully shoved his cock into Bear’s mouth when I knew that Bear was not only conscious, but he was ready for a fucking fight. His eyes sprang open and the guy jumped back from Bear, holding onto his crotch and screaming, trying to hold back the blood that was pouring out between his fingers.
Bear spat out what was left of the man’s cock and smiled from ear to ear, blood dripping down his face, coating his teeth.
And he laughed.
It was now or never.
I unholstered my gun and pulled a grenade from the duffel bag. I took a deep breath and cleared my mind of everything except what I was about to do.
Crouching down as close as I could to the ground, I snaked my way over to the fire pit. I pulled the pin from the grenade with my teeth and tossed it into the fire.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
BOOM
The fire pit exploded into a blinding wall of white light. An image of Pup sleeping peacefully in my bed, her limbs tangled with mine, flashed in my mind as I ran toward the chaos.
Toward Bear.
And directly toward the possibility, that come morning, I’d be in a place reserved just for me.
In hell.
Chapter Thirteen
Doe
It had been three weeks without a single word from King. I was starting to give up hope that he would ever come back for me.
Tanner’s mission to help me remember my life continued, fueled by the revelation that I remembered loving him when we were kids. I tried to explain to him that it was a memory, not a current feeling, but I knew that Tanner still looked at it as a step in putting back together what we’d had in the past.
“How are the meetings going with the specialist?” the senator asked, slicing into his rare steak, blood gushed from the meat, flooding the plate with red. He rubbed the piece on his fork through it before pulling it off the fork with his teeth.
It was the first time I was sitting down to an actual meal with my father, my mother once again at the ‘spa’ or wherever she claimed to be. But despite my angry brain telling me that I shouldn’t be nervous, I was still wiping my damp palms on my jeans every few minutes. Sammy was napping on the couch just a few feet from the round dining room table where we sat.
“Okay, I guess. I don’t really know how those things are supposed to go, though. ” In actuality, the specialist barely asked me any questions and on two occasions, he’d nodded off during our session.
“Good. I want you to continue your visits wit
h him. We have some functions coming up at which I’d like you to be present. There is a charity event for the campaign in a few weeks. We are hosting it in the Redmond’s backyard, Tanners parents place,” the senator said, making the event sound more like a business meeting rather than a party.
I scrunched my nose and poked at my dinner with my fork. “I don’t know if that’s such a great idea. I assume I’m supposed to know who these people are. Won’t it be obvious when they start talking to me and I look at them like they have thirty heads?” I asked.
“Ray, you’ve never liked what I do for a living. You’ve never really acclimated to being the daughter of a senator,” my father said, sitting forward in his chair. “It wouldn’t be unusual for you not to know who these people are. ”
“Ray, it could help with your memory. You should come,” Tanner gently chimed in. Trying to regain my memory would be the only reason I’d agree to play the part of ‘dutiful daughter’.
“Will my mother be there?” I asked.
The senator kept his eyes on his plate. “Yes, she attends all the campaign functions. It’s part of our…agreement. ”
I snorted. “She attends all the functions, yet she’s somehow forgotten to attend her own life,” I muttered.
The senator sighed. “Your mother…she blames me for…well, everything,” the senator said. “It’s hard for her to be around for too long. She get’s restless. ” And for a mere flash of a second I felt almost bad for him. For one tenth of a millisecond thought I saw a tiny glimpse of a man who wasn’t a senator at all, but a frustrated husband with an unhappy wife.