And she’s now paying for my moronic choices.
“What do you mean?” Breanna leans forward on her bent arm and drags a sheet up to cover her breasts. Her modesty reminds me how different we are.
I stare straight into her hazel eyes, which are widening. Twenty dollars she already knows. She’s Einstein and those pieces are already put together in her head.
“It’s the only way,” I say.
She’s shaking her head. “You promised me the club would stay out of this.”
“They can do what I can’t. They can make this problem go away.”
“How?” Her voice grows in volume. “How are they going to make it go away? Are they going to hurt him? Are they going to make him disappear like Mia Ziggler?”
“Is that where we’re at? Back to believing rumors spread by a bunch of assholes?”
Breanna slams her mouth shut and looks down, but anger causes her body to tense. “I’ve told you, I trust you. Just because I trust you doesn’t mean I trust your club—”
“I am the club.” I cut her off and point at the tattoos of fire on my arms. “I have never not been the club.”
“That’s not true. You’ve been doubting them since we met. That’s the whole reason why we continued to talk. You needed proof about your mother because you didn’t trust them. I don’t claim to understand everything that happened the other night, but I saw the look on your face, I heard you yelling at them. I know they lied to you and I know you aren’t okay with it.”
“That’s between me and them.” I scoot to the edge of the bed, grabbing my jeans. “I’m talking about you and me. I’m talking about keeping you safe.”
She laughs and it’s a bit hysterical as she grabs for her clothes. “You didn’t trust them to take care of your mother and yet you expect me to trust them with my problems? With my life?”
I flinch as if her words were a switchblade. “I’m asking you to trust me and I’ve already explained I am the club. I will not allow Kyle to continue to blackmail you.”
Breanna works under the sheet to get her bra back on and I use that time to shrug on my jeans. I’m so fucking pissed that when I shove my foot through, I rip the already frayed cuff. She slides out of the bed and she’s also brewing with enough ticked-off energy that it’s not long before, like me, her shirt and jeans are on, too. The silence is sharp enough that it could cut us. I roll my neck and try to fight the feeling she’s slipping away.
“In case you’re wondering.” A snap from her laces as she double knots. “None of this is your decision. It’s mine. I asked for your help, you tried and it didn’t work, so now I’m choosing to write his papers.”
“Is that what you want? Because it won’t stop there. It will never stop. Shit like this, Breanna, it’s not about the endgame of the fucking papers, it’s about control.”
“You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I know this is about control? I’m the one under his thumb. I’m the puppet being played. I’m the one whose future is being decided by some guy who has to act dominant to make himself feel better.”
I stretch out my arms, desperate for her to understand. “Then let me help. Let me do what needs to be done.”
“Why? So you can be in control?”
“Are you comparing me to that bastard?”
“Yes. No. You and Kyle are two different people. Not just on the outside, but the inside, as well. You would never treat a girl like he’s treating me, but you guys do have one thing in common and that is control. You want to fix things, you want to protect people, you want to take the bullet, and I’m telling you, it’s not your choice to take the bullet on this.”
“When Kyle’s around, do you know what I see? Fear. And fuck me for not wanting the girl I love to be scared. Fear—that’s not you. You are one of the few people I know who is truly fearless.”
“You’ve made that girl up in your head! She doesn’t exist. At least she doesn’t exist in me, because all I am is scared. I’ve been scared for years! Scared someone will make fun of me. Scared someone will make me the butt of their jokes. Scared I’ll stick out too much. Scared that if I do too much or say too much or do too well, that I’m going to hurt the people around me, and I can’t take that burden, not anymore.”
She claws at her shirt as if she’s suffocating. “I don’t want to hurt people and I’m scared, but what terrifies me the most is that I will never be as free to be myself as I am with you. I’m terrified I’m going to be in this box forever and I have to be. I have to stay just as I am.”
Breanna’s chest rises and sinks too fast and my instincts flare. There’s more happening than Kyle. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” It falls out of her mouth as an automatic response and I’m not buying it.
“You’re talking like I’m an outsider. You act like I’m not involved with this.”
Breanna knots her hair at the base of her neck. “I am not your club! There is no in or out. This is my problem, not yours and it sure as hell isn’t the club’s problem, either. I’ll handle this my way because my way won’t end up with someone possibly being hurt.”
“So you’re going to do what you do at school? You’re going to hide?” A wave of anger and hurt ripples through me and it’s building into a tsunami.
Her eyes narrow into slits. “What happened to me being fearless?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I have it wrong, because the girl I love wouldn’t be asking me to butt out, but would keep me involved.”
“This isn’t about you! This is about me and I’m trying desperately to keep my world from falling apart. That picture can destroy what little I have left.”
“Are you ashamed of me?” I spit out. “Was I a piece to a puzzle for you and now that the puzzle isn’t working I’m being discarded?”
Shock and hurt cloud her face. “Why would you say that? I just did things with you that I have never done with anyone else. I have loved you like I have loved no one else. I’m standing here in your house, defying my family, hurting them because I love you!”
Pissed at myself, my entire body becomes a steamroller and I throw my fist into the wall. Breanna jumps and I press my hands over my face and scrub the skin as if that could erase the past few minutes.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying anymore. She’s leaving. After she walks out that door, I don’t know when I’ll see her again, if I’ll see her again, and she’s leaving with more problems than she had to begin with.
I’m hurt, she’s hurt and we’re only hurting each other more. As always, I’m cursed. She came searching for a memory and I’m sure as hell giving her one. Just the nightmare version everyone else in town also shares of me.
I take a deep breath and search for a semicoherent thought. “Breanna, I’m sorr—”
“Take me home.” She wraps her arms around herself and I curse when I spot the tears lining the bottom rim of her eyes.
“We can’t leave it like this between us.”
“I’m not ashamed of you.” Her voice cracks and that tears me up.
“I know.” And those words that other people are good at saying, I find myself lost trying to form.
“Tell me you aren’t going to the club about the picture and Kyle.”
I wish I could lie to her, but I can’t. I fucking can’t. “I don’t know.”
“If you go to them, then we’re over.”
If I don’t go to them, she’ll forever live in that box she’s terrified of being chained in for the rest of her life. I love Breanna. Love her more than I thought I was capable of loving a person. She brought me peace, light and happiness and I should give her something in return.
I step into her, and because Breanna is brave at her core, she doesn’t step back.
“Don’t do it,” she whispers as I run my finge
rs through her hair. “Don’t make my life more complicated than it already is. I can’t trust them. I can’t do what you’re asking.”
I hear her words, but I’m too busy making my own memories to respond. Breanna’s hair is soft, and when my fingers glide through, it’s like touching silk. I caress her face next and enjoy the smoothness of her cheek against my knuckles.
Her lips are perfect. Dark pink to light red. Curved just so that when she smiles it has this seductive tease. I’ll go to bed night after night thinking of her lips. Kissing them. The feel of them on my skin. I curl her into me. Our time is almost completely gone. Not nearly enough left for me to love her properly—enough for memories.
“Razor,” she says as a plea. “Please tell me you aren’t choosing to end this.”
I lower my head so that our foreheads are touching. “I’m choosing to love you.”
“What does that mean?”
I kiss her. Slowly. Softly. As if she’s glass on the verge of breaking, because that’s what I am. I’m shattering on the inside. Her lips move with mine with as much deliberateness. Her taste is so sweet, her smell so enticing, this moment is fucking shredding my heart.
“What will they do to Kyle? He’s wrong, Razor. He’s more than wrong, he’s sick in the head even, but I can’t live with the idea of someone being hurt over me.”
The front door to the house opens and the voices of multiple people talking at once cause Breanna to ease back, but I keep my arms locked around her. We stare at each other. She’s still begging for an answer I don’t possess. Screw it, I do know the answer, but it’s not the one she craves to hear. But for her happiness, for her safety—I’d do anything.
“I love you,” I tell her. “I don’t have fancy shit inside me or other pretty words to say, but know that, no matter what, I love you.”
She opens her mouth, to possibly say it back, but someone knocks on my door. “Come in.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at—” School dies on Dad’s lips as I glance over my shoulder at him. His gaze lands on Breanna, then jumps to me. “Pigpen didn’t tell me you had company.”
“He didn’t know. Did I hear Rebecca?”
“Yeah.”
I rest my arm over Breanna’s shoulders and edge her forward for the living room. I kiss her temple and briefly close my eyes with the embrace. This could be the last time I touch her. “I need her to take Breanna home.”
Breanna
RAZOR’S GOING TO tell his club. The way he kissed me, the way he told me he loved me, the return of the frozen blue eyes as he watched me riding away in the passenger side of Rebecca’s car—it was all there, the answer I didn’t want to hear. The answer that is tearing us apart.
Rebecca’s car idles at the end of the driveway and she waits like I’m walking the last few feet of my life. Maybe I am. Maybe when I enter the kitchen, my family will literally kill me, but when I round the corner, Mom’s and Dad’s cars are still missing.
I slip in the back door to buy myself as much time as I can without Clara and Liam and drop into a chair at the kitchen table. Weeks ago, I stood at the sink washing dishes—being the good little girl most everyone has predicted me to be. The smart girl, the best friend, the one who follows every command, the sister keeping a secret.
A secret.
I now have so many secrets that I’m buried alive—still in the box, still chained inside, and I’m losing air. Razor’s words come hurtling back at me... Are you ashamed of me?
What causes bile to slosh around in my stomach was the internal hesitation. How come I never told my parents? Why didn’t I proudly hold his hand at school? Why wasn’t the love from this fantastic man enough for me to rise above the thoughts and fears of everyone else?
Because I’m a coward... I’m afraid...
Around the room, everything is the same. Dirty dishes piled up. A half-eaten apple turning brown on the counter. A stack of mismatched shoes in the corner near the door. The same scene, another day, but I left this house one person last August and I’m sitting here someone new, someone changed, and it’s time not to be afraid anymore.
Across the kitchen on the island is my phone, because in truth, my parents assume me to be the good little dog. They’re convinced I’ll obey.
Just like Clara expects me to forever keep her secret.
Just like Kyle expects me to write his papers.
But there is one person who expected the unexpected from me and the only time I noticed disappointment on his face was when I cowered like a sheep. And I had to take a moment to figure out I’m not ashamed of him. It’s him who should be ashamed of me.
I’ve put Razor in an unfair position. He introduced me to his world. Welcomed me with open arms. Made me feel like I belonged and I’ve asked him to keep a secret when doing so is killing him. And I told him that we would be over... I did the same exact thing to him that Clara did to me and that’s not okay. No part of it is okay.
I cross the kitchen, and when I pick up my cell, it feels epically heavy. My heart picks up pace and dizziness causes me to lean against the counter. I can do this. I can end this nightmare and Razor won’t have to choose between me and keeping my secret.
With a swipe of my finger, my phone powers on. I never knew that being fearless could be so terrifying.
RAZOR
I WISH I HAD Breanna’s mind. If I did, maybe I could sort through the possible solutions faster. Find the way to protect her without risking that picture going live on the internet. Find a way to convince her parents to let her stay. But I don’t have her mind. I have mine and I can’t think of an answer that will work.
The board is here. All but Pigpen inside the house. He’s sitting on the railing on the opposite end of the porch from me, staring. Just staring.
It’s an eerie sensation that my mother’s cramped house is filled with so many men and there’s hardly a sound. It’s like everyone has their guns loaded, are lying in a ditch, watching a hill, and they’re waiting for someone to yell “charge.”
Messed-up part? They’re waiting on me.
I’m in the same place as when Rebecca left with Breanna—my left shoulder leaning against the corner post on the front porch. I’m putting off the inevitable. As though if I remain in the same spot I was in the last time I saw her, I won’t cause myself pain.
“There’s a Bible story.” Pigpen breaks the silence. “About this guy named Jacob and how he wrestled with God. Have you heard it before?”
I blink a no.
“The two of them went at it all night,” he says. “Think about it—you’re Jacob and he’s God and you’re evenly matched enough that you fight for hours. Jacob had to believe he was kicking ass. Thinking he was big and bad enough to do it on his own, but do you know what happened?”
It’s a biblical story, so nothing good. “A plague? Pillars of salt? Brimstone and fire?”
“God touched him.” Pigpen points one finger in the air. “And with that one touch, he dislocates Jacob’s hip. One touch and it was over.”
God smashed him like a bug. I crushed fireflies. Mom’s dead. Breanna’s floundering. And Pigpen wants to spin a story about how shit happens. “Working on a seminary degree?”
A smile stretches across his face. “Naw, but we had a chaplain over in Afghanistan. Cool son of a bitch. And he’d do this. Out of nowhere tell a story that would put it in perspective.”
“Got a point?”
The grin slips off his face. I hate it when he goes dead serious. It usually means bad shit is about to go down. “God could have flattened Jacob, but he didn’t. God knew that Jacob was stubborn, was prideful, so he let the poor bastard wear himself out before God does what he does—prove to Jacob he’s nothing compared to God.”
“Still waiting on that point.”
He shrugs
. “I was thinking you look like I expected Jacob would have after he realized he was fighting something bigger than he was, and I wonder, like Jacob, how long it’s going to take you to figure it out that you don’t have to be fighting alone.”
Sometimes, I hate this guy. Especially when he makes sense. “I’m in love with her.”
“Figured,” he says. “Is she making you choose between us and her?”
“She’s making me choose between keeping her safe or keeping her.”
“That fucking sucks.”
It does. Sucks enough I don’t need to respond.
Wind blows across the field and the cold air causes the hair on my arms to stand on end. Breanna still has my jacket. I’m glad she does. Maybe she’ll take it with her. Maybe it will help her remember me.
“How’s that wrestling match with God going?” Pigpen asks. “From here you look mighty tired.”
I’m fucking exhausted. “Breanna doesn’t want me to go to the club with her problem, and when I tried talking her into it, she drew the line.”
“Where you at on this line?” he asks.
I shove my hands into my jeans pockets and toe a piece of faded wood splintering off the deck floor. “If I cross it, I lose her. I might be losing her anyhow, because her parents are sending her away, but she’ll walk if I go to the club for help.”
“Hate to say this, but the way you sent her away, you already made the decision.”
That’s what is killing my soul. I know the choice has been made and so does Breanna. The agony of letting her go strikes deep. “I love her. Enough that I’ll do anything to keep her safe.”
The graying wood of the porch creaks under Pigpen’s weight as he crosses it to join me. “Sounds like the decision your mom made when she drove away from the clubhouse—sacrificing herself to protect you.”
My heart stalls out, but Pigpen’s not done torturing me yet. “Also sounds like the decision the board and your dad made by keeping how she died a secret from you. And before you say shit, you and I both know how ugly that demon is inside you when it comes to her. I know it when I see it because that warped monster lives inside me. If you grew up knowing the truth, you would have gone into Louisville guns blazing by the time you were sixteen, starting a war that this club can’t win, costing lives we couldn’t save.”