Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 107118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
She sat down next to Cowboy on the couch. He put an arm around her and pulled her close. I saw them both hold their breath some as their brands pulled, but then they settled. Watching them did something strange to me inside. Both blond. Both blue-eyed . . . both matched in every way that I didn’t.
“I’m taking a shower,” I announced and ducked into the bathroom. It was only the middle of the afternoon, but I needed to get away. I turned on the shower and stood, watching my reflection in the mirror. I lifted my arm and ran my fingers down my skin. Skin that had caused so much fucking grief in my life. I stared at my blue eyes, a legacy from my mother. The eyes that screamed to people that I wasn’t one or the other. Not black or white, but both.
I have never seen anyone as beautiful as you, gullunge, my mamma would say to me as a kid and kiss each eye. The very best of us both.
As a bright-eyed kid I’d believed her. Then, every year, as I would be knocked further and further to the ground by words disguised as bullets, daggers disguised as fists, the compliment slowly tarnished.
And as the home I loved so much was incinerated before my eyes, taking my heroes with it into the flames, I realized it was all bullshit.
Even this club couldn’t give me the acceptance it promised. When our former prez in New Orleans died of a sudden heart attack, the VP took over. The VP who’d been the only brother to vote against me making full patch. Not Cowboy, only me. And from the minute he’d been given the gavel, I was a target. Always sent on the bad runs. The butt of all the jokes, and finally, the fucking lie that I had stolen from the club. Just like your kind to do something like that, Titus had accused. No white brother would’ve ever betrayed his brother like this.
We went nomad before the situation could even make it to church. Asshole agreed in a second. Anything to get the coon from his club and an excuse for where the money had gone. I bet that fucker told them my decision on going nomad had guilt written all over it.
Cowboy, as always, told any brother we met on the road that we left because of him. That was typical Cowboy. Having my back, every fucking time. He followed me all around the states until we found ourselves in Austin.
Titus refused any prospect trying to join the New Orleans chapter who had even an ounce of color in their skin. Caramel, brown, black . . . anything that wasn’t a shade of beaming white. Instead of fucking confronting the racist cunt, I’d just left. Thought I could get away from that shit, but just like everything else, it caught up with me anyway.
I didn’t seem to belong in any fucking world.
I stripped off my clothes. Naked, I stared at the tattoos that covered the skin I wished I never had. I belonged to no one. Had no fucking family but Cowboy.
I wasn’t black enough.
Not white enough.
Never fucking enough.
I touched the scar I would have forever. The “N” branded on me at sixteen. I was twenty-six now, and people still hadn’t fucking changed. There had been fuck-all progression.
And I was tired. So fucking exhausted with fighting their shit.
I ran my fingers down my arm again, scraping my nails along the skin. Digging further and further into the flesh until blood began to drip from the marks. I panted, wanting to shed who the fuck I was. Change into something else. Someone who wasn’t a plague on everyone he let in.
Mamma, I listed in my mind. Papa . . . Aubin . . . Sia.
The names played on repeat in my head. Circling, swarming like sharks. Biting at my fucking soul, until all that was left was the bloody corpse of the person I could have been, if things had been different. If I had been different. If people hadn’t cast me aside. Hadn’t pushed and pushed. Chipped and chipped away at me until there was nothing.
Nothing.
One word that summed me up.
My feet led me to the shower. I hung my head, letting the scalding spray batter my body. My palms pressed against the wall. I turned the water up higher and higher until it was at maximum temperature. My flat hands fisted as the water slapped like a million hands at my skin.
I pictured my parents in my head. I saw them in the attic window. Saw my mamma’s hand on the window pane. I opened my eyes, staring at my hand on the wall. The heat rose, the steam robbing me of my breath. I wondered what they felt in that moment . . . wondered what they saw as they looked at me standing on the grass, watching the fire climb higher and higher, licking at their feet.