Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
"What did you end up doing?"
"I bounced around a few jobs. Nothing worked out."
"How did you end up with a Henchmen cut on your back?" I asked. The question had been niggling at me since I first saw him in the front yard of the clubhouse.
"I just couldn't find a place. Years ago, your father told me if I ever needed anything, to come to him. I needed a new focus in life. He gave it to me."
"That's quite a shift, though. A musician to an outlaw biker?"
His lips curved up at that. "I think you are one step in the wrong neighborhood in this town away from being some sort of criminal. Plus, because of you and Iggs, I was even more exposed to that kind of lifestyle. It was more normalized in a way, I guess."
"Did you like it? Or was it just a compromise?"
"I didn't expect to like it at first. It just seemed like a sure path, a way out of this shit apartment, some way to belong again. But it didn't take long to start to really like it, to think it was a good decision. The brotherhood is nice. The family of it all—with the brothers as well as the wives and kids —was something I no longer knew. I mean, I've always had Iggs. But that shit, well, it hit the fan with my family and Iggs and therefore me. I haven't spoken to our parents since."
My stomach plummeted at his words. At the idea of my best friend in the whole world being without me when the seemingly inevitable blowup happened with her family.
Iggy had always been a good child. She rebelled in small ways usually thanks to my or Vance's nudging, but she bent to her parent's ridiculously strict rules with little or no protest in the vast majority of the cases. I always thought that she would one day hit her wall, would have enough, would give them a lifetime worth of her pain and anger and resentment.
I always wanted to be there for that.
"Hey," Vance said, voice soft, hand reaching out, closing around my knee, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "It's okay. She's okay. I don't... I want her to be able to tell you her own story. It's not my place. But she's good now. I think we both knew it was going to happen eventually."
"I should have been there for her."
"You know what, Ace, fuck shoulds. I think you are only going to make yourself miserable with them if you let them in. And what good will that do?"
"I don't really see a way around them," I admitted, curling up, pulling my knees to my chest, a makeshift shield against all the feelings suddenly swirling around me.
"Ace, it's going to be alright," he told me, voice sweet.
His hand moved out, snagging my chin between strong yet gentle fingers, carefully tipping my head up, making my gaze find his.
One beat.
Two.
Three.
I'd swear the world could stop right then and I wouldn't have even noticed.
And, what's more, I wasn't sure he would have either.
"Christ, were you always this bea—"
The knock at the door might as well have been cannon fire the way it sent us shooting apart.
I didn't know about Vance, but my heart flew into overdrive.
"P-pizza," Vance declared, clearing his voice as he folded up, moved away from the couch and toward the door.
As I watched his back, there was only one thought in my head.
A desperate, needy sound.
Always what?
Had I always been so... what?
It had been so long since someone mattered, since someone's thoughts and feelings about me mattered.
There was no denying, though, that while conversation curved toward lighter topics as we devoured the pizza, that it mattered.
He mattered.
And I wasn't entirely sure he ever stopped mattering.
Maybe I had simply forced it down, pretended to ignore it.
Suddenly, all those nights alone in my bed, emotionally dead seemed a lot less triumphant and a whole lot sadder.
Eight
- Journal Entry - 20th Birthday -
Maybe I could blame a night without sleep the night before the job.
There was no accounting for them. No matter how much I tried to analyze it, it made no sense why some nights I slept like a baby while others my mind flashed through a catalog of memories. Mostly ones I didn't want to relive. The ones soaked in blood and screaming, full of abused women.
The night before the job I was finally supposed to do on my own, I couldn't sleep.
Maybe that had been a factor.
Especially because it was the first time in a long time that the bloody shit was somehow cut with other images. Ones from my past. Ones of my family, my friends, and Vance.
You want to really fuck up your psyche, have images of a man choking on his own blood followed by kissing the guy of your dreams followed by a head bashed in with a ten-pound hammer.