Chapter 1 #2
And that’s how the unlikely friendship between a biker and a mess of a girl began.
Before I learned to drive, Cash took me to the store if I needed ingredients, and then Lucy and Jude bought me a car of my own.
Whenever I experimented with a new recipe, Cash was my taste tester.
When I started watching Colby for Maizie, he often came to the park with us.
I wasn’t afraid to be out on my own—not like I was the first few months I lived here—but having him around made me feel safer.
We started talking, really talking. He listened to me rail on about how my sister wants to “fix” me, but she didn’t know how deeply I was broken.
No one did. I’ve never elaborated on what exactly that meant, but I’ve never felt like I needed to with him.
I listened to him talk about the guilt he felt over taking in Cooper—the prospect who died while protecting Lucy.
Cash and Cooper grew up together. When Cooper wanted more than what the little town in Louisiana could offer him and his sister, Cash brought him to Shine to have him prospect for the club.
They were both kids who had families that didn’t give two shits about them when they were young, and Cash had found a real family in the Black Roses. He wanted Cooper to have the same.
A knock sounds at my bathroom door, shaking me out of my thoughts.
“Cece. You okay?” my sister asks through the wood.
“Yeah, just getting ready for the day,” I answer before standing and turning on the shower.
“Okay. Jude made breakfast if you’re hungry,” she calls over the running water.
“Be out in a minute.”
There’s no way my behavior last night isn’t going to be the topic of conversation at the breakfast table.
I quickly wash my hair and brush my teeth before stepping into my bedroom.
Jude and his brother Liam decorated it for me—or rather, for the version of me they thought I was.
The pastel-pink and white comforter is soft and sweet.
But not who I am. Not that I know who that is right now.
The furniture is a whitewashed farmhouse style that screams simple and feminine.
The only thing I really cared about when I came to live here was having a lock on my door.
Though I believed Lucy when she said I could trust these people, there was still a lingering fear in the back of my mind.
Men aren’t trustworthy. They’re driven by the basest of instincts, which usually means taking advantage of those they deem weaker.
It’s taken me a long time to dispel that notion.
Opening my drawer, I pull out a pair of cutoff shorts and a T-shirt, throwing them on before brushing my long, straight blonde hair.
I was often told how pretty my hair was growing up.
How I was lucky to have such natural beauty.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve almost cut the long locks to my chin.
Even thought of dying them black like my sister had when she was on the run.
When I walk out of my room and into the kitchen, Lucy and Jude are sitting at the small table next to a large window that overlooks the backyard.
Jude looks up from his plate and gives me a pitying smile while Lucy’s is tight as she watches me pour myself a cup of coffee and lean against the counter, facing my firing squad.
“Well,” I say after taking a sip. “Out with it.” I wave my hand in my sister’s direction.
Jude clears his throat and stands from the table as Lucy and I stare at each other. He grabs his plate and walks over to the sink, rinsing the dish and putting it in the dishwasher.
“We only care about you, Little Bit. No matter what, we want what’s best for you,” he says and offers me a smile. “Go easy on your sister, yeah? She loves you.”
I nod as he turns toward my sister. He bends and gives her a kiss on the mouth. When he stands straight, his gaze darts between the two of us. “Remember, you love each other,” he says, then walks out the door.
“Chicken,” my sister calls after him.
“Self-preservation, love,” he yells back before the front door closes behind him.
Lucy holds my stare as we listen to Jude’s bike start.
“Listen,” I begin. “I know I was a mess yesterday. It won’t happen again.”
I showed up at the barbecue drunk as shit and drove there myself. Not my finest hour, to say the least. Lucy was done at that point with my drinking and surly attitude.
I’ll be the first to admit to myself that I’ve been using alcohol more as a crutch since the kidnapping.
In the months following my rescue from the compound, I’d buried the feelings and memories.
Then the anger started and so did the drinking and rage baking, as Jude likes to call it.
It was something that everyone tiptoed around.
But last night seemed to be the final straw for my sister.
We started arguing, and everyone was staring, including the five-year-old boy I absolutely adored but couldn’t bring myself to spend time with.
Not after seeing his father and almost being raped again while he was locked in the bathroom of a dingy motel room.
Cash intervened, from what I remember—which isn’t much—and took me home while I silently cried in my car the entire way.
I vaguely remember him walking me into my room and setting a glass of water on the nightstand next to my bed.
As soon as he left, I grabbed an almost empty bottle of vodka from underneath my bed and pounded the rest of it.
Then I promptly passed out and didn’t wake again until the phone rang this morning.
“It won’t happen again?” Lucy asks, shaking her head.
“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place!
” she yells. “You fucking know better than to drink a bottle of wine and get behind the wheel. You should have fucking known better than to show up at a family barbecue so drunk off your ass you were stumbling through Elaine’s fucking rose bushes. ”
That would explain the tiny cuts I felt in the shower this morning.
“I know. It was a stupid mistake,” I plead.
“You don’t know. And I’ve been tight-lipped about everything I’ve seen these last several months because I know you have shit you’re trying to work through.
But Cece, you won’t let me in. You won’t let me help you.
” She runs a hand through her messy dark hair and blows out a breath.
“Look, I’m not exactly the poster child for well adjusted, but sister, you are traveling down a dangerous path.
You’re out all hours of the night. You drink like a goddamn fish, and don’t think I haven’t noticed the bottles piling up in the trash—and you won’t talk to me.
Just talk to me, Cece. Let me help you.”
Though her pleas are coming from a place of love and concern—and I know that, truly I do—her begging grates on my already frayed nerves.
“What do you think you can do, huh? Erase my past. Make the seven years I spent on the compound without you just disappear?” I hold up a hand and snap my fingers. “You have no idea what I went through. And you have no right to judge me for how I’m dealing with things.”
“That’s just it. You aren’t dealing with anything. When you were babysitting Colby, that was the only time you weren’t drinking, or blaring music and baking, or out doing God knows what with God knows who. Now you barely look at Colby, and you haven’t watched him in months.”
“Listen, I might be a fucking mess, but at least I know not to bring it around Colby. At least give me some credit.”
“Oh, I give you credit for that, but he loves you and misses you. Maizie told me he thinks you’re mad at him because he didn’t fight off the bad guys.”
My heart drops to my stomach, and if I wasn’t leaning against the counter, I’m pretty sure my legs would have given out. Hell, they still might.
I clear my throat and fight back the tears that threaten to spill out. “There’s nothing he could have done. He’s just a kid who had no control over what was happening to us. Neither of us did.”
“I know that and you know that, but you’ve disappeared from his life. That’s not the Cece I know. No matter what you were going through, at least I knew you loved that kid and were always there for him. It was the only time I saw a glimmer of the sweet girl I remember.”
“And there it is,” I say, throwing my hands in the air. “I’m not the Cece I used to be. Well, no shit.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she says, trying to backtrack.
“It’s that I don’t recognize this version of you.
When you came here, you were quiet and reserved.
And I was worried because you wouldn’t open up.
I didn’t want to push, but maybe I should have.
Then, in the last year, you’ve been angrier than I’ve ever seen you.
I still didn’t push when I should have. Now you’re running around, not telling me where you’re going or who you’re with, and I have no idea what to do with that.
” Lucy takes a deep breath and tries to settle herself the best she knows how, which, for my sister, isn’t much.
“Do you understand what could have happened yesterday? What if Colby was outside riding his bike? Or what if you’d hit a fucking tree because you were so drunk you couldn’t keep the car straight?
What if, after all these years, I had lost you? ”
“I know. Jesus. I’m sorry. I never drink and drive. I’m not that stupid.”
“Then what changed yesterday?” Lucy prods again.
So many things have changed for me in the last month and a half. Namely, the images and feelings I kept buried are all that run through my head these days.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I reply.
Lucy scoffs. “You never want to talk about it.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry my trauma is such an inconvenience for you. If I’m too much trouble, I’ll leave.”
“Is this the part where I get the petulant teenager?” she asks snidely.
“Sorry, Mom.”
I blurt out the word before I have a chance to think about it.
Lucy and I hold each other’s stares as tears fill her eyes.
She wasn’t there when our mother passed.
Not that she was much of a caring maternal figure, but she was all we had.
I know Lucy regrets the fact that she and the MC were too late to save our mother.
They saved the other women and kids from the compound, but they couldn’t save her.
I think both of us carry around a lot of baggage where our mother is concerned.
Lucy clears her throat and stands from her chair. Shutting down when the conversation veers into something neither of us is ready to talk about seems to be a family trait.
“I have errands to run before I head into work. I’ll see you when I get home.
” She grabs her keys and bag from the counter then turns around to leave the kitchen.
“You know,” she starts, her back facing me, “you aren’t the only one who went through hell.
I wasn’t there for seven years and didn’t see what happened to you, couldn’t protect you, but every day I thought of you and worried for you.
My mind came up with the worst possible things, Cece, and I was scared every single day for you.
I just want to help now that I have you with me.
” She steps toward the door, and a moment later, I hear it shut, then hear the engine of her car start.
No matter what Lu imagined, I can guarantee my reality was so much worse.
And neither of us is ready to open that can of worms.