Chapter 3 Cece #3
Thoughts of Thea and the kidnapping tumble through my head.
This is the time of day the demons like to infiltrate.
When the sun is just about to set, and there’s nothing but darkness for the next several hours.
This is the time when I start getting antsy.
When the world quiets, the memories scream at me.
I pull up to a red light and look to my right, seeing the neon sign of a bar I’ve passed dozens of times.
Lottie’s Tavern. I didn’t have one drink yesterday and told myself I would never get behind the wheel of my car drunk like I did the other night.
I told myself I wasn’t going to use alcohol as a crutch anymore.
But fuck, I can’t stop staring at that damn sign.
Before I can give it more thought, my car turns right, and I pull into the parking lot of the small bar.
I won’t get drunk. Have maybe one or two then head home.
My hair is a ratty mess in a high ponytail, and I’m wearing a pair of shorts and a baggy T-shirt.
Judging from the outside, though, this place doesn’t exactly scream dress to impress.
When I open the door, the inside is dark with low lighting coming from the tile ceiling. A few neon signs litter the walls. An old jukebox sits in the corner, but no one is playing music.
I walk up to the bar, noticing the scarred laminate.
Not real wood. Nothing like the bar that the Black Roses own in Shine, but no one knows me here.
No one can judge my choices, or my scowl, or the million other little things about me that Lucy and everyone else seem intent on analyzing. Here, I’m just a woman having a drink.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asks as he looks me over, probably trying to gauge if I’m even old enough to be sitting in a bar.
“I’ll take a light beer. Anything you have in a bottle.” Looking around at the dingy carpet and the worn seats, I’m not sure that I would trust anything on tap.
He sets the beer in front of me, apparently deciding that he doesn’t need my ID, and I take a long pull from the bottle.
I’m not exactly a beer fan, but that’s probably a good thing.
If I don’t like the taste, I’ll be less likely to drink too much and have to pass out in my car for a few hours before driving home.
“I’ll take a whiskey on the rocks as well,” I say. Two drinks is my max.
The bartender sets the drink in front of me, and I hand him a couple bills before sipping the fiery liquid that burns its way down my throat, warming my belly. I don’t like whiskey much either.
Some game is playing on the TV behind the bar.
I stare at the screen, but I don’t have the faintest idea of what’s going on.
My head is too busy thinking about Thea sitting in the hospital and the number Leandra shoved into my hand that’s folded inside my pocket.
Why wouldn’t she want her cousin to get a hold of these guys?
It doesn’t sound like the law is going to take care of it for her, not as long as her ex is an insider.
There’s one thing through this entire ordeal that I have been grateful for—that those men were taken care of at the compound and at the hotel.
And I’m sure the rest of the Bone Breakers are in for a rude awakening at some point.
They threatened the club, and if I know anything about the Black Roses, it’s that there is no way that shit is going to fly.
I don’t hate the idea of vigilante justice.
Hell, I’m more than okay with horrible men meeting the fate they deserve.
“Hey, honey. Haven’t seen you here before,” a man who looks to be somewhere in his fifties but is probably only in his forties says at my side.
I turn and give him a flat smile, and his eyes light up as his beady gaze rakes over my body. Disgust rolls through me at the way he’s ogling what he probably deems as fresh meat.
“Just stopping in for a drink and to watch the game,” I say, nodding toward the TV.
“Let me buy you one,” he says, sitting next to me.
“No, thank you,” I reply and turn away from him.
It’s not that I haven’t been around men who I don’t know in the last couple years.
But it’s usually in Shine where everyone knows who I am and who my family is.
It gives me a certain amount of protection from unwanted advances—not that I go places where those advances would take place.
“Oh, come on. That game is a repeat anyway. I’m much more interesting,” he says, and I ignore him. “Or maybe you’re looking for something a little harder than that beer?”
“I’m not,” I say without sparing him a glance.
“Then another shot won’t hurt nothing,” he says as the roughened pad of his finger skates up my arm.
I jump away from him and throw his hand off of me.
“I said no,” I yell and grab my purse from the back of the barstool before running out of the bar to my car.
I drive a couple blocks, my body shaking so violently that I have to pull over to the side of the street.
That man’s touch, his sour breath too close to my face, the way he wouldn’t take no for an answer…
brought it all back. That asshole being on top of me, his rancid breath making it hard for me to breathe, the way I begged him to stop, and his laughter at my tears. It was too much.
I think about all the women who are hurt by men like him on a daily basis.
All the ways the system that is supposed to protect us fails us every damn day.
Then I remember the phone number in my pocket.
I don’t need anyone to take care of the people who brutalized me.
Most of them have been taken care of. But what if I want to be the one who takes care of them?
What if I want to be the one to make all the others hurt and bleed like they’ve made so many others?
I grab the paper from my pocket and stare at the number for a moment. Then, before I can talk myself out of it, I pick up my phone and dial.
“This is Roman,” a gruff male voice answers.
“Hi. I…uh…I got your phone number from a friend of mine. Thea.” Partially true. That’s who the number was meant for in the first place.
“Okay.”
“I’d like to meet. To talk to you about something.
” What the hell am I even saying? What the hell am I even doing?
There’s no way this guy is going to meet with me.
If what Leandra said is true, then he’s not going to meet up with some random girl who calls him out of the blue, saying she got his number from a friend. It screams suspicious.
“I’ll be at Delvines’s Diner tomorrow. Back booth facing the front door. Say noon?”
My eyes widen, shocked that this is actually working—that this is actually happening.
“I’ll be there,” I say.
“Good. You got a name?”
“Cece. Cece Thomas.”
“See you tomorrow, Cece.” And he disconnects the call.
This is crazy. I’m crazy for even trying this. But goddammit, I’m so fucking tired of feeling powerless. The self-defense classes are great and all, but I don’t want to just be able to fight someone off so I can run.
I don’t want to run.
I want to make them bleed.