29. Steel
Adora
I wasn’t ready for this conversation. But I was never going to be ready. So I put on a brave face and brace for what’s coming. I need to know this, not just to understand why we ended the way we did, but to try and deal with the guilt that’s still trailing me.
I know I didn’t play the biggest role in sending him to prison, but I played a role. Small or big, does it matter in the end? When the steel bars closed behind him, did my reason for lying — saving my sister — give him any comfort? Did it make a difference?
I don’t want the lies and the unknown to fester anymore, inventing new ways to torture me. I need to step into the light and know the full truth. Then maybe I can finally move on.
His brows furrow. He looks out through the windshield, leans back, one hand hanging loosely on the wheel. He takes a deep breath, like a soldier before battle, and when he speaks his voice is flat, stripped of emotion. Like he’s trying to pretend he’s telling someone else’s story.
“The only one who knows everything is Bones,” he starts.
There’s a faint buzz under my skin that spreads with every blink, every twitch of his brow. It’s itchy and unnerving. It makes me want to run. Instead I stay silent and watch him sink under the weight of his memories, trying not to drown in mine.
“I couldn’t talk about it with anyone else,” he says, jaw clenched. “But I owe you this, so I’ll give you as much as I can.”
He takes a second, inhales a long, shaky breath, and flexes his fingers around the steering wheel.
Fuck. I don’t want to hear this.
“The day of your testimony is when I stopped fighting. You looked so fucking innocent on that stand. Clean. Reliable. Not one prior. Good student. Every word out of your mouth said with conviction. The perfect fucking witness.”
“There was no hope for my case after that. I was facing ten years, so when the prosecutor sent over a deal for five, with the possibility of parole after three — against the wishes of the entire club — I took it.”
“I fucking took it,” he whispers, voice cracked and raw.
“Wait. You were supposed to get out after three years?” I breathe, my voice breaking too. The buzz under my skin isn’t faint anymore. It’s burning, crawling. Almost painful. Like it’s warning me of what’s to come. Of the truth I tried to bury.
“Yeah,” he confirms quietly. “I’ll get to that soon enough.”
He sighs and presses two fingers to his temple, eyes narrowing dangerously. “I was transferred to max and by the time I had contact with the outside world again, the news came. You were fucking married. To none other than the pig who ruined my life.”
His voice drops lower. “I’d already been jumped in the yard at this point.
Two fuckers held me while another kneed me in the ribs.
I knew I might never get out alive. And while I was fighting to survive, you were moving on with another man.
I got too angry to see past it. And the years that followed only made me angrier. ”
Dread coils around my spine, my chest, my lungs.
The air feels too thick and too thin at the same time.
He keeps staring into the dark, lost in the past. I can almost see the younger version of him sitting here, right in front of me.
Full of pain, fury, and an agony that had nowhere else to go except inside his soul.
“For three years, I was shoved down the stairs. Kicked in the kidneys. Had salt rubbed into shallow cuts. Shivs rammed between my ribs. My fingers stepped on. My bones broken.”
He swallows. “I lost four fucking teeth. Had to get implants when I got out.”
“But it wasn’t the constant attacks that destroyed me,” he murmurs, the skin around his eyes tightening.
He clears his throat, flexes his fingers, and keeps going. “In the end, I survived those. I had to. But by the time Pops got me protection, it was too late.”
He grits his teeth so hard I can almost hear them crack. “They made a final move. Bowie put it all together,” he growls, and suddenly there’s a wave of cold nausea in my stomach.
“Wh—what?” I stammer, horrified. “What do you mean, Bowie?”
He looks at me, his eyes two black holes of fury. “Up until then, all attacks were done by other inmates. But I guess those weren’t fun anymore. They wanted something else.”
His voice hardens. “So your ex-husband roped in some of the guards. And they made sure I knew it was him who sent them. He didn’t just want me hurt.
He wanted me destroyed. Humiliated. He clearly had a personal grudge.
I thought it was because of my connection to you. That it was his jealousy boiling over.”
A muscle in his jaw ticks. “From that day on, I became so obsessively focused on you that I didn’t even think of the possibility of him being connected to the cartel. I didn’t care about anyone else. I just wanted to get to you.”
He exhales slowly, leans his head back against the seat, and closes his eyes.
“They ganged up on me in the showers,” he murmurs, voice flat. “Stopped me from leaving. Cleared everyone else out. They—” His voice cracks. He rubs the heels of his palms against his eyes and lets out a small, frustrated sound.
I can barely breathe. Barely think. The unspoken words hang between us, too poisonous to touch.
How did I never think about this? You always hear about it — in movies, in books, on TV.
But the thought never crossed my mind. Not once.
He always looked so strong, so big, his every step heavy and sure, that I never imagined him going through something like this.
“It was two against one,” he growls, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles whiten. “Maybe I could’ve fought back, but one of them slammed my head into the tile. Made me dizzy. A few seconds of weakness, but it was enough to give them the upper hand.”
Everything inside me rages, breaking apart the last remaining pieces of my already broken soul.
He slumps forward, breathing ragged, forehead pressed against the steering wheel. Seconds pass. Then minutes. His breathing grows louder, harsher, but no words come.
Somehow, I manage to move. His pain is a living thing, biting into him with teeth made of glass. It needs to go away. It needs to leave him alone. It’s enough. It’s done enough.
I shift forward over the console, my arms moving before I can think.
The first touch feels cold against the leather of his cut.
He freezes, breath caught, but doesn’t react in any other way.
Not until my arms circle his neck and my face buries in his hair.
He smells like fire and leather, just like he always did.
The familiar scent wraps around me, trying — desperately — to drown out the pain overflowing in this small space.
“We can stop,” I whisper. “You don’t have to say—”
The words choke me. My vision blurs, my tears fall fast, getting lost in his hair.
He turns, nestling his face in the hollow of my neck. His arm slips around my waist and pulls me into his lap.
“I was raped.”
It’s less than a whisper. Less than a breath. But it’s like a nuclear weapon. It burns. It hurts. It rips everything apart.
“And at the end, they told me it was a special message from Bowie. That he wanted to show me how he fucks you every night.”
There are tears in his voice. I wish I knew the perfect words that would heal him. Instead my fingers curl into his hair and I pull him closer, trying, against every rational thought, to absorb those memories. To blast them out of existence.
“It—” I start, but he stops me with a squeeze.
“Don’t,” he rasps. “Don’t say it. Don’t say you’re sorry, that it’s in the past, that I survived. It’s exactly why I didn’t tell anyone. I don’t want those fucking empty words.”
I pull back and look into his eyes. There’s an unspoken question there, hovering, too afraid to surface. I reach out and gently wipe the wet tracks under his eyes. He doesn’t pull away, and for some reason that brings me comfort.
“I was going to say it was bullshit,” I whisper, anger hot under my skin. “That roach never fucked me.” I laugh, bitter. “Not once.”
“What?” He murmurs, brows pinching. There’s a flicker of relief on his face and the pain in my chest eases a fraction. “He has a fucking girlfriend.”
“Yeah,” I nod. “A girlfriend doesn’t mean shit. He had a wife too and everyone thought it was a dream marriage.” My voice drops. “I never cared to find out why. I only cared that he didn’t touch me like that. So I kept my mouth shut and let my mother live out her sick fantasies.”
My eyes narrow, voice hard. “Forget that bastard. What matters is that you survived. You say those words are empty, but they’re not. They’re reality.” I hug him tight, choking back new tears. He hugs me back harder. “You’re here. You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
I gulp down a big breath. “Please tell me those guards are dead.”
He exhales. I feel him relax into me a little. “They’re dead,” he says, voice tense. “Found out later they were killed while I was inside. Fuck knows what else they were involved in.” He huffs. “I wish I’d been the one to end them, but I didn’t get that chance. I only got one to bleed.”
He rolls his head to the side and stares out the window.
“After they told me Bowie’s message, something inside me snapped.
For a few seconds I turned into an animal.
I was lying on the floor and one of them stood over me, smug as fuck, dick out.
I don’t remember much, but I remember my arm shooting up.
Next thing I knew I was squeezing his balls so hard blood spattered everywhere. The guy squealed like a dying pig.”
He pauses, his hand moving up and down my back. “I don’t know what happened after. The other one kicked me in the head, and I woke up in the hospital a few days later. With a slash across my back that needed over fifty stitches.”