Chapter 10
CHAPTER
TEN
Letti
When I wake up, my eyes feel raw and gritty. For the first time in years, I allowed the tears to flow without fighting to hold them back. When I was shown to this room, my nerves got the best of me. Being alone freaked me out—I didn’t feel safe even though I knew I was.
These men put everything on the line to make sure we were. They basically initiated war with the Onyx wannabe Dragons. Devils… what the fuck ever. I’m so damn tired that I don’t give a shit if I call them by the right name or not.
Who doesn’t know what the name of their gang is anyway? Fools, that’s who. That thought makes me snort because it’s a ludicrous thing to have floating through your mind.
Feeling achy from sleeping in the same position throughout the night, I sit up and stretch my arms above my head, hearing the snap, crackle, and pop of my bones as my muscles loosen. A light chuckle has my head shifting to the other side of the room where a dark figure sits on the chair.
“Viking, is that you?”
“You didn’t move the whole night,” he informs me. “Had to check on you a few times to make sure you were still breathing.”
“Did you sit in that chair all night?” I ask, wondering why he’d do that. It’s a conundrum that I’d like answered.
“Most of it,” he states, and I see the shadow of his shoulders lift up then fall down in a shrug before he slouches back in the chair. “Don’t sleep much. Bad dreams.”
“That can’t be good for you. Your body requires rest, Viking.”
“I manage. I’ve gotten used to less sleep. I function just fine, Letti.”
“I could give you all the statistics on why that’s a bad thing, Viking man, but I won’t.
Why did you stay here all night?” That’s the thing that’s plaguing me.
Whereas I felt an instant connection to him, like he is the oxygen my lungs so desperately needed, I didn’t think that was reciprocated even though he stayed glued to my hip like a bump on a log yesterday after rescuing me and the others.
“Don’t know. Just needed to,” he answers.
“A man of few words, I see?” I ask, internally rolling my eyes. “Not much of an explanation,” I complain beneath my breath.
“If there’s nothing to say, why talk?” he counters, tilting his head to the side. “Endless chatter over bullshit is worthless. No reason for it. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Depends,” I remark. I’m a social butterfly since joining the land of the living. “After enduring my lonely childhood, where the only company I had was myself, I like to fill the void of silence on most days.”
“Sounds exhausting,” he murmurs.
“Or uplifting,” I oppose. “Guess it’s a matter of how you look at it.”
“Glass half empty,” he parries.
“Or half full,” I counter, thwarting his negative viewpoint before letting him go down that rabbit hole.
Today, I need sunshine and rainbows in my life, not shadows and dreary moods.
“I’m free, Viking. Yesterday, I was preparing myself to go on the auction block and be sold to the highest bidder where there’s no telling what kind of life I would’ve had.
So yeah, my glass is half full instead of partially empty. ”
“We’re like oil and water,” he muses, snorting.
“Or like gold at the end of a rainbow after a stormy day and the pot the coins reside in,” I point out.
“You’re kinda argumentative,” he states.
“Why? Because I make you see the other side of things? Not everything is black and white, Viking. Sometimes you need to open your peepers and see the colors around you.”
“Icer,” he corrects, harrumphing. “Not Viking.”
“They both fit,” I say because it’s true, they do. I decide there and then that I’ll mix them up and call him whatever jibes with the moment.
“If you say so,” he argues before changing the topic, saying, “I put some clothes in the bathroom and some supplies in the shower. After you’re ready, come downstairs and we’ll get you some breakfast and come up with a game plan to keep you safe.”
He stands up to leave but I stop him by asking, “Where’s the bathroom?”
Instead of verbally answering, he walks over to a door attached to the room and raps his knuckles on it.
He nods his head at me as he walks out to the hallway, reaching around to the doorknob in his haste to get away from me and locking it before shutting it.
I smile, he intrigues me and I can’t wait to see what buttons of his I can push.
That man needs to lighten up and be brought out of his funk to learn how to live. I’d love nothing more than to hear him laugh and watch a smile brighten his face.
“End goals, Letti,” I tell myself before crawling out of the bed and mentally preparing myself to face a new day.
Slowly, I creep down the stairs as I hear loud, rowdy men joking around.
Groups of people make me nervous, there’s usually one bad apple in the bushel from my prior experience, and that’d burst the bubble Zoey put me in when she talked about these guys, their honor and loyalty to not only each other, but those they bring into the fold.
Could that be me? Maybe it’s too much to hope for—I should just be thankful they saved my bacon by getting me out of that caged kennel.
I do a few breathing exercises before breaching the door and showing myself.
A throat clears behind me and I jump a foot into the air.
For a five-foot nothing woman, that’s a height I’m not used to seeing.
Turning around, my hand clutched to my chest, I spit out, “Hijo de la chingada! You scared all of my nine lives from me! Where did you come from anyway?” I ask the man whose name I can’t remember.
“You a cat?” the man asks, a smile spread across his face.
“I have the claws for it,” I ascertain, raising my brows at him. “Wanna see how sharp they are?”
“Yay, I’m such a lucky man. Another one with a sassy attitude,” he mumbles, before holding out his hand. “I’m Riptide, the guys call me Rip. I’m the president of this club and was there yesterday but we didn’t get a chance to formally meet.”
“Well, Rip, it’s nice to officially meetcha’,” I reply, accepting his handshake with a tight grip, and introducing myself, “Letti.”
“Well, Letti, how about you join us for some breakfast? We aren’t cooks around here, but we have plenty of options for you to choose from. Cereal, bagels, muffins, and fruit. The easier, less evasive the choice for these guys, the better.”
“Nothing can catch fire with those selections,” I muse.
“That’s the point, darlin’,” he chuckles, amused by some memory he’s reliving. “Been there, done that, have the invoice to prove it. Had to gut the entire kitchen after LoneStar tried his hand at making omelets.”
“Should I ask how he managed that?” I inquire. “It’s not like eggs catch fire easily let alone burn an entire kitchen down.”
“That’s a story for another day,” he humorlessly responds, guiding me into a dining area that holds a large table that spans from one end to the other, ladened down with at least twenty boxes of various types of cereal, toasted bagels and cream cheese on a plate beside it as well as jars of grape and strawberry jam.
However, it’s the wide variety of fruit that catches my eye because before today, I thought all men lived off meat and potatoes but I’m proven wrong when I notice every man in attendance has a plate full of nature’s naturally sweet nectar.
Grapes, mixed berries, bananas, oranges, mangos, melons, and a few others I don’t recognize and can’t name off-hand—not surprising considering my menus weren’t expansive or vast. I lived off scraps before moving to Canton.
“Make a plate and sit anywhere, Letti,” Riptide says as he saunters off to a man that’s waving for him to come over.
“Don’t be scared, Letti,” Zoey whispers as she walks up beside me, linking our elbows. “Come sit beside me, Elodie, and Harrison. There’s a lot we have to talk about.”
“Are the conversations going to get heavy, Zoey? I’m not sure I can talk about things that happened to me on an empty belly.”
“We’ll save the hard stuff for later then,” she states, guiding me to two empty chairs before taking the one beside her man and patting the seat of the other one, indicating that’s where she wants me.
Hesitantly, I plop down and start filling a plate as the platters are passed around.
I pick at the food as conversation around me continues because I know after my ordeal where we were basically starved, consuming a shit load of food will be counterproductive.
It’d all come up and not much would stay down and I need all the nutrients I can get.
Nobody pays me any attention but the fine hairs on my neck stand up which has me scanning the room.
Bright blue eyes that I could drown in meet my dull, brown ones and I can’t bear to look away.
They enrapture me like every other time I’ve seen him around town, and once again, I’m mesmerized and captivated.
Does he know that yesterday wasn’t the first time we’ve crossed paths?
Am I as memorable to him as he is to me?
Maybe one day, I’ll have the answer to those questions, but it won’t be today.