43. Kara
43
KARA
ONE HOUR EARLIER…
M y head spun. The room moved in dizzying circles, and my stomach churned.
Men touched me. Fingers sliding up my legs. Tucking notes into the elastic of my underwear.
I jerked away sharply, teetering on the edge of the table and then stepping down off it on wobbly legs.
Amber caught my wrist. “Hey. You okay?”
I wasn’t. “He’s a liar,” I mumbled drunkenly. “And Hayden is alive.”
Amber had been drinking too, but clearly holding it better than I was. “All men are liars,” she told me. “Just don’t expect more from them and then you won’t be disappointed.” She pointed at the men on the couch, watching us with their hands down their pants. “See? All I expect from men like this is a good time and enough money to pay my rent. Then nobody gets hurt.”
She straddled one of the biker’s laps, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Hey, Thunder? You’re going to put a hundred down my bra before I let you fuck me. Right?”
He took the money from his pocket and pressed it between her cleavage.
She glanced back at me. “Take your pick, honey. Hawk ain’t worth getting upset over when there’s a whole room full of men here just dying to fuck your practically virginal pussy.”
I couldn’t listen to it anymore. Couldn’t take the jeers and the taunts from the men. There were suddenly too many of them. Too many unfamiliar faces, all of them seemingly focused on me.
I’d felt safe here for weeks.
Now suddenly that bubble had burst.
The door to the club’s “church” was still closed, Hawk behind it somewhere.
Along with Fang and War.
They’d all lied.
Everyone but Hayden. He’d done bad things. But at least he wasn’t a liar.
I didn’t know what time it was, but he’d be waiting for me at the back gates by now, surely.
Queenie and Aloha were all over each other as I stumbled past, her hips grinding over his while he drank from his beer bottle.
“Hey, sugar!” she called. “You enjoying your first Slayers’ party?”
“I don’t feel well,” I mumbled. “Going to my cabin.”
It wasn’t a lie. But I wasn’t sure if I felt sick because of the amount of alcohol I’d poured down my throat in the last hour, or if it was because even through my drunken haze, I knew the decision I made tonight was one that couldn’t be undone.
I was choosing between Hawk and Hayden. The man I’d spent weeks with, who I was falling for day by day, and the man who’d saved me all those years ago. Who I had a connection with like nothing I’d ever felt before. One so strong, I’d named my daughter for him.
If I chose wrong, there was no coming back.
Hawk wasn’t the sort of man who would just forgive me if I left with Hayden.
He was the sort of man who would declare me dead to him and never look my way again.
Even though he’d lied, my heart didn’t care. My heart only remembered the soft touches. The sweet words he saved only for me. The fire only he could ignite in my body.
The way he’d started to put me back together after Josiah’s years of abuse and Alice’s death had ripped me to shreds.
I didn’t know how to walk away.
The party followed me down the path. The music. The voices. The footsteps. It should have got quieter the farther I got into the woods, but it was all just a mess of noise and confusion. My steps became faster, until I was running, desperate to leave it all behind, to find some quiet, so I could just think.
Tears fell as I reached the cabin and shouldered my way inside.
I needed to pack a bag.
I needed to leave.
I wasn’t safe here .
Through sobs that spoke of the way Hawk had betrayed me, I pulled clothes from the closet and underwear from the chest of drawers. I threw them into the bag Hawk had brought me groceries in and then sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
He’d bought me clothes. Food. Made a place for me in this club, even after I’d broken his nose.
He’d taken care of me.
Taken care of my daughter. How could I just leave?
But once upon a time, Hayden had done all those things for me too.
I curled up on the mattress, paralyzed with fear and indecision.
I’d spent most of my life following the rules made by men. Every time I’d tried to make one of my own, it had ended in tragedy.
I didn’t want to make another bad choice.
I didn’t want to take Hayley Jade away from the home we’d started building here.
I didn’t want to be out there in the world, all alone with no money, no job, no support.
I didn’t want to leave Hawk.
I didn’t want to leave Hayden.
I closed my eyes, clutching my knees to my chest.
I’d decide when the room stopped spinning.
T he veil covered my face.
For weeks, I’d gone without it, breathing easily without the heavy fabric covering that kept me from being seen by Josiah’s followers .
I hated the veil. I didn’t want it back.
I tried to lift my arm to pull it away so I could breathe better but I couldn’t find the edge. I shifted and squirmed, but something clamped around my arms.
“She’s waking up,” a muffled voice said.
“Put the fucking cloth back over her face then!”
The veil clamped down over my nose and mouth, an oddly sweet smell permeating through.
I slipped back into sleep before I could tell them I didn’t wear the veil anymore. That I was no longer wife number one. That I’d left.
That I was free.
The darkness said otherwise. The darkness whispered taunts. Teased out fears I’d tried so hard to bury. Chuckled darkly as black consumed me.
Pain through my back woke me. Dull, thudding pain that radiated from my neck, along my spine and ribs, and into my hips. It wasn’t sharp, or intermittent, more like a fresh bruise that covered most of my body.
I groaned, opening my eyes, but still only seeing black.
I reached for the veil, but it was gone.
My head spun in confusion. Why had I been wearing the veil?
There was a vague, sweet smell that lingered, but it wasn’t as strong now. Something else overpowered it.
A scent I knew well from planting seeds in the commune plots and pulling vegetables.
Dirt.
I racked my brain, trying to make sense of the fuzziness inside it. I’d been in the clubhouse. Then at my cabin. I’d packed my bags. Had I been choosing Hayden? Had I left the cabin and fallen somewhere in the woods?
The pain in my back made that a plausible explanation but didn’t explain why I couldn’t see.
Josiah’s voice cut through the confusion.
“Women look to us for guidance. They are lost sheep, while you are their shepherd. It is your job, men of the Lord, to guide them to their rightful place. To teach them how to behave and how to honor the Lord by honoring the men the Almighty made in his image.”
I twisted. Turning. Hitting something hard in the darkness.
“Women lose their way. They are weak creatures, easily tempted by evil. And when they are tempted by the Devil, it is your job to bring them back into the light of the Lord.”
Panic crept up my throat. He was here. He’d found me.
I reached out blindly, groping the dark, fingernails rasping over rough wood.
“Women need to be reborn when they have sinned. They need to prove their worth. Prove that the evil can be leached from their souls.”
I rolled over, ignoring the agonizing pain in my back, only to come face-to-face with another barrier.
More wood.
The panic spread. Josiah’s voice in my ears.
I lifted an arm, reaching above me for what should have been sky, even though I couldn’t see the stars.
More wood.
I managed to move my leg, and my ankle knocked against something, Josiah’s voice suddenly becoming clearer as the speaker rolled along beside my body, taking up a new resting position by my ribs.
“Are you sure about this?” a muffled voice asked from somewhere above me. “This is…shit, man, this is a lot.”
“Just fucking do it!” a second voice snapped. “You heard his words. Women need to be reborn to cleanse their souls of their sins! Put your foot on the motherfucking shovel and do what you were told to do. Stop questioning me!”
Josiah wasn’t here.
But that no longer mattered.
Because his teachings were. The podcast he’d recorded, playing over and over through the speaker, not only for me to hear, but for the two men I couldn’t see.
Heart-stopping terror cut through the last of the sweet-smelling, chemical odor on the cloth beside my head. Everything suddenly became so crystal clear I wished I could turn back the hands of time, and again inhale whatever it was they’d drugged me with.
A thump came from above. Something hitting the wood.
Not just wood.
A wooden box, surrounding me on all sides.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Tiny particles filtered through the cracks of the coffin, grains of something cold and damp falling around my face.
Until all I could smell, and taste, was dirt as they buried me alive .
The end…for now.