Chapter Thirty
The tenor of my heart booms inside my ribcage.
I pinch my nose, brush my index finger beneath it, sniffing, cleaning myself up.
The drip at the back of my throat is bitter, like crushed aspirin. I straighten, take a swig from the bottle of vodka beside me.
I’m swallowing it down when two large hands squeeze into the top of my shoulders.
“Some girly out front kickin’ steel for ya, boy.”
I look over my shoulder and see Rails, a long-devoted member of the club. The grin on his weathered face pulls toward his ears. His red eyes roll into the back of his head. He is so far off his face he wouldn't know his own dick from his own asshole.
He stumbles on his feet, releases a wet belch before retreating down the hall, announcing, “Taking a leak.”
“Congratu-fucking-lations,” Skinner mumbles beside me, and where Harlen would usually snort, even rebound his own retort, he doesn’t. He doesn’t take his eyes off me now.
Some girly out front kickin’ steel for ya, boy.
Laiken.
I run my tongue across the back of my teeth, and pull another swig from the bottle. I don’t look in Harlen’s direction.
It’s only when his chair screeches that I raise my chin, and I watch him head for the door, for her, without me.
I hang my head between my shoulders and see Skinner clean the residue of the coke we’d just shared off the table with his finger, rubbing it into his gums.
“It change you too?” I ask.
Skinner places his tattooed elbows on the table, and fists his hands together. I feel his gaze press against my temple, the same place I’d pressed the barrel to my father’s head.
He knew what I was talking about, what I was asking, the effects of what I’d done, because he doesn’t speak until he has my full attention.
His voice is cold when he tells me, “Only because I let it.”
A long moment of silence follows.
I wet my lips. “Don’t wanna hurt her.”
“Then don’t,” he tells me.
I scoff, scrape the chair back the same way Harlen had, rising to my feet. I curl my shaking hands around the backrest, press my shoulders to my ears.
“That’s bullshit. You and I both know it.”
“Do I?” he asks, nonchalantly.
I shake my head. “I didn’t want to hurt Mom, but I was still the one that put a bullet in her head.”
Before he can reply, I throw the chair across the room, listen to it splinter and crack, snap, behind me as I follow after Harlen.