Chapter 6
Six
Melissa
Stumbling off my stool, I hear the harsh grind of metal legs on concrete as I lurch toward the stereo.
My hands flail, brushing the coarse weave of a nearby chair. I clutch it tight, knuckles paling, fighting to stay upright. Fear coats my tongue, sharp and metallic, as icy sweat beads on my skin, stinging with every frantic breath.
Glancing over, I catch the huddle of women with their hushed giggles and sly smirks. My palm presses hard against my forehead, trying to steady the chaos inside.
The room sways once more, a dizzying pull snaking through me. No way.
I’ve got to pull myself together.
I stagger up, legs shaking, and spot the stripper pole gleaming in the corner.
My fingers fumble with my phone until The Weeknd's music fills the room.
Every head turns as I grip the cold metal.
Whatever drug they slipped me makes everything dreamlike, but I surrender to it, letting my body move with the beat.
“Yana!” I call out, waving her toward me. “Come danceeee!”
She jerks forward, grabbing for my arm. “Get off there, right now. How much did you drink?”
I stumble off the edge, blackness engulfing me before it fades, exposing her worried scowl.
Slumping against her, my arms loop around her neck, words slurring into a mess. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know... did I drink anything?”
Her eyebrows knit tight. “You're obviously wasted, Melissa. Come on, we'll get you water.” She tugs me toward the bar while my awareness flickers like a dying bulb. Yana's fingers against my skin ignite a trail of fire that races through my veins.
“Yana? Ever been with a girl?”
“What?” she scoffs, still dragging me forward.
Yana plants me on a barstool and barks at Ashley to bring water.
“Yana...” I tilt my head, the room wobbling like a ship at sea. “I don't remember drinking anything but my juice.”
“Are you sure? Where'd you get your orange juice from?”
I accept the water, condensation slicking my overheated palm. “I... um...” I twist around, hunting for Lisha, but the room carousel spins faster. When my vision finally steadies, her smug face materializes among her tittering friends, and realization crashes through my fog.
I lurch off the stool, every cell screaming to smash her face into the floor, but my legs buckle beneath me like melting wax.
“Melissa!” Yana drops beside me, draping her cardigan over my trembling shoulders. “Are you cold? Are you okay? Shit! Where's Phoebe?”
She hoists me back onto the stool as Ashley bolts over.
“Is she okay?” Ashley kneels beside me, rubbing my arms.
“I don't know. Melissa?”
“Yana, it's Lisha, the club whore.”
“Lisa?” Yana's brow furrows, my last comment floating away unacknowledged.
Ashley's head swivels like a radar. “No, she means Lisha.” Her gaze locks onto the group across the room, eyes narrowing to slits. “It is Lisha. She's had a thing for Hella since he's been here.”
A weak laugh bubbles from my throat as my eyelids grow heavier. I part my lips to question what this woman's crush has to do with me, but Yana cuts me off.
“What the hell did she do to her?”
Ashley's shoulders lift. “I'll find out, if you want. But if I'm reading her symptoms correctly, I'd say she slipped her a molly.”
“A say-what-now?” My fingers drift toward Ashley's silky brown hair, drawn to its shimmer.
She swats me away. “Powdered X. Me and my ex used to drop some occasionally.”
My head crashes against the cool bar surface.
Yana backs away, jaw tight. “Watch her. I need to find Phoebe.”
I jerk upright, the room spinning. “I'll be fine. I'm a little...”
The room tilts, warps, then snaps back into focus like a rubber band. My heartbeat echoes in my skull, but it's not fear pounding through me. It's something else. Something electric.
I press my palms against the bar top, cool beneath my burning skin. “I shouldn't feel like this,” I whisper.
But I do. Every colour intensifies. The bar lights fracture into beams. When I move, my body flows like water, each sensation amplified and beautiful.
This isn't right.
Last time, the edges closed in like curtains drawing shut, frame by frame—a boy's grinning face, a red cup tipping toward me, a bathroom tile with a crack shaped like Florida. Blackness. Then nothing until I woke up raw.
But now my skin buzzes like I've licked a battery.
I drag my fingernail across the bar top, leaving invisible trails that glow neon in my mind.
Bass notes punch through my chest, each thump a separate heartbeat.
I want to press my body against someone, anyone.
I want to run my tongue along the condensation on my glass.
I remember the weight of hands holding my wrists to the mattress. The sound of laughter. The smell of beer and cheap body spray.
A laugh bubbles up my throat, unexpected and genuine. I clamp my hand over my mouth, shocked by the sound.
Why am I enjoying this?
The guilt crashes over me like a wave, even as my skin hums with pleasure. My body betraying me all over again.
Ashley continues to pat me like a broken doll. “You've been drugged, Melissa. Sit down.”
Through the haze, I track Yana as she stalks toward Lisha. Their voices spike like fever charts, tension crackling between them. Then Yana lunges, a blur of motion and rage, her fists hammering into Lisha's face.
I lurch forward, but my legs dissolve beneath me. Voices tunnel away. Ashley's worried face swims in and out like a tide until blackness drags me under completely.
Voices pierce the darkness like needles dragging me toward consciousness. The world smells wrong. Burnt wood, concrete dust, something metallic that coats my throat. My body floats weightless, disconnected, but the voices anchor me.
“Yana! Follow my voice!” Phoebe's shout cuts through the ringing in my ears.
I try to open my eyes, but my lids weigh a thousand pounds. The molly still pulses through my system, everything soft and strange even as chaos erupts around me.
Strong arms lift me, and I know it's not Phoebe. These arms are solid muscle, ink etched into the skin, the scent of leather and motor oil overwhelming my senses.
“Give her to me.” Phoebe's voice, sharp with worry.
“No.” Hella's chest rumbles against my cheek. “Not happening.”
“She's gonna fucking kill you if she wakes up in your arms.”
“Then she can kill me.” His grip tightens protectively. “Nobody else touches her right now.”
I want to protest, to say something, but my tongue feels thick and useless. The drug makes everything dreamy, disconnected, even as my body registers the warmth of his arms, the steady rhythm of his breathing.
We're moving. Hella's stride changes, picking his way through what sounds like debris. Glass crunches under heavy boots. Someone's crying in the distance, high and panicked.
“Jesus Christ,” Phoebe mutters somewhere behind us. “The whole back wall's gone.”
Explosion. The word filters through my fog. That's what happened. Something exploded.
Cool night air hits my face as we emerge from whatever destruction we left behind. Hella keeps walking, carrying me away from the noise, the chaos, the smoke that still burns my nostrils.
“She's almost unconscious,” he says, and I realize he's talking to someone else now. Yana maybe. “What the fuck happened to her?”
Blake continues. Asshole. “She said pulling triggers was easy, but could you do a backflip? Her words.”
“I can still do backflips,” I mutter.
“Maybe,” Blake laughs, “but you couldn't then. Launched herself off the second-floor balcony trying to prove her point. Stubborn little shit.”
Yana laughs. “You didn't.”
“She did,” Zane confirms. “Landed like a sack of potatoes. Fractured her shin clean through.”
“And still tried to walk it off,” Blake adds, his voice softening with something like pride. “Limped around for three days before Ma found out and dragged her to the hospital.”
“Ah uh!” I wiggle my finger. “Don't skip the best part!” My eyes widen in excitement.
Ade's laugh ricochets through the air. “When Ma dropped her? All three of us prospects were already laid up in the hospital. One with a busted back. Another with a damn fractured spleen. All sacrificed at the altar of little Wild Child and her stubborn-ass pride.”
Hella's breath warms my neck as he leans in. “So you've always been this stubborn.”
I elbow him in the ribs, earning a grunt. “It's called determination.”
Yana tilts her head. “I can't picture Melissa doing backflips off balconies.”
“There's a lot you don't know about someone when you haven't spent most of your life being around them,” Blake says, his gaze lingering on me with that mix of protectiveness and respect I've known my whole life.
“She might look like sugar and spice now,” his grin widens, green eyes blazing.
“But she'll always hit you like Cyanide.”
My lips roll behind my teeth. “Aw. Guys. Stop. I might think you love me.”
The truth is, they knew me. They knew the whole of me. Right up until Uni, when I had to rebuild myself into someone else. Something else.
Beast approaches, his massive frame casting shadows in the emergency lights. Zane steps toward him, lowering his voice, but sound carries strangely in my drug-enhanced state.
“Thanks for the backup these past couple days,” Zane says, clapping Beast on the shoulder. “Sorry we couldn't help with the Old Man.”
Beast nods, expression grim. “Any idea who was behind this?”
“Wasn't the Russians,” Zane confirms, “or any other MC. No colours claimed it.”
“That's what worries me,” Beast rumbles.
Their voices drop lower, but the fragments I catch send ice through my veins. No one knows who attacked the clubhouse. No one knows who might come back to finish the job.
I press closer to Hella, trying to ground myself as the reality sinks in beneath the drug's fuzzy edges. The explosion wasn't random. Someone targeted this place, targeted these people.
Targeted my family.
Sobering. Completely sobering.