Twenty-Four
TWENTY-FOUR
CHAOS
She holds a finger between us, head turning to face away as her chin dimples and tears pool in her eyes again. “Give me a minute.” Vanessa swallows, nostrils flaring. “Go make yourself a coffee or something. I’ll come join you shortly.”
“Not going anywhere.” I flop back to land on my ass, kicking my legs out either side of her. “You do what you need to.”
Her brilliant eyes widen. “I can’t do this if you’re there.”
“Why not?” Have I ever given her reason to think she needs to be anything other than herself with me?
“Because…” Her tears dry up, emotions quickly shifting to frustration. “It’s just… I mean…” She sighs, head slamming back against the wall. “You won’t get it.”
“I get you’re hurting,” I say, running my fingers up the bare line of her calf. “And I get you need release. But there are other ways to do it.”
Her gaze drops to where I touch her, and she sniffles, wiping at her nose. “Of course.”
“Of course, what?” I use both hands to massage her thigh.
“It’s about sex. It always is with men.” Her face falls; I’m losing her.
“It’s not about just the sex,” I clarify. “It’s about the endorphins the sex releases. It’s about remembering that you’re worthy of love and affection as you are. That no matter how shit the day is, your body knows how to make you feel good.”
“It’s a lie,” she snaps, holding my gaze with fire in her eyes. “Because when that high ends, the bullshit is still there.”
“So, because of things outside your control, you’d deny yourself pleasure?” I pull my hands back to her ankle, not ready to stop touching her but wanting less pressure until we’ve got this shit sorted out. “Are you a fucking nun? A martyr?”
“No.” She snorts.
“Then why the fuck are you mentally flagellating yourself?” I wrap my hands around her leg, handcuffing us together. She won’t run. I won’t let her get out of this.
I saw what she wrote. I read the pain in those words. She blames herself for what shitty fucks like her stepfather did to her. Vanessa blames herself for not being able to move past it. For feeling the fucking pain their neglect inflicted.
She’s not a goddamn stone. She breathes and bleeds and deserves to let those goddamn emotions flow.
But she doesn’t need to make herself a prisoner to that pain. She’s deserving of good days, too.
They don’t negate the bad ones, and they sure as shit don’t mean she doesn’t care.
Contrary—they show she gives enough of a fuck about herself to create the life she should have had.
To rise above it. Not forget it or excuse it, but stand over that bullshit and put the fucker where he belongs: groveling at her feet.
Her warm hand rests atop my forearm as though to ask me to stop.
I unknit my fingers and pull away. She may as well be a goddamn boat in an ocean storm: with every breath, she bobs further and further away from me.
I’ve got to save this.
“Tell me what your ideal day is.”
Her eyebrow hitches. Yeah, I know. I sound way too touchy-feely for a goddamn biker. But what most people don’t see is the work we put in behind the scenes at the club. Sure, the fuckers at our table ain’t the best at sharing their emotions, but what they excel at is standing by their brothers when they need help.
It ain’t weak to speak.
It’s fucking expected you will.
“My ideal day,” Vanessa murmurs, testing the idea on her tongue. “If I could have anything in the world?”
“Anything.”
She sighs, tucking her arms beside her, elbows on my shins. “I guess it would start during the night.” She half-smiles. “No nightmares. No three A.M. panic attacks.”
“Sounds fair.”
“When I woke up, there’d be sunshine spilling across the floor. I love it when there’s warm light first thing in the morning.” She turns her head, staring out the window as she talks. “I’d have someone to talk to over coffee.” Her mouth twitches, and she pauses to swallow down the rising sadness. “I think I’d like to work from home. And I know I’ve been told in the past that it’s unhealthy. That I need social interaction, blah, blah. But you know what? I like it quiet. I like there being no pressure. No fuckery from people having shit days themselves.”
“Like the two in the cafe the other day?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She peeks at me before resuming her trance out the window. “Like them.” Ness sighs, her left hand idly shifting to my knee.
I don’t know if she realizes she does it, and like fuck I’ll draw her attention to it in case she stops. So, I sit frozen, absorbing the absolute gift of her sense of comfort, and let her continue.
“I’d create.” She grins. “I don’t know what, but it’d be colorful.” She chuckles. “I know that’s weird coming from me, considering I dress mostly in black, but I actually like a lot of color. Like, when people have those cozy gaming setups with the lights and plants and stuff. I like that.”
I’d give it to her.
“But I’d stop for lunch. That’d be when I leave the house. I’d walk to town and meet my husband. Sit somewhere pretty under the trees or catch up with Theresa. Relationships would be on my terms.” Her expression hardens. “Nobody pressuring me to maintain connections that only hurt me. Nobody forcing me to fit their mold.”
“You’d like it with the Kings,” I muse. “Conventions are out the fucking window. We do what makes us happy, even if that means severing contact with family.”
“Because you guys are a family of sorts, right?” She pins me with a curious stare. “I did some research about what clubs like yours do.”
“Yeah?” I lean forward, folded arms resting on my knees. “What did you learn?”
“I think you know what I would have found.”
“I do.” My gaze drops to her mouth. “But it’s only half the truth.”
“So tell me the rest of it.”
I flick my focus back to her eyes. “Not yet.”
“Because women can’t be trusted with the details of the club, right?” Her lips firm into a hard line. “Men don’t tell their old ladies anything. Club business is off-limits.” She tilts her head, gaze narrowing. “Tell me how your club is any different from the misogynistic bullshit I escaped, Chaos.”
Game on. Here’s the discourse I hoped for—the meat of the issue. “It’s nothing like that hell.”
“How?” she presses, arms digging into my shins as she leans in.
Our fucking noses are inches apart. I could kiss that goddamn look off her face right now, but where would that get me other than proving her point about sex being used as a weapon?
“It’s different,” I detail, “because we keep the women, the men, whoever a brother’s partner is, out of club business to protect them, not deny them. Guilt by association. The less they know, the less they can be pinned for. More than that,” I say, lifting a finger to stall her rebuttal. “We keep them out of the shit to protect their head space. It’s abuse to force the kind of shit we do onto the unwilling. If they wanted to be involved in that side of things, they would have patched in as a member themselves. But by choosing to be property or associates, they’ve more-or-less entered a contract to have us”—I pat my chest—“the brothers who’ve sworn to protect the club, including the people in it, shield them from that hurt. We take the world on our shoulders so they don’t have to.”
“How noble,” she sasses.
It fucking pisses me off. “Yeah. It is noble. It’s also more than many are willing to sacrifice.”
She tucks her arms in, breaking our contact.
“Did I say you could stop touching me?”
I’m met with fury, bright and wild behind her gaze. “Did I say you could dictate what I do with my own body?”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I need it?” Flay my chest open and serve my heart raw because that was the most honest and vulnerable confession ever to leave my lips.
I do need it. I crave connection. The reminder that I’m flesh and bone and not some devil sent to destroy the world.
Vanessa pauses, swallowing as she studies my unwavering gaze. Her jaw tics, nostrils flaring as her stance visibly softens. “Are you okay?”
“No.” I clench my fists where they hang between my knees. “But I’m not here for me.”
“Why are you here?” Her breathing picks up pace. “What is it about me that makes you feel obligated to waste your time like this?”
I clench my jaw. “Don’t ever tell me I’m wasting my time on you again.” I lean so damn far forward that my chest crushes my thighs. “You hear me?”
She stiffens.
“I choose what to do with my time, and I choose to be here. With you.”
“You still haven’t told me why,” she stresses. “I don’t understand what the fuck makes you feel responsible for me when you don’t even know me.”
“Don’t I?” I tilt my head, brow hard.
She rolls her lips together, testing my resolve not to kiss her yet.
It’s there, unsaid in the spaces between my words: I read your journal. I read your pain. I know you.
I am you.
“Even so.” Breathless words fall from her lips.
“Even so,” I mimic. “You tell me. Does anyone need a reason to fall in love?”