20. Char
CHAR
I couldn’t help the tear that slid down my cheek.
Deac’s eyes were hard on my face as the guys filtered in silence all around me.
It was as if my world came to a grinding halt.
Had I really convinced myself that they weren’t doing shady shit simply because I didn’t think that woman was who she said she was?
How the hell was I so stupid?
“God, it’s true,” I whispered to myself.
Something warm and soft brushed my tears away, and I didn’t fight it. I simply stood there as the back of someone’s hand gripped my neck. With a soft nudge, my legs kicked into gear, moving toward the wall that wasn’t really a wall.
Then that hand slid down to my shoulder, guiding me through the massive house until I was in my new room.
Perched on the edge of my new bed.
“You good?” Gauge asked.
“No,” I said plainly.
He chuckled as he sat next to me. “Join the club.”
I didn’t know whether to scoot away or lean my head against his arm. I watched as a shadow crept away from the door outside, and I wondered who it was.
It didn’t matter, though. Not really.
Holy fuck, they sell illegal firearms.
“Char,” Gauge said.
I swallowed hard. “You really mean to tell me that angry victim wasn’t the first thought that crossed anyone’s mind around here?”
His silence spoke volumes. How the hell did we always get looked over? How the hell did our pain always get outweighed by whoever the fuck was inconvenienced. They weren’t inconvenienced, though. They were being hunted.
Which was just as bad as whatever the hell they were doing.
“I’m so tired,” I whispered.
Gauge scooted a bit closer. “Only if you want.”
And without another word spoken, I leaned off to the side and placed my cheek against his bicep.
“Lay there as long as you’d like,” he said as he snaked his arm around my waist.
I must have fallen asleep against him, because the chirping of birds in the sky pulled me from the dark.
Sunlight as bright as the heavens poured through the only two windows in the bedroom, and it was enough to shove me further into the mound of covers someone piled on top of me.
I was warm and comfortable. I didn’t want to get up and face reality again.
But the wondrous smell of coffee and fruit slowly trickled beneath my nose.
“Food?” I asked.
Dallas chuckled as something clattered to my right. “Rise and shine.”
I peeked an eye out and took stock of the tray of food. Strawberries and grapes. Sliced pineapple that looked like it was browned with something. Bananas and jelly toast. And oh, how lovely the fresh coffee smelled.
“Thank you,” I said as I pushed the comforter off my head.
“Gauge says you fell asleep practically instantly last night.”
“Long day.”
“Yeah.”
I forced myself to sit up in bed, gathering the pillows around me. “What time is it?”
Dallas didn’t hesitate. “Almost ten in the morning.”
I groaned. “Jesus, it’s so early.”
I felt the bed give way to his body. “Lean up.”
“Huh?”
“Just close your eyes and lean up.”
I was too tired to fight, so I simply did as he asked. I leaned forward, feeling my spine cracking into place before something splayed across the bare skin of my lower back. Up his hand went, running the length of my spine before rushing back down. Up and down. Up and down. Up and right back down.
A rhythmic motion raced goosebumps across my skin.
“Mmmm,” I hummed as I pushed back against his hand a bit, “that feels good.”
“Good,” he said as he shifted a bit closer.
How was that possible? I was frightened at the lives they led.
In some respects, they weren’t much better than my father.
Then they talked. Then they touched me. Then they showed exactly how much they were willing to do to protect me, and I was putty in their hands all over again.
I let those men crawl into my chest, crack it open, and weasel their way inside.
Criminals.
Gun runners.
An illegal crew being hunted.
Why the hell did my life keep doing this to me?
“Thanks,” I said as I flinched away from his touch.
He quickly withdrew his hand and stood. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
I suddenly felt unsafe without contact to the outside world. “I’ll need a way to contact DeShawn and M.J. every once in a while. They’re going to worry about me.”
Dallas paused in the doorway. “Deac said you took care of that. They think you’re home visiting your father, right?”
I snickered. “You think my two best friends are gonna leave me the hell alone when I’m going by myself to see my version of the boogeyman?”
He tilted his head. “What did you do, Char?”
“Nothing. But I have people that care about me and my well-being, and they’re going to get worried. Even if it’s only once every couple of days, I’m going to have to reach out. They’re going to have questions.”
“Well, I can’t let you do that. We’re on lockdown, all of us. That means no one’s using phones of any sort unless it’s an emergency.”
I bristled at his words. “It’ll be an emergency if my two best friends tear down this entire place to find me.”
He chuckled. “Hate to break it to you, beautiful, but they don’t seem like those kinds of people.”
I scoffed. “Well I didn’t take you guys to be the kinds of people that made your profit off of other’s deaths, yet here we are.”
His face fell flat. “Eat up and shut up, Char.”
And that was it before he closed the door.
I heard his angry footsteps backtracking down the hallway, no doubt going to tattletale to Daddy on the mean girl upstairs.
I flopped back down against the pillow and turned away from the food.
I wasn’t hungry any longer. Even the smell of caffeine didn’t entice me as I sank further into the sheets, hoping that they’d swallow me whole for good.
Back and forth. I felt like I was being yanked back and forth.
The little girl inside of me screamed at me to make better choices, but my inner teenager kept whispering about having a bit of fun while we waited.
A war raged within me as I laid there, soaking the soft pillow with my tears.
All I wanted my entire life was to feel safe.
Secure. Protected. And now that I found it, the guys who gave it to me were just as bad as my fucking father?
How sick was that?
It was as if the universe conspired against me.
All of the worlds, laughing at me as I struggled to keep my emotions at bay.
I couldn’t show weakness. Not to anyone, lest it be held against me in some way.
Fucking hell, I was right back in it. Right back in the thick of the kind of bullshit that rattled my childhood and stole my innocence from me.
Life hadn’t looked the same since Dad killed my mother.
In one drug-induced stupor, the rose-colored lenses fell away from my eyes, revealing the slimy underground of the world around me.
I spent so much time running from it that I didn’t realize I tripped and stumbled right back into it.
Or maybe I knew all along and simply didn’t care.
Either way, I was fucking the enemy. Willingly sleeping with men who profited off other people’s misery, like my mother’s.
It made me sick to my stomach. The smell of the fruit and coffee only made things worse as my stomach knotted up.
Bile crept up the back of my throat. It left a disgusting taste in my mouth as I whipped the covers off me and stumbled toward what I hoped was the bathroom door.
I never felt so much relief at the sight of a toilet in all my life.
“Oh—mmgblgh—God.”
I launched myself toward the porcelain god.
I clung to it for dear life as my stomach turned itself inside out.
The bile burned my mouth. My voice grew hoarse with every dry heave that sent my body spiraling for stability.
I scraped my bare feet against the tiled flooring, trying to get traction as I white-knuckled the edge of the toilet seat.
If there were no drugs in my father’s life, my mother would still be alive.
That much I knew. That fucking shit turned my dad into a monster.
Into a man neither of us recognized. Drug dealers were the scum of the Earth as far as I was concerned.
Ruining people’s lives just to have money for their next fucking fix.
It was a vicious cycle that I knew would never end, no matter how many police officers and federal agents chased down my father’s dealers.
But gun running? Willingly selling firearms to people they knew were going to harm others? And I was fucking them? Allowing them inside of my body?
My body locked out as more bile projected from the back of my throat.
I needed a shower. I needed to scrub them away.
I felt dirty. Disgusting. Compromised. Hell, for all I knew, this was their plan all along.
Fuck the girl to get the answers they needed so they could take out the woman stalking them.
After all, that was Dallas’s plan at one point in time.
Fucking me to get me to shut up with some pathetic-ass answers to questions that I saw right through.
The memory of their warmth against my skin was no longer comforting, and I pried myself away from the toilet long enough to turn on the shower by sheer force of will.
I turned the water all the way up until the steam enveloped me and blocked out the world.
I shed my summer dress and wiggled out of my underwear.
I tossed everything into the sink, hoping to soak the stench of bile out of them.
And as I stepped into the searing hot stream of water, I allowed the pain to yank me out of my state of mind.
I’m trapped with them.
Even the hot water couldn’t erase the most petrifying realization of it all, though.
Now that I had proof, straight from them, that people had reason to be tracking them down, I felt vulnerable again.
Why the fuck wasn’t I safe in my apartment?
If they were the targets, why the hell was I safe with them?
So many things didn’t make sense, and I allowed my sexual appetite to cloud my judgement.
If they were the targets, then I wasn’t safe with them.
I was trapped with them, if anything, and that frightened me more than the prospect of running into that not-really-an-ATF agent again.
I had to find a way to get my hands on a phone.
I had to get a message out to DeShawn and M.J.
Knock knock. “Char?”
Gauge’s voice sounded beyond the bathroom door, and I held my breath.
Knock knock knock. “Char? You in there?”
Who the hell else would it be?
I heard him sigh. “Look, I know you’re scared, and you’ve got every right to be. But you have my word that you really are safe here.”
I scoffed. “Even though you’re the ones being hunted, and not me?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head as I sat down on the floor of the shower. “Go away, please.”
“Will you let me say one more thing?”
“Like I have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
I rolled my eyes. “What is it, Gauge?”
“If you really don’t want to be here, we aren’t gonna make you stay.”
That caught my attention. “Really?”
“Yes, really. We don’t like it, we think you’re gonna be weaponized, or worse, if you leave.”
“Or worse?”
“Baitfish?”
I paused. “You think she killed Baitfish?”
He paused as well. “He kept saying that there was a woman with the team that beat the shit out of Rat and took Baitfish. He said it was a woman, and she kept saying, ‘an eye for an eye.’”
I nodded slowly. “You killed someone of hers, so she kills someone of yours.”
“That’s what we’re thinking, now that you’ve brought your theory to the table.”
I closed my eyes. “So that means she’ll stop, right? An eye for an eye?”
When he didn’t respond, however, I knew that there was more to the story.
“All right, here’s the deal,” I said as I opened my eyes, “if I’m staying here under whatever protection you guys think you can provide, then I get to know everything.”
“Seems reasonable enough.”
“And if I don’t get access to everything you guys know about this situation, I’m gone.”
“Understood.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Gauge?”
“Yeah, Char?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you do it? Why do you… hurt people?”
At first, I thought he left. It grew so silent for so long that I figured he left me, just like Dallas did.
That was until he cleared his throat.
“Growing up in foster care, I learned very quickly how to stay out of sight and out of mind. I’m sure you’ve heard horror stories from people in foster care, and I can confirm that they are true, and sometimes worse than what people make of it.”
As angry as I was, I found myself hurting for him. “I’m so sorry, Gauge.”
“The point being, when I was fifteen, I ran. I ducked out of the system, packed up my shit in a trash bag, and booked it for the streets. I never graduated high school. I never got my GED. I figured I’d die out there just like any other street rat the world forgot about.”
I snickered. “I don’t have a GED, either.”
“I know.”
It took me a while for the full force of those two words to descend upon me. He knew. How he knew, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know. Then again, most of that shit was in my employee file anyway.
“Yeah,” was all I managed to say.
“I was okay with dying on the street, until Axel found me in a dumpster trying to keep away from a rainstorm. He just… flipped that lid open, held out his hand to a disheveled nineteen-year-old?—”
“Nineteen?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“So you spent?—”
Dear God, he spent four years of his life living in the streets.
“He saved my life, Char, and he gave me a place among family to exist. Is it perfect? Nope. Is it good? Probably not. But is it home? Is it my family? Is it who I’d die for in the blink of an eye? Absolutely. And I think even you can understand that.”
He was right.
I did understand it.
“So,” he said as his voice grew stronger, “take all the time you need, and if you choose to leave, we won’t stop you. But we won’t protect you any further if that’s the decision you make. We simply can’t divert the resources until we know what’s going on.”
I licked my lips. “I understand.”
“Good. Then I’ll leave you to it.”
And as I listened to his practically silent footsteps drag against the carpet of my bedroom, I pulled my knees as close to my chest as I could stand.
What in the hell was I going to do?