Chapter Four
MEADOW
I’m not perfectly imperfect. Just imperfect
~Meadow, journal entry
Women got asked out all the time. Men, too. Everybody did.
I was no different than anyone else. I’d succumbed and nodded yes to Beckham.
And that meant that tomorrow, on his day off, we were going on a date.
I didn’t know what kind. It wasn’t like I had much experience with them.
I sucked at the whole dating thing, actually.
My dating usually included putting on tight jeans, high-heeled boots, a bra that pushed my boobs up to my chin, and then involved me sitting on the back of a bike before doing things I shouldn’t.
At least, old Meadow’s dates had been like that.
The new Meadow didn’t do that. She didn’t go out at all.
I hadn’t been on a date since Coby.
I shuddered at the name, wondering why I’d even thought it. I’d done my best not to think about him for over a year. It wouldn’t do to start now. Simply because I thought of my past for some reason every time I thought of Beckham didn’t mean that was the right trajectory.
Sure, he was big and bearded and tattooed like Coby, but that didn’t mean he was the same type of man Coby was.
Though it surprised me a little that I’d said yes to Beckham, or that I wanted to kiss or be near him at all. Even the similarities in the way the two of them moved worried me—or at least it should.
I knew that I flinched when large men came near. I knew I cowered even though I tried not to.
I hadn’t always been like this. I used to laugh and smile and toss my hair behind my shoulders, grinning at any man who flirted with me.
But I didn’t flirt back. Not usually. And especially not when Coby and I were together.
He didn’t like that. And I hadn’t wanted to flirt with anyone else while I was with him.
He was mine. My prize, my dream, my…everything.
He had been the epitome of everything a girl needed.
He had a rough edge, and paired with his wicked smile and growl, he was the ultimate bad boy.
I’d thought he was nice, even under the cruelty.
In his position, he’d needed to be that way.
You couldn’t work your way up in the club without being a little ruthless.
You had to push and fight your way to the top, and he’d had to do that more than most. His father was the president of the MC.
Still was as far as I knew. And just because Coby was the son, the legacy, didn’t mean he could rise easily.
Coby had done things I didn’t want to think about, even now. And he’d started them before we even met.
But that had been my life, too.
I’d grown up with that.
Not in the same club, but another one.
Both had been the type to skirt the edges of the law, and they usually came out on the wrong side.
I looked down at my hands, at the tiny scars on my wrists and my fingertips.
I’d fallen off a bike—or, more accurately, I had been pushed off. But I’d survived.
Back then, I was an old lady. Coby’s property. His bitch. He called me his one and only.
And I had treasured it. I’d watched my mother climb through the ranks along with my father until he became the president of their MC.
And I was the princess. The one who finally fell in love with the prince of another club.
Thankfully, they weren’t rivals, and I hadn’t gone all Juliet and Romeo, but there was plenty of drama and angst regardless.
And, at first, I was only a teenager. Then I became an adult who made her own choices—ones that I regretted to this day.
But I wasn’t that person anymore. I was normal. I had to be.
I was just Meadow. The one who went to school and got her degrees. The one who wrote and edited science textbooks. I rarely left the house, and if I did, it wasn’t to go anyplace where anyone from my past might be.
I wasn’t that person anymore.
But I had said “yes” to Beckham.
Not that he was my past. He had nothing to do with that life. He was only a bartender. A friend of a friend, who could be my friend in truth.
Maybe I agreed because old Meadow was coming out. But not the kindhearted one with the soft eyes. The one who’d fought and clawed her way to the top alongside Coby because that had been the only thing I could do.
I hadn’t been cruel like the rest of them. I hadn’t been mean or hard-hearted.
But I hadn’t thought myself anything more than what I was, either. I hadn’t considered myself worthy.
When Coby hit me for the first time, I didn’t fight back. My father had beaten my mother enough, had told her that if she didn’t toe the line, if she ruined his chances of moving up, that she would regret it.
So, while I knew that my mom didn’t deserve to be hit—like the punch to the face I got wasn’t warranted—I also knew that, sometimes, you couldn’t get around it.
Often, if you didn’t find a way out, it was your destiny.
So I hadn’t walked away the first time Coby hit me. Hadn’t left the second, either.
I stayed because I had nothing else.
There was no way I could go back to my parents, not when they’d sent me off in grand style as their princess to marry the future king.
I broke a little inside, shattered into a thousand pieces with each blow, every time Coby looked at me like I was nothing.
But I hadn’t left. Hadn’t run away.
There was nowhere to go.
It was only when he got drunk enough to bring a friend into our bed to see what I would do that I tried to fight back.
He didn’t force me, neither of them had, but they didn’t leave me standing in the end, either.
No, they left me bleeding, a broken shell of myself. I tried to crawl away, attempted to run.
I still had the scar on my back from the knife—a cut to prove that I was his. That there would be no leaving him…ever.
So I stayed.
Because I had to. There was nothing left for me out there. Nothing left of me within either.
When my parents heard about what I had done, that I’d tried to leave, my dad took me in hand to make sure that I never attempted to run away again. The scar on my left knee was proof of that.
I made a move to run one more time, but they didn’t let me.
I had scars on both ankles from that incident.
Rope burns from when they tied me up so I’d learn whose property I was.
It wasn’t until I ran with evidence of their drug-running that I felt even remotely safe.
I snitched. I became the worst sort of person in my family’s eyes, in Coby’s eyes. But I needed that freedom.
I’d caught a glimpse of the person I was becoming, of the woman that I could turn into, and I saw my mother.
I didn’t want to become that. I wanted more. So I got out. Finally.
Coby was in jail now. He could never hurt me again.
They hadn’t sent him to jail for hurting me, or for threatening me.
No, he had gone down for drugs. They were worth more than a woman’s body in Coby’s world. More than her soul.
After all, I had basically sold myself to them. What, of what was left, was worth anything?
I tried not to be bitter about that, but sometimes, that vitriol was all I had.
But none of that mattered now. I was out of that life. Completely out of it.
I tried not to talk to my parents. They came to me for money, but I’d tried to leave that life fully after Coby had been locked up.
The state didn’t even require me to testify since my help had gotten them all the evidence they needed.
Coby had pleaded for less time, so I didn’t even have to face him in court. Didn’t have to face any of the club’s members.
Yet I knew my life was still on the line if I wasn’t careful.
“Stop it, Meadow,” I mumbled to myself, shaking my head.
I went to the fridge and poured myself a glass of wine, chugging it in three big gulps before pouring myself another.
I needed to take the edge off, to be okay for a brief moment. I didn’t know why thinking about going on a date with Beckham had made me think of all of that from my past. Maybe because I hadn’t actually been on a date before, at least not with Coby.
I wasn’t normal. And I wasn’t good at pretending. I didn’t know if I had ever been good at it.
My phone buzzed, bringing me out of my thoughts, and I froze as I looked down at the name on the readout.
I didn’t want to answer.
“Just get it over with,” I whispered to myself. As soon as the screen went black, and I knew she had hung up, it lit up again, this time with a new call. My mother would keep calling until I answered. She didn’t understand that I needed time or space.
I picked up this time, steadying myself as I sucked in a deep breath. “Hello.”
“You don’t answer your phone?”
Petal Brown’s voice grated on my ears, but I was used to it.
It sounded as if she had smoked a pack a day, which she most likely had, but she also made sure that it was a little low, a bit breathy for my dad.
I hated that I knew that, but it was kind of hard to put that away and forget about it, especially when it was something he said to her often.
He hadn’t cared that I was around. He was horrible.
My mom hadn’t been a terrible mother all the time. And that was something I needed to remind myself of.
I remembered the days when we played outside and laughed. Or when she’d dance with me in the rain or giggle and sneak me an ice cream cone without my dad knowing. I remembered how the sun shone on her bottle-blond hair, and I could recall thinking, you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.
At least, on the outside.
I hadn’t cared that she bleached her hair, or that she was always afraid of her roots going gray or dark.
I dyed my hair a darker brown now because I liked the color, and I wanted to be a new Meadow instead of the one with the ash-blond hair with natural highlights that Coby loved.
Or, at least, pretended to.
As my mother began to berate me over the phone about not answering and how I was a disgrace and an ingrate, I tried to ignore it.
I attempted to remember the good times. But there hadn’t been many.