5. Lynx
LYNX
Dear Diary,
I finally found something that felt like family. Naturally, I’m the biggest threat to it.
We all piled into the club van, and I didn’t miss the way Reaper made sure the two of us were sitting in the back row together. We were both big guys, so even though the row technically sat three, nobody tried to sit between us.
He waited until War got the van going and the radio and chatter amongst the others drowned out our murmured conversation.
He let out a long breath. “It happened again?”
I glanced over at him. “Who—”
“Nyah.”
Of course she did. She sat squished between Dax, who instinctively leaned toward her in the middle row, and Luca, on her other side, leaning as far toward the window as he could get.
He seemed like he’d rather throw himself through it than sit that close to her but he didn’t have much choice because Hawk and War had taken up the only other two seats in the front.
She peeked back over her shoulder at me and then quickly looked away.
I shifted back in my seat to talk to Reaper. “I can’t even remember most of it. You know I never fucking can. One minute I’m telling Luca’s old man that I’m not fighting. The next I’m covered in blood and the guy dead at my feet has lynx marks in his back.”
Reaper closed his eyes. “Just like that time on the inside.”
I shrugged. “I can’t remember much of that either.”
But Reaper did. He’d been the one who’d found me in one of the prison storerooms with a homemade shiv and a dead body.
He’d been the one who’d covered up the marks I’d carved, so the prison guards couldn’t link anything back to me.
We’d both been grilled for days over it.
He’d done time in solitary, the guards trying to mentally break him into giving me up.
But he hadn’t.
Reaper was the loyalist of friends.
It was just a shame for him he’d picked up such a defective one in me.
Reaper sighed heavily. “You need to talk to Doc when we get back. Join his group.”
I snorted. “His Murder Squad?”
A smile turned up the corners of Reaper’s mouth. “Only X calls it that. The rest of us just call it a support group. Somewhere to go when that urge inside you starts whispering too loudly.”
That was the thing. With me, it didn’t whisper at all. It went completely dormant, until it took over my body completely. And by the time it did that, there was no amount of talking or support groups that were going to stop it.
“Maybe,” I told Reaper.
But he shook his head. “No. Not maybe. You talk to Doc and the rest of us or you’re out. I thought all this was behind you.”
I did too. It had been years since I’d last slipped up like this.
But I knew what happened next. It would take weeks or months for the urges to go away. For all my demons to settle back deep enough that I wasn’t constantly on the verge of going on a killing spree.
I was dangerous to be around when I was like this.
“I’ll leave. I shouldn’t be at the clubhouse.
” It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to leave something I loved behind.
And I did love the club. I’d barely been there five minutes, and yet it had so quickly become like family.
I might have been a prospect, the lowest rung on the ladder, but Reaper and War and Hawk and the other guys who’d been in the club their entire lives didn’t treat me like I was just some dumb kid.
There was a brotherhood my soul desperately fucking needed, and without them I was scared of what I’d become.
But I also didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Reaper wasn’t happy with that suggestion. “No. If you leave, you’re gonna spiral hard, and then next thing I know, I’m gonna be seeing you on the goddamn fucking news. You aren’t going back to prison. I’ll put you down myself before that happens.”
I breathed out a long, slow breath. “I’m not going back there.”
“I know. Neither am I. So you’ll stay at the club. And you’ll talk to Doc. And you’ll come to meetings.”
“And at the first sign of me losing control, you’ll put a bullet in my head.”
I said it not as a question. Not even as a statement. It came out more like I was asking him for a promise.
Nyah would be at that clubhouse. And Luca. If I lost control and hurt one of them…
I squeezed my eyes shut, but when Reaper didn’t say anything, I opened them and demanded it of him. “Promise me, Reap. Promise me if I lose control again you’ll put a bullet in my brain. No hesitation.”
He didn’t look happy about it, but he eventually nodded.
That was all I needed. His assurance that he and the others at the club were prepared to do what had probably needed doing for a long time now.
I stared down at my hands for the rest of the drive back to the clubhouse. But no matter how clean I’d washed them, there was still blood on them.