33. Nyah
NYAH
Dear Diary,
This is what I’d hoped for. Apparently.
Isat on the Slayers’ club couch with Violet, Amber, Kiki, Queenie, and Kara in a circle around me. Violet had one of her notebooks out and was diligently filling a page with her neat handwriting as the others threw ideas at her.
Their chatter about turkey stuffing and place settings drifted around me like a fog, a mist of noise and laughter I couldn’t quite catch.
“What about you, Nyah?” Violet asked. “Do you have a Thanksgiving favorite? I want everyone to have at least one dish they’re really excited about.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
She always had so much patience. “Food. We’re all making our favorites for the club’s Thanksgiving meal. Any ideas what you’re going to do?”
I blinked, because I hadn’t even realized that’s what they were planning. I tried to look interested. “Uh, yams, maybe?”
Violet nodded and jotted that down in her notebook. “Yum. Okay, so who’s going to work on decorations?”
I wanted to go back to staring into space and not being aware of my surroundings.
Because when I was forced to interact with the real world, all I could see were the pitying looks the other women threw in my direction, and I had the feeling they were all walking on eggshells around me, scared I was going to break.
And they were probably right. I felt broken.
The club door slammed, loud enough to startle me out of my stupor, and Chirp walked in with his arms full of parcels and envelopes.
He stopped in front of us and shifted the pile to his left hand.
“Mail, ladies. Queenie, you’ve got the new issue of that fashion magazine you like.
Kiki, as usual, you’ve got a soft parcel… let me guess, more clothes?”
She grinned at him and took the plastic mailer that was straining at the joints to hold in whatever dresses or tops she’d bought online. “A girl has a right to shop, Chirp. Leave me alone with the things that make me happy. This one isn’t even for me. It’s for Kyle.”
Chirp squinted at her. “You’re buying his clothes now? I guess that’s why he no longer looks like he stepped right off the farm. At least not all the time.”
Kiki seemed pleased with that assessment. “He needed a whole new wardrobe after he left that creepy fucking cult he lived in. We’re still trying to fill it out.”
Chirp had already lost interest and passed Amber a handful of envelopes, the top one with a threatening red warning on top. “Amber, bills. Might want to actually pay those.”
She scowled at him but took them anyway.
Which left him with the biggest package of them all, a large rectangular box. He peered at the label on it. “Nyah. Yours.”
I squinted at him. “I’m not expecting anything.”
Unlike Kiki, I didn’t care for online shopping.
Chirp shrugged and waved it in my direction anyway. “It’s got your name on it. Unless there’s another Nyah Matish hanging around here.”
I forced my lips into something that resembled a smile and took it from him, since he was just doing his job, and it wasn’t his fault I was only here in body but not spirit.
The other women were all peering over Queenie’s shoulder to see something in the magazine she’d flipped open. I ran my nail beneath the tape on my package, finding the end and ripping it off so I could open the box.
I let out a little gasp as the contents were revealed, and all the other women looked over at me simultaneously.
Violet frowned. “What is that?”
I pulled out the white lace and satin monstrosity, but I had known from the first glimpse. “It’s my wedding dress.”
I didn’t think I’d ever said a sentence so flatly. But that was exactly the emotion that dress evoked in me.
Nothing.
All the women stared at me, nobody knowing what to say.
I waved a hand around dismissively. “Let’s go on with the Thanksgiving planning.”
They reluctantly did, but I couldn’t stop the way my fingers clenched into the fabric of the dress. The tiny beads dug into my skin painfully, but my grip only tightened more.
I shoved to my feet. Like I was on autopilot, I moved stiffly to the door and took the van keys from the hook on the wall.
Nobody tried to stop me from walking out and into the parking lot. Violet finally caught up with me as I was hauling my too-heavy body into the driver’s seat and fiddling with the controls so I could actually reach the pedals.
She flung open the passenger-side door. “I don’t know where you’re going, but I’m coming too.”
I didn’t try to convince her otherwise. I didn’t have it in me. I just nodded, waited for her to put her seat belt on, then got the van moving toward the gates. Herb was on sentry duty, and he took one glimpse at my expression before he opened the gates and let me pass through without a word.
We drove for hours in silence. Violet tapped out a couple of messages on her phone, no doubt letting her men know we were on the road to somewhere or maybe sharing her location with them.
But she didn’t ask me where we were going or try to make idle chitchat to fill the silence.
She let me be and just sat silently in support.
I’d never loved her more for understanding what I needed without me having to say it. Her presence was enough.
I don’t think she was surprised when I pulled the van into the driveway of my parents’ house. I yanked the box with the overflowing wedding dress from where I’d tossed it in the back and stormed to the front door, glaring at my father’s butler, silently daring him to challenge me.
He was smart enough not to. He nodded to me like it was completely normal for me to stomp into my parents’ residence with my arms full of fluffy white tulle.
“Mom!” I shouted from the foyer, pausing for a moment to wait for her response. When there wasn’t one, I barged up the stairs, Violet at my heels. “Mom!”
She came walking out of her bedroom in one of her ridiculous “house” dresses that verged on being a formal gown. Her face was fully made up, and her hair neatly brushed, as always. “Nyah?”
I thrust the dress at her. “Don’t act like you’re surprised to see me. What did you think would happen when you sent me a fucking wedding dress!”
She didn’t attempt to take it, forcing me to continue holding it or drop it on the floor.
Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Your wedding is in a matter of days, Nyah. Don’t you think you’ll be needing it?”
“I’m not getting married!”
Violet stood wide-eyed beside me, her gaze bouncing between my mother and me, her shock written all over her face. “Who would you be marrying?” Her voice was so small it was barely a whisper.
My mother glared at her. “Carlos Guerra, of course. Her fiancé.”
Violet’s jaw was somewhere near the floor, her mouth hanging open wide. Couldn’t blame her. I hadn’t told anyone about Carlos’s recent pleas for me to marry him.
But clearly, my mother had heard from other sources and had already decided on my behalf that it was happening.
“I’m not marrying Carlos, Mother,” I practically hissed. “I don’t need this fucking wedding dress. Not now. Not ever. And I don’t want it anywhere near me.” I shoved it at her again. “Take it.”
She refused, her gaze narrowing on me. “Girl, do not be stupid! The fact Carlos even still wants you is a miracle in itself. Do not look a gift horse in the mouth! You can’t raise that baby alone.
And you have no one left. That Dax boy left you.
The bodyguard is in prison. And Luca Guerra…
” She made the sign of the cross over her forehead and heart, like Luca’s dead, evil spirit might enter the room just by saying his name.
A little of my resolve crumbled at hearing it, the grief rushing in again, the reminder that I had no one except this baby, who deserved better than I could give alone.
Violet’s fingers wrapped around mine and squeezed fiercely. She glared at my mother. “She does have someone. She has me. Always.”
But Violet, though I loved her with every damn beat of my heart, was not the men I’d lost. She was not this baby’s father.
She wasn’t the family I’d thought I was building with the three of them. She had her own, one I didn’t get to belong to. One she was bringing a new baby home to just days after I would.
My mother stared at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking. I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat, but it wouldn’t budge.
My mother had always been able to read me like a book, and she knew she had me.
But she pressed in harder, just to really drive the point home.
“You are all alone and living at an MC clubhouse, Nyah. You have no job. No prospects, and a baby due any day now. I didn’t raise you to be this weak or this pathetic.
I know your wedding is set to go ahead and Carlos Guerra is going to be waiting at the end of the aisle for you on Saturday.
He will give you a good life. All the money you could ever need to raise that baby right, to give him the best shot.
He’ll go to the best schools, he’ll have the protection he needs, and the name to make people stand up and take notice! ”
“He’s not a Guerra, Mom!” I hissed. “Carlos knows that! This baby is not his grandson. Not his heir. He’s nothing to him!”
My mother pinched me so hard I knew it would bruise. She glared at me with all the hate in her eyes I’d always known she felt, even though she tried to hide it. “And Carlos doesn’t care! Don’t you see that, girl? He’s lost his only son—”
“He murdered his only son!”
My mother went on like I hadn’t just screamed in her face.
“He wants to believe this baby is his. He wants a second chance to raise him right and to have the heir he’s always hoped for!
It doesn’t matter if the baby is his blood or not.
He’s not going to check, Nyah! This is exactly what we hoped for! ”
This was not what I had hoped for. None of it.
But resignation crept in.
Because somewhere deep inside me, I knew she was right.
My mother saw me break. She saw the resolve leave my body and she doubled down on making sure it wouldn’t return. “Marry Carlos, Nyah. Legitimize his heir. It’s a win-win situation. Give him what he wants and take what you need in return.”
That was what it really came down to, wasn’t it? That I had no other options. That I could take this baby and run and live a life where I constantly looked over my shoulder. We’d have no money, nowhere to live, and no support. We’d have nothing but memories of the men I’d loved.
What good were those when your child was in danger?
Or I could marry Carlos Guerra and have everything I needed and a safe home for my baby to grow up in.
My mother and I both knew there was only one choice.
I took the wedding dress back and gave Violet the keys to the Slayers’ van.
I’d been reminded of my place.
It was no longer in a biker clubhouse.