Chapter 9
Wraith
I don’t sleep. Big surprise.
I lie awake for the remainder of the night, my arms crossed beneath my head, staring up at the ceiling.
I’m used to it—the wakeful hours between dusk and dawn.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve learned to go without sleep.
It was a necessity when I was younger. As a grown man, safe in his own house, it might be ridiculous, but I’ve trained myself into it and never really cared about being untrained.
I listen to Abby’s gentle dog snores. The love I feel for her is irrational.
It goes beyond master and dog. To some people, she might just be an animal, but to me, from the minute I saw her, her leash in Steel’s big hand, a reluctant smile spreading over his face when he entrusted her care to me, it was like we were two souls meeting.
Two survivors.
She’s known unspeakable cruelty in her life.
For years she was chained up and beaten by her master.
Left without food or water or shelter from the unrelenting Florida heat.
She was at his mercy. He might have crushed her body with his fists and his boots, but he never broke her spirit.
The way she looks at me, has looked at me from the first, with those big, soft brown eyes, unraveled the pain I kept carefully knitted up in my own broken soul.
I’d never admit it to anyone, but that night I first took Abby home and she cowered away from me, but then, after hours of coaxing her to eat, she licked my fingers, I cried like a fucking baby.
She came to me, a sobbing mess on the damn floor, and curled softly into my arms, let me bathe her fur with my tears.
It was the first time I remember crying.
Ever. Life had been cruel to her, but still, she had a tender heart.
She still does. She’s the sweetest soul on the planet.
So no, she’s not just my dog. She’s my inspiration.
Those nights when the longing for my old life, the freedom and the excess, the whisky soaked nights that obliterated the pain inside of my head and the coke that blew it out of my veins and gave me the invincibility and power I’d always craved, through those long nights I’d stare at Abby sleeping and it gave me the courage I damn well needed just to crawl through another day sober.
If she could live through the pain and still be so trusting and loving, then maybe I could get through it, grow a set of balls, and face the world with the scraps of my shattered soul gathered in my hands with just enough coherence to keep me moving forward.
The shower the night before was delicious. Probably one of the best I’ve had in ages. Seeing my fancy clothes strewn in a heap on the bathroom floor next to Leena’s ruined dress was one of the most satisfying things I’ve witnessed in a long time.
When I came back to the bedroom, Leena was already asleep, the covers pulled up to her chin like a shield to ward off the terrors of the night. She was obviously exhausted from a sleepless night before, probably nights without sleep.
I slipped in beside her, hoping to find a semblance of peace. Instead, I listened to her gentle breaths and Abby’s soft snores.
When the first gray light of dawn creeps beneath the edges of the dark curtains at the windows, I debate about getting up.
Working out. Going to the tiny room upstairs and trying to untangle the terrifying ball of shit lodged firmly in my chest, but I realize I’d just sit there, twirling a brush endlessly between my fingertips, and I decide to save myself the frustration.
Even before the earth shakes outside, that low rumble that always fires my blood with adrenaline stronger than any drug ever could—and I’ve tried a fuckload of them over the years—I sense it.
The sound surges through me, imagined at first, but it grows louder, closer, a dull steady roar that my heart echoes with every beat.
Bikes.
Two of them.
The hair on my nape stands on end and I swivel my hand a fraction, resting it gently on Abby’s head so that she knows she’s safe and doesn’t stir. She’s grown used to the throaty roar over the years with me. That sound is steeped in both of us, entrenched in our blood and hearts.
I throw back the blankets before the rumble has a chance to reach my street.
Peeling off my shirt and dumping it on the floor, I stalk to the dresser at the far side of the room, ready to pull out another.
My leather jacket with the Steel Riders patch is hung with care over the only chair in the room, an upholstered fancy flowery thing that I picked out because it was black and white and matched the black fucking curtains.
That jacket is the proudest thing I’ve ever worn in my life.
My old club, my old jacket, it was nothing compared to the pride I feel when I ride with The Riders.
Even if I’m a smart-ass and I don’t generally let them know it, they’re the first real family I ever had.
Edge and Steel aren’t exactly father figures, being less than a decade older than I am, but they’re something.
Something like older brothers. They started the MC, designed it for guys who had no other place to go.
They wanted it to be a family. Guys who actually give a shit about each other.
They would never admit it, but the club is a place people can go to find a shade of healing for all the broken parts inside of them.
Shit that won’t ever be right, but the club is that thread holding it all together.
So yeah.
I would rather die than dishonor that jacket.
A startled gasp, more an abrupt sucking of air than any real sound, causes me to spin around, a curse forming under my breath.
Leena’s lush, mahogany hair is tumbled about her shoulders, the gold strands shot through shining in the early morning light creeping into the room.
Her hazel eyes are wide and glistening with horror.
No sleep clings to them, though her cheeks are still flushed with the warmth and comfort of slumber.
It softens her face, even with her pillow soft bow lips parted wide.
“Oh my god,” she hisses, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “Your- your back…” She slaps a hand over her mouth, as her eyes widen further, nearly comically, though there isn’t anything funny about the ruined devastation of my flesh.
I realize I’m clutching a fresh t-shirt in my hands and savagely jerk it over my head. I expect disgust and condemnation in her eyes, and it’s like a sliver lodged in my shredded insides, irritating and wickedly painful, when all I find is muted sorrow shimmering in those depths.
Fuck. If she had to see it, I didn’t want it to be like this.
“It’s nothing,” I grind out hoarsely, whirling to find a pair of jeans from the dresser. I slam into them, before she can take in the rest of the scars that my years of living have painted onto the canvas of my flesh.
Leena’s young. I don’t even know how young, but I can tell that she’s probably no more than twenty-one or twenty-two, from the flawlessness of her skin, the smooth, taut surface without mar or wrinkle. She’s not like other women, though.
Other women would shrink away from the rage in my eyes and the acrid bitterness bubbling just below the surface. Another woman might shrivel up with disgust that her new husband from a forced union, has a body that is so blindingly ugly beneath that sleek facade of clothing, but not her.
Not Leena.
She’s not like other women. I realize that, as she scrambles from the bed and her soft padded steps carry her across the room to me.
When I turn, towering over her, raw, fierce power, her breath catches and she seems to shake herself out of whatever trance she’s in.
She twists her hands furiously in front of her and when she bites down on her bottom lip, my whole body reacts, my blood surging hot and twisted in my veins.
“I’m sorry,” she breathes, her eyes shining wells. “Just please tell me that you’re… I mean, are you okay?”
I nearly smile, despite how fucked up everything is.
“Yeah.” I force gentleness into my tone because I hate the worry in her eyes.
Worry for me. A man she doesn’t even know.
Her hazel depths, big and liquid and guileless, remind me so much of Abby’s eyes in that moment that it hurts.
That sliver twists deep into my gut. “They’re old.
Don’t worry about it. Your father and brothers, bastards and pigs that they undoubtedly are, never laid a hand on you. ”
It’s a statement, not a question, but she answers me the same. “No.”
“My… well… the people who were supposed to be caring for me, and I use that term fucking lightly, had a different version of how shit was supposed to go down.”
“Where are they now? I’ll ask my brothers… I’ll find them—”
I can’t help it. I laugh, a deep low rumble that starts in my chest and pours out of my throat like water rushing from a fountain. Leena’s mouth twists in a mix of horror and annoyance, because of course, none of this shit is funny.
“I appreciate the thought.” Really, I do.
I’m impressed that she’d turn to the very men who’ve obviously treated her with little to no regard over the years, used her as an object, traded her away like fucking cattle to satisfy their own ends, just to right an ancient wrong.
That she’d humble herself and go back to her family.
For me. Me, when her pride has probably never permitted her to ask them for a thing for her in her life.
“They’re old scars.” That might be true. The ones on my back are, at any rate. “They healed up a long time ago, and you’ll be happy to hear I took my own retribution on the bastard who dealt them.”