Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Lola
Are you trying to send me to an early grave?
Yes, mother, that’s exactly what I want.
Don’t you joke with me young lady, you set a barn on fire!
It was an accident!
You shouldn’t have even been there in the first place.
- Conversation between Lola’s mother and Lola, age 15
I can’t bring myself to go back home after my spectacular run in with Roman. I know when I get there, I’m going to have to drop the whole ‘I bought a coffee shop’ bombshell on my parents and I just need a little time away from everyone. I love small town life, but I forgot how stifling it can be.
I go to my quiet place instead, up on the cliffside overlooking Surfer’s Bay.
Sand and rocks poke into my thighs as I sit down, my legs hanging off the side of the cliff. I spent so many teenage nights out here, my friends and I spilling out from the old, abandoned barn set back on the cliff.
“Oh my god, you should kiss him.” Sadie’s doe eyes grow round with excitement.
I glance back at Max who’s leaning against the barn looking like James Dean in a leather jacket and torn jeans. He’s undeniably hot but the only guy I want to kiss is seven years older and would chew my ass out if he knew I was up here.
“I’m too drunk to kiss anyone,” I say. “Plus, my parents would actually kill me if I dated a biker kid.” My gaze drifts and I spy a couple of other kids from the Vipers Motorcycle Club setting up some fireworks. I point a finger their way. “Now that though, that looks like fun.”
It’s a Pine Rock rite of passage to sneak out to one of the parties the biker kids always hold up on the cliff. Every kid does it. Of course, most kids don’t accidentally set the barn on fire but hey, I was fifteen with a severe lack of understanding on how to use fireworks.
I can sense the burnt-out shell of the barn behind me, but I refuse to look at it. I try focusing on the long stretch of beach down below instead but that just takes me back to another night.
“You look sad.”
Not exactly what a girl wants to hear at her eighteenth birthday party. I tear my gaze away from the bonfire, pretending it’s the smoke that’s making my eyes red, and look at Carson. “Gee, thanks.”
Carson takes a swig of his beer and leans back on the sand. “Suits you.”
My brows climb my forehead. “Being sad suits me?”
He smirks and runs a hand over his blond buzz cut. “Yeah. You’ve got that whole sultry, ‘I need saving’ look going on.”
I scoff and turn back to the fire. “I don’t need saving.” My heart might, but I don’t.
Carson sits up, his shoulder brushing mine as he hands me a beer. “Maybe you just need to be shown a good time then.”
I cut my gaze to him, and his lips curl in a cocky grin. I know it’s a bad idea, but bad ideas seem to be my specialty and honestly, I think I might do anything to forget that I just tried to kiss Roman. You and I will never be Lola. It can’t happen. Ever.
His words play over and over in my head, so I take the beer and down it.
I breathe slow and count the blue and white stripes on the Heart Home Lighthouse.
Maybe I should have gone there instead of climbing up here.
The Heart Home Foundation is a foster care charity that the whole town has adopted.
They converted the old lighthouse into their hub just before I was born.
My friend Sadie was in foster care, and I’d hang out there with her a lot.
It was the one place I could always go and never get judged. I have nothing but good memories there.
Unlike here.
The last time I sat on this cliff was the morning I got out of the hospital after my eighteenth birthday.
I didn’t remember much from what happened the night before, but I knew I woke up in that burnt barn. I knew I woke up with blood between my thighs. And I knew who had brought me up here.
Eighteen-year-old me thought I could go back to the barn, that it would help me process what had happened somehow, but my feet stopped outside the door, cold sweat clammy on my neck and hands.
I’d backed away from the barn and stumbled to the ground. My whole body shaking. My breath sticking. Every memory I did have of the night before playing in my mind.
I’d sat on the edge of the cliff, just like I am now, and watched the sun create hundreds of tiny diamonds in the ocean until I could breathe again.
I still don’t remember the assault from that night, but I remember what happened seven weeks ago.
I remember hot, alcoholic breath against my cheek and heavy thighs pinning me to my bed in the hostel.
I know without a shadow of a doubt if Scott hadn’t come looking for me right at that moment, I’d have ended up back in the hospital again. Or worse.
Scott hadn’t wanted me to come home after that, didn’t like the idea of me traveling alone, but I’d realized then that the thing I’d been running from could happen anywhere in the world.
Nowhere is a hundred percent safe and all I’d wanted after that night was to come home. To the smell of pine trees and ocean air. To lobster sandwiches and the creepy scarecrow contest every fall. To my parents and my brother. And to Roman.
I didn’t anticipate how hard coming back would be though. Wasn’t ready for all the memories that would hit me. My senses are in overdrive because of it, and I jolt at the crunch of footsteps on the dirt path, the edge of the cliff scraping my bare legs as I twist around.
“Why am I not surprised to find you up here?”
I relax a little as I recognize Max’s voice.
He’s in full biker gear, leather riding pants and full sleeve tattoos on both arms. Last time I saw him, he was still a teenager but now he’s all man and either I’m more of a wimp these days or the Viper MC cut makes him a hell of a lot more intimidating than he was back then.
“I thought you said we weren’t supposed to have any more contact. ”
He grunts and runs a hand through his long dark hair. “We’re not.”
He doesn’t leave though.
“But?”
“Carson is out. Got released on good behavior.”
My fingers curl around the edge of the cliff, jagged edges cutting into my skin. If my parents knew I was here, talking to a biker after what happened… I spent too much of my teens hanging around kids looking for trouble and I paid the price for it.
“So?” I force out, my mouth sand dry as I stare at the blanket of sea.
“It’s not like he was even in there for what he did to me.
” Rob Carson got arrested for possession with intent to distribute.
The irony is he got a longer sentence for that than he would have if he’d been convicted of sexual assault, because the patriarchy’s fucked up like that.
“Just… be careful Lo.”
I watch the sailboats bobbing in the harbor below, my heart thrumming. “I don’t need protecting, Max.”
He grunts again. “It’s Wolf now.”
My lip twitches. It would be funny if the name didn’t suit him so well. Despite growing up as part of the MC, Max always had that lone wolf vibe going for him. It’s why I went to him after what happened that night. It’s how I’d knew he’d help me do what I needed to do.
What I should never have done.
Other than Scott, Max is the only one who knows everything that went down before I left town, and I need it to stay that way.
His boots crunch against the ground as he turns to leave and I twist around.
“Is he still a Viper?” I ask, catching Max’s gaze before he can go.
He looks at me like he can’t quite believe I had to ask. “You really think I’d let him back in after what he did?”
I shrug, scraping sand with my fingernail. “Didn’t realize it was your call to make.”
Another grunt. “It will be soon.” And with that mysterious comment, Max leaves me to my thoughts on the edge of the cliff.
I tell myself he’s being paranoid. That Carson doesn’t even live in this town, and he knows better than to show his face back here. My shoulders loosen and I’ve almost got myself convinced when my phone buzzes.
I take it out, thinking maybe Scott’s woken up and seen the photos of the shop I sent, but it’s not from Scott. It’s an unknown number. And when I read the message, my blood stops.
Unknown Number: I know what you did, bitch. You should have stayed away.