Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Though Colby was younger than most of the members, he had his shit together. Still had that air they all possessed, like bullets could bounce off them.
I forgot that sometimes the people who looked the most bulletproof were the ones nursing the most wounds. Ones who might bleed out quietly without asking for help.
“Now I’m going to paraphrase Albus Dumbledore,” he continued, voice peppier now, or as peppy as a man like Colby could get. “Finding our way through those dark times can be as simple as remembering to turn on the light,” he grinned. “Or you know, by finishing the rest of The Vampire Diaries,” he winked. “Then we’ve got all the spinoffs.”
I couldn’t help but smile as he held out his hand in invitation.
I didn’t take it straight away, though. Something inside of me was almost desperate to stay up on this roof, where reality couldn’t find me. Where I could relive Elden’s lips against mine. Where I could hope that he would find his way back up here and carry me down.
But that wasn’t how life worked. And even if it did, that wasn’t who I was. I knew that, even though I currently only had a tenuous grasp on my identity.
So I took Colby’s hand.
And I climbed down the ladder on my own, if under the watchful the eye of a friend.
A few days later, I was nursing a coffee and a hangover in the kitchen. The kitchen that my mom loved. Where she’d spent the first mornings of her time at the Sons of Templar compound. For good reason. When I arrived, I had expected some kind of ancient, stained, whiteware situation. But everything was gleaming stainless steel, clean and full of produce and various nut milks.
Lucas, the muscled, tattooed biker, was a vegan.
A biker vegan who wore a large knife on his belt and a visible gun strapped to him. Though I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t have any evidence to prove this, I was relatively certain that being a biker in this particular club meant violence was a part of life.
I wasn’t exactly versed in urban life, having grown up in pastel suburbia, but I also guessed murder was a part of life here too.
Again, these were all educated guesses. But I didn’t think you wore two deadly weapons on your body unless you planned on using them.
I enjoyed the rhythm of the clubhouse, the freedom of it. There was always someone somewhere, even at two in the morning. And I wasn’t the only woman in residence. There was a rotation of ‘club girls’ who I soon learned were there to service the members of the club in … whatever way they needed. At first, like most of the tenets here, I’d been disgusted. These men were using women as sexual objects. But the more time I spent here, the more I got to know the women, got to understand what the connection to the club meant to them. They came from different backgrounds, yet they all felt like society didn’t fit them, had failed them, didn’t make them happy. They found what they needed here, they found a place to belong, and they were empowered. In charge of their own sexuality and unafraid to show it.
Who the fuck was I to judge?
They were all kind to me, taking me under their wings in some way.
Kiera, one of the more recent club girls, impossibly tall and elegant with flawless ebony skin and curves to die for, had become a friend. Not close enough to tell her much, but enough so I was able to subtly ask her about who Elden slept with. The pinch of her lips told me that I wasn’t being at all subtle, but she didn’t call me out on it. She’d simply told me that Elden didn’t sleep with any of the club girls. Each of them had tried, since he was a man who looked like he could fuck, but he’d respectfully rebuffed them. He was an enigma to everyone.
Yet he’d kissed me.
My lips still felt swollen, seared with his brand. My mind was racing with what that kiss meant, wondering where he was and trying to pretend that everything was normal.
If living at a biker clubhouse and having Swiss show me the house he was buying for my mother could be considered normal. My body, at least, was returning back to normal, the bleeding already stopping, the cramps gone. We’d caught it early enough, the doctor said, that it wouldn’t be as physically traumatic as it might’ve been. But she’d warned me about the emotional trauma, had given me pamphlets and urged me to talk to someone. I was sure for women in different situations than mine, this would be traumatic. It would be something they’d never forget. Something they carried with them always.