Telling that story sucked. But now I was back in my comfort zone.
“As fate would have it, my father and mother divorced around that time, and my mother took me back here to Santa Maria,” I said. “And when I got here, let me tell you. I fucking did everything I could. I started getting tattoos. I shaved my head—and when you’re a teenager, having shaved hair really says you don’t get fucked with. I picked fights whenever I could. I got my ass kicked a couple times, but I learned. I learned how to fight. And more than that, I learned how to take a punch. I wasn’t a fucking bitch-ass anymore.”
“I see,” Katie said.
How she was still here was beyond me.
“So you turned into a fighter,” she said. “But you sound like you didn’t start out with a clear purpose for fighting. That you just fought for the sake of fighting.”
Now we were getting to the last ugly part of my story, the part that made me cringe inside and made me feel discomfort. Mostly because it was an unresolved thread, one that I was still fighting to get.
“Here in Santa Maria, I met the Bernard Boys and fell into the group pretty easily,” I said. “We’re all…we’re all different, obviously. As teenagers, though? We just fought. We beat each other up. Saw who was toughest. Only one who didn’t was Mason; he was the oldest, and he always kept us in line. Made sure we kicked each other’s ass, but not send each other to the hospital.
“Anyway, throughout, I distrusted women. I think anyone would after dealing with the shit I did. But there was one person that did not, one woman that made me feel differently. And that person was Rachel Reid.”
I looked to see if Katie had any recognition of the name. She did not seem to.
“Rachel was Brock’s high school sweetheart,” I said. “But she was also great with us back when we were the Bernard Boys. She’s one of the few girls that looked past my scowl and my bitter attitude and tattoos. She got near me. I appreciated it, even though I never showed it. Shockingly, I’m not great at showing how I feel.”
Katie smiled. And then she did something that sent chills through my body but that I did not resist.
She put her hand on top of mine.
I gulped. It felt…good.
“Rachel was one of the few good things in my life, the girl that encouraged me to see the good in others,” I said. “And then…the Bandits got to her. Brock had to watch it all. We all…we all took it hard. I took it harder than anyone other than Brock, though, because of what she meant to me. Not romantically, just as a friend. No one else did what she did to me.”
I cursed under my breath.
“Since that fucking day,” I said. “I made a promise to the rest of the Bernard Boys and to myself that I would hunt down the three Bandits that…that fucking raped her. We killed one. Derek. And now there are two left. Damian and Eduardo.”
“How do you know—”
“They’re not fucking shy about what they did, Katie,” I said. I took a breath to calm myself. “That’s why they’re the real fuckheads here. The Reapers aren’t good people, but we tell people to just leave us the fuck alone and all will be good. The Bandits will encroach on your life regardless and make it all fucking hell. And it pisses me the fuck off.”
I coughed. My throat was getting scratchy from how hard I was speaking.
“And so right now, I guess you could say that for the last decade or so, I’ve spent my entire time just itching for a chance to kill those three bastards. We killed one. We almost killed a second. The third is somewhere. The two living ones are in this town, though.”
“And Damian comes to the store somewhat regularly,” Katie said.
Gears started to turn in my head, but this felt like the wrong time to mention them. And besides…Katie still had her hand on mine. After all that I’d said. After all the dark, brutal, ugly details.
She was making me feel…
No, not like I had with Rachel.
Better than Rachel.
With Rachel, I’d had no illusions that we were more than friends, nor had I ever yearned for anything more. I was in a fucked-up place, and just having female friends was a win. I never even thought about challenging Brock for her or anything ridiculous like that.
But with Katie? Shit, I was feeling like…
Like I could allow myself to feel a certain way. Like I could allow myself to feel as I had for the hot girl in Long Beach before I’d gotten burned by her.
Had over a decade of armor finally started to crumble? Was I smart to let it crumble? Or was I just being really fucking stupid here right now?
“So that’s how I found my focus,” I said. “The worst thing in the world happened to a good friend. Her identity, her sense of innocence, was fucking mauled by some shitheads. And so it’s been my mission to kill them. I’m not sure I’m smart enough to justify it, but I seem to have accidentally found a good cause. So, I’ll fucking take it.”
