I breatheslow 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 footstepson 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 afterwhat 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.
