“You been with Anarchy? My brother said you’d fall back in her bed.”
“No,” he sounded offended. “I’ve not been anywhere near her bed.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” He barked back, “Is it true that you and Snakebite were in love? It’s really his baby?” I realized Cowboy had been drinking. He wasn’t drunk, but he’d had a few.
“No.”
“Then why would he storm down here and tell everyone that?”
“Is that what they all think? Is that what you think?”
“I saw him. He was rescuing you. He’d packed a bag for you and the baby. Sounds like love to me.”
“You don’t understand. No one wants to hear it, hear how bad it was. It about killed my own brother to listen. Everyone looks at me like I’m crazy.” I’d tried to getout of the house and go for a walk, even with the two goons following me. Everyone wanted to visit me and the baby like this was the fucking zoo. Everyone knew all about me.Poor Halley who the devils took.They’d introduced themselves, but I couldn’t remember all their stupid names.
“Sometimes, I think I am crazy,” I cried out.
Cowboy grabbed and held my hands. “You know I’ll always listen, right?”
I couldn’t speak. I just cried.
“Halley, I’m going to listen.”
Drying my tears, again, I looked over my shoulder. The baby was sleeping. Sometimes I’d forget how long it’d been since he ate. I hadn’t slept through the night since Cowboy had been gone.
“Halley, talk to me.”
“Will you? Can you listen without pitying me? Without apologizing for pain, you didn’t inflict.”
“I don’t pity you. I just care. I’ve known about you, about your pain for so long.”
“Do you know how hard it is to know that all these people here knew where I was but was too chicken shit to do anything about it?”
“Halley, we knew your captors would sooner kill you than give you up.”
“There are plenty of times I would’ve welcomed death over what I had. Well, that’s a lie, too. There was a long time that I didn’t know I wasn’t exactly where I was supposed to be. I loved being part of the Sons of Satan MC.”
“Don’t say that.”
I cut him off. “You said you’d listen.”
He quieted up.
“It’s only when you all got too close… when my life changed.”
Cowboy nodded, and I assumed that meant he was paying attention.
“I was too young to know any better. I hear I was five. They’d told me my parents had been killed, and they, the Sons of Satan MC rescued me from the same fate. It all made sense. I was Star, not Halley. Who’s she? Star, thatwas me. Just like a typical biker brat until Scar tracked me down. First it was Diablo then LuAnn, Serpentines old lady who raised me as her own. See, she couldn’t have kids, so she really loved us kids, me and my stepbrother. I had a stepbrother… Snakebite.”
Then I told the truth. “I think I was in love with him, back then. I was young, fifteen.”
“He loved you?”
I sighed, my eyes watering again. “It feels like he did, at some point. Not when it mattered.”
“What happened then?” He asked, moving beyond this sensitive part.
