“That’s more like it,” he said with a half grin, reaching out to hover a hand beside me in case I needed it. He understood that I didn’t need him, that I could do it myself, but he was still there, just in case.
“We’ve all been in situations, haven’t we… moments where we didn’t like the decision being made for us, but we had no choice. Whether it was rules and chores as a kid, or someone controlling us… I just kept imagining how that feels, and how much worse it’d be if…”
Rocket groaned, grabbing my arm and dragging me against his chest.
“I know I shouldn’t be taking liberties here, but we both fucking need this.” I wrapped my arms around his large body and buried my face against his warm chest. He was right that we needed it, but I’d been too stubborn to ask, or suggest it. Too stubborn to admit I needed someone, even a fucking man. Just… he wasn’t just any man, was he? He’d understood so much about me so fast. Why did people talk to him like he was stupid, when he seemed smarter than most of them?
“Thank you,” I mumbled against his body, relaxing a touch as his hand moved up to cup the back of my head, his fingers stroking through my hair in a soothing motion.
“Let me get you back home, woman. This isn’t a place you need to be, but you helped, okay? Just remember that you helped. That you stepped up, you read the fucking room, and you made things better.”
Tears burned my eyes, because how did he know I needed to hear those words? How did he know that sometimes a person just needs to feel fucking appreciated, and understood? How many times did my bastard ex completely overlook the things I did, and make me feel like shit?
“Can I take you home, V?”
I shook my head, finally lifting it to look him in the eye, and I loved how easily I could do that, because we were so similar in height that I’d had to sag to rest my head on his chest, but it was what I’d needed in that moment.
“You need to be here for Has-Been. He needs his brothers right now, but…” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, but was I trying to stop the next words from escaping?
“But?”
“What if I take Nixie back to your place, and wait for you there? You might… need someone to talk to or something later.”
Rocket scratched his jaw as we stepped apart. “I mean… I’d like that, I really would, but you get that it’s a shitty little room at the clubhouse, right?”
No. I hadn’t known that at all, but how bad could it be?
Half an hour later, as I unlocked his room with his key, after having to explain who I was to the little idiot on the gate, I realised it was pretty bad. It was a windowless box room, which smelled a little like dog pee, because he had pads out for her. Oh well. I set her on his bed, and proceeded to remove the pads, bagging them up in a spare carrier bag he’d had on the floor, and then I set out new ones. I left the door open for a little while, sitting with Nixie on his bed, while I let the room air. Was this a bad idea? What would happen when he returned? Would we talk? Would he want me to go away?
Why did that guy look at me like I was a weirdo, when I drove a car in here? He’d scratched his head and shrugged, pointing to an area with a couple of motorbikes parked in it, like cars were unheard of here, but then I guessed that was the point, what with this being a motorcycle club. It was a bit of a dump, but clearly the value in the club was the people, and not the place.
“I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I?” I asked Nixie, who blinked sleepy eyes at me, and didn’t offer any kind of advice at all. I sent a text to Caroline, letting her know I was waiting forRocket here, so Auntie Pam wouldn’t worry, and then I lay down on the bed with Nixie, and stared at the pockmarked ceiling. Hopefully lifelong retribution wouldn’t take all night, right? That was my last thought before I dozed off.
Chapter Twelve
Fuck me, what anight. They destroyed those two fuckers, after they confessed their sins, the second guy reluctant as fuck, but it’s amazing what a blowtorch aimed at your junk will make you say. They’d transferred all their money to multiple children’s charities, including those specifically aimed at the kind of abuse they’d inflicted. After that, they were beaten, burned, and tortured, before the building was burned down with their corpses inside.
In the end, the need to take a pound of flesh was more important to Has, and so many of us, than letting it look like suicide. Let people know they were forced to confess. In the end, it served a different purpose. It showed that they would never have stopped, never have admitted to it, without the force of violence and death.
The videos were being released as I left the place, and Has was a fucking wired, messed up, well… mess. He was jubilant, and at the same time, fucking broken, all over again.
They were making arrangements to take him home to Elise, and with Lissa on standby, but my work here was done.
I made my way back to the clubhouse, feeling a ton of fucking relief when I saw V’s car sitting beside the rides that had begun to stack up again as people returned.
There was no party. No celebration. It wasn’t something anyone wanted to talk about, or make drunken fun of, because there was nothing good about a brother having gone through what everyone now knew Has-Been had suffered. Fuck me. How the hell was he standing after all they did? I didn’t know details, didn’t want to, but… rape? Was he…Jesus fuck. I scrubbed my hands over my face as I marched toward my bedroom. I wanted peace. I wanted quiet, but I also didn’t want to be alone with my fucking thoughts right now. I didn’t want to dwell on this. I didn’t want to let myself imagine the hell my fucking brother endured, and I knew if V was there, she’d keep me focused on something else. Anything else.
Fuck. The door to my room was open when I approached it, and my first thoughts were that something bad had happened. Someone got in. Someone hurt her, and my Nixie. Someone fucking did awful things. That’s what happens when your mind is so caught up in the horrors you learned on a night like tonight, because if those things were possible, then wasn’t anything?
I shoved the door the rest of the way open, and focused on the curled up bundle on my bed. A woman wrapped in my covers, with my fucking pup tucked against her neck.
They were both sleeping, and trust me when I say I fucking checked that pretty frantically, because my mind was a cavern of horrors right now, and only the worst things seemed possible in this moment.Jesus.
I dropped onto my ass on the floor by the bed, and wrapped my arms around my legs, curled up in a ball of my own. What a night. What a fucking hell of a night for us, but most of all, forHas. For the man I’d spent years with. The man who’d hidden these monstrosities he’d suffered from me, this man who’d walked the walk, and talked the talk, but inside must have been fucking broken and torn to pieces. Who recovers from that shit? Does anyone? My mind kept seeing the child version of him. The one we’d all seen in that damn show when we were kids. The golden-haired, smiling boy who’d been too smart, too funny, and who’d obviously been hiding such pain and terror the whole time.That’sfucking acting.
My eyes burned, and the lump in my throat seemed to constrict it, as I fought to swallow against the tide of heartbreak and pain I was feeling, which I didn’t have any right to feel, because it wasn’t my fucking suffering. It was his. He’d gone through things nobody should, and risen above it, and I was here, about to cry like a fucking pussy.
A sob choked out of me, and I slapped a hand across my mouth to try and silence it, to hold it in, but the fucking dam was broken, and I was drowning.
