“I have no idea,” I lied again.
“You didn’t see anything at all? Not a tattoo or a piece of paper, nothing?” she pressed, and I shook my head at her.
I held her gaze, my shoulders back and my chin high and her eyes narrowed. “I wish I had,” I replied, my jaw tight.
Her smile fell and she let out a sigh. “Okay then. If you remember anything, you know you can trust me.”
“You’ll be the first to hear if I remember anything, Ruby,” I answered. We both knew in that moment that I was lying. More worryingly, we both knew that I couldn’t trust her.
Her chin raised and she pursed her lips before taking a step back from me. “I hope so, Penny. Your daddy’s after blood and he won’t stop until he gets it.” She turned on her heel and headed back to Cheeto.
I headed for the door, feeling everyone’s gazes burning into my back as I left the clubhouse. Scratch was waiting outside on his bike for me. He was a good man, we’d fooled around once when I turned sixteen and he was nineteen, but it hadn’t worked out between us. My father had had other ideas about who was a suitable old man for me, and it wasn’t Scratch.
“You ready to roll?” he asked, pulling his shades from his cut and putting them on, the sight of the grisly scars down his face making my stomach ache like usual.
The scars were my fault.
Scratch wasn’t the one for me, my daddy had said, and when I’d argued, he’d asked me what I liked about him. “He’s kind,” I’d innocently replied, “and he’s handsome.”
Daddy had taken his good looks later that day and Scratch had been promoted to enforcer.
Scratch was still a good man, but he wasn’t a kind one. My daddy had made sure that I had known all the things Scratch did on his jobs, and none of them were ever kind again.
And the scars down his face? They became my daddy’s trademark for anyone that went up against him.
“Yes.” I climbed on behind him, wrapping my arms around his middle. He smelled good, like leather and masculinity. He was familiar and safe. I used to love that smell, desperate to fill the whole inside me with this man, but I realized that now I was craving a new scent.
I was cravinghim, the Highwayman. Or maybe not him exactly, but the freedom that he had, and in some ways, had given me. He’d opened up the box inside of me that I’d kept tightly locked, and there was no way to screw the lid back on now it had been opened. I closed my eyes as Scratch started the bikes engine and we pulled out of the clubhouse grounds, and thought about him; the smell of weed that hung around him. The woody deodorant that he used. His heavy scent of trees and nature that clung to his skin. The taste of his sweat under my tongue.
My obsession with Scratch was over. Now I had a new obsession, a new man to desire, to lust after. To hold the what-ifs in my heart for.
A man I hated and yet desired.
A man I despised and yet wanted.
A man I wanted to forget and yet couldn’t stop thinking about.
We pulled up outside my apartment and Scratch followed me inside. Everything was as it had been, and yet everything was different. I was different. I’d always been a fighter, strong-willed, angry, full of rage. But since coming home I had felt softer. Femininity had settled in my bones where the rage used to live.
Instead of wanting to fight and kick and scream, I wanted to touch and kiss and bite. I wanted a gentler connection to the world around me. To myself, even.
“Do you want a drink?” I asked Scratch, my gaze still roving around my home like I was lost. Like these weren’t my things, and I had no place being here.
“Water would be good,” he replied.
I nodded and headed to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and grabbing some bottles of water for us both. Even the food and drink inside didn’t feel like mine. I guess it wasn’t; it was whatever one of the prospects bought for me. Daddy never let me go anywhere on my own. I didn’t live a normal life. Barring sneaking out to watch old black and white movies and secretly studying nursing, I lived under the club’s protection, my daddy’s rule. People bought my food, took me places. Hell, most of my clothes had been bought by the club women.
I realized with sudden force that I was more of a prisoner in my own home, with my own family, than I ever had been with the Highwayman.
The only thing I had that was mine was my nursing course. It was the only freedom I had. The only place I was truly me. What were the chances I’d be able to continue now? That daddy wouldn’t keep an even tighter leash on me than before.
“You don’t seem like yourself,” Scratch said, unscrewing the lid of his water and taking a long drink. I watched his throat bob as his lips wrapped around the bottle and he drank. There was a time once when I would have watched him swallowing that water with desire flooding my system. The connection between us had been strong, but he’d never touched me or gotten close since the day my father had cut his face wide open.
I shrugged. “Being kidnapped will do that to a girl.”
I put my bottle down and turned to stare out the window, watching the cars below driving past, the people walking by my building. Everyone was free to come and go as they pleased. To do what they wanted. To be what they wanted. To be with who they wanted. Everyone but me.
I swallowed, hating the Highwaymen even more for making me realize how caged I really was. I mean, I’d always known, but now I knew. I realized the full extent of it, and how this was how it would always be.
