“No time, just grab a jacket. I need you to come now,” he ordered, reaching out to take my hand.
I snatched my arm back from his grip. “Will you at least tell me where you’re taking me?”
“It’s Beast, he needs you,” he replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Beast…needed me… I reached out and took Shooter’s hand, closing my door on the way out.
This was a bad idea, and yet I had to make sure he was okay, regardless.
Chapter Five
~ BEAST ~
I woke to the sound of silence.
Silence and pain.
My whole body ached and shook.
My insides felt like they were trying to get outside, and my outsides felt like they were trying to get inside. I was trembling from head to toe, my teeth knocking together and my hands curled up into fists.
I was lying on my back in my room at the clubhouse in so much pain I couldn’t even speak to ask for help. If I had my gun then I’d have shot myself in the head just to end it.
I’d been in this amount of pain once before.
I’d barely lived through it.
I wouldn’t survive it twice.
My eyes were closed, but a noise across the room had me opening them so I could beg for help. Beg for pain relief. Beg for a gun, if need be. But when I opened my eyes and looked across, each movement in my muscles feeling like razor blades, I didn’t see any of my brothers there; instead I saw Belle.
She was curled up in my big armchair in the corner, her arms inside one of my favorite leather jackets. Her long dark hair was tied back from her face so I could see every angle of her face. She looked sad as hell, pale as shit, and she kept whimpering in her sleep. A bucket was next to her on the floor, and if I hadn’t been in so much pain, if every muscle twitch hadn’t made me feel like I was on fire, then I would have frowned, because I was confused as hell.
I didn’t for one minute think I was going to heaven after the crimes I’d committed. Lord knew there was only one place I was going when I died, and it was a one-way ticket to somewhere hot, but for a moment—just one brief moment—I thought I might have been in heaven.
Why else would she be there?
I wanted to say her name and wake her up, to beg for her to help me because I needed something to make all of the pain stop. But instead, I watched her sleep, wishing that I could hold her in my arms and take that sad look off her face.
Sweat poured from me, and my body shook harder.
Moments ticked by and I felt myself going dizzy, my mind fazing in and out. But every time I opened my eyes, she was there. Sleeping. Keeping me company while I slowly died.
*
I woke to the sound of humming.
It was annoying as fuck.
Like a fly buzzing around your face that you couldn’t quite catch, it buzzed into my mind while I slept, and just as I thought I remembered what song it was, it stopped.
I decided, if and when I woke up, I was going to smack the shit out of whoever was humming. They sounded happy, and happiness had no place in my room. Not in my clubhouse. Not in my world. Not in my heaven or hell.
Happiness was the epitome of lies.
Happiness only existed to show us what we should feel. How things could be. And exactly what you were never going to have.
Even other people’s happiness was fake.
