“Get out so I can get dressed.”
I was not going to be able to have this conversation with Clash when I was dressed in shorts that barely covered my butt cheeks and a thin tank top.
“You are dressed.”
I rolled my eyes. “You would think that this was being decently dressed.”
His eyes traveled up and down my body. “You look good.”
“Clash,” I growled through clenched teeth. “I am in my pajamas. Get. Out.”
He shook his head. “Put a sweatshirt on or something, but I’m not going anywhere.”
That would be doable if all of my sweatshirts weren’t in the dirty laundry which was not in my room. This is what I got for waiting so long to do my laundry. I kept my arms over my chest and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Say what you need to say and get out.”
Clash sat down in my desk chair. “Pretty sure this isn’t going to be that quick.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then get on with it.”
“Cut the attitude, Raven.”
“Why? You don’t get to come in my room and tell me what to do.”
This was exactly what I had been wanting to avoid the past days.
“Because we both know it’s fake. What I want to know is why you have to fake it.”
A smirk spread across my lips. “You don’t like when women fake it with you, Clash?”
Something in the air changed. I had gone too far. I wanted to grab my words and shove them back down my throat.
Clash shot up from his chair and pushed me back on the bed. He pinned me to the mattress with his body and caged me in with his arms.
“Never had a woman fake it with me before, Raven, and you sure as fuck aren’t going to be the first.” He was breathing hard, and his nostril flared as he stared down at me. “Cut the fucking shit.”
“I don’t want to.” I didn’t want to bare everything to Clash. No one had ever seen that before.
“Clue in, beautiful, you don’t have a choice when it comes to this. You’re not going to hate me and treat me like I’m a piece of shit when the way you feel hasn’t got anything to do with me.”
“And just who do you think it has to do with?” I hissed.
“Wrecker. Your family. Anything but me. You can’t hate me, Raven, because I haven’t done anything to you. All I want to do is keep you safe and happy.”
“Pretty sure you only have to keep me safe, Clash. Wrecker could give a shit about the fact of whether or not I’m happy.”
“There,” he growled.
“There what?”
“Start there. Start there telling me why Wrecker doesn’t care if you are happy or not.”
“Because he didn’t care when my parents died, so why in the hell would he care now?” I spat.
“Because he’s your brother.”
“Brother?” I laughed hysterically. “That’s just a word, Clash. I can say a ton of words and they don’t mean anything. I can call myself a fucking queen but that doesn’t actually make me one. He had a chance to be the definition of the word brother, and he didn’t. He chose this fucking club instead of being my brother. He choose you over me!”
The words poured out of me without even thinking about them. They were words that rolled around in my head constantly.
Wrecker may be my brother by blood, but when it came down to it, he was just a stranger.
“What happened?” Clash’s eyes never left mine.
“It was either live with Wrecker or go into foster care. They were going to give me to Wrecker, and he told them no. He told them no!” Tears were flowing from my eyes, falling backward onto the bed. “He didn’t want me!”
A knock sounded on the door. Both of our heads snapped toward it.
“Who is it?” Clash thundered.
“Open the fucking door.”
Why in the hell was Wrecker knocking on my door? He was the last one I wanted to see right now. I’d much rather spend the rest of my life locked in here with Clash than see him.
“Go away,” I screeched.
“You’re in here fucking screaming,” he yelled back. “Open the goddamn door.”
“He’s making sure I’m not hurting you, Raven,” Clash said quietly.
I had been screaming, and it was somewhat late. “I’m fine, Wrecker. Leave me the hell alone.”
The door handle rattled. “Open. The. Door.”
Clash rolled off me and whipped open the door.
Wrecker pushed past him before I could even move off the bed.
“What in the fuck is going on in here?” Wrecker demanded.
I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m fine. Get out.”
I wasn’t going to go into this with Wrecker. There was no point in it. I had tried to talk to him about it years ago, but he didn’t care. He didn’t see things the way I did. He claimed to this day he had done the best thing for me.
He was so wrong, he didn’t even know.
Wrecker looked at me splayed out on the bed and Clash who was standing by the door. “You lay one fucking hand on her and you’ll never walk again.”
“Like you fucking care,” I spat. “If I want Clash, I’ll fucking have Clash. You don’t have a say in my life.”
“I don’t, do I? You might want to look around and realize who is keeping your ass safe right now.” Wrecker jabbed his thumb into his chest. “I’m the one who fucking saved you.”
“You saved me from the shitty ass situation you put me in when you asked me to go to work for The Ultra.”
“I asked you to work for The Ultra, Raven, but your mouth was the thing that got you into trouble. That has nothing to fucking do with me.”
I rolled my eyes and sat up. “Get. Out. I don’t want you in here. You don’t listen to a word I say.”
“Oh, I hear you, Raven. The problem is, you only see your side of the story and don’t care about mine.”
I closed my eyes. “I’ve heard your side, Wrecker, but you don’t want to hear mine.”
“I’ve heard it! You think I left you. That I didn’t want you! How was I supposed to take a fifteen-year-old when I didn’t have a place to live? I didn’t have two fucking nickels that were mine to rub together. I had nothing, but you don’t see that. You only see the things that piss you off. The things that make you look right and me look wrong.”
“That’s all I see?” I jumped off the bed and got in Wrecker’s face. “You wanna know exactly what I see?”
“I already know,” Wrecker growled.
I clenched my teeth then let loose what had never been spoken. “His eyes were brown.” My tone was even, but even as I spoke, I felt the panic come to the surface. “If I closed my eyes, he would hit me until I opened them. When I first moved in, he didn’t come close to me. I thought he hated me because I was taking his mom and dad from him. He didn’t touch me until I had been there forty-seven days. Forty-seven days,” I enunciated slowly. “He didn’t rape me until I unlocked my bedroom door and thought I was safe. When I close my eyes at night, I see his brown eyes. When I open my eyes, I see his brown eyes. I see his brown eyes!”
I shook with rage as tears rolled down my cheeks. My hands were clenched at my sides and my fingernails dug into the flesh of my palms. “While you were building your life and forming your brotherhood, your actual family was the plaything to a sick and demented psycho I couldn’t escape.”
The air crackled in the room, and the only thing I could hear was my heart beat thrumming in my ears. I had finally spoken the words that haunted me for the past ten years. “Get out of my room and get out of my life. There is no room for you and your family in it,” I spat.
Wrecker didn’t move. He stared me down as if he couldn’t believe the words I had just said.
“GET OUT!” I screeched.
Clash moved from the door and got between Wrecker and me. “Leave, brother,” he told Wrecker.
“Brother,” I cackled. “You’re not a fucking brother. You’re an asshole who
only cares about himself! A brother wouldn’t send his sister away to be raped. Would you do that to Alice?”
Wrecker’s chest heaved, and he leaned into me. “I didn’t know! How was I supposed to know?!”
I sat back down and shook my head. “Didn’t have a phone, did you? No way for you to get in touch with me?”
Clash caught Wrecker and pushed him toward the door. “You need to go right now.”
“I’m not fucking leaving.”
“You don’t leave, she will, Wrecker. Decide what you really want.”
“I didn’t know,” Wrecker said quietly. “If I would have known, I would have fought harder for you.” Wrecker tried to take a step toward me, but Clash held him back.
“Just let her be right now. Just go.” Clash pushed him toward the door, and this time, he moved. “Find Alice and go to bed.”
Wrecker didn’t take his eyes off me, and even though I wanted to look away, I stared at him until Clash shut the door in his face.
Clash turned to look at me with concern. “I don’t know what to fucking say right now.”
I flopped back onto the bed. “Neither do I, Clash.”
I sighed and closed my eyes.
I had finally said it, and now I was going to have to deal with all of the other shit on the other side of hiding it.
Pity.
Sympathy.
Disgust.
All things I felt for myself on a daily basis.
“Can we go back in time? Change everything?”
“Much as I wish we could, beautiful, we can’t.”
I wiped my tear-stained cheeks with the heels of my palms. “How about for tonight? Can we just forget it until the morning?”
Clash sighed.
I leaned up and saw him standing at the foot of my bed. “You look extremely helpless right now, Clash.”
“That would be because I am helpless, Raven. You just said what you said, and I don’t have one fucking clue what I’m supposed to say to you right now.” His arms were hanging at his sides with his hands clenched. “That’s why you always had your door locked.”
I laid my head back down. “Yes.”
“That would never happen to you here, Raven.”
A heavy sigh escaped my lips. “Sure, it wouldn’t.”
“I’m serious. Not one of these guys here would ever force themselves on you.”
And I knew that. As much as I hated Wrecker for leaving me like he did, I knew that he would never surround himself with men like that.
“Wanna watch a movie?” Yes, I was fully trying to avoid this conversation.
Exploding like a volcano with Wrecker had completely exhausted me, and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore with Clash.
“That really what you want, beautiful?”
“You really care what I want?”
“If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
I dug deep to try to find a bitchy reply but I had nothing. “Then put on a movie and stop talking.”
That was all I had in me.
I listened to Clash move around my room. “Uh, where are the movies?”
A smile curved on my lips. “Grab the remote and point it at the TV. All of my movies are on demand.”
“Fancy,” he muttered.
“Were you looking for an actual movie?”
“Well,” he drawled. “Yeah.”
“Welcome to the future, Clash.” I scooted up the bed and grabbed the remote from the nightstand. “Have at it.”
I tossed the remote to him and laid down closer to the edge of the bed to leave room for him. I turned on my side with my arm under my head and watched as he sat back down on my desk chair.
“How the hell do you have all of these movies?”
I glanced at the TV. “I like to have the TV on while I work.”
“And you work a lot so that explains why you would have so many damn movies.”
I rolled my eyes and laid my head back down. “Are you going to sit over there?”
“Planned on it,” he murmured.
I could sit in that chair for hours working, but even I knew my bed was much more comfortable. “You can lay on the bed, Clash.”
“I’m good right here, beautiful.” He had the remote pointed in the direction of the TV, and his brow was furrowed in concentration. “I can pick whatever?”
“Sure.” All the movies he had as options were ones I had already watched so it wasn’t like he was going to pick something I didn’t like.
“You sure you’re okay?”
I looked over him. “Perfect. Not like I just told a secret I’d been keeping for years or anything.”
Clash chuckled and finally picked a movie. He tossed the remote on the bed next to me. “We can talk, if you want.”
I shook my head. “I’ll pass.”
“Whatever you want.” Clash leaned back in the chair and kicked his feet up on the desk.
“Thanks, Clash,” I said softly. He could have been a real asshole with everything that just went on. Instead, Wrecker was the one being an asshole, and Clash was just trying to protect me. “You can go back to your room, if you want.”
He shook his head. “I’m good here.” He tucked his arms behind his head and kept his eyes on the TV. “Get some rest, Raven. I’ve got the door locked.”
“Okay.” I didn’t need to have the door locked when he was in here with me, but it was nice that he thought I might need that. “But you really don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”
“You told me to sit down and shut up and now you’re the one who won’t stop talking.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m just letting you know I don’t need you in here.”
There was a little bit of that bitch dust I liked to spread around.
“Never said you did. But since you showed me all of these fucking movies you have just waiting on your TV for me to watch, it’s gonna be a long while ‘til you get rid of me.”
Clash jumped up to turn off the light then settled back into his chair. He toed off his boots then kicked his feet back up on the desk.
This was different.
Normally, I worked until I was exhausted then fell into bed just to do it all over again the next day.
Now, I had Clash in my room watching a movie and Wrecker somewhere in the clubhouse more than likely telling everyone my business.
I closed my eyes and burrowed my head into my pillow.
That was too much for me to think about right now.
Tonight, I was just watching a movie with Clash and nothing had changed.
Tomorrow I would deal with the ensuing shit storm.
*
Chapter Nine
Clash
“Doesn’t your neck hurt?”
I cracked open one eye. “Huh?”
“How in the hell are you sleeping like that?”
I opened both eyes and slowly moved my head. “Yeah, that fucking hurts.”
Raven was standing over me with her nose crinkled up. “Well, that’s not surprising. It looked like you were decapitated when I woke up this morning.”
My head had been cranked all the way over the back of the chair, and I was going to pay dearly for it today. “Guess I can sleep anywhere.”
Raven took a step back, and I stood. I rolled my neck back and forth, trying to work the kinks out of it.
“You could have slept in the bed with me.”
I probably should have, but after the bombshell Raven had dropped last night, I didn’t want to do anything that she wasn’t completely okay with. “I’m good, beautiful.”
“Right,” she drawled.
“What time is it?” It felt like I hadn’t even slept an hour.
“Six thirty.”
“Say what?” Why in the hell were we awake this fucking early?
“I have plans today.” I nodded to the chair he had been sleeping in. “Plans that involve that chair for a little bit.”
Oh, hell. She needed to work an
d I was in her way.
I stepped to the side and reached for my boots. “Sorry, beautiful. I didn’t know you got to work this early in the morning.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Uh, I’m not going to work. I’m going to look for a place to rent.”
“Say what?”
“You can lay in the bed if you want to hang around. I might need some help figuring out where to look since I don’t want to wind up living by some psychopath or something.”
I dropped my boots back on the floor. “You’re moving?”
She sat down in the chair and swiveled around to face her desk. “Yeah. I woke up and decided that was what I needed to do.”
“You can’t.”
She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Um, why not?”
“Because I’m supposed to keep you safe.”
She rolled her eyes and turned back around. “There isn’t anything that is coming to get me, Clash. I mouthed off to The Ultra, not killed Oakley Mykel’s dog or something. I’m small fish to them.”
She was right. I knew Wrecker was still concerned about The Ultra because he knew at the end of the day, they would do whatever the hell they wanted, but if they were that concerned with Raven, they would have already come after her. “So, you’re just going to leave.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I like Weston so I figured I would find a place here.” She turned on her computer. “I just need help finding a place.”
I watched her slowly spin around.
Gone was the woman who had angrily screamed at Wrecker.
In her place was a woman looking to run away and who didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
“Don’t you think maybe you should think about this for a second?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t need to think about it, Clash. I can’t stay here for the rest of my life. Sharing a kitchen with nine grown men and their girlfriends isn’t ideal. That’s college.”
“No, it’s an MC.”
She tipped her head to the side. “An MC I want no part of.”
She saw the MC in a bad light, though. Not that she wasn’t justified in seeing it that way, but I knew there was more to an MC than what she thought. I was going to have to convince her that while the decision Wrecker had made was the wrong one, she couldn’t hold onto that forever. I saw Wrecker’s face last night. He was gutted when Raven had blurted out the words. He didn’t know one bad decision he had made had set Raven down the path to hell.
Fallen Lords MC: Books 4-6 Page 38
