“You have my word.” I ground my teeth together as I pushed in fully. “Right here, right now. I will never put you through that kind of hell ever again. I’m not gonna have you making excuses for my shitty behavior so our children won’t be afraid of me. Never.”
“Those are big promises, Tex—”
She didn’t understand, and I could no longer put it into words, but sinking into her body felt like coming home. It didn’t matter how fucking far off-course I’d gotten, or how long we’d been apart, the feel of her walls shifting to fit me was a comfort I couldn’t describe. Like it was her way of reminding me that in a world that had cast me out, I’d been made to fit here.
If Grey had gotten himself clean, so would I. The same blood ran through our veins. We might’ve shared the same vices, but I knew we also shared the same strength and willpower needed to slay the beasts in our heads.
I would either stay clean and sober or die trying.
I wanted to tell her, but all I managed to get out was, “Please trust me.”
Her eyes widened in understanding, and she nodded as if that was enough. “Okay. I trust you.”
“Thank fuck,” I groaned. I was a man who’d lost everything and found it all in the same woman. Lauren’s hands connected around my waist, drawing our bodies closer together and cradling our babies between us.
Her feet wrapped around the backs of my thighs, guiding my pace. My vision blurred as I fought to keep from breaking, needing to give her even just a fraction of what she’d given me by showing up tonight.
It was painfully apparent that all of my free time spent sobering up and building a nursery for my babies had left me severely out of practice.
I gripped her hips tighter as her mouth fell open, knowing she was getting close. My face had gone numb, and any control I still held was quickly sucked away when she clamped down around me with a silent scream.
She sucked in a ragged breath as her entire body convulsed in a shudder, and I was a goner. I held myself inside her as I broke, feeling as if after years of fighting the current, I’d finally reached the shore.
Chapter Fourteen
Kate
“No!” I sat up in bed with a gasp, still seeing the familiar face looming over my body, the feel of hands crawling over my skin. “It was just a dream,” I whispered to the empty bedroom.
My mother had decorated it to look just like the one Dakota and I had grown up in, something that left me feeling disoriented every time I woke up. I likened it to waking from a coma to find that your body had changed and grown while everything else remained as it had been before.
“Just a bad dream,” I repeated again.
The oversized t-shirt I’d fallen asleep in clung to my damp skin as my heart thrummed against my ribs, proof that my body wasn’t buying my explanation.
I forced my head back onto the pillow, working to steady my breathing and calm my mind. The red lights on the alarm clock continued ticking up, but the foreboding feeling didn’t go away.
“This is ridiculous,” I muttered as I kicked off the covers and padded into the living room. I grabbed an afghan off the back of one of the recliners and curled up on the couch, prepared to wait for dawn.
The creaks and pops of the old farmhouse settling had become familiar, even welcome, over the last week. Somehow, it made me feel less alone.
Eventually, the trembling in my limbs subsided, along with the icy cold sense of dread that I was in danger. I found my cell phone where I’d left it on the small table beside the couch.
Nate had called again.
My thumb hovered over his name, waiting for my brain to give the go-ahead. All I had to do was tap the screen, and I’d be able to hear his voice.
If anyone could pull me out of this, it was him. He’d tell me that things weren’t as bad as they seemed before convincing me to come home. I placed the phone back on the side table when I realized that he’d also want to know where I’d been and why I’d left in the first place.
Those were questions I couldn’t answer.
Not yet.
“Kate?” Mama whispered from down the hall. “Is that you?”
“In here. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Good,” she said with a weary smile as she rounded the corner. “Neither can I. Come on, I’ll fix us a little midnight snack.”
Keeping the afghan around my shoulders, I followed her into the kitchen. She moved gracefully around the room, pulling cheese and fruit from the refrigerator and artfully arranging them on a platter next to some crackers.
“You were such a light sleeper when you were younger,” she said while coring an apple. “Your father would come in from work to find you in your PJs, rummaging through the fridge for a snack. I used to think that sleep just didn’t come easily for you, but now I’m convinced that you just wanted that time alone with him. Maybe you knew then that he wasn’t going to be around.”
I climbed up onto one of the bar stools, struggling to remember late-night snacks with the biker. “How long have you lived here?”
She added the apple slices to the platter, avoiding my gaze. “The city house felt empty without you and Dakota in it; too quiet, you know? This place belonged to Angel once upon a time, and he sold it to your dad to fix up.”
Her response was elusive… vague. It was just one more thing she was keeping from me.
“That doesn’t answer my question, though,” I pushed. “How long have you been here?”
Without another word, she calmly knelt beside a cabinet and retrieved a large bottle of tequila from the back. “Angel,” she said by way of explanation, holding the bottle up for inspection. “He found this at Mikey and Lauren’s after the relapse. With your father gone, he thought he’d leave it here.”
At my puzzled expression, she elaborated, “Angel knew that a bottle like this would only tempt Mikey into drinking again, but he also knew he couldn’t keep it at his place—he and your father are recovering alcoholics and addicts. I asked him why he hadn’t just thrown it away, and his eyes bugged out of his head. I guess this is pretty expensive stuff.”
It surprised me to know that Grey had been an addict. Then again, I’d built him up to something close to a god in my mind. Up there, he could do no wrong.
“So,” I said, trying to get us back on topic. “Instead of telling me how long you’ve lived in the country, you’d rather do shots?”
Her laugh brought back memories of the three of us belting out our favorite songs in the car on the way home from school. “This isn’t the kind of tequila you shoot. According to Angel, it’s meant to be sipped, like a glass of whiskey. And, if we’re going to dredge up the past, I’d like a drink in my hand. What about you?”
“Tequila and I have a complicated relationship,” I hedged.
“Ah, sounds like you and the rest of the world have something in common.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth while looking through a cabinet. “The closest thing I’ve got to stemware are these jelly jars. A glass is a glass, though. Right?”
I shrugged as she poured a little into each one. My one and only experience with tequila had ended with Nate’s face between my thighs and then, very suddenly, my head in his toilet.
“To…” My mother paused with her glass raised. “Oh, hell. To the shit that made us who we are!”
“To the shit,” I repeated, clinking my glass to hers. We each took a small sip of the amber liquid, recoiling at the burn. “You’re sure we’re supposed to sip it?”
Her lips puckered as she admitted, “I don’t know. I got drunk on amaretto and Dr. Pepper once in high school, but that’s about the extent of my knowledge of drinking.”
I nodded and knocked the contents in the glass back before pouring another. “I think the only way this is going down is like a shot. We just won’t tell anyone.”
My mother agreed, and after four glasses, the lead in my gut had dissipated, leaving me relaxed. The afghan now hung off of one shoulder while the other side trailed a
long the hardwood floor, but I made no move to right it.
“So, to answer your initial question,” Mama began, her cheeks flushed from the liquor. “I’ve lived out here since you were taken from me.”
I stopped tracing the rim of the jelly jar. “Taken? You abandoned us!”
The alcohol had softened the blow of my words, making it sound as though I were merely confused, not upset.
She shook her head slowly before knocking back another shot. “Nope. Taken. Your grandmother came to the house one day and gave me an ultimatum—deliver you and Dakota to their house by four o’clock sharp, or go to jail and never see either of you again.”
“J-jail?” I slurred. “What would you have gone to jail over?”
“Well, for Angel, she was pushing for child pornography charges. Me?” She tapped a finger against her lips. “I think it was drugs... maybe trafficking for the club. I blocked a lot from that day, to be honest.”
Most of my childhood memories had become little more than blurs as I grew into adulthood, punctuated by only the briefest flashes of clarity.
The day we were left with my grandparents was a moment that had been seared into my brain permanently, though. I remembered watching my mother’s face, searching for signs of remorse, but only seeing grief.
“I was so angry at you that day,” I admitted. “Your face was pale, and I remember, you were making these sounds as you sobbed. At the time, it didn’t make any sense. Why leave if it upset you that much? Why not just stay and fight for us? But you never had a chance, did you?”
She stared down into her empty glass. “I tried. Angel and your dad went to everyone they knew, hoping to call her bluff.”
I knew it had all been for nothing.
Nan had gotten just what she wanted, and we’d eaten up the narrative she’d served, starving for an explanation for why our mother no longer wanted us.
“Why not just kill her?” I clapped a hand to my mouth when it dawned on me what I’d just suggested.
My mother just smiled. “I thought Angel was going to after she accused him of prostituting children—”
“How?” I asked. “How could she ever look at that man and see a predator? He needed a family, and we needed him. There was never anything more to it than that.”
“You should tell him that the next time you see him. In the early days, he was so worried that you girls were going to forget about him.”
She poured another glass. “When your father found out, he swore he’d kill them both before handing you and Dakota over, but she’d planned for that. They had police protection in place for years—”
I thought back to the fact that they were both missing now. “And how do you know that maybe he didn’t follow through all these years later?”
My mother paused with the glass almost to her lips. “You have to understand, Kate, that my parents had never been supportive of my decision to marry your dad. There were so many instances over the years where he could’ve retaliated, but he never did. In the end, he knew they weren’t worth it.”
I didn’t have a lot of memories of my father, but I could clearly recall tracing the tattoos on his arms with my fingers. I could still hear the deep rumble of his voice, yet couldn’t remember ever hearing him say that he loved me.
Maybe bikers didn’t admit to things like that.
I’d had one interaction with him before Dakota’s wedding, and even that had felt like a fever dream thanks to a bout of pneumonia.
“How’d you meet him?” I asked, trying and failing to wrap my fingers around my glass.
“I’m surprised you didn’t already hear about my ‘mistakes,’” my mother said with a bitter laugh. “Your grandmother swore she’d do everything in her power to keep both of you from ever becoming me. Seeing how you two turned out, maybe it was for the best.”
“We became the women we are because of you; not anything she did. And I don’t give a damn what she told us. I want to hear the story of how my parents fell in love… from you.”
Her green eyes became distant. “If you’re expecting something out of a romance novel, I’m afraid you’re going to be let down.”
I shook my head before letting it rest against my fist. “I want the real story… all of it.”
“Okay.” She poured more tequila into our glasses. “Your grandfather actually introduced us—”
“Wait. Pops? How did he know my father?”
My mother sighed. “I made it sound better than it actually was. My father was a customer of the club’s. Only, he decided to stop paying for his drugs, so the club came to collect on the debt.”
“Did they beat him up?” I gasped, unable to picture Pops as an addict.
“I was home alone, Kate. They took me as payment.”
I’d known what my father was but never imagined him laying a hand on my mother.
Seeing my horrified expression, she hastily added, “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I was scared to death because I’d heard the stories about people crossing their club only to disappear the next day. When he came into the room, I decided that if he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.”
“You fought him?” I asked, thinking back to the night I left Nate. I might’ve counseled victims of trauma every day, but deep down, I was weak.
Scared.
I thought this was what you wanted…
The glass slipped from my fingers and fell to the island, sending droplets of tequila in every direction. I wasn’t going to let myself think about that right now.
She helped me mop up my mess before continuing. “I did. It turned out he wasn’t there to kill me. The club had other ideas when it came to collecting debts, but I was just naïve enough to think I could talk him out of it.”
“How old were you?” The tequila seemed to curdle in my gut at the thought of her being forced.
“Seventeen.”
“Mama,” I breathed, doing the math in my head. “Is that how… is that how you got pregnant with me?”
One tear slid down my cheek, then another. Within seconds, I was sobbing hysterically at the thought that I’d been the product of rape. The man I’d long seen as Christ-like was nothing more than a monster.
“No.” She reached for my hand and rushed out, “Listen to me. He didn’t force me, and you weren’t conceived that night—”
“But, but you were a debt,” I drunkenly sobbed. “You said it yourself.”
She blew out a long breath. “I was a rule follower who’d never stepped out of line. When I found out that my father had gotten in over his head with bikers, it sparked some sense of rebellion within me.
“Even without all that, when your father walked into the room, it took my breath away. It was in the way he carried himself like nothing could ever stand in his way. We were from completely different worlds, but I didn’t care. I gave into the recklessness and gave myself to him, willingly.”
“When did you get pregnant with me?” I sniffed, wiping the tears from my face. It was clear that the alcohol had loosened my tongue to the point of obscenity if I was asking about my parent’s sex life.
Her mouth turned up in a distant smile. “It wasn’t long after that. I was supposed to leave for college and Jamie was going to be nothing more than some summer fling I looked back on when I was old and gray. When I found out I was pregnant with you, I realized that I didn’t want a life of perfects. I didn’t want to do something just to check a box off my list.”
She tipped the glass back with a wince. “I was supposed to go off to college and earn a degree before marrying a man who would ensure I never had to work while I raised our two children. I would’ve thrown myself into church fundraisers and country club lunches…only, I didn’t want to go back to being the girl who followed all the rules. I didn’t want to be my mother.”
I snorted back a sudden laugh. “And here I’ve done everything by the book to avoid becoming you and letting Nan down. Well, until Nate, that is.”
/> “But are you happy, Kate? My only goal as a mother was to raise my kids to think for themselves and to chase their dreams, no matter how crazy they seemed. I thought by giving your grandparents the money, it would give you the courage to do just that.”
I studied the patterns in the wood. “For a long time, I think I was just checking boxes, fighting to make sure that no matter how bad things got, it always looked perfect from the outside. Do you ever think about what your life would’ve been like had you not gotten pregnant?”
To my surprise, she nodded. “Yeah, there were days where I found myself thinking about where I would’ve ended up had I just gone to college and married a man that my parents approved of. Then, I realized by doing so, I’d erased the only things in my life that I was sure about. If I’d made different choices, then I would’ve spent the rest of my life wondering where Jamie was and imagining what our children would’ve looked like.”
“That’s how I feel about Nate,” I blurted out in response. “I wasted all my time checking off boxes and creating the ideal partner in my head. Do you know that Nate didn’t meet any of my criteria? Not one thing. And nothing about our relationship has been perfect—”
“Who wants perfection, though? I want passion.” My mother placed a hand over her chest. “I want to feel it here. I want to know that if I fall apart, he’s willing to go to the ends of the earth to pull me back together.”
I couldn’t imagine Nate going to the ends of anything for me.
He would’ve left it to the police, distancing himself from the entire thing. I shoved the thought back to the dark recesses of my mind before approaching a topic my mother had shied away from for too long. “Did he go after the men who hurt you?”
Now that I knew the truth about how we’d ended up with my grandparents, I fought through my drunken haze to recall the things Dakota had said over voicemail the night I left Nate. “They didn’t just hurt you, did they? They raped you.”
My mother’s mouth twisted up, and she let out a sharp breath before quietly admitting, “It’s been sixteen years and sometimes, I still wake up convinced that they’re in the room with me.”
Savior: Silent Phoenix MC Series: Book Five Page 17
