Skylar (The Club Girl Diaries Book 7)

by Addison Jane

  I ground my teeth. The more Ally talked, the angrier I got. I didn’t want to hear anymore, but I knew that this was important. I couldn’t let these assholes get away with what they were doing, or what they had already done to Sky. She had spent the last six years forcing her memories of her childhood into the back of her mind, never really dealing with what she’d been through. That wasn’t fucking healthy. Now it was back in full force and hitting her from all sides. There would be a point where she would have to face what happened to her and find a way to work through it. Right now, though, she was just doing what she was accustom to—pretending it wasn’t there.

  “I brought Ally here to give you some info on the Colony, given she’s helped a few girls from there to get out and start new,” Rivet said with some sadness in his tone. “I’m telling you now, man, it ain’t pretty.”

  Inhaling deeply, I squared my shoulders and tried to put myself into a place where I wouldn’t let what she was about to tell me take over and send me into a haze.

  Ally shifted from one foot to the other nervously, as she watched me try to deal with my self-control. “You care about her a lot?” she asked, the question innocent but extremely loaded.

  Why did this shit make me so upset?

  Was it because I was a firm believer in a man never laying his hands on a woman, or was it because these fuckers had put their hands on one woman in particular?

  “Just explain,” I growled, not wanting to even touch the question when I had no fucking idea myself.

  Ally nodded. “I’ve had two girls from the Colony referred to me after they ran. Women’s shelters and places like that where they usually end up, often recommend they come see me because of the resources I have with families and places willing to take them in and give them jobs so they can start new lives.”

  I rolled my shoulders impatiently, trying not to look like I was being rude. The girl was good, she was doing work that not a lot of people would even know about. But all I wanted to know was, what the hell we were dealing with and whether Skylar was in trouble.

  “The girls, they couldn’t have been more different.” My ears perked up, and I stood a little straighter. “One had grown up there, she was around nineteen, had been married to her second cousin a few months before and just decided she was done. The other…” Ally shook her head and looked at Rivet who gestured for her to keep going. She took a deep breath and turned her gaze back to me. “The other girl, she was a foster kid from California who had been having trouble with her foster family. She was spending a lot of time drinking and partying and one day was introduced to this guy who, I guess, offered her an escape.”

  “There’s a punchline here isn’t there,” Leo said, watching Ally intently, his eyes narrowed as though he was expecting the worst.

  He would be right.

  “He drugged her, and she wound up shackled in a house, the man there claiming he had bought her and now owned her.” Ally’s voice was scratchy, and I could tell even though she knew the story, it was still one that had a huge impact on her and her emotions. “She was there for months, raped continuously, beaten when she would try to fight back. Eventually, she realized that the man gave her more freedom the more obedient she was.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I cursed, scrubbing at my face as if I must be imagining this shit. I knew there were some fucking crazy people out there but this… my brain couldn’t even compute. “She got out, though?”

  “The more submissive she was, the more he started to allow her to do things. He would take her to the Colony church gatherings, he would allow her into the kitchen to cook for him. Eventually, she got pregnant, and he took her into town to see the Colony doctor,” Ally explained. “They sent her to the bathroom to take a pregnancy test, and she climbed out the window. She hid out until it was dark and then made her way to the highway and caught a ride with a trucker until they hit a major city and she went to the police.”

  “And did they do anything?” Leo asked, sitting forward as if excited to hear that this guy had been thrown in jail for life.

  Ally’s grimace told me that it wasn’t the case at all. “Twelve hours after she ran, they searched the house, there was no evidence, and everyone they interviewed told the cops she had been there willingly, and they were a perfectly happy couple.”

  My stomach turned. I wanted to punch someone. “If your purpose was to piss me off, congrats, you win. Otherwise, I need to know exactly what you’re trying to tell me here.”

  “I’m telling you that there’s only so much similar DNA that you can mix before children start ending up with significant birth defects, so you need to start bringing in new DNA so the gene pool can stay healthy.” I could tell that even she didn’t want to say it, none of us really wanted to acknowledge what she was telling us.

  Rivet, on the other hand, wasn’t one to bullshit. “They’re stealing young girls that nobody cares about, like a fucking trafficking ring, but instead they’re using them purely to breed children so they can continue to grow and become stronger.”

  “That’s what I was afraid she was trying to say,” I muttered. “So what you’re telling me is they ain’t just some bible bashers with a god complex.”

  Rivet shook his head. “These guys are big time, Eagle. And you have two sisters whose father is their leader. One of whom has basically just kicked the Colony in the balls by telling them that she left to be a whore and that she loves it.”

  “They are serious about what they’re trying to create,” Leo weighed in thoughtfully. “And they aren’t going to let someone like Sky get into their people’s heads by disrespecting their leader.”

  In other words, we had what could possibly be a shit-storm coming our way.

  The one good thing I knew was that once the brothers heard this story, they’d be only too happy to take out these bastards if they came at us. The men in the club, they didn’t fuck around when it came to respect for their women and any woman for that matter. These guys were using lost young girls with no one else to turn to as breeding stock.

  What kind of sick and demented person did it take to even come up with that idea?

  Ones that needed a bullet through their head.

  And I was going to be only too happy to deliver it, first hand.

  I often wondered how the hell I was ever going to leave the club, knowing that the bed I had here was the most comfortable thing I’d ever slept on. It was soft and fluffy like a damn cloud, which Eagle had quickly noted that he hated with a passion, citing his love for sleeping on a hard surface.

  He’d soon shut his mouth when I’d told him it was fine if he wanted to go sleep somewhere else, trying not to outwardly jump for joy when he’d just rolled over and pulled me into his arms, grumbling to himself until he drifted off to sleep.

  I liked having him there.

  I more than liked it, and it was seriously screwing with my head.

  A sharp jolt woke me with a fright, and I almost tumbled off the side of the bed. I was still getting used to having someone else in my space at night since I’d spent the last few years with brothers coming in and walking straight back out afterward.

  While most of them were sweet, there wasn’t many of them who had a cuddly side. And by not many, I meant Eagle was the only guy in the history of me being at the club who had spent the entire night in my bed. And it had happened more than once since we got back from Dallas last week.

  Scrubbing at my eyes and fighting to adjust to the darkness, I looked over, my heart skipping a beat when I saw Eagle sitting straight up in bed, his chest heaving and his fingers clawing at his throat as if he was fighting for breath.

  I put my hand on his back, and his body jumped like I had shocked him, so I quickly withdrew it again. “Eagle?” I tried, keeping my voice soft and calm. “Eagle, are you okay?”

  He wouldn’t look at me as I crawled a little closer, trying to get in front of him. His eyes were open wide like he was scared, but they were glazed and staring straig
ht ahead, not focusing on anything in particular.

  I remembered the way he had reacted when I’d climbed on the bike behind him for the first time and wrapped my arms around his body. It was like the pressure of my body against him, had triggered an episode, one like this where his heart was racing, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe, even though there was nothing stopping him.

  “Eagle, you need to breathe,” I told him slowly and sternly. “Inhale with me, come on.” I made a production about taking in a huge breath, my shoulders lifting dramatically as I showed how my lungs were filling.

  The wheezing in his throat was lessening slightly, and I caught him blink a couple of times. So I kept at it, determined to help him fight back against the demons that drew on these memories inside his brain. It hurt me to see him so lost, but it also felt good to know that maybe I could do something to help or at least sit here and hold his hand until it passes.

  “Inhale,” I told him again, doing the same thing as before.

  I reached out and touched his hand. It was gripping the bedsheet so tightly that I knew I could never pry it out of his grip but trying whatever I could to soothe that overwhelming flow of emotions and memories that I’m sure were passing through his mind at that moment.

  “Inhale,” I said one more time, and that seemed to be the kicker. His eyes suddenly focused on me and he gasped, much like someone would if they were sleeping and woken suddenly by a bad dream. “Breathe, inhale, and breathe,” I whispered soothingly.

  I reached over and switched on the lamp beside the bed, it was dim and shone just enough light so we could see each other properly without striking us both blind. There was sweat glistening on Eagle’s forehead and chest, and his hair was a complete mess, sticking up all over the place. I continued to lazily rub the back of his hand as he focused on taking in air and becoming aware of where he was, that he was safe and he wasn’t suffocating.

  “Fuck,” he cursed softly, throwing the blankets back and slipping out of bed, leaving me missing the warmth of his hand in mine. He went for a bottle of water which was on my desk and chugged it back. Even with the dim light, I noticed his hand was shaking before he slammed the water bottle down on the desk.

  I wanted to let him have his moment, let him gather his head and process. It couldn’t be easy slipping into those kind of states where I could tell from the way he was acting, that they must have felt so goddamn real. I have plenty of memories, some of them horrific and while they made me feel ill to think about them, I can’t imagine having to relive those moments over and over again.

  “I know asking if you’re okay is kind of a dumb question, but I really do want you to be okay.”

  He huffed out a breath, it almost sounded like an attempt at a laugh before he moved back over to the bed and sat back against the headboard, looking up at the ceiling. “You know…” he started, his voice still a little raw, “… most of my brothers haven’t ever seen me have an episode.”

  I turned my body to face him, tucking the sheet around me. “Way to make a girl feel special,” I teased, enjoying the way the corner of his mouth pulled up. “Can I ask?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut before opening them, his gaze fixed on me. “Ask what?”

  Licking my lips, I tried to make my mouth form the words, but at the last second, I chickened out and shook my head. “Never mind,” I told him with a gentle smile. It really was none of my business. I’d spent years letting brothers do their things, never asking personal questions unless it was something they had brought up. “We should get back to sleep, if you’re okay now?”

  “Sky,” he growled, but I looked the other way reaching for the lamp. Eagle’s large hand grasped my wrist, holding me captive and not letting me turn away. “Just ask the damn question.”

  I turned and looked at him from beneath my eyelashes, he already knew what I was going to ask, of course, he did, he wasn’t fucking stupid. But my mouth was suddenly dry at the realization that once we stepped into this, it could be the point of no return. Things were about to get really intimate, not in the sexual sense but in a sense he was letting me in to hear about a part of himself which he’d kept hidden from almost everyone.

  “Why…” I cleared my throat, feeling it crackle with emotion. “Why do you feel like you can’t breathe?”

  Eagle had quickly turned from a man who I knew nothing about, to someone who I felt like I could trust with anything, and who I wanted to fight for when he was feeling like the world around him was crumbling. He’d stood for me, no questions asked, no second-guessing.

  We both wanted to protect and put ourselves in the way of the demons of the other’s past. I just had this overwhelming need to know his story, find out who he was and what happened to make him the person he was today. I wasn’t trying to fix him, or think that I would be the one to take the pain away. But his story was a part of him, and that made it essential.

  It was a few seconds before his body actually relaxed against the headboard, and he started to explain.

  “Leo and I served together. We were in the same unit for years, we all got deployed together, sent out together. There were times when we would have to sit around for hours out in the middle of nowhere waiting for pickups or drop-offs.” I listened intently, picking up the pillow from behind me and hugging it to my front. “I knew everything about every single one of those men and women. I knew their kids. I knew their birthdays. I knew what kind of food they hated. Fuck, I even knew what date the girls were due to get their periods.” He rolled his eyes, but I could see the corner of his mouth twitch as though that one memory, was at least a pleasant one. It didn’t last long though, a mask of devastation falling over him, his eyes staring at nothing.

  My heart ached. I wanted to hear his story so badly, but seeing him this way just made me want to wrap him in my arms and rock him back and forth like a child. I needed to comfort him, I didn’t care about anything else but making sure he was okay, and right now, he was definitely not looking like he was okay.

  I crawled across the bed. He held up his hands to stop me, but I pushed them out of the way and climbed onto his lap, straddling his legs and placing my hands on his chest. We’d been in this position before, at the hotel on the way to Dallas. I could feel his body instantly relax as I settled myself there, supporting him, but not crowding him to the point where he would lose it again. He was lost in his story, his eyes wandering but his hands tracing gentle patterns as they relaxed onto my thigh.

  “We were heading to the airport,” he whispered.

  My gut sank. I knew where this was going. They were headed home. They were about to get out of this war zone and go back to their families.

  “The road should have been swept already. Leo will tell you it was his fault, but it wasn’t, it was the fault of the team ahead of us who we trusted and who had failed to do a thorough job.”

  A chill was settling over my body, but I didn’t let it get to me, I didn’t move to pull the blanket up around me. I just focused on him.

  “It was an IED. Front tire missed it, back right though was a perfect hit. It threw us through the air. We rolled a few times before we landed on our fucking roof.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “Leo and I were the closest to the front and on the opposite side. The guys closest died instantly.”

  His hands moved up the side of my hips and tickled my waist, but his eyes were still trained over my shoulder as if as he was explaining it, he was watching it happen on a television or a movie screen.

  “I didn’t realize at the time, but I’d broken a rib, and it had punctured my lung,” he explained, huffing out a laugh like it was amusing for him to be so seriously injured and have no idea. “I was fighting for breath, and there were things getting in the way. Things pressing down on me and I just wanted to fight them off, so I shoved at whatever it was to try and find that fresh air, as well as the car filling with smoke, and Leo trying to tell me that our people were on their way.”

  There it was, the teen g
irl who crashed and the smell of the smoke were like a slap in the face. That’s why he’d frozen up and hadn’t been able to move.

  “I had a concussion as well,” he continued, swallowing tightly. “That’s why I didn’t realize at the time that what I was fighting off, were actually arms and legs of my teammates who were hanging there limp.”

  For a second I wondered if my heart would be able to contain the pressure it was under right then, full of so much pain, beating so damn hard. Tears dripped down my cheeks, and I swiped at them with the back of my hand, drawing Eagle’s attention back to my face.

  “Don’t cry,” he said, taking my face in his hands and using his thumbs to wipe under my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, sniffling softly. Everything was starting to make sense now. The reason he was drawn back there when he felt like he was too crowded, the memories of his friends’ bodies pushing down on him.

  He shook his head. “You don’t have to be. Every single one of us went out there knowing there was a chance we might not make it back. We know it’s not going to be pretty, and a fair percentage of men and women who served at the same time as I did, returned home with PTSD.” He lay his head back against the headboard and sighed. “It impacts people in different ways, for some it’s worse than others. Some days I feel normal. Other days I struggle to drag my ass out of bed. Episodes like this, they drain the energy from me, leave me exhausted.”

  I licked my dry lips, tasting the salt of my tears which had escaped and dried there. “I’m not going to pretend I know anything about PTSD, so please don’t take offense, but will it ever go away?”

  “No offense taken. But it’s hard, you know?” he said quietly. “To have people constantly asking you like… hey, are you feeling better? How are things going? Oh… it’ll take time, but you’ll get there.” He squeezed his hands into fists, and my instant reaction was to cover them with my own hands, to try and soothe the frustration I knew he must be feeling.