We Belong: MC Romance (Rattler Romance Book 1)

by Evie Bennet

  He shook his head, exasperated. “It feels like there are some hidden…limits we keep encroaching on, and I don’t know how to approach them if I don’t even know what they are.”

  Chest tightening, I nodded. It was only fair. I knew about his father, about addiction. Maybe I could tell him. I’d only have to do it once.

  “Fine.”

  “Fine?”

  I took a deep breath, trying to figure out where to start without letting that toxic presence infiltrate my life again. “Fine.”

  12

  Past

  There was a certain freedom that came with the wind whipping at my face, hair flowing behind me like ribbons on a bicycle, even under my helmet.

  My heart hummed, my cheek pressed against Reed’s leather with a humbling amount of satisfaction. I could feel his heartbeat. Even my inner cynic didn’t protest how good everything felt. My arms looped tight around his chest, my hand clamped over his wrist so my whole pulse was paired with his. The motor rumbled underneath us, the whole universe spinning.

  Splotches of color whirled past, like the world was being painted right as we thundered through it.

  Maybe the world was made for us.

  Or maybe love just made it brighter.

  I stored that feeling of oddly centered free-fall for my poetry. It was like gravity pushed the two of us together, no matter what the direction. The world was meant for us to be together.

  I thought I heard Reed chuckle as I nuzzled against his shoulder. There was no point in talking when we were riding. It wasn’t like we could hear each other over the roar of the motor. As we got into Vernon Hills, there were a few stoplights that allowed him to look over his shoulder and ask, “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  A brief kiss and we were off.

  We made our way to a beautiful view along the river. The way he pulled to a stop and stretched his back into me made me feel like maybe he was reluctant to stop riding altogether. Maybe I was projecting.

  “You want to stretch your legs first?”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  “You keep saying things like ‘fine’.” He turned, stark blue eyes searching my face as we struggled to our feet. “I want you to be good.”

  I tempered down a coy smile. “Is that so?”

  “Don’t tempt me to do dirty things in the woods, Betty, or the ride back could get very uncomfortable.”

  “I’m willing to risk it.”

  His chuckle followed me as I sauntered ahead. The tips of his fingers curled into mine, a perfect chain link.

  Crunching foliage underfoot, we made our way to a little piece of woods with a fallen log that Reed laughed at and declared was his thinking spot from when he was a teen.

  “What did you think about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Try to remember.”

  I sat him down, rearranging his loose locks until they were swooped in the boyish way they tended to fall when he laughed really hard. Such an intelligent, icy blue peeked out from under long, feathered lashes. Sharpness and softness. We contrasted so well together.

  Whatever he was thinking about made me want to comfort him. I leaned forward to cup his face between my hands and kiss him, reassure him I was there. His mouth moved against mine, keeping a soft, languorous tempo. Fingertips pressed into my hips until I was seated in his lap. The way he pushed his face against mine made me feel like I should never let go. Not that I ever would.

  We were safe with each other.

  “I’ve got you,” I whispered, scratching my nails along his scalp. “I’ve got you, Reed.”

  He nosed his way back into my kisses, hands snaking up under my shirt like he was freezing and needed my warmth.

  It was tender, but getting more desperate, hungry.

  “Reed, what are you thi—”

  He cut me off with an open-mouthed kiss, swallowing the word. He unhooked my bra with one hand while the other bypassed the cup to thumb over my nipple. I gasped, lifting myself off of his lap.

  We should stop. We should talk about this.

  But we didn’t. We kept pulling at each other’s clothes. We were fucking on the log, reclaiming each other endlessly, the thick slap of flesh on flesh the only sounds besides our busied moans and the roar of the river beyond.

  “I love you,” he declared against my skin. Without the warmth of his breath, I might not have been sure he said anything at all.

  “I love you. I’m here,” I repeated, lightly tugging his hair to bring color back to his world.

  A strangled grunt accompanied a thrust hard enough for my hips to ache. With one last effort, he hauled me higher up and off of him, jerking desperately until hot, wet, warmth spilled along my thighs. Even as his furrowed, ecstasy-ridden face softened, his lips found mine again.

  Disentangling myself was a bit awkward, especially since he insisted on finishing me off, his thumb tracing my clit while his slick fingers hooked inside of me. I didn’t think we’d get pregnant, but everything felt slightly savage in a way that made my breasts ache to be sucked.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Please, baby. Let me take care of you.”

  I came while clutching the back of his neck, my shoulders tense and calves sore.

  “I love you so fucking much,” he repeated, kissing my shoulders and lips. “Am I good to you, Betty?”

  “Of course, but why are you asking now?”

  “I just need to feel close to you.”

  I let him kiss me for a while longer and hold me as long as he needed. He stroked my skin like I was the only thing tethering him to the world. Sitting bare-assed on a tree seemed like a bad idea, so he was in his jeans, but I was too focused on being there for him to put on my clothes and just moved closer into him so my breasts were covered by his body.

  “Please. Talk to me.”

  With a few lingering kisses, he started helping me redress, muttering, “Come here. There you go.” Eventually, I was covered enough that I could sit beside him on the log without being charged for indecent exposure. We resettled into the peace and mystery of the woods.

  It was time.

  Elbows on his knees, Reed leaned forward, staring past the grass and ground as if the footprints of his youth were still buried there. “I used to think about hurting people.” My mouth sought the familiar pressure of his shoulder, just behind his double diamond tattoo. “Not even me necessarily hurting them, just what it means to hurt someone. I wasn’t—it wasn’t a great time in my life.”

  “Your mom?” I asked, tilting my head so my cheek lay against him. “The Rattlers?”

  “There was a lot, yeah. Dad was sort of obviously not great. Mom packed up Michelle and left so I was just… there. Forced to do things to keep together the only family that seemed willing to stay. Or unable to leave, at the very least. Not without—not without consequences.” He reached for a fallen branch, snapping it against the ground. The twig split and cracked. Reed sent it sailing across our little clearing before it had time for a clean break.

  “What did you think about it?”

  “About my family or about consequences?”

  “About hurting people.”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded defeated. It wasn’t like he disliked the Rattlers. I’d witnessed the devotion and relative ease he felt at Sidewinders in his jacket. But it was different, doing work for them. Whatever that entailed. “There was a lot.” He wiped the whole lower half of his face like it could get rid of the feeling of being pinched. “And I-I’m worried that I’m going to hurt you, which is the last thing I’d ever want.”

  “The fact that you’re even worried about it shows what a good person you are.”

  He didn’t respond, staring into the woods and taking low, even breaths. Eventually, he closed his eyes. “I’ve left bruises. Bites. Red marks on your skin. Who knows what else I’d do to you?”

  “All those things, you’ve respected my boundaries. We’ve watched the playb
acks, listened and seen the way we treat one another. I have every reason to trust you and you have every reason to trust that I’d tell you if I ever felt…” Rubbing his shoulder, I tried to reframe my anxiety and panic. “Like we weren’t in the same place.”

  “You would talk to me?” he asked, eyebrows quirked, but not quite looking at me.

  “After everything, yeah. I think I would. I have to.” Backing up, I crossed my arms over my abdomen and hunched over my knees in almost the same position as him, facing out into the woods. “I didn’t used to be able to have bruises. I wasn’t… allowed to. They’re sort of beautiful and freeing to me now, a more loving version of the car grease, I guess. So even though I might freeze once in a while, I do think I’m getting better about trusting that when I communicate, the people I love won’t hurt me.”

  “Really?” He sounded hopeful before dipping back to concern. “What do you mean you weren’t allowed to have bruises?”

  It was now or never.

  “I left someone, Reedsy. I don’t know a normal way to tell you this, but I left everyone.” As expected, Reed looked shocked, like I’d pulled the rug out from under him. Wiping my face, I took a deep breath, just enough that I could purge the story out of me. “I know it sucks to grow up without your mom and your sister. I had… I have a mom and a sister I never see anymore either. But I guess I left them? It just… it feels like they left me, too.”

  I attempted to balance on the tree stump, looking at the underbrush, the broken ridges of leaves. My palms found comfort in the bark and smooth veiny ridges underneath me. “My parents divorced when I was young. Maybe five or six? I just remember them yelling a lot.” I swallowed, shaking my head at the way my heart rate increased at the memory. “But there was normal stuff too. The muffins and bake sales.” I chuckled in the attempt to clear the rubble shaking loose in my chest and wiped a stray tear. I wasn’t sad. Memories just tumbled out sometimes in tears, tense muscles, sharp breaths, or even anxious laughs.

  “They’d always be asking us stuff about each other. Trying to pit me and Amy against the other parent. It was a lot, but they finally seemed to start moving on. Mom remarried a man who had a son named Dale.” When I wiped my cheeks, the prickly remnants of bark on my palms scraped against my cheeks. I wondered if the dark marks would be there later and I just couldn’t see them. “He was a little older than Amy and me, and at first he seemed kind of aloof, but he liked to watch me and Amy play. And then he invited us to play with him, and…”

  The words got caught in my throat. Horrible. Impossible. The only way I could get through them was to pretend they happened to somebody else. In a way, they did.

  It wasn’t me.

  It was another life.

  I felt Reed’s thighs as he shifted closer to me, hand on my knee. But I wasn’t brave enough to check his expression. To see pity there. Or anger. Or anything, really, especially anything that might have made him look at me differently.

  Like I was weak.

  But I wasn’t.

  I was strong. I got out. I could get through this.

  “He used to play house with me and Amy. He’d be the-the daddy, or whatever. Baths. Work. That sort of thing.” I tried to ignore the hitch of Reed’s breath, the way his grip tightened on my knee. “Amy was old enough that she lost interest pretty quickly, but he... I guess he thought I was the good one or something, the easier target, at least.” Something invisible dragged through my insides like a trough, opening my guts to hot, muggy memories so everything could rot that much faster. “Our parents were big on acting like the perfect family, so I got used to pretending. Dale said he wanted to be an actor and that he needed help with scenes. If I didn’t want to, he’d hold me down. Tell me that I wasn’t a good sister. A good daughter.” My voice wobbled as the other role came to mind.

  I was playing at relationships in other people’s fantasies. It was real with Reed. I could give the words new meaning. It was eating at me, all those memories, the shame of a word that someone used to apply to me.

  “A good wife,” I said quietly.

  “Betty…” The sympathy in his voice nearly broke me. I couldn’t look at him.

  Sniffing, I turned my face away and felt Reed rubbing my leg reassuringly. “I couldn’t really get away, so he’d do almost anything he wanted with me.”

  Shame burned through my stomach and up my throat.

  “Amy didn’t believe me. She thought I was—well, she played with Dale, too, and that sort of thing never happened when she was around, so she didn’t think I was that great of a sister, either, thought maybe I was trying to get more attention or something. I wanted to be good. I wanted to be loved and protected and right.” My fingers curled into a loosely balled fist. I stared at the ridges of my knuckles and willed myself to move on in the story. “Mom was… well, she was busy with her work, so on weekends, I’d try to escape to Dad’s, where we’d work on cars, where I’d be safe.”

  I could get through this. I only had to tell him once.

  “But Dad traveled a lot for his work, so sometimes I’d be stuck at my mom’s. I’d lock my room or run away or just look out the window. And there was this boy—”

  I could see him in my mind’s eye. Brown hair, almost red at the roots. Milk chocolate eyes. Scar on his right brow from when he fell out of the treehouse.

  “Zack.” The name felt like a whisper, a belated surprise. “He was an only child. Lonely, like me. So we started playing together. I started imagining a life beyond the locked confines of my room where I could be strong and smart like Nancy Drew. I could have a best friend who loved and supported me, someone who was compassionate and just, even when no one else was watching. Maybe they’d be a good boyfriend too, someone who’d build a safe place for us to be together. So I played with Zack and signed up for every after-school activity I could think of just to get out of the house and keep up appearances of finding the path to the perfect family. The perfect life. We learned about each other. He was my first—” I swallowed the overwhelming urge to vomit. “My first real kiss and my first crush, too. I thought—well, I thought it was love. He always told me we couldn’t date for real because Dale freaked him out with the ‘overprotective brother’ routine, but we did other stuff.”

  Zack’s hands fumbling under my sweater in the treehouse was almost surreal to me now, a half-memory. I’d been so excited to try the scenario. A real one. One where I had a voice, one where I could breathe, could move, could choose.

  My toes dug into the ground, footprint dragged into a hole. “I had always assumed that once Dale moved out or any of us went to college, whatever Zack and I had would turn into something real, that he felt we were as important as I did. But he got kind of distant.” I chewed my lip, only vaguely aware of the pain. “I sensed he was losing interest in me, so I started watching his house a lot. I even snuck out my second-story bedroom one time to try and see him or at least get into his room.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?” I stilled, fingertips instinctively stuttering with the urge to dig in. “I meant, leaving the house, breaking in? I know that can be risky,” Reed clarified, gently rubbing my back.

  That’s what he cared about?

  He was so unbelievably sweet.

  “No. I’d learned how to pick locks by then. It came in handy if I was locked in or locked up.” I tried to push past the way Reed’s eyes widened in alarm. I couldn’t think about it. “But most of the time I wanted to know what was out there.”

  I wanted to get away.

  “If I knew other people’s secrets, I didn’t feel as lonely for some reason. Anyway, I was pretty familiar with Zack’s house by then and I knew from my mom, my sister, and Dale going through my things where to look and what would hurt so I could be better than they were.”

  Dale had burned my diary and any attempts I’d made to write poetry by hand. It felt like there was smoke in the air, my eyes watering and lungs spasming as I continued, “So I just sat in Zack’s room, staring at the
hair tie that wasn’t mine that sat on his nightstand, hoping he’d find me, comfort me, maybe be my friend again, or at the very least take away the feeling that I was… bad.”

  “Betty…”

  “No, but this is the good part,” I insisted, wiping my face with the back of my hand. “His father, Frank, found me, and he saw I was—”

  Broken. That was how it felt, anyway.

  “He saw I was hurt, so he kind of took me in.” I shrugged, spreading my palms out on my thighs. “He helped me figure out a lot of things. About myself. About Zack. About love.” I scratched my nails on the ripped seam of my denim.

  But he couldn’t change my family. No one could help me with that.

  “Even though I stopped seeing Zack, and that was hard at the time, I started seeing Frank. Not romantically,” I clarified, shaking my hands out. “He gave me a part time job. He gave me hope. Just envisioning that maybe there really was someone good out there, someone who didn’t want to hurt me, who wanted to love me and make me happy and safe and wanted me to love them in return. When I asked Frank if I should be with a man like him, he said I should find someone whose passions aligned with mine in a way that nurtured my heart instead of consuming it but also someone I trusted enough not to have to do things like search his room for traces of proof he still liked me. We talked about other stuff, but he was always good in ways that I wasn’t.”

  The words were trembling now, rolling through my throat as hot tears streamed down my face.

  “I didn’t tell him everything. I just… I couldn’t. Dale would’ve burned down their house or broken my neck and I didn’t need that added to my conscience.”

  “I’m so thankful you got out, baby,” Reed cooed, wiping my cheeks. My eyelashes felt so thick and heavy, like impossible, tangled brush. “I know what it’s like to be scared and to scare people out of saying anything.”

  I cried harder, fists curling into his jacket.

  “I’m sorry.” He squatted in front of me, wiping my face as panic wobbled through his voice. “I’m sorry, baby. Tell me. You can tell me anything and no one’s gonna hurt you. I’m a fucking monster and I don’t deserve you, but you can tell me anything. Please. You’re so strong and I promise I’m here for you.”