“I think it’s time you get some answers,” Liam told the other man softly. “There’s only so often a man can make a fool of himself. You feel me?”
“I do, and it’s not like I want to make a fuckin’ fool out of myself. I was just trying to win her trust.”
“Sometimes you can’t win it,” Tyler spoke up. “Sometimes you gotta take it.”
“Is that what you did with Meredith?” Travis was interested. He didn’t know how to approach this woman in his life anymore.
“I didn’t take it. She had been through a lot, but I did explain to her at every turn that I was with her and I understood that she needed time.”
Maybe that was where he’d gone wrong. They never really talked; he just assumed she didn’t want to. And maybe she didn’t, but maybe she needed to. “Twenty-four hours?” he asked them again.
Liam nodded. “That’s all you get. After that, I’m putting both Rooster and Jagger onto you. Go out the back, we’ll take care of the rest.”
Chapter Nine
Waiting until Christine got off work was one of the hardest things that Travis had ever done. He’d given himself a pep talk about what a pussy he was being, how he needed to man up and tell this woman what he needed her to do. He’d told himself he needed to tell her there would be no more of this secrecy, that she was going to be truthful with him. If she couldn’t be truthful, he was going to cut her loose. That’s what he’d told himself.
As her car pulled into her driveway, the fight almost went out of him. He had never been the one that all the women looked up to, he didn’t have the air of authority that Liam had, the dangerous edge that Tyler did, the good looks that got Jagger everything he wanted, or the wounded soul that Layne carried around (as he should) like a badge of honor. Travis had always been plain Pete. Nothing was special about him, except for his mind. Now, he was scared that this woman had used it, not in the way that other people used it, but used it to get to him and possibly hurt the people he cared about.
“Travis?” she questioned as she got out of the car and shouldered her purse. He looked frazzled and haggard. “Is everything alright? You cancelled lunch and it got me nervous.”
“Nah.” He shook his head, rubbing his hand along his jaw. Today he wore scruff, he was contemplating letting it grow into a goatee. “Everything’s not alright. I need to talk to you.”
The way he spoke the words made her blood turn cold. It was almost the way Clinton had spoken to her. She didn’t like it one bit, and it made her nervous. “What did I do?”
“It’s not anything you did.” It’s what you haven’t done, he wanted to add. It’s what you’ve made me do, the person you’ve turned me into.
“Can we talk out here, or do we need to go inside?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“Inside,” the tone of his voice told her not to ask questions.
She fumbled with the lock after they made their way to the door, and she cursed herself. When she’d left Clinton, she had promised herself that she would not allow another man to make her feel this way again. That didn’t stop her from letting Travis move her out of the way and put the code in to open the door for them. Immediately, she went to the couch and had a seat, pressing her knees together and putting her purse in her lap. She looked down and refused to meet his eyes.
“Stop,” he told her, breathing deeply. “Stop looking like I’m about to give you a beating.”
“Isn’t that what’s going to happen here?” she asked, fear that she hated in her voice.
In this moment, he hated the Heaven Hill MC, he hated Rooster Hancock, and he absolutely hated that he’d been forced to take this position with her. “No, I’m not going to physically hurt you,” he told her, disgusted with himself.
“Sometimes words hurt just as much.”
It was that small voice, those words spoken, that got to him. “Then you need to be honest with me, as honest as you’ve ever been with me, because right now I could be in a lot of damn trouble over you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, even though she didn’t want to know the answer.
“Somebody wants you back bad. They’ve threatened the MC over it.”
She was quiet, her face a mask of shock. There, let that sink in, he thought. Let her see what kind of position she’s put me in. Let her see what kind of mindfuck I have going on over this whole situation. It killed him to be quiet for long moments. Finally he spoke. “Tell me.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“You will.” His voice left no room for argument. If he wanted to keep the life he built for himself, he was going to have to be tough with her. It was going to be hard on the both of them, but sometimes feelings and the possibility of caring for someone enough to love them wasn’t easy. He wasn’t ready to tell her these things, but he knew which way he was moving, and he didn’t want to give it up.
She shook her head, her dark hair flying around her head. “I can’t.”
“Either you tell me, so I can figure out how in the fuck to protect you, or I hand you over. What do you think about that? You’ve tested every piece of me, and I’ve shown you nothing that you can’t trust. I need you to help me now, and if you’re not going to, then I have to do what’s best for me. This can’t be a relationship until you meet me halfway.” He tested out the authoritative tone that he’d rarely ever taken with anyone. Fuck, he rarely ever had to. In his cave, he only had to answer to himself—Liam sometimes, but usually just himself. Now that he was being asked to answer to other people, he wasn’t sure how well he liked that.
“I think I deserve to be handed over to him for making you be this person for months.”
He shook his head this time. “Not what I’m looking for, Christy. You matter; you’re worth something to me. I’m being a hard ass because I want you to fight with me, not against me. Don’t you see that?”
“I’m worth a status symbol, that’s all. I’m the one that got away.”
“I don’t believe that,” he told her.
“Believe whatever the fuck you want,” she yelled. For the first time, she yelled. “I am the one that got away. Others tried. When they came back, they were taken into the room, and I never saw them again. I know they were killed, I know they were. There was no way they couldn’t have been after the things I heard in that room. We had no voice, none. One by one, we tried to get away, and everyone failed. Everyone but me. Now he wants a second chance. He wants to make sure he keeps his perfect record,” she blurted out.
“What do you mean ‘all of them’? There was more than just you?” He was finally getting some of the answers that he’d craved so badly for months.
“Yes! Off and on there were up to five at a time.”
Now he was even more confused than when he’d started talking to her. In his head, he could hear Tyler telling him to take it. She was offering him a little nugget, he had to take it and run with it. Very carefully, he sat across from her and took her hands in his. “I have done everything I can do for the past few months to protect you. My ability is being tested and it’s being compromised. I don’t want you to go back to this place; I don’t want you to live in fear. I want you to be happy and live the life that I know you can. I want you to live that life with me, but I need to be able to be the man that can make that happen. Help me.”
She started to interrupt him, and he put his finger to her lips.
“I know you want that life because you ran. If you were down to being subservient forever, you would have stayed, you wouldn’t have run. You got me? You wanted to do something better for yourself, something you probably didn’t even know that you needed, but you did. If you had that much courage to run, to leave this place that scared you so badly, why are you so scared to tell me about it? Don’t you realize that by not talking about it, you’re giving him power? You’re hiding from that part of your life, and it’s still holding you captive. You talk to me about it…you speak the words. You set it free, Christy. You set that motherfucker
free and let it fly like a bird.” Great, now he was paraphrasing Lynyrd Skynyrd, but sometimes you had to do what you had to do.
“There’s no other way?”
Travis could see her warring inside herself. The question was in her eyes, and she was swaying, coming around to his way of thinking. He was as close as he had ever been to being allowed in. That trust was amazing, he could feel it, he welcomed it. All she had to do was invite him into her thoughts, into her memories, into her life. “There isn’t. I wish there was. I don’t want to cause you anymore pain, it’s the last thing I want to do. Let me be real honest with you, though. If you don’t do this, if you don’t let me in, Jagger’s going to find out in the worst way about you. I know that you want that on your terms, not someone else’s. Am I right about that?”
She thought about her brother. He deserved more than to be used in the same game that she was. As long as he didn’t know about her, they could use her as a bargaining tool—on anyone that knew about her. If Jagger was going to find out, she wanted for him to find out on her terms, not anyone else’s. That would require her letting Travis know about her life; that would mean giving voice to things she’d never given voice to before. Hell, some of it she’d never even thought about once it happened and it was over. There was no time to be scared anymore, there was no time to let fear rule her—it could still be there, but it couldn’t rule her. She couldn’t let it rule Jagger or Travis.
“Okay.” She swallowed to wet her dry throat and licked her cracked lips.
“You good?” he asked, only halfway believing that she had just agreed to tell him what had happened with her. He ran his hand along her back, daring to touch her, knowing that sometimes you just needed the touch of another human being to bring you back from the brink.
“I’m not good, but I’ll be honest with you. I warn you, this could take a while.”
He sat back against the couch, propping his feet up in a relaxed manner. He put his hands on his stomach and offered her a small smile. “I got all night. However long it takes you, I got the time.”
And she knew that he did. Whatever she needed. He always seemed to have it. He would need it in spades tonight because she had never told her story to anyone, and she wasn’t sure she could make it through, but for him, she was willing to try.
Chapter Ten
“Clinton was a very bad man,” she started.
Finally, he had a name. Even with just a first name, sometimes he could find out who people were. He was one of the best at what he did, no matter who or what he usually did it for. “In what way?” he asked, even though he had some sort of idea. It seemed like it would help to ask her questions, that way she didn’t have to necessarily offer anything.
She appeared to struggle with the answer, even though he had provided the question. “He was mean. You know how some people are just evil? That was him.” There had been a glint to his eye, even the first day she’d come to the home. The way he looked at her, it was as if someone was walking on her grave, and at that point, she’d known she was in trouble. She had begged her father not to leave her there, had prayed that Jagger would show up every day, but he never came, and her father never came back either.
“When did you find out?” He was storing all the information in his head, so that he could access it when he needed to.
“The first night I was there,” she whispered. “There was another girl who hadn’t cooked his dinner just the way he liked. He backhanded her with a cast iron griddle.”
“Jesus,” he breathed. “Was it still hot?” He couldn’t even begin to imagine that pain. He’d been shot before, but even that would probably pale in comparison.
“It was warm, and the way the women reacted, he did it often enough.” She shivered involuntarily.
There were a million questions running through Travis’ mind. “Who were these other women, and where did they come from?”
She shrugged. “That something I could never figure out, because one by one they vanished until it was just me. After me, he didn’t bring any more women into the family. I don’t know why, I never asked, because I didn’t want him to think that he needed to bring someone else in. I couldn’t imagine this happening to another woman. But I watched him.” She stopped and took a breath, putting her hair behind her ears. “He looked at me differently than the others, before they were gone. In moments, he would treat me with tenderness, but it was even scarier to me when he did that.”
“He was in love with you?” That thought pissed him off. He didn’t want any other man having some sort of claim on her.
“I think so,” she whispered. “In his own way, I believe he was in love with me. That’s why he fought so hard to keep me, that’s why it killed him when I went away, why I think he’s still trying to find me.”
He hated to be the one to break the news to her, that this man was still trying to find her and he now had the club up against a wall. “I’m going to be completely honest with you, and because of that, I need you to be completely honest with me.”
She still wasn’t sure that she could do that, but she nodded anyway.
“He is trying to find you, and he’s threatened the club. I’m going to have to tell Jagger about you. I’ve been given twenty-four hours to get you on board. If not, it’s not going to matter. I need you to be honest with me and let us protect you.”
She gasped, the color draining from her face. “What?”
“I can’t explain everything to you right now, but I need you to trust me when I tell you that he’s threatened some very powerful people within the club, and those people are not gonna sit back and let him play them for a fool. They will retaliate. This will be very ugly, and I want to make sure that you’re protected. In order to do that, I need you to be honest with me. What was his business? Why did he want you? What did he do to you?”
“I can’t.” She shook her head, closing her eyes. “I can’t tell you all that.” It was embarrassing, and she would be relieving moments and memories that she’d sworn she would not go back to ever again. That had been the only thing that had gotten her up in the morning at the CRISIS center, the fact that she had told herself she did not have to relive her captivity. It was beginning to look like he’d even ruined that for her.
“You have to, Christy.” His voice took on a hard edge to it. “I’m fixing to tell one of my brothers that I’ve known this secret for months and haven’t told him. Jagger will rip me apart, and damnit, I need to know it’s for something.” He was desperate. “I’ve followed you around for months, like a goddamn puppy dog. I’ve helped you try to get your life back together. I need you to throw me something here.”
Before he knew what she was doing, she’d thrown herself at him, circled her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, capturing his lips with hers. It was as if a bomb had gone off in his body. He had been on edge with her for weeks, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, he was trying to be the good guy for once. His fingers tangled in her hair and pulled, situating it to his liking as he took over the kiss, trailing his other hand down her side, cupping her hip as he gently pushed her down onto the couch. His body covered hers, but he was careful to keep most of his weight off, until she hooked her legs around his waist.
“Travis,” she breathed. How had they gotten here? She wasn’t sure; she just knew she hadn’t wanted to talk to him anymore. She didn’t want to think of the things she’d experienced in that house; she wanted to make new memories and erase the bad ones. If her life was going to implode, she wanted one memory of something good happening to her. She pushed against his T-shirt, running her fingers up the skin she had just exposed.
It took a super-human force of will, but he pulled himself back from the out-of-control kiss. “Stop,” he breathed heavily against her lips. “Stop.”
It was like throwing cold water over her and she felt stupid. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t do that,” he told her. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, but I
can’t let you distract me from why I’m here. I still need answers.”
“Can I answer them in the morning? I’m really tired, and I need you to trust me. I need to get my head in the right place,” she told him. “I just need some time to myself.”
Could he do that? “Promise me that you’ll keep the system on, that you won’t leave this house. I don’t think it’s safe.”
“I promise,” she told him, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Fine, I’ll be here first thing in the morning, and then, I want all the answers to every question I have.”
She nodded and knew he was telling her the truth. They had come to an impasse in their relationship, and now it was either time for her to run or stay and fight. Honestly, she still wasn’t sure what she was going to do.
Steele hadn’t been sure he’d made the right decision, leaving Christine at her house by herself. He had the distinct impression that she was going to run. If she did, he would find her, he had her tech’d up. She couldn’t even begin to know how many tracking devices she carried on her. He had hoped that she would come back to the clubhouse with him, that she would accept the things he was telling her, but she had to come to grips with it in her own mind, he reasoned. He understood that, but it didn’t mean that he had to like it.
Steele groaned and leaned against the soft cushion of the chair that was his throne when he was in the cave. Every time other members of the club came in, they would give him shit about how he sat in a recliner and not a computer chair, but he just brushed it off. Let them sit at a computer for most of their damn day and not be comfortable.
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