Wave the fucking wand.
Make it go away.
Begone!
I needed something catastrophic to happen to me. Something to jar me out of thinking about killing myself day in and day out because the haunting ghosts were real. What better way to chase them away than with an angry demon from hell?
My solution—Rape me!
Jynx’s moves were spectacular and brilliant. His handsome model physique masked his inner fiend, and I never realized what nasty things could happen by placing the bait.
I managed to acquire a sadist who trapped me, and I fell in love with him.
Love hurt much worse than bruises.
He did things to not only make me forget but change my entire outlook for the rest of my life. Instead of contemplating ways to end it all, I filled my head with the possibilities of his endless love. I was hiccuping on the past but jonesing for a fix of his authority.
Feeding the craving is all I think about.
Nothing else matters.
But is it love?
His hands dripped with red—defending me, protecting me, guarding me. I was his possession. He was my obsession. And in the darkness, we found passion. My eyes close tight as the blood pressure cuff cinches around my arm.
“I don’t want romance.”
“Do no harm doesn’t exist in my vernacular.”
“I’m not innocent. I’ve never raped or killed anyone. Or abducted anyone until you.”
“I desperately want to fuck you into next week.”
“I advise taking you to the hospital,” the medic says as I return to reality, abandoning the fantasy of Jynx Monroe. It hurts. I hurt. “Your blood pressure is elevated.”
Jynx was ripped from my world.
Of course, my blood pressure is elevated, idiot.
Eddie is taken by airflight to the hospital, where he is pronounced dead on arrival. And I spend most of the night cradled in Axel’s arms in the emergency room. No rape occurred. No kit was needed. I have major trauma with deep bruising to my torso, so I’m kept overnight for observation and released the next morning.
Despite his delightful charm, begging me to stay, Axel agrees to pack a small bag at the hotel for me. He drives me directly to the airport after I’m released from the hospital.
Gripping my hand, he stops in the unloading zone. “Are you sure, Ekky?”
“I’m sure if I don’t get away from this life that he will destroy me.”
“I really wanted you as my sister,” he softly confides, squeezing my hand. His eyes well with regret. “We would’ve taken care of you.”
“I know,” I say, crying. “But I can’t be this girl. I need stability and Jynx will never be able to give me that. It isn’t who he is and it’s not fair of me to ask him to be something he isn’t. I can’t make him change who he is. Thank you for showing up at the hotel room when you did, and not bothering to knock. Good luck with everything, Ax.” I lean over and kiss my would’ve-been-brother-in-law on the cheek. “Thank you for saving me.”
“We always have one another’s extra room keys,” he divulges, shaking his head. “But I didn’t save you. Jynx did that all on his own. I called him and he told me to get back up to your room. Remember, I said you were bad news in the beginning.” He grins, and I giggle. “If you ever need anything—anything at all—call me. Or better yet, call my asshole of a brother.”
“He killed a man Axel.”
“There is a first time for everything,” he remarks with a solemn nod. He isn’t proud or displeased with his brother’s actions. It just is. “And what better reason to be behind bars than to have saved a woman, especially one as genuine as you. You’re a keeper, Echo. You don’t believe it or want to hear it, but it’s true.”
“… Will he get out?”
“I’m sure he will,” he says, tightening his brow. “It was self-defense. The investigative team found weaponry that Eddie had stashed in his car. He was coming to kill Jynx and planned to destroy Dower Headquarters tomorrow morning. Jynx saved a hell of a lot more lives last night than yours.”
“Oh, my gosh…” I cover my mouth, comprehending the depth of Eddie’s despair. “Jynx saved them.”
“Yeah. And you tell me I don’t know him.” Poking my arm, he says, “That is who he is.”
“How did he find out where we were?”
Gripping the steering wheel, he snickers, “My brother has a reputation. Every weekend for months, he spent at Madame Tilda’s. Eddie knew he’d be in Tucson, probably checked into the nicest hotel there. My brother isn’t a challenging profile, just hard as fuck to get to open up. He is a creature of habit, clean and neat, never straying far from his center.”
“He wanted that center to be me,” I mumble in a shower of tears. “God, what am I doing?”
“Making a decision to impact the rest of your life.”
I pull the handle of the door and exit the vehicle. The humid air cloisters upon my skin with a light sheen of sweat. I accept the nightmare of my existence will never end. “Take care of yourself, Axel.”
“I love you, sis.”
I smile. “You’re not too bad yourself.”
I cry all the way home to Alabama.
The dream of Jynx Monroe is finally over.
But I fear my recovery will never end.
Jynx
“She left me.”
“I think she’ll be back,” Axel mumbles, packing her things, my things—our things together. We planned to put things in our house, like the vase I bought from the museum gift shop and the large handwoven tapestry we purchased at the open-air market on some dusty two-lane road. She wanted to frame it for the entryway of the beach house.
We were making plans.
Plans, together.
For our future.
With my hand clenched around the bottle of Stoli, I ask, “What the fuck am I going to do now?”
Tossing another handful of nuts in his mouth, Axel chews and waves his hands about in an exaggerated fashion. “You’re going to get out of that chair, go take a shower, and let me take you to the airport. I’ll get all this shit shipped to…”
“Texas,” I answer, filling in the blank. “I’m only staying in South Carolina long enough to secure the farm. A week or two at most.”
“Do I want to know how much in debt we are to the mob?”
“No,” I reply, tucking my fingers beneath my chin. “I will take care of it.”
“It’s not money they want.”
I nod, moving my jaw from side to side. “I’m aware of what they want, but I also did them a favor.”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “And you stupidly fell for her. I warned you to stay away. This one—I knew she was going to fuck your head up. The Jynx you were, living life and having fun, he no longer exists. You’re going to have to figure out how to be a new you without her.”
“I thought your dumbass said that you believed she’d be back?”
“I do,” he replies, zipping a row of tape over a box. “But on the off chance that I’m wrong, you need to be prepared.”
I tilt my head low to my chest and slightly shake the idea of losing her away. “I never thought I would be sitting here without her by my side.”
“She’s left before,” he points out. “What’s changed?”
With tears in my eyes, I stare at my brother. “She’s never made it to Alabama before.”
“You’re slightly proprietorial.”
“She is my girl—my possession—mine.”
He blinks, concerned. “You may need to get some help for this.”
“I don’t want any help,” I say, shooting out of the chair. “I want my Echo back.”
“Then listen,” he mutters, laying his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll hear her.”
40
Alabama Burns
Echo
Three days later, I’m packing up my childhood home in Alabama. Brandon told me that I would be helping him. Shall I repeat that?
Told.—Helping.
He’s been at work, the bar, God knows where else—but anywhere other than here, not helping me for three days. I saw him once. He picked me up at the airport, dropped me at the house, showed off the stack of unbuilt boxes, tissue paper, and multiple rolls of tape, and then he left with—“Let me know if you need anything else.”
What. The. Fuck.
I am not the help.
I’m beyond angry as I wrap the plates up from the kitchen. The house is crammed with my parent’s life—pictures, clothes, records. Everything remains in the house as I left it four years ago.
Rampage threatened my father after the incident.
Get out, or we’re coming after you.
Ken and Mindy Maines acted like fugitives on the run. They rushed home, grabbed one bag each of clothing, and drove their two cars to just outside of Tallahassee, where they started over again.
Clean slate.
Nothing of the past.
Except for one thing—my teenage sister.
Daphne was beside herself and the worst off of all of us. She was starting to come out of her shell, preparing to go to high school, and they swept her away like an unexpected tornado in the middle of the night.
New city? Daphne would adjust, they contended.
New school? She would learn to accept, they said.
New friends? She’d find plenty, they argued.
She stayed alone in her bubble until graduating. She didn’t have a choice. She was thirteen.
I considered running to her side, but that also meant living with my parents in Florida. I had managed to get out a year before. Like hell, I was going back.
I had made it out.
And eventually, Daphne did, too.
At seventeen, I graduated early with a year and a half of college-level coursework under my belt. I moved to California with my Aunt Josie and Uncle Moe, my father’s younger brother, who was nothing like him. I attended on-campus classes and worked my ass off at the café. I stayed with them until my eighteenth birthday when I promptly moved into the apartment I had—which I no longer do because I stupidly trusted a man.
I carefully fold the tissue paper over each plate, but I yearn to smash them to bits. Take a hammer and wreck the place—just like they did our lives.
I drop the safely wrapped plate into the box and cry as it shatters.
“Oh, dear God,” I whimper, falling to my knees. “What happened to who we were? How did we get so lost?”
I had gone home—to Alabama, for the first time in over a year. A steaming hot summer awaited with Rampage’s Independence Day celebration, and as the VP of the club, my father and his family were expected to attend.
Dad was involved with the club since before I was born.
In another box, there are faded pictures of him holding me when I was…a baby, a toddler, a child, a pre-teen, a young lady…all on his bike with him. I vowed after I left to never sit on another motorcycle.
I had attended lots of club functions. I wasn’t a biker party virgin. I knew the shit that went on and eschewed interacting as much as possible. Of course, by my teens, that earned me the reputation of being a snob, but I never wanted anything to do with club life.
I was the one random blue iris sprouting up in a cornfield.
And I stuck out like a sore thumb.
My short height and small disposition did nothing to help me with those boys either. I was picked up, tossed about, poked fun at, and generally made to feel that my place—whether I wanted it or not—would be in the bitch seat behind a young Rampage boy.
Ugh.
If Jynx had shown up into my world with a Harley and a cut, my heart wouldn’t be in shambles because I wouldn’t have given him the time of day.
I didn’t want to lose my identity—the identity I fought hard to discover—to a man like that. I liked preppy, professional-types, and athletes, and even bad boys were okay if well behaved.
I held a grudge against grungy bikers.
The night boasted barbecue, bottles, and kegs of beer on red and white checkered table cloths. Like family night, but quadruple the size because everyone was in attendance. I found a quiet spot, away from the crowd, and read because that was what I always did.
With fireworks exploding in the sky and old-school rock music blaring, I was cornered, grabbed by two of his best friends, and taken to a stockroom in the clubhouse where my dad was waiting.
My mother was off gossiping with Daphne and the rest of the club because that is what she did. I don’t know where Brandon was, probably off getting high and wishing he was anywhere else in the world.
One of Dad’s brothers brought Tawny in, and I cried in horror as my father showed his daughter how a woman should be treated. His hostile attack went on for over an hour. I wasn’t a stranger to the violence and misogyny in his world.
I knew it; he raised me in it.
And I avoided it and him until I made one critical mistake—I went to the bathroom alone. He wouldn’t let them assault me, so in some emotionally crippling, dependent way, I trusted him.
But I was fearless and helpless standing there as he pumped his hips, and she fought against him. Two held her down as my father mauled her. I was so slight; it didn’t take two men to hold me down.
One would do.
I felt the man behind me, with his burly, inked arm around my chest, grow hard against my ass. He bucked a few times and peered down at me. He grinned with his stained brown teeth and beer-infused breath. We both knew he wanted me. And we also both knew he’d never live to see another day if he tried.
In his mind, my dad could be the attacker, but he’d never condone the victimization of his little girl. And to this day, he believes he did nothing wrong, yet he condemned Jynx for being a biker.
He has never acknowledged how much his mistreatment hurt.
Dad strode up, drunk and belligerently wagging his finger in my face with his pants dangling loose on his waist. “That is how you should be treated! This is what real men do!” He slapped my cheek, and the group went on their way as I froze, staring at Tawny. “Don’t marry anyone like your pussy ass brother, Echo Renata!”
Tawny was young, maybe a year or two older than me. I stared in shock at her for a long while, comparing her and me, and praying I never ended up needing a booster by spreading my legs. I eventually handed her a towel. “It was my fault. I pissed your father off by telling him he needed to raise Brandon better.”
In my father’s eyes, he had one child.
And she was me.
“This was not your fault,” I said, quietly crying. She shrugged it off, and I suspected, though never confirmed, this wasn’t the first time she’d been the party favor. “You should tell Gus.”
“Yeah, maybe if I did, I could end up being the Prez’s old lady.”
I walked out, understanding we weren’t all that much different—she and I.
I wanted Colton to love me, but he never would. His dogmatic Christian faith wouldn’t allow any such action to occur until after college in the marital bed. I pushed the boundary, lost my friend, and would suffer from the guilt of his suicide for the rest of my days.
Tawny wanted a real man—a biker, not my drug addicted brother, who, by luck, happened to wear a Rampage cut. They had dated in high school, but with much-altered versions. Her future revolved around becoming an old lady and mother, while my brother wanted to wear heavy eyeliner and black trench coats like some Goth kid, which was fine—nothing against the Goths—but Bran was never meant to be a biker.
Dad put his only son in the club even though he was as much of an outcast as I was and didn’t deserve the cut. I knew the guys shared the women, snorted the drugs, and liked to party, but my brother was in a different league of scumbag.
Since his late teens, he suffered from an addiction to heroin, liked hanging around degenerates, and squatting in homes. But anytime I needed him—prior to the incident—he was always there for me.
He was
my person.
And I want him to be my person still.
But who he was before—that guy left town when shit went south.
I imagined Tawny ratted out Dad to Gus when she found out the night was never going to end with my father’s spawn, who would have been my half-sibling, growing in her belly.
Despite witnessing the crime of my father, I didn’t hang around for the fallout. If I could distance myself from my father, I had a fierce independent streak. I called a taxi, went to the airport, and reserved a seat on the next plane home—to California. I slept in the airport. No one called. Not my parents. Not Brandon. Not Daphne.
I walked to the end of the driveway and swore that I’d never return to Alabama because that night was more gut-wrenching than anything I had ever experienced.
At least, until I met Jynx Monroe.
And he administered pain like I’d never known.
Alabama ain’t got nothing on a man with the devil in his name.
I scan over the boxes and wonder what the hell to do with all of the shit. We’ll need to rent a storage unit until one of us gets settled. I’m sitting on a box and eating pizza when Brandon walks in. Nice of him to show up now that I’m done.
Asshole.
He opens my pizza box and steals a piece. And something about that little arrogant move pisses me the fuck off. I rush to my feet and yell, “Where the hell have you been?”
“I had work,” he garbles, shoving the pizza in his mouth. “You know that.” I fume, chasing after him as he walks through the house—like he is inspecting my work. “You did good.”
He turns back toward me in the hallway, and I slap the hell out of him. Keep in mind, I’m barely five feet tall, and he is almost as tall as Jynx. Wanting to pick a fight with someone, I seethe, “How dare you!” I stomp off.
“What the fuck did you hit me for?”
I gather my things as he follows me into the bedroom. “You tossed me out of your life, didn’t bother to make time to help me, or for that matter, communicate on any level. You’re still a goddamned drug addict. You can’t look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t using again!”
Beautiful Things Evil People Do Page 34
