I slap my knees and stand up, giving my top one last tug down—it’s staying on for now—and I head toward the bedroom, checking that the front door is locked and peeking in the closet and pantry and Grinder’s room on my way. Frances is still asleep and snoring, tangled in Grinder’s sheets.
I open my bedroom door wide, and I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t Scrap, shirtless and lounging on the pillows with my stuffed penguin in his lap, holding up his phone, saying, “Babe! Look at this dude dance!”
I crack up, so I don’t notice at first that he’s staring.
“Hey,” he breathes, and hops up, coming to me, grabbing both my hands and holding them out from my sides. “Look at you.” He rakes his gaze down my front, and my nipples pebble even more against my shirt.
I blush; I can feel the heat flood my chest and face, but Scrap’s looking down at my legs.
“Yes. Finally.” And then he scoops me up, flings me on the bed, lays down beside me, grinning like crazy. “We gonna do this, then?”
“Yeah.” Before I can say anything else, his mouth is on mine, and he’s tasting me, tugging and delving deep, babbling when he stops for breath about how long it’s been and how soft I am. His hands are ranging everywhere: my thighs, my arms, cupping my cheek.
My mind grows muzzy and slow. Scrap’s leaning over me, but his body is next to mine, and it’s okay. More than okay. The longer we kiss, the antsier my body gets. I feel the pulsing that I felt back at the clubhouse when he was thrusting up between my legs, and I was so high on adrenaline that the self-consciousness couldn’t touch me.
I arch up, wanting to feel the pressure of his bare chest against mine. I let my knees slip apart so he can slip a leg between my thighs. It feels good. More of his body is over me now, but he’s moving down, kissing my neck and easing down my tank top, baring my breasts. There are a few white scars noticeable, but they’re small, easily ignored.
“Fucking perfect.” He takes a nipple into his mouth and sucks, swirling his tongue, and it’s almost too much, but it’s also not enough. His hands keep roaming, stroking my other breast, then grabbing my hip and urging me up to feel the hardness between his legs.
“Rock, baby,” he urges, and I do, and it feels even better. I find a rhythm like the one I set with my hand when I touch myself at night, and he kisses my mouth again, lighter now, softly. He’s watching me with his calm blue eyes.
“What?” I pant.
“I’m gonna go down on you now, okay?”
Is it? My skin is hot to the touch, I ache between my legs, and my mind is scattered, but in this moment, it’s not from panic, it’s from the sensations and the closeness and Scrap, his clean scent and his strong, warm arms. I think it’ll be okay.
I nod.
He groans, almost a purr, and he kind of reverses down the bed, tugging me with him. He slips his thumbs in my underwear and pulls them off. I breathe a sigh of relief when he tosses them immediately in the direction of the hamper. If this is my life now, I need to invest in some cute panties.
He does exactly what he said that time at the store, propping my feet on the edge of the bed, then sinking to his knees on the floor. I hear a zipper, and then the heat of his breath on my folds. Oh, God. He’s going to see the scar.
Before I can freak, though, he parts me with his fingers and slides his tongue all the way from my clit to my hole, lapping there, moaning words I can’t make out because I’m whimpering now, embarrassed, but there’s also a tingling in my core, almost an itch, and he stokes it every time he circles his tongue around the swollen bud that’s popped out of its hood.
I’m holding onto the sides of my tank top for dear life so it won’t inch up any further, but I also can’t tear my eyes away from Scrap, his eyes closed as he licks and licks, a blissed out expression on his face when he stops every so often to check on me and give me that half-quirk of a smile.
“Is it good, baby?”
“Yes,” I hum, and it is. So good. I’m on my way. Not close yet, but it’s building, and that’s way more than I thought would happen. I can hear him now, working himself with his free hand, and he’s moaning more as he laps up my pussy juices.
This is happening. It’s okay, and normal, and I’m normal, and a car pulls into the driveway.
A car door slams. Loud.
Frances barks. Over and over.
There’s boots on the stairs. Someone at the door.
I scream.
Footsteps race down the hall.
Oh, Christ.
Oh, Christ.
Gasoline and piss. Cold concrete. Copper.
I kick, draw up my knees and drive my heels into flesh and muscle, over and over—I don’t stop; I keep kicking—and there the crunch of bone and screaming, and it’s me, and I’m scrabbling for the headboard, and there’s blood, spurting, red on the mint green comforter. A man looms above me, and I kick again, digging across the bed with my elbows, reaching for something, anything. A lamp. I pull. It slips from my grasp, falls.
Gasoline and piss. Cold concrete. Copper.
He’s still coming, and I tumble to the floor, crawling, fighting to get to the door, digging my nails into the carpet and dragging myself with all I have, and there’s a bang—a door—and more footsteps and shouting and barking.
A man yells, “Stop!”
Frances howls.
And I’m crouched in the hallway, shaking—Where are my pants? My underwear?—and there’s blood on my leg, but it’s not mine. Everything contracts and then comes into perfect clarity, like the focus on the entire world was readjusted.
A sob is wrenched from deep in my chest.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off me!” It’s Scrap. Oh, God. I hurt Scrap.
He’s in the doorway to the bedroom, eyes boring into me, but something’s holding him back. I curl in on myself, turn my head into the wall, like that will make this go away, stop the whomp, whomp sound in my ears and the puke burning up my esophagus.
“Not now, brother. Calm down.” That’s Grinder. There in my bedroom. He’s holding Scrap back.
“Baby. Baby, it’s okay. It’s okay.” There’s blood streaming from his nose, down his chest, and he’s straining toward me. Grinder’s losing his grip.
I scream, but it comes out a strangled moan. And then a door slams and Mom comes running. She squats in front of me, a careful distance away, stroking my arm. Frances is standing beside her, facing Scrap, growling low in his throat.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re okay. Mama’s here.”
Scrap shouts, lunging forward. “Let me go.”
Grinder hauls him back. “Not now.”
“Let go or so help me—”
“You need to clean your face first. She can’t see you like this.” Someone else crowds into the hall. It’s Daddy. Daddy’s here.
My face burns, and I try to make myself smaller but I can’t, try to hide against a wall, but everyone can see me. It feels like there’s a hundred people in this narrow hallway. I’m in nothing but a man’s tank top, and there’s blood splatter on my leg, and I can’t breathe. How did I get here?
“Mama, please.” I need to turn the volume down. I need to breathe.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. Just come with me. I’ll take you home. It’ll be okay.” Somewhere, she’s gotten a pair of sweatpants, and draws me to my feet, helping me into them, one leg at a time, and then she walks me out the door and down the stairs, pressing close behind me, sheltering me from everyone’s eyes.
I go because I don’t know what else to do. Frances pads along behind. There are loud voices behind us, but Daddy handles it.
Mama takes me to her place, and guides me to the bathroom to clean me up. She still has the huge case of bandages and creams from my surgeries, although the packaging is all yellowed a bit from age.
I sit on the toilet seat, sink into the baby blue, plush cover, and let the shaking take over my body while she carefully wipes the drying blood from my leg with a co
tton ball soaked in alcohol. I can’t tell her it isn’t mine. My teeth are clattering too hard.
We don’t speak. Frances nudges his way into the room and lays on top of my bare feet. When the shaking starts to subside, Mom pulls me to my feet, and says, “Come on, then. You need a nap.”
She’s white as a ghost, and her hands are trembling, too. Guilt snakes into my chest.
She takes an orange bottle from the medicine cabinet and gives me two of her little white pills. She grabs me a hoodie I left hanging on the hall tree, and then she walks me to my old bedroom, the one she’s redecorated for Annie’s kids, and says, “You sleep now. We’ll sort it out later.”
I sit there like a posed doll.
“Mom. I’m so sorry.”
“No need to be.”
“I scared you.”
“We’re fine. We’re both fine.”
“Did I hurt him bad?” The lump in my throat is so huge I can hardly swallow. “I really hurt him, didn’t I?”
“Scrap? He’s fine. That’s not the first blow to the face that boy took. Not the last either.”
She sounds so matter of fact, and if you didn’t know Deb Holt, you wouldn’t hear it underneath the calm, it’ll-be-fine tone of voice. But this is my mother. I can hear the residue of terror underlining her words, just like I can feel it reverberating around my brain as the little pills go to work.
Later, hard to say when since my brain is fuzzy from the meds and the aftereffects of losing my shit, I wake up when the bed dips. I don’t even panic. I smell cigarettes and beard wax, and I curl onto my side.
“Daddy?”
“How you doin’, little girl?” Pig Iron pats me awkwardly on the shoulder.
“I’ll live.”
He sighs, looks around the room. It’s so incongruous, this pot-bellied biker in stained jeans and a cut, balefully staring at a pink dollhouse and two overflowing hampers filled with stuffies.
“You know, we could put all this shit in the basement. You could move back in.”
What? I struggle to disentangle myself from the sheets and sit up.
“Your Ma could use the help when she’s watching the girls. I could hang up a flat screen in here. You could watch your shows.”
“I’m not moving back in, Dad. I’m twenty-six.” My gut swirls with shame and self-disgust. I’m talking like I don’t live a few feet away above the garage. Like I’m not buried under the covers in my old bed.
He sniffs like he does when he’s aggravated. “My heart cain’t take this shit, Crista. I thought you was gettin’ murdered.”
And now guilt has joined the mix, and I can feel the tears prickling, but there’s also something else, the thrum of rage that showed up with Scrap and that seems to dog my steps these days. It’s like he showed up, and all the unfairness and the bullshit got thrown into stark relief, and the years of living on edge finally became intolerable. I hate the feeling, but still, I cling to it because however twisted and bitter it is, it doesn’t make me weak.
“I’m not moving back in, Daddy. I’m fine.”
“Honey, you ain’t.” He reaches out to smooth my hair, and I duck my head away. I need to get out of here. This room, this place, is backwards. I don’t want to go backwards.
I throw my legs over the side of the bed, root around with my feet until I find my shoes.
“Where you goin’?”
“Home.” I’m on my feet and woozy, and the idea of walking back to my place, being alone, or worse yet, confronting Scrap, feels heavy enough to almost knock me back into bed. Almost. “I gotta check on Frances.”
“Mom’ll take care of that.”
“Dad. I got to go.”
“You got to lay back down. Get some sleep.”
I pause by the door. He’s still perched on the side of the bed, a sliver of light from the hallway falling across his face. There’s gray in his beard, and his forehead’s shiny where his hair is receding. His crinkly, brown eyes and his bulbous nose remind me of Santa Claus, just like they did when I was a little girl.
He loves me, and I love him so much. And it’s so clear in that moment. Love makes us hostages, me to my secret, to protecting this man who would die for me. And him to his fear, to the memory of cupping my cheek while I bled out on a concrete floor.
We’re not gonna be free until we choose to be.
“I’m going home, Daddy. I’ll text you when I get there.”
“I’ll walk you.” He goes to stand.
I shake my head. “No, Daddy. It’s only next door.”
I can’t stop him from watching me from the porch, and I can’t stop the shuddering as I check the pantry and the closets and under the beds, but I do what I can. Get a shower. Change the sheets.
Hours later, as I’m sitting up straight in bed, alone, my gun resting on the night table, each harmless creak and bark triggering a burst of adrenaline to shoot through my veins, I think hard about choices. And secrets. And what it would take for it to finally, finally be over.
CHAPTER 11
SCRAP
Grinder drives me to some dentist’s house up in Gracy’s Corner. I don’t want to go, but he points out that my face makes him want to puke, so how’s Crista gonna react?
This dentist is shacked up with a sweetbutt I remember from way back when, a hot blonde named Sunny who used to take on all-comers. He tapes my nose at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, and then he checks my teeth. Crista didn’t knock any loose, but she did give me two black eyes. The dentist don’t think any other bones in my face are broken. He says I’m lucky.
My girl’s got some power in her legs. I need to get back to her, but Grinder makes the point that she always needs a few hours’ sleep after a flashback, and my fucked-up face might very well make shit worse instead of better.
So after the dentist, we go to the clubhouse. Pig Iron gets there a little while later. He brings me a beer and nods for me to follow him out to the yard to sit at one of them picnic tables next to the makeshift stage. There’s a lot of brothers hangin’ out, playing horseshoes. It’s a mellow vibe.
I get why I should give Crista space, but I’m startin’ to feel antsy. I need to get back to her. She’s gonna be hurtin’, tellin’ herself all kinds of fucked up things. I know we ain’t been together long, but I know my girl. If she gets deep in her head, she’s gonna make it ten times worse. And it ain’t the end of the world. I’ve accepted that lovin’ Crista Holt comes with a shit ton of baggage, and that’s fine by me.
Maybe I need to rethink sex positions, but this kind of shit ain’t something I can’t handle.
I chug my beer, clear that I have other places I want to be. Pig Iron gives me a look when I thump the empty on the table.
“Boy, you ain’t goin’ nowhere until we’ve had ourselves a nice, long talk.” Pig Iron cracks open another bottle and slides it to me. “Get comfortable.”
I grin. “Is this the talk where you tell me you got an unregistered sawed-off under your bed and ain’t no one gonna find me if I lay a hand on your little girl? Cause you gave me that talk already about twelve years ago.”
“I don’t need to warn you off with a shotgun. Looks like my girl can fuck you up just fine with her bare feet.”
I snort, and Pig Iron chuckles. We both sober up soon enough.
“Nah. This ain’t that.” Pig Iron exhales, wipes his beard. “This is where I ask if you know what the fuck you’re doing.”
“Fuck no, I don’t know what I’m doin’. Do you guys?” I keep my gaze steady. He needs to know that I respect him as a brother and as Crista’s father, but at the end of the day, she’s mine.
Pig Iron shakes his head. “We’ve always took it day by day. Did whatever the doctors told us to do. Tried to push her, but not too hard. She’s gotten better.” Pig Iron eyes my face. “You can’t push her too hard, too fast. Some shit she just might never be ready for.”
We both shift uncomfortably in our seats, take long sips from our beers. This ain’t the kind of
conversation you want to have with your woman’s father.
“Listen,” Pig Iron finally says. “The only thing that’s ever worked with Crista is let her do shit in her own time. I mean, going back to when she was a baby even. Deb would buy those walkers. She’d try to bribe her with animal crackers and shit. Crista does things in her own time. When she was ready, she walked.”
“Yeah?”
“Deb and I were at the bar. We’d left her on a mat by the pool table, and we look up, and there she was, holdin’ an eight ball.”
“I don’t know. My experience is she needs a little push.”
Pig Iron’s fist clenches. “I know you care. But you gotta understand. She might not be able to be with you how you want.”
He looks up to the sky like he’s wishin’ someone would rescue him.
“I get what you’re sayin’.”
“I love you, brother, but I don’t know if you do. The fucker— He stabbed her, and then he raped her, and then when he was done, he slit her open. She can’t have kids.” Pig Iron’s voice is cracking, and puke is burning up my throat. “No offense, but you been back a month or so. Do you really think that’s all the time it takes to get over somethin’ like that?
Now it’s shame roiling my guts. ‘Cause put like that? No. I don’t think me bein’ here a hot minute, puttin’ my foot in my mouth more often than not, is enough to overcome somethin’ like that.
I pushed, though. I wasn’t an asshole about it, but I pushed. And Crista’s brave as shit. She’s shy, and she ain’t like some poster child for survivors, but she ain’t a quitter, neither. I pushed, and she let me, and this is what happened. Five steps backward.
“Shit, Pig Iron.”
I love this man like a father. I got to respect what he says.Dad passed when I was in high school, about a year before the shit went down with Crista. After losing Mom like we did, and then Dad goin’ so sudden, I wasn’t doin’ so good. Twitch, George, Boots—they all stepped up for me. My dad was Steel Bones, a brother, and that made me their son. With Pig Iron, it always felt like more. Like he saw somethin’ in me. If he’s tellin’ me this now, I got to listen.
Scrap: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 14
