Taken With You: A Fractured Connections Novella

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  I knew that I flinched when large men came near. I knew I cowered even though I tried not to.

  I hadn’t always been like this. I used to laugh and smile and toss my hair behind my shoulders, grinning at any man who flirted with me. But I didn’t flirt back. Not usually. And especially not when Coby and I were together. He didn’t like that. And I hadn’t wanted to flirt with anyone else while I was with him. He was mine. My prize, my dream, my…everything. He had been the epitome of everything a girl needed.

  He had a rough edge, and paired with his wicked smile and growl, he was the ultimate bad boy. I’d thought he was nice, even under the cruelty. In his position, he’d needed to be that way. You couldn’t work your way up in the club without being a little ruthless. You had to push and fight your way to the top, and he’d had to do that more than most. His father was the president of the MC. Still was as far as I knew. And just because Coby was the son, the legacy, didn’t mean he could rise easily.

  Coby had done things I didn’t want to think about, even now. And he’d started them before we even met.

  But that had been my life, too.

  I’d grown up with that.

  Not in the same club, but another one.

  Both had been the type to skirt the edges of the law, and they usually came out on the wrong side.

  I looked down at my hands, at the tiny scars on my wrists and my fingertips.

  I’d fallen off a bike—or, more accurately, I had been pushed off. But I’d survived.

  Back then, I was an old lady. Coby’s property. His bitch. He called me his one and only.

  And I had treasured it. I’d watched my mother climb through the ranks along with my father until he became the president of their MC. And I was the princess. The one who finally fell in love with the prince of another club. Thankfully, they weren’t rivals, and I hadn’t gone all Juliet and Romeo, but there was plenty of drama and angst regardless. And, at first, I was only a teenager. Then I became an adult who made her own choices—ones that I regretted to this day.

  But I wasn’t that person anymore. I was normal. I had to be.

  I was just Meadow. The one who went to school and got her degrees. The one who wrote and edited science textbooks. I rarely left the house, and if I did, it wasn’t to go anyplace where anyone from my past might be.

  I wasn’t that person anymore.

  But I had said “yes” to Beckham.

  Not that he was my past. He had nothing to do with that life. He was only a bartender. A friend of a friend, who could be my friend in truth.

  Maybe I agreed because old Meadow was coming out. But not the kindhearted one with the soft eyes. The one who’d fought and clawed her way to the top alongside Coby because that had been the only thing I could do.

  I hadn’t been cruel like the rest of them. I hadn’t been mean or hard-hearted.

  But I hadn’t thought myself anything more than what I was, either. I hadn’t considered myself worthy.

  When Coby hit me for the first time, I didn’t fight back. My father had beaten my mother enough, had told her that if she didn’t toe the line, if she ruined his chances of moving up, that she would regret it.

  So, while I knew that my mom didn’t deserve to be hit—like the punch to the face I got wasn’t warranted—I also knew that, sometimes, you couldn’t get around it.

  Often, if you didn’t find a way out, it was your destiny.

  So I hadn’t walked away the first time Coby hit me. Hadn’t left the second, either.

  I stayed because I had nothing else.

  There was no way I could go back to my parents, not when they’d sent me off in grand style as their princess to marry the future king.

  I broke a little inside, shattered into a thousand pieces with each blow, every time Coby looked at me like I was nothing.

  But I hadn’t left. Hadn’t run away.

  There was nowhere to go.

  It was only when he got drunk enough to bring a friend into our bed to see what I would do that I tried to fight back.

  He didn’t force me, neither of them had, but they didn’t leave me standing in the end, either.

  No, they left me bleeding, a broken shell of myself. I tried to crawl away, attempted to run.

  I still had the scar on my back from the knife—a cut to prove that I was his. That there would be no leaving him…ever.

  So I stayed.

  Because I had to. There was nothing left for me out there. Nothing left of me within either.

  When my parents heard about what I had done, that I’d tried to leave, my dad took me in hand to make sure that I never attempted to run away again. The scar on my left knee was proof of that.

  I made a move to run one more time, but they didn’t let me.

  I had scars on both ankles from that incident.

  Rope burns from when they tied me up so I’d learn whose property I was.

  It wasn’t until I ran with evidence of their drug-running that I felt even remotely safe.

  I snitched. I became the worst sort of person in my family’s eyes, in Coby’s eyes. But I needed that freedom.

  I’d caught a glimpse of the person I was becoming, of the woman that I could turn into, and I saw my mother.

  I didn’t want to become that. I wanted more. So I got out. Finally.

  Coby was in jail now. He could never hurt me again.

  They hadn’t sent him to jail for hurting me, or for threatening me.

  No, he had gone down for drugs. They were worth more than a woman’s body in Coby’s world. More than her soul.

  After all, I had basically sold myself to them. What, of what was left, was worth anything?

  I tried not to be bitter about that, but sometimes, that vitriol was all I had.

  But none of that mattered now. I was out of that life. Completely out of it.

  I tried not to talk to my parents. They came to me for money, but I’d tried to leave that life fully after Coby had been locked up.

  The state didn’t even require me to testify since my help had gotten them all the evidence they needed.

  Coby had pleaded for less time, so I didn’t even have to face him in court. Didn’t have to face any of the club’s members.

  Yet I knew my life was still on the line if I wasn’t careful.

  “Stop it, Meadow,” I mumbled to myself, shaking my head.

  I went to the fridge and poured myself a glass of wine, chugging it in three big gulps before pouring myself another.

  I needed to take the edge off, to be okay for a brief moment. I didn’t know why thinking about going on a date with Beckham had made me think of all of that from my past. Maybe because I hadn’t actually been on a date before, at least not with Coby.

  I wasn’t normal. And I wasn’t good at pretending. I didn’t know if I had ever been good at it.

  My phone buzzed, bringing me out of my thoughts, and I froze as I looked down at the name on the readout.

  I didn’t want to answer.

  “Just get it over with,” I whispered to myself. As soon as the screen went black, and I knew she had hung up, it lit up again, this time with a new call. My mother would keep calling until I answered. She didn’t understand that I needed time or space.

  I picked up this time, steadying myself as I sucked in a deep breath. “Hello.”

  “You don’t answer your phone?”

  Petal Brown’s voice grated on my ears, but I was used to it. It sounded as if she had smoked a pack a day, which she most likely had, but she also made sure that it was a little low, a bit breathy for my dad. I hated that I knew that, but it was kind of hard to put that away and forget about it, especially when it was something he said to her often. He hadn’t cared that I was around. He was horrible.

  My mom hadn’t been a terrible mother all the time. And that was something I needed to remind myself of.

  I remembered the days when we played outside and laughed. Or when she’d dance with me in the rain or giggle and sneak me an
ice cream cone without my dad knowing. I remembered how the sun shone on her bottle-blond hair, and I could recall thinking, you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.

  At least, on the outside.

  I hadn’t cared that she bleached her hair, or that she was always afraid of her roots going gray or dark.

  I dyed my hair a darker brown now because I liked the color, and I wanted to be a new Meadow instead of the one with the ash-blond hair with natural highlights that Coby loved.

  Or, at least, pretended to.

  As my mother began to berate me over the phone about not answering and how I was a disgrace and an ingrate, I tried to ignore it.

  I attempted to remember the good times. But there hadn’t been many.

  She’d slapped me when I said too many things I shouldn’t, or when I questioned my father or the club. She’d pinched me behind the arms where the bruises wouldn’t show if I didn’t say the right things. She forced me to shove my fingers down my throat if I overate at dinner. And she’d smack me on the behind if I didn’t do the right things for Daddy like having the table set for dinner or wearing the right clothes that he would approve of.

  She’d wanted me skinny and perfect with the best boobs that could fill a push-up bra. When I was fifteen, she’d told me she had been trying to scrimp for money to get me a boob job like she had, all because I hadn’t filled out the way she wanted. But then hormones and genes had done their best, and she’d scrapped the idea, using the money to buy herself things instead.

  I hadn’t wanted a boob job. I’d liked my body, even as a teenager. But what I thought or felt hadn’t mattered to Mom.

  She put me in too-tight jeans, leather skirts, bustiers, and other barely-there outfits to try and entice the other MC’s members. I had to be the perfect princess in a world that was anything but perfect.

  Then, when I met Coby, and he treated me far differently than anyone else had, my mother thought I’d done the best thing in the world. She believed that I had become the woman she thought I should have been all along.

  But I hadn’t. I wasn’t that person. Or maybe I had become what she wanted, and it wasn’t enough.

  Either way, the woman on the other end of the phone call now had given birth to me. Raised me.

  And yet, she’d never loved me.

  I didn’t think she could.

  “Are you even fucking listening to me?” she asked, and I brought myself out of my thoughts.

  “I’m sorry. What is it you wanted?”

  “Answer your fucking door.” She hung up the phone, and then the doorbell rang over and over and over again.

  I froze, sweat sliding down my back as my palms went clammy.

  My mother had never shown up at my house before. She shouldn’t be here, but it appeared she was.

  I hadn’t changed my name or gone into true hiding, so it wasn’t like she couldn’t find me. After Coby had gone to jail, and my parents told me that they disowned me, no one really cared where I ended up. I told myself I was hiding, but in reality, I was just trying to be a different person and start over somewhere else.

  And yet, here we were.

  She was here.

  The doorbell rang again. I could hear her screaming on the other side.

  “I will wake up your whole fucking neighborhood, young lady. Open this fucking door right now.”

  I closed my eyes, counted to ten. I didn’t want to believe this was happening. That she was right outside my door. I didn’t want to wake up the whole neighborhood. I didn’t want this to be happening, but it wasn’t like I could stop it or simply will it away.

  My past was here. I couldn’t hide from it anymore.

  I went to the door, tugging my sweatshirt over my hips. I looked like hell, but I didn’t care. Yet, I did. What would she say when she looked at me?

  Would it matter?

  I didn’t know, but I would find out soon.

  I opened the door, flipping each lock carefully as I did.

  I could have called the cops, alerted my security, but I didn’t. This was my mother. And even though she was yelling and cursing at me, I somehow still hoped that things would be different.

  Or maybe I knew that if I didn’t get this over with now, she would keep coming back.

  “It’s about fucking time.” She stormed past me, pushing my shoulder as she did. “Looks like you’ve done well for yourself. Not my taste, but it’s fine.” She looked me up and down, staring. “Good God. You’re never going to keep Coby if you dress like that. What the hell are you wearing? Jesus, that sweatshirt’s hiding…what? The extra twenty pounds you’ve added? You’re such a fat-ass. You always were. If I hadn’t kept on you when you were little, you never would have gotten Coby. And all your weight had to go to your hips and your thighs. Never to your tits. You know, that comes from my mother-in-law. Daddy’s mama. She is such a lard-ass. Constantly having to wear sweats and leggings and stuff because she can’t fit into her leathers anymore. God. If you don’t take care of yourself, Coby’s never going to take you back. You better work on that. I only say this because I love you. Us girls need to watch our weight. You can’t let yourself be too big. Fat kills. It keeps men away.”

  I just stood there, looking at her, wondering how in the hell this woman had raised me. Every single thing she said was wrong. I liked the way I looked. I was nowhere close to being what some might call overweight. And even if I was what some might classify as that, what the fuck ever?

  As long as I was happy and took care of myself, fuck them. I had curves, and I liked them.

  Jesus Christ.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, surprised my voice was still steady.

  “I’m here so you can do your duty.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “What do you mean?”

  “Your daddy and I need a little help. It’s been a tough couple of months since I asked for anything…with what happened after you left. You know, the incident.”

  I looked at her, not quite comprehending. I left when the cops raided both places looking for drugs. They’d found all of them, but only a few people had gone to jail. Coby being one of them. My father hadn’t. Neither had Mom.

  “You need money,” I said, comprehending at last.

  “Just a little. You know you owe us. For everything. We gave everything we ever had to get you where you are. You owe us for that, at least.”

  “I went to school on my own. I took out loans and attended community college. I worked night and day to get myself through. I did this.”

  “And you would have none of this if we hadn’t put clothes on your back and food in your belly as a kid. Don’t be such an ungrateful bitch.”

  It didn’t surprise me that she kept calling me horrible names and degrading me even as she asked for things. That’s how Petal Brown was. There was no changing that.

  Mom had been named after a flower her mother saw on her way to the hospital. Somehow, my mother had come out alive and healthy as a baby, at least according to my grandparents, even though Grandma had been high as fuck when she gave birth. Hence the name.

  Petal had wanted to continue the tradition with names since you could find flowers in meadows. At least, that’s what she said. Dad told me it was because of where I was conceived, though he hadn’t used those words. No, he’d used ones far more crass.

  Somewhere deep down, I truly hated my family. Or at least what they had become. I didn’t want to be a part of this. I wanted to be alone. In my own home.

  The place this woman was currently tainting. I knew if I didn’t give her some money now, she wouldn’t leave.

  Even if I told myself that I shouldn’t give her anything and hope that she never came back again, that wasn’t how things worked with her. She would stay, and she would make a scene, and she would find me at the bar or with my friends or somewhere else later, and it would be worse.

  I didn’t want things to be worse.

  So I went to my wallet, pulled out the couple of twent
ies I had, and handed them over. “It’s all I have. I’m sorry.”

  “This is it?” she asked, sneering. “Well, I guess you’re not as high and mighty as you think.” Still, she stuffed the money into her bra without saying, “thank you.”

  “Call your pops. He misses you.”

  He didn’t. He missed the idea of having the perfect princess to lord over the guys. He didn’t miss me.

  “And visit Coby. He needs you.”

  “No, he really doesn’t,” I whispered. I hadn’t meant to say anything. “You should leave now. You have your money. It’s all I have. You need to go.”

  “You were always such an ungrateful brat. Even when I made sure that you were perfect for Coby. As I said, he’s going to need you. I’ll leave. Sure, honey, I’ll go. But remember this. Once you’re in, you’re never out.”

  “I didn’t really have much choice, did I?”

  “Well, you had a choice when you said yes to Coby. When you spread your legs for him and became his whore. There’s no getting out after that. There’s no saying no. But don’t worry. You’ll see when he gets out. His appeal is coming up soon. You’ll have to deal with him then.”

  The threat slid over me. My hands went damp, and my blood turned cold.

  “Go. Go away.”

  My voice was firm, even though I wanted to scream.

  “Okay. Thanks for the money. You’re going to do your mama proud.” She reached up and pinched my cheek before slapping it a couple of times, two quick, hard taps like she was patting me. It wasn’t only that.

  Then she left, sauntering out in her tight jeans and frizzy hair.

  I closed the door behind her, flipping all three locks afterwards, and then slid to the floor, my hands shaking.

  I wasn’t part of that world anymore. I couldn’t be. This wasn’t some movie where a biker gang came in and took me away. This was real life. I had made choices, and I was going to continue making them. Even though my mother would likely always say things like she just did. I knew Coby wasn’t getting out anytime soon. And he certainly didn’t need me.

  My mother might know where I lived, but no one else in the clubs did. No one cared.

  I was only their forgotten whore. At least, that’s what they called me when they asked for money. And that was okay, that’s all I needed to be with them.