Tattered & Torn

by A. J. Downey

  Tattered & Torn

  The Sacred Heart’s MC Book IV

  By A. J. Downey

  Text Copyright © 2014 A.J. Downey

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedication

  To the women of A.J.’s Sacred Circle. My very own, much needed, street team. You all have made my life so much easier, most notably, Jennifer Mitsada and Michelle Bigioni Slagan. If I have missed calling you by name it is not any kind of intended slight, you all have been exceedingly awesome at spreading the love, shouting the word and cheering me up when it feels like everything is burning down around me. Much love. Keep on keepin’ on!

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  “Tell me about Ghost, you mentioned him earlier.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, you said that he was different from the rest. Different how?”

  “Is that what you write in that fancy notebook of yours all the time?”

  “You sound angry. Does my note taking bother you?”

  “No.”

  “So why are you angry?”

  “…”

  “Shelly?”

  “…”

  “Shelly..?”

  “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know! What do I need to talk about to get you, my cousin, Ashton… Hell all of them, off my back!?”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  “Yes! … No… I don’t know.”

  “Shelly the goal of coming to therapy is to help you, but first you have to decide what you want help with. No one can make you work your issues. You have to be willing to do that on your own. I’m sensing you don’t want to be here.”

  “You’re right I don’t.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Short answer? It was the condition my cousin gave me to let me move in with him and his wife. I kind of lost my shit a little and forgot to pay my rent and got evicted.”

  “I see. Well. This is your third visit, do you feel like you have made any progress?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I still dream about it. You know? At night, I wake up in a cold sweat with this crushing weight on my chest and it’s like… I don’t know! This is stupid!”

  “No, no it’s not… Please… Keep talking.”

  “Why? Talking isn’t going to fix it. It’s not going to undo anything that’s happened.”

  “No, that’s true. That’s very true, but it’s my hope that what it will do is allow you to come to grips with it, to deal with it and move past it.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t think that’s true Shelly.”

  “Well what the fuck do you know?”

  “I know that you’re hurting. I know that when you talked about Ghost during your first session here that you seemed to hurt a little bit less. Why is that? What is it about him?”

  “I like him. Okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

  “It’s a start.”

  “He’s just different.”

  “What makes him different?”

  “I don’t know, it’s like he sees me, you know? It’s weird. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Can you try?”

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about him! Can we please just talk about something else? Please?”

  “We can talk about whatever it is you would like to talk about for the remainder of our session.”

  “Thank you… I guess.”

  Chapter 1

  Shelly…

  I left Dr. Hubbard’s office feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. I got into my battered old Volvo and started it, shivering. It was the end of fall and the days were shorter, the nights longer and it was getting a hell of a lot colder. It had been warmer earlier in the day, if rainy and windy, and stupid me, I thought I would be fine in what I had on. I was wearing a pair of black leggings with an oversized white ‘V’ neck tee-shirt and had a light gray cardigan with an asymmetrical hemline over the top of it all. I probably would have looked a hell of a lot better if I’d bothered to do anything with my hair or had put on any make up, but lately, I didn’t care so much about what I looked like.

  I huddled miserably behind the wheel of my car and hugged myself. Fuck, I was cold! I wrapped the cardigan around me tighter and sighed out miserably, my breath pluming the air. Great. That was just great. I yanked the seatbelt savagely across my body and buckled it with fingers going numb and put the old car in reverse. It protested moving so quickly without being fully warmed up but it would warm up quicker if I got it moving.

  I put my headphones in my ears and set some music to playing on my phone before pulling out onto the street. I was Dr. Hubbard’s last appointment for the day so the parking lot for the little squat two story office building was empty, except for what I assumed was Dr. Hubbard’s silvery gray, old school Mercedes.

  The streetlights were coming on, glimmering against the wet pavement as I turned out of the drive, my headlights sweeping across the row of parked cars along the side of the road. I was grateful to be motoring up the street. God! It was good to get away from all of the probing questions and uncomfortable silences of my latest cross to bear. I still couldn’t believe Reaver was making me go to therapy! I loved my cousin, I really did, but sometimes he could be really fucking irritating. Like with this whole going to therapy thing. Seriously? What good was it going to do?

  I sniffed, my nose running from the cold, and tried the heat in my car. The air blew from the vents and defrosters slightly warmer than the ambient air and I was grateful. Wouldn’t be long now before she was really heated up and I could be warm again.

  It was eerily quiet and deserted as I drove through town, heading out for the country road that would take me to the ‘burbs and ultimately to Reave and Hayden’s townhouse. It had been storming all day, rain and wind and sometimes even hail with thunder and lightning added to the mix, so it was no wonder that the world felt deserted at barely eight o’clock on a Thursday. I imagined most people were bundled into their nice warm houses with a bowl of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. Yeah, it had been that kind of a day.

  I drove down the country back road past tree lined farmland and even had to skirt around a fallen tree limb or two. I was just beginning to think that maybe I should have taken the highway, squinting into the rising mist and cursing my dim headlights when I realized that
something was wrong. My headlights were steadily growing dimmer, my car was losing power. I cursed.

  “No!” I cried when it stalled. I cranked the wheel hard to the right and coasted to the shoulder of the narrow two lane road and let out a harsh breath. Well this was just fucking perfect on top of everything else! I slumped back into my seat and stopped the music on my phone and realized that it was dying too.

  “Damn it!” I yelled and did what I always did in situations like this… I dialed my big cousin to bail me out of trouble and like always, he answered pretty much on the first ring which made my shoulders drop in relief.

  “Yellow?”

  “Reave! Listen, my phone is about to die. I’m on Abbey Country Road on my way home and my car just quit, can you come get me?” I rushed out.

  “Whoa, hey, what was that Baby Cuz? Your car died?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it just lost power and died,” my phone chirped the two percent battery warning in my ear and I swore.

  “Shelly? Shelly?” Fuck he couldn’t hear me!

  “Yeah Reaver, I’m here! I’m on Abbey Country Road!” I called into the phone.

  “Abbey Country Road, got it! Hang tight, we’ll get you taken care of Runt,” he said and I heard things being moved around, like tools and stuff.

  “Thanks Reaver, I’m really sorry,” I said softly.

  “Don’t be Baby Cuz, just stay –“

  My phone died and with it my only means of communication, entertainment and way to tell time. Shit. I tried to restart my car but as I suspected, nada. I pulled the hood of my thin sweater over my hair and undid my seatbelt, forcing the angry tears that were threatening down. Fuck that. I would not cry. I was not a fucking crier. I violently jerked the sweater around my body and huddled miserably on my driver’s seat and waited for Reaver. I heard a distant motorcycle and locked my door and tried to make myself small.

  The Suicide Kings travelled this road almost as much as the Sacred Hearts did lately and besides that, Reaver wouldn’t come on the bike. Not to say any of our guys were fair weather riders, they rode whenever they fucking felt like it, but I was closer to the county line and The Suicide Kings clubhouse than I was to town and The Sacred Hearts and it’d barely been two weeks since the Suicide Kings had blown up Open Road Ink. They’d tagged the hell out of Open Road Garage with threatening messages just two nights ago. Dray had been fucking pissed and had pretty much been on the warpath ever since… and here I was, not just a sitting duck but the cause of it all.

  I bowed my head and sighed, the guilt weighing heavily on my soul, the damp chill from outside creeping into the car as the minutes ticked by. I sniffed and started to shiver. I had no way of telling how much time had actually gone by, but it certainly felt like forever.

  “Come on Reaver!” I said impatiently, my voice harsh in the quiet interior of the car as if my impatience would somehow make him appear. I shifted for what must have been the thousandth time and tried to get comfortable which was easier said than done in a car that was almost twice my age. Well, okay… it was really more like fifteen years older than me but that was still the 80’s which by car standards made this bitch a classic. I mean wasn’t it something like 30 years and older it was a classic?

  I exhaled sharply and ground my teeth together to keep them from chattering. Where the fuck was my cousin!? Not a single damned soul had passed me on the road since I’d pulled off to the side so when the sweep of headlights caught in my side view I felt relief spiked with a hard measure of anxiety. I couldn’t tell what kind of truck was pulling up behind me but what I could tell was it wasn’t Reaver’s Ford and it wasn’t Hayden’s Escalade so the relief was quickly swamped by the anxiety.

  I huddled in on myself harder as I watched the driver’s door on the big black monstrosity open and a pair of legs appear beneath it. The door on the truck swung shut and the person, who was so not my cousin, walked up along the driver’s side of my car. I swallowed hard and hugged myself tighter and turned my face away from the penetrating ray of light from his big black flashlight. My door was locked but if he wanted to get at me he could, and if he wanted anything else… well I already knew it didn’t matter how hard I fought.

  “Shelly! Open the door Princess. It’s me Ghost,” he called through the window, rapping his knuckles lightly against the glass.

  Ghost!? Reaver had sent Ghost!? I swallowed hard and with trembling hands pulled up on the lock. The door opened up.

  “You okay?” he asked. I put up my hand to block the flashlight he was shining at me and squinted.

  “I’m fine,” I said and sniffed, my damned nose still running from the chill.

  “No you’re not. Come on, let’s get you into the truck where it’s warm,” he tried to take my hand but I recoiled from the touch.

  “Fine! Just please don’t touch me,” I snapped.

  “Sure. Sure thing. Sorry Princess,” he said and he sounded it, I still couldn’t help but to put up a hard front.

  “Don’t be sorry, just don’t touch me,” I said unfolding myself from the driver’s seat. Bits of twig and leaves grated under my simple flats as I stood up and slung my small purse across my chest.

  “Come on,” he walked with me to the passenger side of a tow truck and opened the door for me. The heat was blasting inside and the warm air puffed out to greet me, I turned my face into it and sighed inwardly with relief. I was freezing!

  “Can I help you up?” he asked me and I shook my head.

  “I can do it,” I said and braced a foot on the metal step and gripped the handle set above the door on the inside of the cab. I pulled myself up and startled when his hands went to my hips and helped me anyways when my foot started to slip. He quickly took them away once I was stable and I was at once grateful for his assistance and thoroughly put out with the fact that I’d needed it.

  “Thanks,” I grated sourly and Ghost nodded. I could see him now, the light from the interior of the cab of his truck shining down into his upturned face. He was your all-American boy kind of beautiful. Compact and lithe, the high school star quarterback all grown up but without losing any of those damned good looks. He had high cheekbones and these hazel eyes that sparkled when he smiled, more brown than green. His milk chocolate brown hair flopped over his forehead and looked soft to the touch but it’s not like I would ever know. No, no and nope. Ghost didn’t want me, and once upon a time, before The Suicide Kings, it had turned me upside down and inside out.

  No matter how hard I’d tried to get into Ghost’s bed or him into mine before, well, before… anyways, it never happened. He wouldn’t so much as kiss me. For a minute I had thought he was gay like Disney but only for a minute because sometimes I would catch him looking at me, sort of like he was looking at me right now and I knew he wanted me but I couldn’t wrap my brain around why he didn’t. It hurt. A lot of things hurt right now, in fact I was pretty sure the whole damned world was nothing but one big ball of hurt anymore and it made me so tired that I just didn’t want to poke at it. So I turned my face away from him. I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye and he shut me into the warm brightly lit bubble of the truck’s cab.

  I watched him come round the front of the truck, and wistfully admired the way he moved in the beams of the headlights. Ghost moved with purpose, no matter what he did. Like he was set to take on the world even when the task at hand was simply getting a glass of water, or in this case to get up into the truck to pull up in front of my dead Volvo. He climbed up into the cab and put the truck in gear, I turned my face and stared out the window. If Ghost hadn’t wanted me before, he damn sure didn’t want me now and I didn’t want to see the cold look of pity or the sadness in his eyes. It was hard enough seeing it on everyone else’s faces.

  “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I had a tow across town when I got the call and had to drop it off before I could come get you.”

  He expertly piloted the monstrous black truck in front of my car. I let my gaze wander the reflection of h
is hand resting on the seat between us. The girl I was before would have given anything for that hand to touch me, to trail across my skin in that way that left a shiver down my spine and a sweep of tingling sensation in its wake. Now I just felt so dirty, so reviled and unclean I didn’t want anybody to touch me and unfortunately the stain left behind on me from the fourth of July weekend wasn’t something I could scrub off in the shower. God knows I’d tried often enough since then.

  “Shelly?” my name snapped me out of my downward thinking spiral and I turned unbidden to that look of concern I was so sick of seeing on everyone’s faces painted all over Ghost’s. The last person I ever wanted to pity me.

  “What?” I demanded and it came out a little more sharply than I intended. Ghost lifted the hand I’d been studying so hard the moment before, and reached out. I flattened myself against the door and he dropped it.

  “I’ll be just a minute Princess,” he said and I snorted.

  “Stop calling me that!” I snapped and he smiled to himself and was out into the night, the door swinging shut behind him leaving me in the dimly lit but blessedly warm interior of the truck. I closed my eyes for a moment and simply soaked in the warmth. The truck jerked and rocked a few times as Ghost expertly flipped switches and dragged chains and bound my poor old car to the metal framework behind it.

  I felt so tired. I always did after my sessions with Dr. Hubbard. I wondered faintly if that meant they were working, but then quickly dismissed the notion. Dr. Hubbard wasn’t a bad guy. Short and portly he reminded me of my junior high science teacher with his pressed shirts, bow ties and sweater vests. Dr. Hubbard always wore slacks and decent shoes. Every time I looked at him I thought how much he looked like a shrink, or an old-school family doctor or, a lawyer… With the way he interrogated me sometimes he really could be any of the three.

  The driver’s side door opened and I jumped. Ghost froze midway into climbing into the cab and raked me with his gaze, a quick, hard once over.

  “It is A-Okay Darlin’. It’s just me,” he uttered and hoisted himself up into his seat. I turned my face to the glass and didn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say and truthfully I had so many burning questions to ask… Why don’t you want me Ghost? Why do you pretend to care when you’ve already made it so clear you don’t? But I looked at it this way, I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night. You didn’t ask questions unless you were prepared for the answer and I just didn’t think I was ready, or could take even just one more blow right now. Life was just hard enough without Ghost in it. Trouble was, at least for me, is that it was hard without him around too.