Dirty Little Secret

by Laramie Briscoe

  That was the truth, and she also knew that. Her stomach rolled involuntarily, and she fought back the gag that threatened her throat. His form of sick punishment was one she never wanted to witness again. It was imperative to get away this time. If she didn’t, she knew that she would kill herself—she would be done. There was no way she could continue to live in this hellhole anymore. No one should be forced into the servitude her own father had forced her into at eighteen years old. Nothing could make her live this life anymore. Glancing at her watch, she realized that the cattle truck would be coming down the road in a mere minute. It was like clockwork—every Wednesday, even if it snowed. The truck…it always made it. She had watched it for over six months, timed it to the second. A mere sixty seconds and she could be on her way to some other place.

  “Goddamn it, where are you!” he yelled at her again, his voice causing unwelcome goose bumps on her arms.

  He was close, much closer than was comfortable, but she knew that the cattle truck was less than a minute away. For seconds, she had to hang on. Just had to hang on. Glancing at the second hand on her watch, she saw they were less than twenty seconds out. She strained, waiting to hear the welcome sound of that rambling truck. A moment of panic set in when she didn’t hear it. It should be close enough now. She strained again, her heartbeat pounding heavily in her ears. What if this was the one time in over six months it didn’t come? What would she do? Five seconds away from having a complete nervous breakdown, she heard it. The whine of the eighteen-wheeler as it made it up the hill. When she saw the headlights, she knew that she was this close to making it. Throwing everything she had into her legs, she escaped from her hiding place and kicked her legs into long strides. Memories of running from her brother, Jagger, when they played as kids willed her faster. Her thighs burned and her feet beat against the pavement; she could feel the skin splitting as she pounded against the hard surface. The minute he saw her, she knew it. She felt it against the nape of her neck, but she was across the road from him, and the truck was about to be between them. She couldn’t stumble, she couldn’t look back, she had to give it to God and hope that he would save her this one time she asked. Running as fast as she had ever run in her life, she threw herself at the trailer, catching one of the holes that allowed the cattle to breath. Fleetingly, she heard the gunshot in the wind, but she didn’t focus on that. She focused on hanging on tight. The metal cut her hands, but she knew that she had to put miles between herself and Clinton. He would have to go more than a mile to get back to the house and get into a truck to come find her. By then, she should be at least twenty minutes ahead of him. She would drop off the truck and decide just where in the hell she was going to go. For the first time in years, she breathed. She was broken, but she wasn’t dead.

  Christine jerked awake, her chest heaving. It had been a few months since she’d had that dream. Since she had relived the night she left. Sitting up in bed, she turned on the lamp that sat on her bedside table. Uncharacteristic tears streamed down her face. One thing that she wasn’t was a crier, and it had been even longer since she had done that. Beside her, her cell phone rang, and she smiled, seeing the name of her only friend.

  “Hey,” she answered softly.

  “You okay? The security system detected that you turned on a lamp, and I checked the video. You look like you’re crying. You’re never awake this late at night,” Travis said to her, quickly, his voice urgent.

  She breathed deeply. “I had a bad dream.”

  “Do I need to come?”

  She wanted that more than anything, but there was a part of her that told her she couldn’t count on him like this, it wasn’t right to ask this of him. They hadn’t talked about it in depth, but he knew Jagger, and that was almost too close for her. There was a piece of her soul that longed to see her brother, but there was another piece of her soul that was pissed at him. Pissed that he had left her in the house with their father, knowing how he was. Sometimes the two feelings were interchangeable, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever know which one she actually felt. Christine wasn’t sure that she could forgive him yet. There was one thing, though, she knew she wanted. She wanted—no needed—to see Travis Steele, even if that meant that she was counting on him too much. For once in her life, she wanted to be selfish. She wanted the one thing that brought her a feeling of peace and a feeling of safety.

  “Christy?” he asked her again, using the nickname he had been testing out on her for the past few weeks.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Would you please?”

  “You don’t even have to ask me twice,” he told her. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  It said something about the man he was, Travis thought, as he made his way back to his dorm room still wearing the boxers he slept in, that he was willing to get out of bed at 2 AM and go console a woman that he hadn’t even slept with yet. It also said something about the feelings he had for her, feelings he knew that he shouldn’t have. Feelings that he knew would abso-fucking-lutely scare her. Feelings that scared him, if he were being honest.

  He hurried back to his dorm and threw some clothes on, rubbing his hands over his face, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes. He was tired, so tired, but he knew that she needed him, and he would do anything for her. In the past few months, he had become so deeply ingrained in her life that he couldn’t remember what his life was like before her.

  “Fuck,” he breathed, throwing on his cut and grabbing a cigarette from his bedside table. Lighting it and inhaling deeply, he let the nicotine rush through his body. It was few and far between that he needed those cancer sticks anymore, but sometimes he needed to feel that rush.

  Between the two of them, someone was going to get hurt, and he was pretty fucking sure it was going to be him. “Man up, Steele,” he whispered as he swung his dorm room door open and made his way through the clubhouse. When he hit the kitchen that lead to the garages, he cursed again. There stood Jagger, drinking orange juice from the carton.

  “You lazy piece of shit, grab a glass,” he told the other man, reaching into the cabinet and extracting one before sitting it on the counter.

  Jagger gasped, taking the juice down the wrong way, and then coughed, heaving as he tried to push the juice past his throat. “You scared the absolute shit out of me. What the fuck are you doing up?”

  “Could ask you the same thing, and why the hell are you here and not at your apartment?”

  “The Fall Festival ran over, and it was closer to come out here than go to the apartment. B’s exhausted after helping to plan it. I was afraid she’d fall off the bike if we tried to go any further.”

  Travis nodded. He knew that Bianca worked hard at her job as a teacher—she took it very seriously. “That doesn’t explain why you’re out here drinking orange juice out of the carton, which I have to tell you, is fucking nasty, dude. Germs and all. Who knows where your mouth’s been?”

  Jagger let loose with a shit-eating grin, and Travis held his hands up. “Don’t wanna hear it.”

  “Hey you asked why I was out here.”

  The two stood there in silence. Travis’ heart beat heavily against his chest. He wanted to tell Jagger, so badly, about Christine. He knew that Jagger wondered about her, he had let it slip once, while drunk, that he had gone back to his childhood home, but his parents wouldn’t see him. They wouldn’t tell him where she was, or even acknowledge that either one of them was their child. Steele knew that had to hurt. His family was just as fucked up as the rest, but at least his mom, when he did see her, acknowledged him. “Whatever. Can you tell Liam that I had to go take care of a personal emergency? I’ll meet everybody here before we head out to deal with the Rooster situation.”

  Jagger regarded Travis closely, his young face turning serious. He looked a lot like Christine when he did that. “You know, it must be weird for you now that all of us are in relationships and happy with what we have. If you ever just need to hang out, you know
that Layne and I are here, right?”

  Awesome, now Jagger was feeling sorry for him.

  “I know, man, thanks for the offer.” He squeezed Jagger’s shoulder. “But this really is something that I need to deal with on my own.”

  Not wanting to be in the same room anymore, Travis made a mad dash for the door and all but ran into the garages. Tired didn’t even begin to cover it as he hopped on his bike. Now the lie he was living was becoming increasingly harder to keep up with. He hoped with everything in him that Christine Stone was worth it, because if not, when this all came crashing down, his life would be over. He’d probably be kicked out of the MC, lose every single friend he had, and live the rest of his life wondering what could have been with her. Never had he been the type of person to put all his eggs in one basket, but he had with her, and while he wasn’t regretting it, he was wondering just what in the fuck he’d gotten himself into.

  Any person in their right mind would question themselves for getting out of bed at 2 AM and driving to meet a woman that they hadn’t even kissed yet. Starting the bike, he sighed and drove down the driveway before hitting Porter Pike and driving the same direction he’d been driving for months. Soon, he would need to demand answers, but right now, he wanted to be what she needed because he desperately wanted her to be what he needed.

  Chapter Five

  Christine was scared that Travis had changed his mind when, after thirty minutes, he still hadn’t showed up at her house. She didn’t want to examine too closely why that bothered her or why it scared her, but it did. She got up, pacing the living room until she heard the muted roar of a bike. She would know that sound anywhere, it had become one of her favorites. Running over to the front door, she opened it when she heard him on the front porch.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” he told her as he made his way into the house. “I got stopped on my way out.”

  “At this hour?” she asked, disbelief showing on her face.

  Travis shrugged. “We kinda keep our own hours at the clubhouse. Just so happened someone was drinking out of the orange juice carton. Drives me fucking nuts. There’s glasses there for a reason.”

  She smiled softly. “Sounds like something Jagger used to do.”

  He tensed, wondering if he should tell her the truth. This was one of the first times that she had mentioned him voluntarily. Knowing that they wouldn’t get past this huge elephant if they didn’t acknowledge it, he decided it was best to be honest. “It was Jagger, and he asked me where the fuck I was going.”

  “Did you tell him?” Two feelings bubbled up in gut at the thought of him telling her brother, fear and relief. She didn’t want to examine either one of them.

  “Have I broken a promise to you yet?”

  Something about him coming here at this time of night, something about him dropping everything just for her, made her look at him differently. He hadn’t ever broken a promise to her, and she could tell by looking at him now that it was taking a toll. There were dark circles under his eyes, his face was pulled taut. “You haven’t, and I’m beginning to think that’s been very selfish of me.”

  Those were the last words that he expected to come out of her mouth. “You’ve got a lot going on,” he tried to play it off.

  “So do you. I don’t have the monopoly on bullshit and life crises.”

  “Wow,” he chuckled. “What’s going on here?”

  She sought the words that she wanted to speak. It took a long time, but finally she found them. “Tonight is the first time that I’ve ever seen you when your guard isn’t up.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” It was hard to hold back the tone of his voice, the lack of sleep was beginning to get to him.

  “That I’m always asking for your help but never asking if you need mine.”

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing from her. For so long she had been scared to speak to him, almost like she couldn’t put voice to anything she really thought, and now here she was telling him that maybe he needed her help. “What the fuck happened to you tonight?”

  “I had a dream,” she told him.

  “Must have been some kinda dream.”

  “It was about the night I left him.”

  He stilled, completely stopped moving any part of his body. Was she finally ready to tell him who “him” was? Was she finally ready to trust him? “You know you can talk to me about that…right? I want to know who this guy was, who made you so scared you had to go to a shelter for battered and abused women.”

  “He was a bad man.” She took a deep breath.

  It was on the tip of Steele’s tongue to tell her “no shit”, but he refrained. This was the closest she’d ever been to telling him the things that he wanted to know, and he didn’t want to ruin it. “How did you meet him? Does Jagger know him?”

  “I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “I don’t know where Jagger would have met him, but stranger things have happened, I guess. To tell you the truth, I really don’t know. I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

  She was quiet for so long that he had a seat on the couch and leaned back. He was tired, and he thought maybe if he acted like this wasn’t that big of a deal she could open up. He leaned his head back against the cushions and willed his body to relax, closing his eyes at the silence of the room.

  “My dad knew him,” she finally said. “They had some sort of deal.”

  His eyes popped open. “Like an arranged marriage?”

  “I guess, I never quiet understood it.” She shrugged, pulling her legs up to her chest.

  He recognized that as a protective gesture and knew he had to tread lightly. Travis couldn’t believe that someone their age would be involved in an arranged marriage. It was so antiquated. “How old was this piece of shit?”

  “When we got married, I was a week past eighteen. He was forty-five,” she whispered, her eyes downcast as she said the words.

  “Are you fucking shitting me?” he asked, his whole body coming up off the couch.

  “I wish I was.” She swallowed roughly against the lump that had formed in her throat. “I was nothing more than a trophy wife for him. He decided the color of my hair, what I wore, who I hung out with. I could only drive the kind of car he wanted me to, only when he was with me.”

  “Is that why your hair looked so weird the first time I met you?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. Her hair had looked awful. It was in that in-between stage of color because she hadn’t been able to afford to get someone to do it correctly. At that time, she had been trying to do it in the small bathroom at the CRISIS house, and it had been a nightmare. “Yeah,” she giggled. “It did look weird. Thank God you got me the job at the hair salon; otherwise it might still look like shit.”

  He leaned back down against the couch again, pulling her with him. Very carefully, he reached over and ran his hand through her hair. He let his fingers linger at the end of the strand. “I like this color on you.”

  It was one of the first times that he had ever touched her, other than helping her on or off the bike. They weren’t ones to give into displays of any type of affection. They had never even hugged one another, but the way he ran his fingers through her hair, she wanted to lean her head against his chest and purr like a kitten. “I do too.”

  “Is it your natural color?”

  She knew that he was thinking about Jagger. His was a dirty-blond, sometimes darker. Hers had always been on the darker side. She often wondered if the two of them were real brother and sister when she was younger. Their looks, as far as hair color and eye color, were polar opposites, but their bone structure was almost identical. It was why Jagger had always been called a pretty-boy. “It’s a little bit darker than my natural color, but I’ve always had darker-colored hair. Jagger, when he was little, had hair so blond that it was white. I can remember once we went to the pool and the chlorine turned it green. My dad was so mad.”

  He took that little nugget of in
fo that she had given him and put it in his pocket for later. It wasn’t like her to share things with him, and he wanted to believe that they were turning a corner, that she was starting to trust him. “Why would your dad be mad? It wasn’t like it was the little shit’s fault his hair turned colors.”

  “It was just how dad was.” She shrugged. “The littlest thing would set him off, and the two of us would be wondering just what in the hell we did so wrong. That’s why I was surprised when you told me that Jagger’s in a relationship.”

  He had accidentally let that slip in one of their conversations. “Jagger isn’t anything like I would imagine your dad was. He’s a very compassionate guy. He and B, they have a great relationship.”

  “B?”

  “Her name is Bianca, but we all call her B,” Travis explained. “Here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his personal cell phone, the one that had all his pictures and real-name contacts on it. “This is them.” He pulled up a picture that had been taken a few weeks prior at one of the family dinners that the club was now known to have on occasion. They were sitting so close together that there was no space between them. They were cheek to cheek, and the smile on both their faces was bright. Jagger’s arm was slung around B’s shoulders, and he apparently hadn’t been able to help touching her, his thumb cupped her chin.

  “She’s gorgeous,” Christine said as she gazed at the picture. “They look happy.”

  “They are. It took them a little while to get there, but they are. I’m expecting them to run off and get married any day now.”

  “Really?” she questioned. After the hell their parents had put them through, she couldn’t imagine Jagger willingly wanting to tie himself down like that.

  “Yeah,” Travis nodded. “Your parents might have been asses, but Jagger has some really good committed couples to pull inspiration from. He’s grown into a good man.”

  No thanks to her or their parents was left unsaid. “I’m so glad he’s happy.”