He had to respect that. She was right; he had done as much as he could for her, now it was time for her to stand on her own. He would be just like her dad, just like Clinton, if he didn’t let her do that. It was a small step, but a huge leap in what he was beginning to see was a recovery of sorts. “Alright.”
His reward for agreeing to let her be her own person was a soft kiss on the cheek. She stood up and let Jagger escort her out the back door. Once they got there, neither one knew what to say. The silence between them had never been so strained, had never been so awkward, even when they were kids. They’d always had a million and one things to talk about. Those things weren’t there anymore, and that made her heart hurt. For the first time, Christine realized she was going to have possibly live with the fact that she would no longer have a relationship with her brother.
Chapter Seventeen
Jagger finally broke the silence. His voice was low, the tone tortured. “Tell me. Just tell me everything that you went through. I need to hear it, and I don’t want you to hold anything back. We need to get it out in the open if we’re going to move past it.”
Christine couldn’t look at him when she spoke, so she turned, facing the backyard, focusing on the fence that surrounded the property. “The day you left, I knew that my life was over. I could tell in the way Dad looked at me, the things he said to me. He would get onto me if I ate what he deemed too much, if I didn’t exercise the way he thought I should. I had a feeling he was grooming me for something, but I didn’t know what. I waited, and waited, and the closer I got to eighteen the more nervous I got.”
Jagger let out a deep breath and his stomach clenched. He wasn’t going to like what she had to say, and he knew it, but he’d told her not to sugarcoat anything. If she had lived through it, he sure as hell could listen to it. He took a seat at the table and put his head in his hands.
“A week before my birthday, he told me to get ready. The day of my birthday, he told me to go upstairs and pack my stuff, that I was about to fulfill my duty as a woman.”
“Were you scared?” He had to know, how had she felt?
It seemed like forever until she spoke again. “For a long time, I dreamed that you would come find me, because you knew how Dad was, you knew what kind of hell we were living in. At eighteen you could take me and I could say that I was fine with that. But it changed, the longer I was there, the more sure I was that you were never going to find me. I had to take the fear I did feel and turn it into something else. I used that feeling to get me out of the situation.”
That tore Jagger’s heart apart. He had gone back to their childhood home to try and find her. He’d been run off by the police, and he’d not been allowed back. A few months ago, he’d gone back at night and the place was abandoned. “I did look for you. I went back, and me and the old man had it out. I was escorted off by police and told never to come back. I had nothing to go on, and looking back, I probably should have asked Steele to find you for me. I had this idea, though, that maybe you had a better life, that maybe you were happy. I was afraid I would ruin it, and I didn’t want to be the cause of that, especially after how we were raised up.”
“It wasn’t.” She turned around to face him, the tears swimming in her eyes. “My life absolutely sucked. I am still married to a man that’s almost 50 years old. I want to be divorced, but that means that I would have to tell him where I am. He’s going to make my life a living hell for the rest of my life. He’s already started, trying to use you against me with this information with the club. He wants me to come out of hiding.”
“You’re not going to,” Jagger told her, his tone hard.
“I have to. He’s not going to stop. Don’t you understand that?” Her hands shook. “He’s not going to stop until he gets me back. He’s obsessed with me.”
“Tell me, please. We can’t protect you until you tell us.”
“I’ve told Travis some.”
That pissed him off. If she was confiding in anyone, it should be him. He knew that it was stupid for him to feel that way, he hadn’t been a part of her life in years, but it still hurt. He had always been the one to protect her, and he wanted to be that person now. “But you haven’t told me.”
She shook her head, her face breaking. “It’s embarrassing and shameful. I don’t want you to think less of me.” Tears streamed down her face. “Travis saw me at my absolute worst and helped me out. He didn’t know me before, he’s only known the broken me.”
“That’s not fair,” he told her. “You haven’t given me a chance to know the ‘broken’ you. But I can guarantee you; I’ve felt much of what you have. It’s been a long journey for me to be with B. It took a lot of understanding and even therapy. If there’s any place you could have come to be healed from being broken—it’s here. Nobody in that room has had an easy life. Nobody. Not many people know what’s happened to Steele, but we just found out that he and Rooster are cousins, so it’s pretty obvious that he also has his own demons. We help each other here.”
She was quiet for so long that he thought he’d lost her, that she wasn’t going to open up to him. Just when he was about to give up, she started to speak. “I was his slave. Not in the housework sense of the word. I did that too, but I did it to keep from being bored. His brand of enslavement was sexual. He asked sexual favors of me and expected me to perform whenever he wanted me to.”
“Did he hurt you?”
Christine knew that she had to be honest. “Sometimes. There were a few times that I fought him and he beat me up or hurt me badly.”
“When did it start?”
“Our wedding night,” she smiled sadly. “There were other women too, but they disappeared the longer I was there.”
“Do you know what happened to them?”
“Not really.” She shrugged. “I know that I was his favorite, and I’m kind of afraid that he killed them,” she let that fact slip through quietly. It felt freeing to tell someone else.
Jagger’s mind was working a mile a minute. “How the hell did he get away with it?”
“Clinton had friends, law enforcement friends. At least two or three times a month, there was a sheriff car parked out in front of the house. I never saw the actual people, but the cars belonged to different counties. I get the feeling he had something on all of them. One night he had a huge fight with one of them, and I could hear some of the words as they screamed at each other. It’s like he finds the one weakness that the person has and he exploits it. Just like he did with you guys. It’s something that you can’t get out of easily or something that you can’t just push under the rug.” She was quiet for a few minutes. “I think that’s how he got me. He knew something about Dad. He mentioned once when he was drunk, which was rare, about something that happened with someone involving the church and how it was swept under the rug.”
Jagger froze and his body turned cold. “That wasn’t Dad,” he whispered. “That was me.”
That pissed him off. This piece of shit had used what had happened to him against his sister? How had this man even found out about it? How long had he been looking at Christine before he’d approached their dad to marry her? Was he a child molester? So that she would understand that he wasn’t the one who’d had to hide, he forged ahead. “Something was done to me. I didn’t do anything that had to be covered up, it was done to me, and Dad didn’t want to believe it. There were certain people that did, though. Of course, Dad wanted to sweep it under the rug and not let people know what happened.”
“Then we were both played,” she whispered.
“Because we had awesome parents.” His tone was sarcastic.
“But it didn’t kill us,” she grinned as she walked over and put her hand in his.
“Nope, it didn’t. Here the two of us are, still standing. I actually have a woman that loves me, I know you’ve got a man that cares deeply for you, and I’m really sorry that I busted his head open. It was such a shock to see you. I didn’t know what to do. All I thought was
how long I’ve looked for you and he’d had you all along. It pissed me off.”
“Can you imagine how I felt when I started stripping at Wet Wanda’s and I found out that my brother was the one bringing the house down singing? I wondered why in the world, out of anywhere that I could have gone, I went to the place you were.”
“Because it always works out, no matter what.”
For the first time in a long time, she actually believed him.
Travis’ head was killing him, and he wasn’t looking forward to Jagger coming back into the clubhouse. It had gone even worse than he had assumed it would.
“Are you okay?” Rooster asked as he sat next to his cousin.
“Do I look okay?” he asked, pulling away the towel from the back of his head. They were waiting on Ashley to get there to stitch him up.
Rooster was quiet for a few minutes before he spoke. “I’m sorry you got caught up in my shit.”
“What?” His head hurt, and he wasn’t able to figure out what in the hell Rooster was going on about. “It may be the fact that my head is pounding, but you’re going to have to explain to me what you mean by that.”
“If I hadn’t done what I did as a teenager, with Roni and Liam, this Clinton man wouldn’t have been able to use it against Christine. I’m sorry about that.”
“This is what I don’t get, Brandon.” It felt weird, using Rooster’s given name. It had been a very long time since he’d used it, since they were kids. “Why weren’t you honest with me about why you and Liam didn’t talk anymore? Why aren’t you true to yourself? Obviously you’re just as outlaw as the rest of the guys in this clubhouse.”
“It’s hard to explain, but I had to take on a persona to keep myself safe at that camp. Liam thinks that maybe he had it worse in juvie, but I wonder about that every day of my life. The people up there at that camp were hardcore. It was the last place they were going before prison, and they were hard ass about all of it. Every day that I was there, I wished that someone would come get me and take me home. I was made fun of because of my red hair, because I had made a deal and Liam had been sent to juvie and I hadn’t. Everyone knew what had happened.”
Travis remembered, it had been a big deal back then. It had been on the news, and there had been talk that they would be tried as adults. Everyone had a theory about what had really happened. There was talk that William had actually done it and then let his son and Rooster take the fall for it. Lots of people in their small town thought it was Liam’s initiation, that it was the only way he would be allowed into the Heaven Hill MC. Knowing now what that event had really been, Travis was sad. It had ruined a friendship, and now it was affecting lives of people that hadn’t even known about it.
“So you decided to become a hard ass and be a sheriff’s deputy?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. After I completed the program, my record was expunged, and I was scared. Believe it or not, a lot of people wanted to be the ones to break me. I needed something to do that would show me how to protect myself in a legal way. Then once I got there, I had to change the way I thought. I was used to hanging out with people who didn’t necessarily obey the law, and then here I was expected to uphold it. It wasn’t nearly as easy for me as people assumed, I’ll tell you that. There’s a large, very large, part of me that would love to be in the position you are. That’s honestly where my heart is.”
“With Roni?” Travis grinned.
“That was a long time ago, but you never forget the first, huh?” Rooster couldn’t keep the sad smile off his face either. “There are going to be some tough decisions I’m going to have to make, but first I need to figure out what we’re going to do about this Clinton guy. He wants your lady back, in a bad way, and he’s got something on the sheriff. I’m not sure I can help with this. My hands might be tied.”
“Then we have to figure out what he has on the sheriff or figure out something on him. But first, you need to talk to Christine, she thinks there were some women killed in that house, and I need to get a motherfucking painkiller.” He winced.
Rooster pulled his cuffs out of their holder. “You want me to arrest Jagger for assault?” He couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
Travis laughed. “If only that would bring this asshole out into the open.”
“It might,” Rooster mumbled, thinking aloud. “If he wants Christine, don’t you think he would know who her brother is? Wouldn’t he be interested in a having a few minutes alone with him?”
“No,” a female voice yelled. “Don’t use him like that.”
Christine and Jagger had come back in, and they had obviously caught the tail end of the conversation.
Jagger spoke up. “Do you think it would help? Cause you can go ahead and put me in those cuffs if you think it will.”
Rooster turned it over in his head for a couple of minutes. “I think it’s worth a shot. What’s one night there? We’ll keep you by yourself, and come tomorrow morning we’ll drop the charges and you’ll be free to go. What have we got to lose?”
“He’s not a nice man. I know exactly what he can do if he gets you alone.”
“You forget what I’ve been doing the past few years, sis,” Jagger reminded her. “I can handle myself. It’s not that big of a deal.”
She took a glance around the clubhouse and, for the first time, really looked at the people who were surrounding them. She guessed he had been doing a lot of different things in the last few years. There was not one person here who looked like they couldn’t handle themselves. It was time for her to ask for help, time for her to let her brother in and put this part of life behind her. It was time for her to live, and it was her right. She didn’t have to stay the way she had been. It was okay to make a change.
“Okay, but whatever he tells you about me, don’t believe him.”
She was very well aware of how he liked to manipulate, and she was scared that he would turn them all against her, right as she had found them.
Chapter Eighteen
Christine sighed as she sat on the same back porch that she had been on earlier in the day. She needed to decompress. The events of the day had been tiring, and she knew all of it was because of her and the choices that she had made. Travis now lay in his bed, sleeping off the pain medication that Ashley had given him after she stitched up his head. That head was now almost bald, and even that made her feel awful. Jagger now sat in a jail cell, waiting to see if they could bring Clinton to them. She hated this. She should have made better decisions for everyone involved. The sliding glass door opened, and she looked up, seeing B. The other woman hesitated at the threshold before making her way out into the night.
“Hi,” she said to Christine, almost shy.
“Hi,” she said back.
It was awkward¸ and Christine wasn’t sure what to do. This woman obviously meant a great deal to Jagger, and she wanted to get to know her too, she just wasn’t sure how to do that. The only friend she had made in years was Travis, and that had been based on need and an attraction that she could now no longer deny. B tentatively came over to the all-weather table and had a seat across from her. They were quiet for a few minutes, until the other woman spoke.
“I’ve been with Jagger for a while. We’re going on a year,” she smiled softly. “Well not ‘officially’, but we’ve been flirting for at least a year.”
Christine wondered what this conversation was going to be, and it made her nervous. Was B going to tell her what an idiot she had been? Was she going to be upset because Jagger now sat in a jail cell, trying to lure out this other man? She didn’t want to open her mouth and interrupt, so she kept silent.
“There’s been a million times in the last year that he’s driven me crazy and I’ve wanted to kill him,” she laughed, before her face turned serious. “But there’s been a handful of times since he moved in with me and we’ve been sleeping in the same bed that he’s awoken in the middle of the night. Those nights are bad, he’s screaming bloody murder, and sweat i
s pouring down his body, and he’s gasping for breath, and it takes me a long time to calm him down. It always takes him a long time to tell me what causes that. Every time, it’s a nightmare about his childhood, and it’s the guilt over leaving you alone. He always tells me that he hoped that by him leaving you alone, you had a better life, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that you hadn’t. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with you.”
B stopped for a moment, letting those words sink in.
“We were always close,” Christine whispered, tears thick in her throat. “I was so mad at him when he left. I couldn’t hear the fight that he and my dad had. They were outside, and when Jagger came banging back in the house, up to his room, Dad gave him ten minutes. I remember because I kept watch on that clock as I heard him gathering stuff in his room. I waited at the door of mine, hoping against everything that he would get me and take me with him.”
“He wanted to,” B interjected. “He’s told me that a million times, but you weren’t of age, and he knew that your parents would spin it. They would say that he kidnapped you, and then he would be done for. He went back, ya know? A few years ago and then again more recently.”
Christine’s head shot up. “How recent?”
The other woman cleared her throat and averted her eyes. “Earlier this year, there was a situation. The principal at the school I teach at became obsessed with me. He held me hostage and the Heaven Hill boys, along with Rooster, had to come save me. It brought up a lot of feelings in both Jagger and me. The last thing I remember about being in the room that the principal had me in was that he had me up against the wall, his hand at my throat, he had lifted me so high my feet couldn’t touch the ground, and I was having a very hard time breathing. I know I blacked out, but I don’t know for how long. Jagger is the one that came in the room and saw it. It apparently triggered something in him about his childhood?” She formed the statement as a question, because it was something she had always wanted to know. Jagger had opened up to her in a big way, but in some cases, he was still very closed off about what he had gone through as a child.
Dirty Little Secret Page 11
