Page 1 of Tame Me

Prologue

Reagan

MY ENTIRE LIFE I’ve been wrapped in bubble wrap and not allowed to do very much. I understood it when I was younger because I was continually scaring my mom with the seizures I had. That’s what happens when you have a cyst on your brain in the central processing center. There was no rhyme or reason to my seizures, and no one could pinpoint what triggered them. I grew up constantly at doctor appointments and having various tests run. Like clockwork I was at a hospital. The only times it wasn’t consistent was if I had a seizure and had to be taken to the emergency department. Even though I was on medicine to prevent the seizures from happening, it wasn’t a guarantee that they would stop. Nothing is ever a guarantee.

The day Cage and Joker decided to make us a part of their family, we gained an entire club as a family. I now have two very overbearing dads and a whole club full of uncles that treat me like a toddler instead of the almost twenty-one-year-old woman I am. The ol’ ladies of the club are somewhat more compassionate about my feelings, but they still tend to be overbearing aunts as well. For once, I want someone to understand where I’m coming from. To know and realize that I have dreams and goals I want to accomplish and that I know how to take care of myself. I’ve more than learned my limits and what I can and can’t do when it comes to various aspects of my life.

My mom, Skylar, has had her hands full raising six kids. She’s tried to treat me the same way as my younger brothers and sisters, but it’s not enough. Alana and Haley can go out and date, they can drive, go to school, live off-campus, and pretty much anything else they want. Kyle and Brandon finished school and are now officially Prospecting with my dads’ club, the Wild Kings. They get to do whatever the hell they want. The four of them grew up knowing what to do if I had a seizure in front of them and my brothers have taken on the same protective stance as our dads. I’m suffocating and no one can see the pain I feel on a daily basis because they don’t care to look.

Jameson, my twin brother, left home just after we turned nineteen. He found another club to Prospect with. They’re a one percent club and I know my parents are worried about him. But, they didn’t throw a fit when he told them his decision to leave with Reaper and the Fallen Brethren MC. He was allowed to start living his life the way he wants to. The day he left, it felt as if my heart broke in my chest. Jameson has been my biggest supporter and always let me do things I wasn’t supposed to do within reason. He could feel the pain filling me and let me have some fun as long as he was by my side in case anything happened to me. Now, there’s a void that no one can fill except for my twin brother. And he’s living his best life while I’m still being held back from starting to live at all.

I started to assert my independence when I became thirteen. The seizures became less and less, and I wanted to start experiencing things other kids my age did. Go to games at school, hang out with friends, lay in the sun. Nope. I didn’t get to do any of that. Not without my parents, Cage and Joker especially, having fits and us getting into arguments. It honestly caused a rift to start building between my parents and I because they don’t understand where I’m coming from. However, I always take into consideration their feelings and how much they want to protect me from anything bad happening. Even though I understand where they’re coming from, it doesn’t make it any easier to know they are always going to see me as some weak little girl who can’t take care of herself.

When the neurologist cleared me to get my permit shortly after our eighteenth birthday, my dads questioned the doctor for over an hour. They made her go over all the test results for the last seven years to ensure them my seizures weren’t going to come back, and anything else they could think of to try to stop me from getting that particular piece of independence. It didn’t work though. I got cleared and the doctor filled out my paperwork. My mom is the one who took me to get my permit and eventually my license. My dad Cage wouldn’t even teach me how to drive. He was so completely against me driving and I get where he’s coming from. If I happen to have a seizure behind the wheel, it's not just my life at stake. I could hurt or kill someone else and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if that happened. However, if I’m careful and only remain in town, I should be okay. I don’t plan on driving all over the place because I hate being out in public.

I didn’t even get a new car like Alana and Haley. When they got their license, they each got a new car. The boys all got new bikes. I finally got my license and I got told I could use my mom’s SUV when she didn’t need it. Conveniently, they always had her going somewhere if they even had the hint I wanted to go somewhere. Again, I was stuck on the sidelines and there was nothing I could do to change my circumstances. While I had money saved from birthdays and holidays, I wasn’t allowed to have a job so there simply wasn’t enough saved up to go buy a used car.

Jameson, Anthony, and the rest of my family all got to choose their dates for the prom and Homecoming. If I went, I got told I had to go with a Prospect. Probably because I wasn’t allowed to date. So, I had to compromise and take a Prospect with me to the prom. He barely even danced with me because my dads and uncles threatened his position within the club if he so much as looked at me wrong. The entire night I sat on the sidelines and watched as everyone else danced, talked, and laughed with their friends. I don’t even have friends who aren’t the kids from the club because I’m not allowed to do anything. I’m the only one who doesn’t have a group of friends outside of the Wild Kings. I’m so fucking lonely and no one listens when I try to explain it to them.

The only place I’m allowed to go without a chaperone is to the clubhouse. In reality, I have tons of chaperones there. My entire family spends most of their time there. Even there I have Prospects waiting on me hand and foot and I don’t get a second to myself. If I go out to the field behind the clubhouse, someone always manages to find me. When I try to go out to the pond behind our house where we’ve had countless parties and stuff over the years, someone shows up to make sure I’m okay. The only place I can be completely alone is in my bedroom. It’s within the four walls of the house I grew up in and that’s where I’m expected to remain.

Pops is the only one that lets me get a break. He takes me for rides on his bike and he’s the main one that taught me how to drive. My dads got into a massive fight with him when they found out. I’m surprised I can still hang out with Pops. Joker taught me a little how to drive, but he always had one reason or another as to why he couldn’t take me out. Pops found me in tears one day and he told me to get off my ass, wipe my tears, and get in his truck. That was the first driving lesson he gave me and it was one of the best days of my life.

Even now, I’m confined to Clifton Falls. I work at the tattoo parlor and get to do an apprenticeship under my uncle. It’s still not enough. I want the freedom to spread my wings and fly like the rest of the kids. I want to experience life, have a boyfriend, lose my virginity, and make the same mistakes others my age have been making for years. Mistakes I should’ve been making for years now. Instead, I’m always the outsider as I watch everything happen from the sidelines as a mere spectator.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my family and wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. The only thing I ask is they treat me as if I’m about to turn twenty-one. I don’t even get to go out to a bar for my birthday because they want me at the clubhouse. Jameson isn’t going to be here to celebrate our birthday again with me and I know he’s going to have a kick ass time out at bars or even just at the clubhouse of the new club he belongs to. I’ll get a boring as fuck party with no alcohol and that’s about it. Usually the parents go all out when one of us turns twenty-one. It breaks my heart to know I won’t get to experience the same kind of treatment.

At almost twenty-one, I’m still a fucking virgin. My sisters laugh about it and I put on a brave face so they don’t know how much it bothers me, but I can’t stand the fact they all get to live their lives and I’m stuck in bubble wrap with no hope of a future—that the pain I feel daily is a source of jokes to my siblings. I know they don’t mean to taunt me and rub things in my face, but they do all the same. It’s almost like my suffering is some sort of game to them. Like they try to see which one of them can break me first. However, none of them ever see my tears. Those are only shed in my room when I’m completely alone and can hide from the small world surrounding me.

I’m grateful that my parents, everyone in the club, love and care about me. I feel so stifled like I have no room to breathe or experience anything that might hurt me. I’ll never grow or learn if I can’t make my own mistakes. I know I have to be watchful of the possibility of my seizures returning and that an injury to my head could cause them to come back. I’m always cautious and know my surroundings. I know my limits more than any other kid I grew up with.

That’s why my parents don’t know I’ve been applying to schools that are at least six hours from home. One day, I hope to own a tattoo parlor and want to get my degree in accounting so I don’t have to worry about trusting someone else with my books. I want to be independent in every way possible. I’ve been held back for so damn long now that I want to make as many aspects of my life as possible free from needing to rely on anyone else for help or any kind of assistance. I hate feeling this way, but that’s about where I am in life now.

Chapter One

Reagan

WAKING UP, I take a minute to take in the fact I’m officially twenty-one-years-old. Jameson isn’t here to celebrate this milestone with me and knowing I won’t get to go out to celebrate, I realize I don’t give a shit about my birthday. If I had my way, I’d stay in bed with my head under the covers. My parents won’t let me do that though. And there’s no point in feeling sorry for myself; not when I’m trying to show everyone how independent I am and how much I want to be on my own. So, with a deep sigh, I realize I have to get up and actually go about the day as if I’m happy it’s my birthday and that I’m not going to treat it as just another day in my life.

The house is quiet as I get out of bed and make my way to the shower. It’s abnormally quiet. I take advantage and linger in the shower letting the hot water soak into my stiff muscles. My entire body hurts with the tension filling me. The same thing happened last year because Jameson wasn’t here with me. If it’s anything like last year, I won’t even get a call from him. He’s too busy and I get that. There’s always something going on with his club and they have different businesses than we do because they’re a one percent club and the Wild Kings aren’t. To know he didn’t even think about me on the day we were born, broke another piece of my heart and my soul cracked just a little more.

As soon as I’m ready to start my day, I make my way downstairs. Usually, my mom would already be in the kitchen but she’s not there. No one is home at all. What the fuck?

On all of our birthdays my mom gets up early and makes our favorite breakfast. She goes all out for our day. I don’t remember a single time she hasn’t been there for us as soon as we wake up. Even if she were sick, she’d still get up and pretend everything was okay for our ‘special day’. I think it comes from how hard things were for her when Jameson and I were little before she met Cage and Joker. She didn’t always have money to do anything, including having just a simple cake for us. So, the first year she could do something major, she did and it’s been that way ever since. I mean, she had an inheritance, but at that point in time I think my mom was so used to not having any money that she didn’t spend a lot of it so it disappeared quickly. I’m pretty sure there’s still a portion of it left now in an account collecting interest because she’s always got that fear in the back of her mind that she’ll be back in the position of not having anything at all.

Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I pick an apple up out of the bowl on the island and make my way out of the house. If they don’t want to be here for my birthday, that’s fine. I’ll head to the tattoo parlor and get to work early instead of sitting around the house, alone, and feeling sorry for myself.

I walk outside and see Mom’s SUV sitting in the driveway. There’s a note on the windshield and my curiosity gets the better of me as I walk over to see what it says. Pulling it down, I open the piece of paper and skim it.

Reagan,

I went out with your dads. Take the SUV to work and we’ll pick it up later. I love you!

Mom

Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about walking to work. It takes me about an hour to walk there. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again if I have to. The wrath of my dads is worth it to prove I can take care of myself. Or I’m just stubborn as fuck. However, even in my mom’s note, she doesn’t wish me a happy birthday. Maybe everyone forgot what today is. While part of me is happy because I don’t want to think about what today is, a larger part breaks even more. I honestly don’t know what the hell I’ve done in my life to be completely ignored by those around me.

Getting in the SUV, I find the keys above the visor. It takes me mere minutes to get from the house to the tattoo parlor. I take a few minutes to compose myself after the weird morning. The fact I haven’t heard from anyone is messing with me more than I thought it would.

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