That steely gaze traces my ruined jacket. It was open, so unfortunately the black shirt below didn’t fare much better.
“You’re a mess and we don’t have a spare for you with half an hour before this shit is supposed to go down. The place is already packed. Not like any of us have a spare sitting in our closet at home either.”
“Then let me wear my regular clothes. This shit is killing me. Literally. I can’t fucking breathe.”
Something in Steel’s hard look softens. “Leah isn’t here yet. She wasn’t feeling well and needed extra time at the house. She’ll swing by some store and pick something up.”
“In half an hour?”
I choose not to comment on the whole Steel’s old lady not feeling well. It’s come to everyone’s attention, over the past few weeks, that she’s been sick on and off. Being August, it’s not exactly cold and flu season either. It’s obvious that Steel’s gonna be a father, even though he hasn’t come out and told the club yet.
“She’s worked miracles before.”
“Can you get her to turn water into wine while she’s at it?”
Steel’s meaty palm guides me over to the sinks. “Get the fuck undressed and shut that wise-ass mouth. See if you can keep it closed during this damn ceremony, if you can. The sooner it’s done, the better. We can get down to the real business of all of this.”
I brace my arms on the chipped porcelain sink. I chance a glance in the mirror above, a square industrial looking thing put there out of pure necessity and not for any ornamental flair. Big mistake. I look worse than I did two years ago, when The Riders picked my bullet-riddled ass off the floor of the warehouse where the rest of my club went down. They gave me a choice. Join them or die. I wanted to die. Or so I said. I guess they knew better, because they got my sorry ass stitched up and sent to rehab to get clean after years of putting my own product up my nose. I remember being in that whitewashed room, looking at myself, shivering, red rimmed eyes, sweat encrusted grayed out skin. I looked like something death couldn’t even digest and had shit back out. The only difference between then and now is that, sans blow, I’ve filled out my six foot frame.
“Can I keep it fucking shut when they ask me to repeat those damn vows?”
Steel’s mouth presses into a hard line and I can practically hear his teeth grinding. “You’re helping us prevent an all-out war. Plus, having a second chapter of The Riders makes sense.”
“I know.” My fingers curl harder over the edge of the sink.
“If it’s any consolation, Leah says Leena is pretty. All the old ladies thought so. The other sisters refused to show to their own wedding shower, but your girl, she was decent enough to come.” Steel claps me on the back as he gets out his phone, ready to dial his old lady and try and put the pieces of my vomit-riddled self back together.
“Better get her to pick up spares for the other two. Gage and Wing didn’t look any better when I left.” I want to tackon some wise-ass crack about shoving those assurances up his ass, but I press my lips into a thin line and for once in my life, stay silent.
Steel rolls his eyes. He sets his big, heavy right hand on my shoulder, the one with his massive metal rings. The biggest one, a huge chrome looking skull, winks back at me in the shitty fluorescent lighting overhead. I shudder, hoping like hell Leah won’t answer and maybe I’ll be spared. Or maybe they’ll just let me strip down to the waist and go out there bare chested. I have enough ink littering my body that some might mistake it for a shirt.
No such luck. Steel launches into instructions immediately. Right at the end, before he hangs up, he says, love ya’ babe, and I think I’m going to be sick all over the floor again. If I barfed all over the fucker’s boots, it would serve him right.
Pretty wife to be or not, I’m twenty-nine years old and not ready to get fucking hitched.
It’s a damn fine thing that divorce is in style. The sooner I can get one, the better.
Chapter 2
Leena
Today is my wedding day. And I’m a mess.
On the outside, I look put together. Polished. Poised. Nothing less than the graceful woman I’m supposed to be, the daughter of Viking, a man who doesn’t like to be disappointed. On the inside, I’m a mess of twisted up insides, my stomach roiling, my heart beating out an unsteady rhythm. I force my breaths to come regular, to stay calm, but my soaking wet palms and the clammy skin underneath the simple off-white, lace dress are dead giveaways that I’m barely holding it together.
My chest hurts the most. All my life I’ve battled against invisibility, simply fading away in a world where I’ve always been little more than unwanted. The grain of terror that’s taken root in my heart keeps growing with every passing second. I’m afraid it will burst its confines and split me wide open to flower, terrible and enraged, in the room where my sisters and I wait.
I dart quick glances at Ami and Stephanie. I wish I could blame them for this, for all of it, but I know that whether or not they’d acted on their right to express their own freedoms, the man we call Father would have orchestrated some other way to wash us from his hands.
“He always wanted sons,” Ami whispers, like she can hear my thoughts clear across the small room we were shoved into by my oldest brother, Ivan, AKA our guard for theday, to hurriedly dress and make ourselves passably presentable. That was two hours ago. No one has come for us yet, but I know it won’t be long.
“We’re just pawns in his game,” Stephanie adds. There isn’t any bitterness in her voice, because it’s a fact that we’ve all long since accepted. At twenty-five, she’s my oldest sister. Old enough to know how the world works, though I guess I’ve known these things since I was old enough to process thought.
“Whatever.” Ami shifts out of the chair she’s been perched in for the past hour. She’s beautiful. At twenty-two, she’s had more experiences than I could hope to have in an entire lifetime. My father didn’t ever know what to do with her.
With any of us.
Marrying us off, like it’s eighteen fucking hundred, is his grand solution. Get a woman a husband. Get her settled down with a man and a job and children. That’ll tame her.
