Page 9 of Devil’s Torture

I never had the chance to slip a ring on a finger. It was all planned; the ring is still in the bottom of my saddlebag. I’ve kept it all these years hoping I’d get the chance to slip it onto her finger right where it was always meant to be.

I’m not sure I’ll get that chance now.

Not with how much time has passed.

Past the fear of going home, there’s something more. A pull. A call. I know where it wants me to go.

Home.

To her.

To Bexley.

It’s a feeling I’ve been ignoring for ten years. Now, I don’t have to anymore.

And just like that, I know I’m headed in the right direction even though I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to get the life I was supposed to live back. Bexley may never look at me with love in her eyes again.

The idea of her moving on hits me out of nowhere and my bike wobbles a little as I keep moving east. I can’t really blame her if she did move on considering I haven’t contacted her in ten years.

But fuck if the thought of it doesn’t tear through me like shrapnel.

Getting back home takes time which only irritates the fuck out of me the longer I’m on the road. Because the pull I feel to get home, to get back to New Orleans, gets stronger every mile I get closer.

The feeling starts to blur with memories of the past, the very memories which ended with me on the road for ten years of penance I never considered when I made the choice I did. Not that I would do anything differently that night.

Some of that night is fuzzy in my memory, but then there are other moments I remember with a vivid clarity which borders on haunting.

Two guys who sometimes hung around were talking at the clubhouse that night. I didn’t catch all of their conversation, but I heard enough. More than fucking enough.

The sentence that had me walking out of the clubhouse, not caring if anyone noticed, was one of the guys saying, “The deal is done. Ron already sold her. I wish I could have gotten one more look at her but haven’t seen her tonight.”

He kept his voice down, but there was something like glee in his words. It made my skin crawl. I also knew, fucking knew with a certainty that was bone deep that they were talking about Bexley.

That Ron, her piece of shit stepfather, sold my woman.

As if he had the right. She wasn’t under his roof. She wasn’t under his care as a minor.

As if either of those things being true would make it okay. It fucking wouldn’t.

Rage like I had never felt before curdled inside me. It made my feet move before I realized it, but I remembered who the fuck was talking. I would make sure they got theirs.

I walked straight to my bike and was on the road before anyone realized I was gone. Parking on the backside of the rundown house, the same one Bexley lived in for far too long, I made my way to the backdoor. My steps were silent.

Everything in me was focused on finding out what the fuck Ron had done.

Just as I stepped into the cramped kitchen, I heard Ron’s voice toward the front of the house. “I told you, once you pay me, I’ll deliver her.”

There was a pause and he sighed with an edge of magnanimousness in the sound. “Fine, half now, but I’m not grabbing her until I have the money.”

What a fucking saint.

When he started laughing like a madman, I stepped into the living room. He was lounging on the couch in just a pair of old, worn boxers. He was never an attractive man to look at. I always wondered what Bexley’s mom saw in him, but then she passed and I could only protect my girl from outside the house.

It was fucking torture.

But I got her out.

After stepping behind him on the couch, I gripped the front of his greasy hair and my lip curled up in a snarl of disgust. Fucking gross. I was thankful as fuck that I was wearing gloves.