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A dull pain lanced my chest. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t. But I got why she thought I so easily could. She thought she knew where my head was at, thought I was grieving Raquel and struggling to move forward. Maya didn’t truly understand, she didn’t have the facts … because she was right about one thing: I hadn’t shared.
I hadn’t been honest with her about everything. I’d let her believe the false conclusions she’d come to, just as I had everybody else. And I knew that the only way she’d allow me to stay was if I gave her some honesty.
“Ask me a question,” I blurted out. “Any question.”
“Ryder—”
“Any question. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
She stared at me for long seconds and then weakly flapped her arms. “Why? Why bother?”
“I haven’t held back from you to be a dick. It’s just … reflexive when you grew up around people who weren’t interested in who you really were. People who, even as they loved you, wanted you to be someone different.”
“I don’t understand.”
“So ask me to explain.” Let me stay.
More seconds of staring went by. “Explain what you meant,” she finally said, but it was clear that she thought I’d be vague as fuck.
“Can we sit while we talk? The story isn’t long, but it also ain’t short.”
She sighed and then inclined her head.
I followed her into the living area, not feeling any triumph just yet. She was still seconds away from tossing my ass out of here. We both sank onto the sofa, though she kept a respectable distance between us.
“Go on,” she urged.
“This isn’t a tale of woe. It’s pretty boring, really. I had a good life as a human. It was just complicated at times. My dad was the vice president of an MC, so I spent my early years around bikers. I don’t remember my mother. She left because he wouldn’t stop cheating on her—the man was like a damn nympho, to be fair to her. She took my older sister with her when she left.”
Maya cocked her head. “You wanted to stay with him so he wouldn’t be alone?”
“No. She left me behind.”
“What?”
“I didn’t even know she was gone until I went to her bedroom to wake her up, thinking she was still sleeping. She apparently told my dad, Mace, that she was leaving. He didn’t try to stop her or even particularly give a shit who she took with her. He seemed surprised when he realised I was still there. I don’t know why she left me behind, and I can’t say I ever felt the need to find her and ask.” The hurt had long since faded.
“What she did was fucked up,” said Maya, an angry flush staining her cheeks.
I shrugged. “Maybe she thought I’d be better off with him, I don’t know. Anyway, after Mace got arrested for drug trafficking when I was seven, I ended up living with his parents—people I’d never met until then. They’d had Mace when they were in their early forties, and they were everything the people I’d known before weren’t—quiet, conservative, conformers.”
“Snobs?”
“No. They weren’t narrowminded either. They were tolerant and accepting. They weren’t mad at Mace for leaving and joining a MC. But drugs were a hard no for them, and he’d been an addict for years. He’d burned his bridges with them.”
“Were they happy to take you in?”
“Oh yeah. They hadn’t even known I existed, so I was a surprise, but not unwelcome. For me, though, it felt like going from one extreme to the other. There were no more parties, no more bike rides, no more reckless behaviour, no more bare knuckle fights or gambling or booze. My grandparents drank sherry, went to wine tasting events, and hosted dinner parties. They never swore, never raised their voices, never used slang.”
She blinked. “No offence to them, but they sound … really dull.”
“I guess they were. I was used to expressive, larger than life people. My grandparents were far from that. And they believed that children should be seen and not heard. So although they were happy to take me in, they wanted to ‘get the biker out of me.’ Not with violence. But they were pretty strict, and there was constant criticism and punishments.
“I’d never had actual rules before. And these ones … they weren’t there to guide you, they were there to box you in and oppress you. I felt suffocated. Wanted to crawl out of my own skin at times. But my grandparents were all I had, and they loved me. Hell, they took more interest in me than anyone else ever had. They just needed me to be someone else. I lived by their rules. Mostly. I never quite ‘fit’ in their circle, though. No matter how many manners they taught me, I was still rough and edgy beneath it all.”
