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He was only alive because we’d made it so. Because I’d held back just when I saw he was about to leave this world.
I’d been unwilling to give him that mercy. Fuck, I’d even danced with the idea of keeping him down here forever, feeding my wrath with his pain.
It was tempting. Really fucking tempting.
But I felt myself emptying. Felt parts of me becoming hard, cruel with every piece of flesh I tore off, every new injury.
He deserved pain. He deserved to feel that fear and helplessness he’d made countless other women feel. But I deserved life. Sariah did.
And she’d gone.
The night after I’d claimed her.
Though it filled me with rage, I hadn’t been surprised. Her need to escape was written all over her. Fuck, even I felt suffocated in the town that had become my home. With the reporters, the fucking podcasters, every true crime junkie in the world it seemed invading our small town.
Yeah, I’d been expecting her to run. I knew I’d be chasing her. Which meant I’d be ending Granger’s life. It had to be me, though my brothers had offered. Each of them were hungry for his blood, pain and death. His violence had pierced each of us.
“You didn’t take anything from her,” I told him as I stared at him, looking nothing more than the pathetic coward he was. “You didn’t break her.”
It was a lie. A necessary one. She was broken. But she wouldn’t be for long.
Then, without giving him the chance for last words, I put my knife through his temple.
“They’ll never touch her again,” I promised Sariah’s father.
He nodded curtly. “I’m a godly man,” he told me, laying the wrench down neatly beside the other tools. “I don’t believe in violence, in concepts like revenge. My church believes that humans are not inherently evil, just that sin pushes them further from God, that everyone can be forgiven if they ask for it. If they repent.”
I didn’t disagree, figuring that wasn’t exactly the time to talk about my views on God, or lack thereof.
“But I’ll say, I abandoned all of those beliefs just as soon as I saw that pain in my daughter’s eyes,” he continued. His eyes roamed over me before landing on my cut. I’d debated wearing it, fearing this reunion was going to be tense enough as it was. I didn’t need to taunt conversative people with my affiliation with what they would label as a gang.
Sariah was there as I stared at my cut in the hotel room that morning. It was resting on a chair.
She didn’t hesitate to pick it up, carefully, reverently, her small hands brushing across the leather. My cock hardened. She moved to put it on me, and I complied, anything to have her near, have her touch me in a way that wasn’t sexual. She still struggled with affection when she wasn’t in the midst of desire.
Her hands brushed over my shoulders after she put on my cut, lifting up on her tiptoes to rest her chin on my shoulder.
I grasped her hands, pulling them around my body so her front pressed to my back.
“It’s part of you,” she whispered. “We’re both going there as we are, not pretending to be anything we’re not, and we’re sure as shit not censoring ourselves for their comfort. It’s up to them whether they can deal or not.”
“You’re not just a mechanic, are you?” he asked.
“No.” Again, lying wouldn’t have served me. And Sariah was right, if her parents wanted to be a part of her life, they were a part of club life. It was up to them whether they could deal or not.
“What happened to my daughter, is it because of the life you live?” her father’s tone was colder now.
I’d racked my brain, trying to figure out whether Sariah would’ve been hurt if she was or wasn’t involved with the club. Granger had hated the club, wanted to hurt us. He also hated women he considered to be like his mother, selling themselves.
Ultimately, there was no one to blame but that sick piece of shit.
“No,” I replied. “It was because he was evil.”
Her father looked at me, fist clenched. “Are you gonna take care of her?”
“With my life,” I promised.
His head bobbed, abandoning the tools before clapping me on the shoulder. “Right. Now that that’s done, let’s go and have some breakfast.”
SARIAH
By the time my father and Colby showed up for breakfast—curiously together—both Mom and I had pulled ourselves together.
We hadn’t spoken more about what happened to me, or about the mistakes made in my upbringing. There was both too much and not enough to say at the same time. Much too messy. And I didn’t think years of conflict and resentment would be solved in a day. Surely, we had a long road to go. But this would do for now.
