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“No, you don’t. Let me help.”
She gives me a shy, awkward little smile and doesn’t say anything. But she goes into a pantry and grabs a broom and dustpan. Then she steps out and starts to sweep up, the clinking and clanking of the broken glass echoing loudly in the room. As she does that, I start picking up the larger shards and dropping them into the trash can. As I work, I steal glances at her, stunned by her beauty. Her fair skin is flawless, and the cool, icy blue of her eyes sends a flutter through my heart that’s unexpected but pleasant.
“I’ve never heard anybody talk to him that way,” she says.
I shrug. “Why not? He’s just a guy.”
“Everybody lives in fear of him.”
“Do you?”
The moment of silence stretches far too long between us.
“Especially me,” she admits quietly.
I feel a flash of anger tear through me as I see him standing over her, ready to slap her around in my mind’s eye again. That scene plays over and over again and I feel myself growing angrier and angrier. I take a breath and let it out slowly, getting myself back under control again. The thought that this woman lives in fear every day of her life because of that walking sack of shit infuriates me. It makes me want to put two in his head and leave him to rot somewhere in the middle of the desert.
But I know I can’t afford to think like that. I’m here on business. Club business. I can’t afford to be distracted or let my emotions get the better of me. And if I move against Hammerhead, Old Grim will have my ass on a platter soon enough. Still, I can’t tamp down the anger entirely.
“Does he do that often?” I ask.
She looks away and won’t meet my gaze. Her cheeks flush and her eyes shimmer, as if she’s fighting to keep tears from falling. I can tell she’s embarrassed by her situation. It wrenches at my heart.
“You have no reason to be embarrassed,” I tell her.
“It’s… humiliating. I hate that I’m even in this position.”
“If there’s anybody who should be embarrassed, it’s him,” I say, my voice low and hard.
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t see it that way.”
“He’s an idiot,” I reply. “But why don’t you just leave?”
She looks up at me and I can see by the look on her face that I just asked a really stupid question. I know these situations are complicated, to say the least. I’m not an expert in psychology but I have read that victims of domestic abuse often can’t just pick up and go when things get rough. There are a lot of reasons for it, not the least of which is fear of what happens if they’re caught. For others, they simply don’t have anything to run to. And there are a host of other reasons why some remain in situations as miserable as Molly’s.
“How did you end up with him anyway?” I ask.
She frowns. “It wasn’t my choice.”
I cock my head. “What do you mean?”
She shakes her head. “It’s just… it’s complicated.”
She sweeps in silence for a moment then I hold the dustpan for her. She gingerly sweeps it into the pan for me, taking care to avoid meeting my eyes. Molly has such an open vulnerability and a look of pain on her face that it physically hurts me to see it. I hate that she’s having to endure this life. It’s nuts. I don’t even know this woman and yet I already feel protective of her. There’s some part of me that wants to get her away from this prick.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
“Seems like forever,” she says.
“If you were able to leave, would you?”
A wry smile crosses her face, but she doesn’t say anything. She simply keeps cleaning up. I take that as my cue to not press that issue since it seems like a sensitive spot for her. It also tells me that she would leave in a heartbeat if she could. I can feel her keeping me at an arm’s distance as well as the walls that she surrounds herself with. She doesn’t trust me. And I suppose I can’t blame her if Hammerhead is her first interaction with a biker. If I wasn’t in an MC already, dealing with that prick would probably turn me off the life too.
But that’s the thing. She doesn’t strike me as a typical cut-slut. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly but something about her doesn’t quite jibe with this life. To me, Molly feels like a square peg in a round hole—she doesn’t quite fit into the MC life. She doesn’t have that feeling about her. That makes her comment about this not being her choice make a lot more sense. Which only piques my curiosity about how she wound up here, to begin with.
“Where are you from?” I ask. “Originally.”
“Feels like another planet.”
