AllFreeNovel
Share Us
By some miracle, Maddie understands my mumble through the pillow. "We all screw up, Rae."
I jerk the obstruction aside. "Tell me honestly: am I plain stupid?"
She twists her lips.Not the response I was hoping for.I set the pillow back in place and open my mouth against the cotton in a silent scream. I've spent my whole life questioning why I always seem to do things wrong, why good decisions don't come as naturally to me as they do others.
Wondering if I'm broken.
This whole fucked up scenario just reinforces that fear—I’m different, and not in a good way. A little special in the head.DoI even stand a chance at a peaceful future if this is how I've managed to fuck up the first twenty-three years of my life?
A knock at the door stalls the spiraling thoughts, the reel of chaos coming to a screeching halt at Tyke's deep timbre.
"You girlies decent?"
"No, Daddy," Maddie sasses, rolling to her side. "We're naked, painting mandalas on each other’s ass."
A low grumble precedes his footfalls into the room, heavy boots knocking against the timber floor as they near. "I need you downstairs, Rae."
And there he goes again, with the magic words that turn my desperate heart to mush:I need you...He could postface that statement with something as mundane asto take out the trash,and I'd still swoon at the fact I'mneeded.Christ. What Ineedis my head read. Or erased. Rebooted, more like.Fuck.
"Sure." I set the pillow aside and crunch to a seated position, my back to him so he won't see me dab my under eye.Just in case."I'll be right down."
"You need me too?" Maddie shifts so her legs hang off the edge of the bed.
Tyke makes a rumble that's a mix of a sigh and a groan. "May as well. You'll hear it anyway." I glance to the window opposite me, and his reflection caught against the night-shrouded glass.
He stares straight into my fucking soul. The slight furrow to his brow tells me he saw exactly what I did: me wiping at my eyes. Why that matters to him, I don't know.
He blew me off before. Coaxed me into confessing my feelings and then marched out as though I'd personally offended him.
He's not the one who's hurt and confused.Is he?
"In my office." He turns and retreats, throwing over his shoulder as he goes, "Be good girls, and don't make me wait, yeah?"
He fucking had to go and do it, didn't he?
35
TYKE
Top lip curled back,I regard the half-drunk glass of whiskey in my hand as the girls walk in. The swirl in my gut and the burgeoning headache behind one eye tell me that I should’ve laid off the drink after the start of the evening, but the anger firing through my veins, hot and ready to discharge through coiled muscle, reminds me I need the escape.
The oblivion.
“Sit.”
The girls do as instructed, finding solace in one another as they fall into the middle of the sofa opposite mine. I glance toward Digger over the rim of my glass as I finish the fucking poison and find my brother studying our guest, the side of his index finger rubbing an incessant path back and forth across his bottom lip.
He looks as though he wants to devour her. And I get why.
We’re taught in Sunday school that angels radiate innocence with their silken, pale hair and soft, rounded faces. The woman reaching for my daughter’s hand has neither, but I find myself hungering for her dark, straight locks and wicked eyes, slaveringfor a taste of her sharpened cheekbones and salivating for a minute between those pillowy thighs all the same.
Not once since Rae arrived on our property has she pretended to be anything other than herself. Andthatis the fucking honesty and confidence that I crave. I don’t give a fuck what she says; she can tell me until she’s blue in the face that she hasn’t an ounce of belief in herself, but her reluctance to waver from her truth is the evidence that beneath all the doubts, beneath the bullshit criticisms laid on her from others, is a beautiful woman convicted in herself.
Rae’s the kind of pride I want to wear on my arm. The kind of honesty that I want to bathe in. To selfishly drink in the hopes it transfers, even just an ounce, to myself.
“You heard most of what Kane said out there,” I start, setting the glass aside on the table between us. “Rules are the women don’t get involved and, while I see how fuckin’ backward and archaic that can be, I still agree with it. The club works because the women are protected. What the men lose in pursuit of freedom and protection for what they love, the women restore with compassion and blissful ignorance at home. We need your soft hearts, but today, that changes.”
Maddie frowns, glancing toward her uncle for confirmation that I haven’t lost my head.
