Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
“No, I mean, I’m done.”
His brows drew down. “With what?”
“You.” I swung an arm out in front of me. “This. All of it.”
He released a heavy sigh. “Please make sense, Diana. It was kind Ms. Bainbridge allowed us to use her office, but we can’t stay in it all day.”
“I’m dropping out of college.”
An angry flush started up his neck.
“You are not,” he stated flatly.
“You’re paying for it, and I want nothing more from you, so until I can pay for it, I’m out. I’m out at home too. I’ll move in with Gram and Gramps.”
His lip curled with distaste. “Now is not the time to throw a tantrum, Diana.”
At his words, a sudden calm stole over me.
No, not a calm, a chill. But I welcomed it completely.
“I’m not five, I’m nineteen,” I reminded him. “I’m officially an adult. I can vote. I can serve my country. So please don’t mistake me. I’m not throwing a tantrum. I’m making a decision and carrying it through.”
“This is ridiculous. You’ve had something unpleasant happen to you and you’re being overly emotional.”
“I can assure you with one hundred percent accuracy, until you’ve experienced your own sexual assault, you cannot make that first judgement about the level of emotion of a person who’s experienced one. I can also share what happened to me wasn’t unpleasant. It was terrifying. It was shocking. It was unconscionable. And it was felonious. You are a student of the law, but more, you’re my father, and you making it easy for that asshole to get away with what he did to me, which might mean he’ll do it to someone else, is utterly unthinkable.”
“A lady doesn’t curse.”
Oh my God!
That was what he focused on in all I said?
“Yeah?” I asked.
“It’s yes…and yes, you know that, as I’ve told you repeatedly I do not accept that kind of language from my daughter.”
“Well, hear this, Dad. I’m not a lady. I’m a woman, and I can talk however the fuck I want. So fuck you, Dad.” I leaned toward his stunned straight body and bit, “Fuck you.”
With that, I walked out of Ms. Bainbridge’s office.
She was standing outside it. Her eyes came immediately to me and the softness and concern in them almost blew it for me.
“Thanks,” I muttered and got the heck out of there.
I’d fall apart somewhere else.
Not here.
Not now.
Not with him close.
Later.
I’d give myself that, but not much of it, because I’d need to put myself back together, build myself up and stay strong so he didn’t grind me to dust too.
This was right.
This was good.
I needed an education. I needed to think about my future.
What I did not need was to owe that man anything.
Some might think it crazy, or even stupid, but they’d be wrong.
This was the smartest thing I’d ever done in my life.
Harlan
Denver, Colorado
Present day…
Rush had been wrong.
Being a prospect for the Chaos MC wasn’t that tough of a gig.
Hugger and his ma had some rough times, more lean ones, some scary ones, so he’d been cooking and cleaning and helping his ma at the laundromat since he was in single digits. He got his first job, getting paid under the table, when he was eleven.
In his life, he’d lugged more kegs than he cared to count, cleaned up puke and blood, took punches, meted them out, got talked down to, taken for granted, screwed over.
Pulling a beer from a tap for a brother at his demand and driving home drunk biker bunnies was not a hardship.
Sure, there was tougher shit than that to do, a lot tougher, but it was shit that had to get done.
Hugger had learned in his life, if something had to get done, just do it. Don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to con someone else into doing it or assessing the easiest way to get it done. Just get stuck in and do the job right.
Then move on.
He worked out his time as prospect, got paid for it (which, seriously, made it just like a kind of shitty job), then got patched in, and now he got paid a helluva lot more, which was not shitty at all.
And the brotherhood was good.
They were all like those beat-up chairs he’d had to stack more than once when he was a recruit.
They were all a lot like him.
Nicked. Scraped. Worn. But still standing and doing their jobs.
Those jobs were, as he’d noted over the years he’d spent with them, being good husbands, good fathers, good brothers and keeping the businesses strong and thriving, mostly so they could keep their families the same.
That was it.
There was other stuff they got into, but it was up to you if you wanted to get involved.
Hugger had signed on to that right away.
He suspected they all knew who he was, of a sort. Definitely the older brothers did.