Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
"Your pants," he growled, unable to even look at me.
My pants.
The girl had my pants.
But Holden, Holden had found me without them. And thought the worst.
"No," I objected, voice forceful. "No. I mean it could have happened. I missed so many signs. But no. I gave my pants to one of the girls. I thought... I thought I was done. I told her to take my clothes, give me hers. It would all fall on me."
"Thank fuck," he grumbled, shaking his head.
"How did you know?"
"Didn't," he said, shaking his head.
"You just didn't trust that I was ready." I couldn't help it, my temper flared a bit at that.
"You weren't," he agreed, shrugging. "I followed just in case. When you didn't come out after the girls ran off, I came in. Found you on the floor half naked and coughing up blood."
"What about the evidence?"
"I work fast," he said, shrugging. "Took that shirt off of you, mopped up most of your blood with it. Put you in something fresh. Wiped you down with paper towels and fucking Windex in the car on the way to the hospital. Said saw you getting mugged. Scared the guys off. Grabbed you. Brought you in. You had no documents on you, of course. They took pity on me and let me visit with you. They're going to kick me out eventually though."
"What am I supposed to do from here?" I asked, suddenly afraid to be alone, something I hadn't experienced in ages.
"You go with the cover story. You have all the documents." The fake documents. Everything from driver's license to social security number. I had an identity to fall back on for situations such as this. "You're gonna be here for five to seven days. I can visit during the right hours. Make sure you're keeping it all straight. From there, you get discharged, take your shit, and meet me out front. You're going to be down for two months. Then we can start training again."
Somehow, that was reassuring. That things hadn't changed. That this didn't take away Holden's faith in me.
In the end, he'd been right.
I stayed there six days.
I went home on my twentieth birthday.
I celebrated by sprawling out on my mattress, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember that all of this was worth it
That it wasn't about me.
That my life wasn't about me.
That my pain didn't matter.
That my fear didn't either.
Because those girls out there were in pain and scared.
My life was about them.
I knew that.
I believed in that.
But I just really, really wanted a fucking ice cream cake.
Nine
Ferryn - Present Day
I couldn't breathe.
It was laughable, really.
I'd been in the most dangerous situations anyone could imagine. I had legitimately faced death time and time and time again.
And I had done that with a sense of calm coursing through me.
But the thought of walking into the compound to see my parents was making it feel like someone had a hand around my throat.
"Hey, Ace," Vance called, voice sounding far away even though he was just a foot or so away from me. "Hey," he tried again, hand reaching out, tipping my chin up, a move that sent a little shiver through my insides.
I remembered once seeing him do that to a girl at a show. And then went ahead and spent eighteen months fantasizing about him maybe doing it to me someday.
Now he had done it twice.
And it was proving just as effective as I imagined it would be.
We'd found a relative truce over the remaining few days.
He showed up in the late mornings. He brought various foods. We talked. Mostly about the club, about Navesink Bank, about the new club members and their women, about all the dramas I had missed. It was all enough to fill up a dozen books, I swear.
But there was a sort of comfort in the chaos. My childhood had been full of it. My mom shaking us awake in the middle of the night, telling us to grab our favorite toys—or as we got older, electronics and books—then shuffling us into Dad's bullet-resistant SUV, and driving us up to Hailstorm.
As kids, we thought it was some sort of planned adventure
Oh, how naive we had been.
As we got older, though, we knew what was really going on. There was some kind of drama in Navesink Bank. And as a precautionary measure, the women and kids were shipped off to the safest spot in the area.
Eventually, I started to be able to piece together the drama, figure out the new bad guys in town, what they wanted, how my family or their connections dealt with it.
It had been a while since I learned about it. And it felt good to be in the know again. Even if it was so after the fact.
Vance carefully side-stepped information about my parents or siblings, wanting me to hear all that from them, and I gave as little as possible about my past.