Break Me Open (12 page)

Not a good answer. She scowled, shoved some more fries and looked out the window. “It’s ok, you know. I’m into to you too. It’s ok for us to just be here with each other and hide for a bit. But the only thing I’m missing out on is a couple days of classes. Why would you risk jail time to protect a girl who can get your club in trouble? Why go against your own club?”

“It’s… It’s because of the way you look at me,” I said.

She returned her gaze to me, composed. She knew what I meant. I wasn’t talking about just her looks. It was the way she had looked at me that night. Even in the depths of my wrath, she hadn’t just seen a monster to fear. She had seen me as a “someone”. Someone she didn’t want to look away from. My eyes were the ones that shone in the night, but it took hers to see my reflection. To see that I might be more than the sum of my past.

Or maybe she was just used to ghosts.

I struggled to put that all into words, to explain, but she nodded, apparently satisfied. “ So that’s it,” she said. “That’s enough to get you to betray your club?”

“They’re not exactly the brothers I picked,” I said. “And I didn’t exactly betray them.”

Not exactly helping them either though, that much I had to admit.

“Do you know what you plan to do with me?” she asked.

“No. Do you know what you want?” I asked.

“Well, I’d rather not die.”

“Yeah, that’s about as far as I’ve gotten too.”

“Other than that though, no, I don’t. I don’t know your world. But I trust you.”

She sighed, but not in surrender. Relief. She perked up a bit with a smile.

“I’ll figure it out,” I said, to her as well as me. “Just give it some time.”

She nodded. “So until then…”

I saw the longing cross her face again, felt the deep draw in me mirror it. Goddamn, this food really was just fuel.

“In the meantime, back to our routine?” I asked.

She nodded urgently.

We tossed the trash and I led her by the shoulder back across the lonely parking lot into the dim warmth of our room.

We went another two full sessions, with only a short wordless space in between. Afterwards, we showered together and the heat and the slickness of her body brought me back into her for a third time.

When we got back to bed I was so tired that my brain barely worked. The last shot in the shower had blown through my reserves and no food was going to restore them.

I drifted into sleep, my face buried in her damp. I wondered, as my thoughts decomposed for the night, how it would be to wake up tomorrow, and find that my life had started just now. Just here with her.

It sounded pretty fine indeed.

When I woke, the curtain was glowing with daylight and Ghost was gone. I panicked, and shot to the window, but remembered the chopper wasn’t in view. His jacket was still here. I saw that, and my heart slowed, cause no way he’d leave that. Even if he had decided to abandon his club, it would have been for me. Why leave us both behind?

Cause he’s gotten what he wants from both of us.

No, I didn’t buy that.

The a/c rattled to life and hit my face with cold chemical air. I stood in the blast until I started shivering and was forced away. I sat swinging my legs at the edge of the bed. The jacket pretty much summed up the contents of this room. Just his clothes, my clothes, and oh yeah, another change of clothes for me.

Not exactly the best toolkit to come up with a plan.

I lay flat on the rumpled sheets. Last night had been such a fun frenzy. I’d never been nearly abducted. I’d never been taken by a guy before. Two firsts out with one night, both pretty out of the blue.

What now though? Something about Ghost made me feel safe with him around, but his answer from last night wasn’t enough with the light showing me how dingy the place we were staying in was. This was just a rest stop. What do we now?

I stared at the bumpy ceiling listening to pops and groans in the wall and asked myself follow-ups.

Where exactly do we stand? And who am I standing with?

The door jamb rattled and I covered myself with sheets. Ghost stepped in wearing nothing but his dark jeans and a sheen of sweat. My insides tugged at the sight of him, glistening in the doorway. He shut the door and sat heaving softly at the table by the a/c.

“No trouble right?” I asked.

“Just a run,” he said.

“It’s really cooking out there.” The air that had come in with Ghost had been enough to thaw me out.

Ghost just shrugged. “I was designed for this.”

I looked over the form that I knew so well by now. Even if I took out my own personal opinion on his body, he was clearly in peak condition. I’d seen race horse with more flab.

But that wasn’t what he meant, was it? It was the eyes, and the modifications, and a whole host of other secrets he kept close.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Sudden lack of memory?” he asked.

“I really mean it, Ghost, Bryan, whatever. Who are you and where did you come from?”

“Not the right questions,” he said. “Cause I really am Bryan White, and as for where I’m from? A little town called Gilsner.”

He looked a little amused. If he was lying there’d be no way for me to tell, but it made sense. Only a son of Gilsner would stay in this town. I didn’t remember him from school or anything, but the city had been big enough to host more than one not long ago.

“So what’s the right question?” I asked.

“Are you sure you can you trust me?”

“Are you asking?” I said.

“No. I’m saying that’s your real question.”

“It’s not. I already said I did.” He was VP of his club, so why would he find my faith in him so surprising? “How about this? If you’re from Gilsner and you left, then why are you back?”

“That’s a better question ,” he said. “The answer? I got nowhere else to go.”

“Tired of the military?”

He rapped a hand aimlessly on the table. “More like the other way around.”

“They kicked you out?”

“Dishonorable discharge.”

His eyes shone right at mine, searching for my reaction. The words didn’t mean all that much though. I didn’t know how people were supposed to leave the army, but I had seen desperate veterans try to use strays to get access to painkillers and other meds at the veterinary hospital. If that was the result of dishonorable discharge, then there wasn’t any honor to it on either side.

“Was that why you took up with your , uh, what was the name of the club?” I should know this, given they were currently trying to kill me.

“The Desert Wraiths. Yeah, they were the only ones who took me in.” He looked distant. “Only ones who had use for a killer.”

“I don’t think you’re a killer.”

Ghost got more than a chuckle out of that. “You’ve seen me kill.”

“And you’ve seen me shoot you full of drugs. It doesn’t make me a doctor.”

“I suppose it’s true I’m not a licensed killer,” he said. “Well, not anymore.”

“Have you killed before?” My heart raced even as I asked. “I mean for the Desert Wraiths.”

“I’ve shot back when people were shooting at us,” he said. “Did I kill? Don’t know. Never checked. Given the way those shots lined up in my sights though, I’d guess so.”

“What else do you do for your club?” I asked.

“You want a confession?” He clasped his hands, bowed his head. “I have dealt drugs, used drugs, sold weapons, stolen, beaten, ripped off and cheated. I have done the things I needed to without question. Without care.”

He had a little smile on at the start, but it had gone flat by the end. “You did all this for the club?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you want to do these things?”

“Honestly. I didn’t care.”

“You were ok with everything they did.”

“Not all of it. I didn’t stand for dumb shit. No wanton murder. No rape.”

“But the first time you actually fought against your own club was last night?”

“More or less.”

He looked at me earnest, as if
I
were supposed to tell
him
what that meant. I kind of did see though how his path had led him to the Desert Wraiths and why he had stayed so long with such apathy. I could see the aimlessness which had carried him along, the lack of desire to change your path. I knew that feeling. In a way it had brought us both here. But I couldn’t tell us where it led anymore than he could.

“How long will your club look for us?” I asked. “Will they ever let us just be?”

“Not anytime soon. The feds actually are in town you know.”

“Oh.”

“So...” he looked torn. “We can’t go back there anytime soon.”

My skin prickled with bumps. I tugged my sheets tighter. “What do you mean by soon?”

“A month, at least. If the investigation dies down, I can smooth Rico’s feathers, maybe. Police will probably still want to talk to you though, so I don’t know. Maybe longer than a month.”

My mouth opened, ready for the anger to come pouring out of me, but I actually felt calm hearing an option cut off. Life could not go back to normal. Or what had passed for normal these past couple weeks. I remembered the way those guns had felt as they fired, dropping heat and clips right by my ears. I remember the sight of that ugly barrel on the freeway trying to find my life. If that was what waited, then he was right. It wasn’t safe to go back.

Ghost watched me think it through, but I got the sense he had more to say about something else and I knew what. If we couldn’t go back, then we would have to keep running.

Run.

Now I felt that anger and it took me a couple moments to place it. Ghost watched and waited patiently and I got the sense he could read the turmoil right off my face.

When my parents had died, I had hid in my house for months, and hid within myself for…. Well, until now really. Now, here comes another tragedy, and I was going to take it one step further. I was going to run? Not even run, but be whisked away. Was that who I was? Had I wakened up from my darkness to just be a girl who couldn’t face what the world had to offer?

“I’m sorry,” Ghost said.

I felt the tension squeezing on my face, and wondered how ugly I must look. “It’s not your fault,” I said. “I’m glad actually.”

“Glad?” he said.

“Glad that I have time to think.” I smiled.

“It might be a lot of time,” Ghost said. “I was easing you into the idea. It might be much longer than a couple months.”

“And you’ll be with me?” I asked.

“If that’s something you want.”

His voice rose with promise. It drummed away all thoughts of my weakness and reminded me that I had some strengths. Strengths that I was just now learning to enjoy using with him.

“My memory’s weak,” I said, as delicious warmth seeped through me. “Come remind me.”

I dropped my blanket. His mouth edged up in a smile. He pushed off the chair and landed with his mouth on my nipple. We ground back into the bed, my world already a bright explosion of wet pleasure.

He drank up each of my breasts, stopping only to rip my shirt off. I needed him so bad. At least I had chosen him. That one decision I could cling onto, my fists full of his flesh. Maybe if I kept at him, I’d know how to go after other things I wanted.

He kissed hot peppers of ecstasy up my neck and onto my mouth. His pants zipped open and he shoved my legs up onto the bed at the same time his member ran through them and into me. I yelped into his mouth and felt him smile against my face.

God I loved that smile. I kissed the edges of it as he pounded me closer and closer to the edge of the bed. I threw my legs around him, draped myself deeper over his rod, but it still seemed like I might fall off. His arms curled around me, and held me dangling over the side of the bed while he thrust into me again and again.

If he was all I had left to hold on to, then I would hold on for dear life. The thought made me press back against him harder. Our grinding burned hot and soon, I was wailing out to the wall just to let it out. He gushed into me and I broke, gushed back onto him, my hot wetness soon mingling with his.