Loving Me, Trusting You (19 page)

I intend to show off a fierce as fuck lady boner.

Mack appears out of the dusty melee with his eyes red rimmed and the devil's dance in his step. He comes at me with intentions that are nothing short of malicious and finds himself with a line of metal around his neck. When I was younger, right after I married Tray, I used to dance with chains. I'd put on some heavy metal and an outfit that would make a hooker blush, and I'd get up in front of the MC and shake my fucking ass like there was no tomorrow, like that moment was all that mattered. It was fun, and I'll admit, I spent half of that period of my life in a drugged or drunk daze, but it didn't last. The honeymoon period ended and things went sour. Tray stopped asking me to dance and started making me. He stopped holding me in his arms and started pushing me into others'. He started treating me like I was less than his bike, less even than the dirt beneath his boots.

So I did what I'd always done, what he said made him fall in love with me. I showed him my spirit, I rode my girls through town and came back flushed and panting, but he wasn't the same. I don't know what happened to him or why, but it didn't matter, the moment I told him no and he laid his hands on me was the moment I died inside. Gaine thinks it was only Mireya Walker that passed away that day, that maybe he can get Mireya Sawyer back, but he's wrong. I don't want to come alive again because then I'll have to feel it all a hundred times worse than I do now. A necrotic soul doesn't bleed half as bad as a living, breathing, aching, loving mess.
Es cruel, pero es la verdad.

“Have you missed me terribly, Mack?” I ask as I pull the chains tight around his neck and lift my boot up to his stomach for leverage. Dancing with those chains made me good at handling them. After all, it's not all that sexy if the dancer smacks herself in the back of the knee and goes down wailing, and it certainly isn't impressive if she can't flip and spin and twirl like a deranged baton girl in a beauty pageant. So here I am, dancer turned ass kicker and I am
destroying.
I make the chains as taught as I can, holding Mack's windpipes hostage as people spin and scream and kick around me.

I look at his reddened face, gasping for breath, hands outstretched and wonder how he felt when he was looming above me, taking things I never gave, hurting me in ways I never imagined. I thought of him as a brother, and he raped me. He raped me. He raped me.

With a scream of rage, I squeeze harder and bring Mack down to his knees, dropping him to the pavement like a sack of weevil ridden flour. Useless. My blood runs hot as the sun and my eyes start to blur, white hot memories of anger and rage crashing into me, taking over, destroying my sanity. I'm losing it again, and I have nowhere to fall.

And then I feel arms around my waist and my body spasms, loosing the chains just enough that Mack slips out, falling to the cement with a choking gasp. Sweat starts to pour down my face and my knees go weak as I slip a bit on the gravel and the dirt. Gaine holds me up with one arm and borrows one of the chains with his other hand, using it like a whip to snap a man in the knee caps. It's pretty fucking impressive, I'll admit.

“Let fucking go of me!” I scream, but I don't fight. I can't move. My body doesn't belong to me in that moment, it belongs to the howling demons inside my skin, the ones that fight for supremacy everyday, the ones that I always just manage to hold back. Lately though, lately they've been kicking my ass hard, beating down the door of my sanity.
I never should've killed Tray.
There. There it is. I've said it. It hurts to admit it, feels like a betrayal of self, but that's it. That's the magic answer. I keep striving for vengeance when all I really want is peace.

I scream and flail, stumbling from Gaine's arms in a pulsating frenzy, a collection of confusion and barely suppressed rage. I can't believe this. I cannot even freaking believe this. How could I
not
want to kill these stupid fuckers? And how, how, how could I regret taking out the worst one of them all? Obviously, something is seriously wrong with me.

I squeeze my fists at my side and turn to look at Gaine.

Or someone. Yeah, maybe someone is wrong
for
me.

“You stay away from me!” I tell him in the middle of our mid-afternoon brawl. He looks at me like I've completely lost it, brushing his dark brown hair from his forehead as his eyes flick this way and that, absorbing the mess around us. Seems kind of counterproductive for me to start a shit storm in the middle of a tornado of crap, but that's kind of what I'm good at. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. “You don't touch me, you don't pander to me.” I point my finger at him and pause just long enough for him to shove a guy in the chest and send him stumbling back into the whirlwind that is Beck Evans. The redhead grins the entire time. “You treat me like an old friend and that's it, Gaine. This cat and mouse game is over.”

I turn away and smash the instep of a man in a Bested by Crows jacket. I have no clue who he is, and I don't care. If he's a part of Tray's gang then he's trouble. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

“Mireya!” Gaine's calling after me, but I'm not listening. I'm letting my fury boil up and spill out, letting it cascade down around me and crash into the rioting crowd like a tsunami. I take my frustration out on anyone that gets in my way, swinging my single remaining chain around like I'm still dancing for my first husband and his friends, for the people I called family and who called me cunt, saw me as nothing more than a place to hang their hat. “Mireya!”

I move away from Gaine, purposely trying to lose him in the melee. It isn't difficult. There's a lot going on here and none of it is simple or easy. It's just a big, fucking mess. There are a lot of people that are going to be hurting come tomorrow morning. I get terrible déjà vu then, remembering the first time I'd seen Bested by Crows in years, at the bike show in Amy's town. We went to trash their bikes, and they came to trash us. None of my attackers were there then, so it was easier to distance myself. Here, they're all the fuck over.

I fight my way to Kimmi's side because I know that when it comes down to it, even if she hates me half as much as I pretend to hate her, that she won't tell anyone about the tears that shine wet on the dusty planes of my face.

It's two in the morning, and I'm still awake. I'd rather not be, but the moon won't let me sleep. She was beckoning to me through the curtains and drawing me out here to sit on the edge of the pool with my thoughts. The water might have chlorine in it and be swimming with water bugs, but at least it looks pretty. I dip a finger and try to grab some control over myself. I don't feel like me anymore. I blame Gaine for it because he's the closest person to me, a victim of friendly fire, but maybe it's true. He's been desperately trying to see inside the cracks of my psyche all these years, so I guess he's finally done it. He's in and I am screwed.
¿Qué voy a hacer?

Tray Walker.

I twirl my finger through the water and watch the trail of ripples, comparing my clumsy motion with the weightless dance of the insects on the surface nearby. They're probably laughing at me, at this ridiculous woman with the horrible past who can't make up her mind for shit.

Right now, sitting here in this quiet loneliness, I know that I was right. I know why I feel so conflicted. I want Bested by Crows to suffer for what they did, but I don't want to be the one to act on it. I figure it's because I've already been through enough shit. I have plenty of nightmares to keep me awake at night. I'm not a saint myself, so I have more than enough to atone for. You add that on top of all the horrible things that have ever happened to me and there you have it. I'm tired. I'm done with all of this.

I drop my palm to the water and hold it there, feeling just the slightest kiss of liquid against my flesh. It feels like Tray's blood. Well, in my mind it does. In reality, it's nothing like it. It was sticky and hot; my mouth filled with the taste and scent of copper, like I was sucking on a jar full of old pennies. He convulsed like a fish out of water and bled out right then and there in front of me, life fading from him like color draining from a photograph. One minute, he was in color, the next he was black and white.

I want to like it that I did it, to cackle with glee at the memory like a wicked witch in a fairytale with some hope of a happy ending. But I don't. Don't get me wrong though. In no way do I feel guilty for what I've done. Did Tray deserve to die? You make your own decision on that, but he did deserve to pay and I extracted my remittance. Was it right? I don't fucking know. But I won't do it again. If I do, I'll just be splitting myself up into even smaller pieces. Right now, there's a chance I can recover. Later, maybe not so much.

I glance up at the roundness of the moon and wish I could join her in the sky, join
las estrellas
and sparkle for eternity in blissful peace. I laugh and the sound echoes around the empty pavement, stirring up the day's dust to dance a solo just for me. I'm not usually so poetic, so I know something must be wrong.
Fuck you, Gaine Kelley. I don't know who you think you are, but if I keep having these Shakespearean thoughts, you are done for.

“Mireya?” I almost pull a knife when the voice sounds from behind me, soft and unassuming but also unafraid. I turn to find Amy Cross standing with her arms crossed over her chest. She's dressed in a pair of pink silk pajamas with a hotel robe thrown around her shoulders. Her blue eyes catch the moonlight and throw it back at me, like she knows all its secrets. I squeeze my fists and try not to scowl. I don't want to deal with her or Austin right now. I can't even get into that. Ten years of chasing that fool man around and I have nothing to show for it. What a waste of time. It just goes to show that no matter how strong I think I am, inside, there's a pathetic, quivering cunt just waiting to get out. I don't know if Tray and his cronies put her there, or if she was there all along, but I'm tired of looking at her ugly face. I've cried, what, three times in as many days? I don't cry. That's not me. That's her, all her.

“What the fuck do you want?” I ask Amy. It's not enough that I'm nursing sore knuckles and a bruised face, that I got the shit beat out of me even as I kicked some ass today. Things went well for us, but I'm still hurting, and now I have to deal with this. I throw her a poisonous glare and a once-over that says she'd do best to back the hell off.

“May I?” she asks, gesturing at the edge of the pool nearest me. I give her a look that says no, but apparently she misinterprets my silence for a yes. I glare at her heart-shaped face and her pale skin, already warming up with color from the sun. The worst part about her isn't just how pretty she is, how her chestnut hair falls straight and silky around her shoulders or how her lips always look like they're just about to smile. The worst part is that she's fitting in here, that she slipped right into this life like she was a piece missing from the puzzle. Austin looks at her like she's a god and her face mirrors his. They belong together, whether I want them to or not.

I look away.

“Austin hovering around the door somewhere?” I ask, gesturing my hand at the dimly light entry to the lobby. I hear Amy's clothes rustle as she shakes her head and slips her robe off her shoulders, rolling up her pant legs and dipping her feet into the cool water. When I glance back at her, I see a small shiver work its way up her legs. It was hot as fuck out here today, but the water is freezing ass cold. Don't know how they manage to pull that one off.

“He's not back yet,” she says, and I can see in her eyes that she's worried. I am, too, but I refuse to show it. Kimmi and Austin have done this midnight rendezvous shit for years. It's just now that I'm hearing what it's all about, but it makes sense. I almost feel betrayed that they didn't tell us sooner. Robbing banks. Who gives a shit about that? There are people in this world who have too much and some who can't have anything, who don't fit into a particular mold. That's us, Triple M. We're not just bikers, we're people with pasts that would light up the sky if you set them on fire. We need this group and this life to keep our spirits alive. It might come at the cost of others, but then, nothing in this world is free. We work for our livelihood in different ways.

“Gaine?” I ask instead because if Austin isn't back, then that means Christy and Amy were still in our room. I doubt he'd let her out to wander by herself. The initial fight might be over, but we're still here and neither of the other gangs wants us to be. If they come at us again, it's going to be with an even worse intent. They're going to come for us, and it's not going to be in broad daylight in the middle of a hotel parking lot. No, next time, they'll grab us when we least expect it, in a place that makes it easy to take things a step further. And I'm no optimist, so I know what's coming. Rape and then death, that's it. Or for poor Amy, they'd probably just rape her and then take her with them for a fate worse than death. I feel irritated with her myself.

“He sent Beck with me,” she says, and I throw a narrowed glance over my shoulder. I don't see the asshole, but then, when Beck doesn't want to be seen, you won't see him. I don't know what his story is because he refuses to tell it, and I don't mind. I don't exactly walk around blabbing about how my mother was a Castilian artist who painted vampires and fairies and cats with demon wings. I get the weirdest urge to tell Amy about her, but catch my tongue just in time. I don't want to have girly gossip with this bitch; I just want her to go away.