Damaged and the Outlaw (Damaged #4)

Raven said nothing as she pulled away and disappeared into her bedroom. I stared at where she’d been and thought about my mom. Whether she was happy or not all those years with Ted, she was at peace now. We never went to church, but she would pray and light candles for special occasions. Mom believed in God and Heaven, so I decided to believe in them too. She was safe now.

She might even be looking down at me and knowing I loved and missed her. She understood me. I had doubted the last few days if she hated me like Ted did. Somehow, Mom never seemed clearer in my mind than at that moment. I saw how she never stopped thinking of me as her little boy. She knew I loved her.

Raven returned wearing a loose shirt and sweat shorts. I liked that she had changed, realizing I didn’t want lap dances or blowjobs. I wanted her to really see me.

We sat on the couch with her legs crossed while facing me. She took my hand and I knew she was genuinely sad. Raven wasn’t the pretty girl pretending for my sake because she wanted to fuck me. My pain was her pain. I didn’t need to kill every guy who ever saw her naked to make her mine. She already was.

“Will you tell me what happened with Harlow?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.

“I’m not a hero, Raven. I know you want to see me as a good man. I’m a killer though. I do ugly things and I do them without caring. Harlow was the exception, not the rule.”

“I understand,” she said, scooting closer. “I don’t want you to hide anymore. I’ll listen to what you say and not hear what I want. I’ll hear the truth.”

Caressing her cheek, I forced a smile. “You won’t like the truth.”

“I don’t like a lot of things about you, but I still like you.”

Smiling wider, I sighed. “Okay, but I warned you.

Raven kissed my hand as if to say she was ready for whatever ugliness I showed her.

“When my mom hooked up with Ted, the club became our life. I was nearly eighteen and already pretty big. Ted didn’t think of me as his son. He just wanted to keep me busy, so he made me an enforcer, doing mostly little stuff. Rough up shop owners and people who owed the Devils money. I worked with a guy named Stinky. I never knew what his real name was, but Stinky noticed how I didn’t react when people would cry and beg. He told Ted I’d be a good cleaner and could handle the ugly stuff. Stinky was right too. I’d show up at some idiot’s place and his wife and kids would cry and I would ignore it. I could block out all that noise and focus on my job. Not a lot of men can ignore crying kids, but I could.”

I waited for Raven to react, but she just watched me in the same way she’d been watching me since the phone call.

“A guy in the club that I cleaned up for a lot was called Playboy. He was a pussy magnet in his youth. As he got older, his tastes stayed young. Those younger girls would get pretty wasted to endure his shit. A few months before Harlow, I cleaned up a dead hooker killed during rough play and a runaway who OD’d. I dumped the body for the first and got the second one to a clinic who wouldn’t ask questions. It wasn’t pretty work, but my job isn’t for the feeling type. It’s why not anyone could be a cleaner. You had to do ugly shit and do it without blinking. I always had a way of turning off my heart.

“I really didn’t care either. Things changed in a weird way when Mom married Ted and I didn’t feel like me anymore. It was easy being a cleaner like that until the night with Harlow.”

My cell rang again, but Raven set it to mute. “It’s the fuckwad calling to be a fuckwad again. We’re pretending again it’s just you and me. Nothing outside this apartment can hurt us.”

Smiling softly, I ran a finger over her bruised knuckles. “Harlow had a normal enough life, I guess. Then, her dad died and her mom went over her rocker and started drinking and doping. The kids ended up living with Playboy’s old lady. She was the husband’s sister or cousin. I don’t know. It was something I heard and didn’t care about. I never thought Harlow or her siblings would mean shit to me.”

Glancing around the room, I hated taking Raven with me into my dark memories. She was bruised and battered enough without my shit dumped on her. Of course, I knew she wouldn’t let me stop.

“One night, Playboy called and said he has a mess that needed cleaning. When I got there, he and his buddies were watching a football game. He tells me about how Harlow’s mom came bitching about wanting her kids back. Playboy didn’t care about the little ones. He just wanted to keep Harlow and told the mom to take the brats and go. When she saw Harlow drugged up and knew what Playboy did, I guess she freaked. Playboy said she wanted to snitch to the cops, so he handled her like he would any rat. That’s all he said before telling me to clean up the mess.”