Fuck.
Diesel leads me into what I guess is Wyatt’s room. I’ve never been in here—or more accurately, if I’ve been in here I don’t remember. The last time I was here, Wyatt was just visiting from the Detroit charter and we’d occasionally steal away in a room to make love, but he didn’t have his own room. The space is totally impersonal. The outside wall is made up of exposed brick and the other three are painted a flat gray. There are scratches and a few stains on the paint. The space is pretty empty with an old wooden dresser, a metal folding chair, and a large bed on a black metal frame. I pause in the doorway for a minute while I eye the bed frame only to realize I’ve seen it before.
“He still has it.”
“Has what?” Diesel’s question surprises me. I didn’t realize I’d spoken my thought until now.
“Zander was conceived on this bed frame.” When I notice my hand on my belly, I pull it away. This was our bed at one time. This was the bed we shared in our home. This was the bed we made love in. This was the bed where my old man used to hold me, tell me that I’m his reason for breathing, and promise himself to me. A golf-ball-size lump forms in my throat, and no matter how many times I try to swallow it, I can’t. Diesel uncuffs himself from me and pulls me to the bed where he forces me to sit. He loops the cuffs around a metal bar only to secure my other hand as well so I have no hope of escaping. He leaves me here, on this bed, and shuts the door behind him.
Our old mattress had a pushy spring right in the middle, about two feet from the head in the center. I keep my eyes closed as I search for it. If Wyatt still has the frame, then maybe he has the mattress, too.
My butt wiggles over a spring that uncomfortably stabs the base of my spine. It’s like being taken back to high school, even though by then I’d already dropped out. This is our mattress.
And it’s in his room.
At the clubhouse.
My throat constricts in response, and I have to look away from the bed just to take a much-needed breath. Too much history assaults me all at once. I think I was in denial until now. I thought about this a lot—coming back here—but never really considered how it’d feel. I figured if I showed my face in this clubhouse, we’d fuck and fight and fuck some more, just like we do every time he comes to Detroit. He’d be fucked up on whatever he was dabbling in at the time, and he’d tell me everything I wanted to hear, and then he’d just disappear on me. Like every other fucking time I’ve seen him since we stopped being us. Except this time, I’d tell Jim about Zander and Piper and force their hands at sobering him up long enough to fucking remember he’s a father. And the kids would visit him. And my life would stay the same except I’d get a break every now and then. If I imagined how shitty the reality would feel, I’d never have let myself consider forcing him to have a part in his kids’ lives. Not that I chose this.
My eyes fall on some weird carving pattern on the back of the door. It looks like a tally, and there must be a couple hundred little marks, if not more. Women. I bet he’s tallied the number of women he’s fucked in my goddamn bed. All the sorrow and guilt and frustration hardens into an icy cold rage.
I don’t see anything else anymore.
I don’t feel anything else anymore.
I just hate.
This room is way too dark. Save for the occasional set of headlights that shine into the short overhead window, everything is completely shrouded in darkness. Diesel left the bedside light on for me, but my left foot took that out when I got the bright idea to try a bobby pin on the locked handcuffs around my wrists.
I’m going to fucking kill Diesel when I get out of this mess.
Feeling frustrated and exhausted, I grab hold of the bed frame and pull myself up into a more comfortable sitting position. Not that I can get comfortable with my wrists handcuffed to the top of the metal frame.
I repeat—Darius “Diesel” Mitchell is a fucking dead man.
Okay, maybe I can’t kill him, but I am going to make him suffer. I just want to get out of here so I can love on my babies and never let go. Rig taking Zander shook me up. My boy’s a tough kid, but that’s just it. He’s still just a kid and he got pulled into club shit. On our way out here from Detroit, he was telling me how well he handled himself. I forced myself to smile and tell him how proud I am of him. And I am, but I’m more scared than anything. I don’t even know if that’s the right word. I was born into this life, grew up a club kid with little supervision and even fewer rules, and I’ve seen and done shit that would give grown men nightmares. But my baby being kidnapped was the absolute worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I don’t care that we got him back safely. I don’t care about anything except that fucking asshole thought he could take my boy and live to tell the tale.