Sooner or later, I had to stop waiting, wondering, hoping. I had to accept my fate.
There were no heroes in this story, and there wouldn't be a happy ending. I was going to be Ricky's until the bitter end.
And if I wanted to stay alive, I had to be dead inside to the man who took me next. Strangers used my lips, my tongue every single day, and giving up more of my body didn't bother me anymore.
But I wouldn't give them any joy, any spark, any life. I had none left to give.
Meg died. Fresh lived.
I swore I'd go to my grave with that name, and if any filthy bastard who touched me ever called me anything else, he'd have to strangle me to make me stop tearing pieces out of his flesh.
The pimp killed Meg without a fight. Fresh wouldn't go down so easy.
She wouldn't wait for her knight or her happy ending. She'd pick up the shattered pieces of herself and wield them like broken glass.
II: IOU (Skin)
Twenty-four Hours Earlier
The worst part about the club being flat out broke? No fucking *.
When I heard the Prez wanted us to shakedown the trucker spas toward Knoxville, I could've ripped out my nine millimeter and shot it through the ceiling, screaming like an idiot.
I rolled out of bed early, showered and dressed, threw on a clean shirt and my cut. I took a second to study myself in the cracked mirror, a morning ritual I'd started the day I earned my prospect patch.
The colors on this leather had changed a lot over the years, but what it meant hadn't. Everything here was earned, just like a soldier's medals, the story of my entire adult life writ in blood and fire.
My fingers trailed up cold leather, grazing the skull with the one-percent sign etched into its head. I got that the first time I went away for the club after a bar fight. I could still feel myself gripping a pool cue, slamming it across the disrespectful motherfucker's head, the smartass who'd pushed the Veep and called our club piss.
I'd slowly filled my cut with skulls and pistols after that, patches I'd earned for killing more disrespectful fucks and finishing runs for the club. I turned around in the mirror, glancing at the backside, which told all the rest.
Everything I'd ever die for appeared in the blood red smoking pistols and the skull sewn into the back. DEADLY PISTOLS MC, TENNESSEE, surrounded it.
Seeing my colors sent hot, angry blood flowing through my fists.
Some men had careers that kept them running like fucking hamsters, and other boys had families. This club was my job, my blood, my whole life.
I didn't do cubicles, and I damned sure didn't do love. That gun with the smoke pouring out of it reminded me of my place in the world every day – the only place I'd ever belonged.
The club had been good to me, and always would be. She might be in dire straits now, but fuck if I'd go limp and walk away. When I got patched in as a full voting member, I vowed my life, and now I was trying every day to stop the MC's lifeblood from bleeding through my hands as Treasurer.
We needed money, and lots of it. Collecting our tribute from the Deadhands' network of shitty whorehouses would tide us over for a while, but we were really after a treasure map.
I was putting on my helmet when the brothers filed out, one by one, everybody heading for their bikes.
The Veep, Joker, wore the same deadpan rip-your-arms-out-of-their-sockets expression he always did. The two prospects, Tinman and Lion, walked with him, and they all started their engines, holding position for the Prez.
“You remember the plan, Skin? Or did you forget last night while you were beating off to cable porn?” Firefly got on his bike next to me and shot me a sharp look, a fresh smoke in his mouth, blowing contrails over his bars.
“Fuck you, man. You know I'm more in love with the ladies than the bottle. Sorry all that sweet Jack makes it so hard to get your dick up.”
He grunted and laughed, then blew a long stream of smoke toward me. I ducked, wondering if there was some truth to the shit I flung at him.
Yeah, I'd been jerking off last night. What red blooded man with hurricane force testosterone and no * in sight wouldn't? I thought about the last girl I had under me while I pumped the volume up so high it must've disrupted our Enforcer's beauty sleep.
Her name was Stockings. Or at least that was the nickname I gave her. She was too drunk to mumble out her name, and I didn't fucking care. She looked a lot like the whore on the screen I beat my cock to last night.
One hard night with my face and cock buried in her * taught her mine. They always remembered Skin. And they always fell hard and fast too, coming back to find me in a bar or at the clubhouse with those big doe eyes.