His tongue collided with mine, taking everything I offered and still demanding more. I leaned into him, my chest pressed against his, and let myself go, breaking the chains that bound me to my scars. It was time to let go of the pain and that was a terrifying revelation, especially since the man holding me, asking me to give him all of me, even the broken pieces of myself, was the reason I was letting go of my broken past.
I don’t know which of us broke the kiss, but we were staring at one another now. He looked at me and I felt like he could see everything. I looked at him and saw nothing but black. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t read him. The only thing I was sure of was that Jack was full of scars and the only one I knew about was his son’s death, and even those details were minimal.
“You owe me a scar,” I whispered.
He rubbed his thumb across my lip, his other hand tangled in my hair.
“Fighting hard not to give it all to you, every goddamn scar, every fucking nightmare,” he said softly, as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to the tip of my nose. “C’mon, I’ll take you home.”
“When do you leave?” I asked, as he reached behind him and offered me a helmet.
“I should’ve already been gone,” he said, as he straddled his bike. He pulled down the sunglasses that rested on the top of his head, gripped the handlebars and waited for me to climb on behind him. I wrapped my arms tightly around his waist and leaned my chin on his shoulder, his words stuck on repeat in my head.
Jack drove me home. He didn’t walk me to my door like the other times. He made me swear to lock up and told me he’d call me when he got back but he didn’t know when that would be. I watched him peel away from my curb and drive away. And then I felt it, that slow burn inside my chest and it became clear to me, I was in deep with Jack Parrish.
Chapter Fifteen
I gave you one of my scars.
Her words a soft whisper taunting my thoughts like a demon beckoning my conscience. The moment Anthony implied there was a possibility that Reina was playing me, I became a prisoner trapped in my warped mind.
I long ago decided there was no God, not for me. There was no mystical maker of Heaven and Earth. There was just my maker, the one that held all the control. My maker is my mind and it fights the rest of me for control. Perhaps your brain is supposed to control the rest of your body, it signals everything else inside of you but when your brain is working against you, sending all the wrong signals, fucking with your existence, it becomes your enemy.
I know that my head is my worst enemy. No drug lord, or rival club, not even a cock-sucking mobster like Jimmy Gold, could compare. It’s my mind that tortures me, it’s my mind that reaps victory over me, it’s my mind I will never conquer. I can go to war with the toughest motherfuckers and bring them to their knees, I can take their lives but I’ll always be the loser because the demons inside my head will always have the last word. It’s those same demons that rob whatever goodness wanders into my life.
I’m living my life stuck on pause. My meds are the pause button. They keep me running, allow me to still be a player, but I’m stuck. I’ll always be stuck. And when I start to think I can be more than idle, that I can live again, my maker hits rewind, dragging me down the black hole where I question everything. Looking for the bad, forgetting all about the goodness that others get. It pulls me back to the day I punched holes in the walls searching for bugs. My mind crucifies me to the day I lost my son, when my mind became my maker.
My maker summoned me last night, brought me to his purgatory and locked me up with the demons that danced around shouting doubts and accusations at me. Infiltrating thoughts of Reina, my sunshine, being nothing but a fucking hail storm.
I stared at the table that centered the sanctuary where the Satan’s Knights congregated over church, my fingers closing tightly around the baseball bat I held in my hands. My knuckles turning white from my grip on the bat.
I was devastated when I found him, I lay down and wrapped my arms around him, never wanting to let go. I held on until I felt the heat.
I lifted the bat over my head and brought it down against the freshly restored table, the wood splintering against my calloused hands. I closed my eyes, pictured the memory she painted for me and for a second I was transported into her world—a tiny part of her world that she held on tightly to. She had found enough trust in a poor slob like me to share it. She gave me her truth and all I’ve given her is my dick and a shitload of lies.
Purgatory.
Maybe Hell.
Satan was beckoning, dragging me down.
Let me go, I pleaded with my maker.
Release me.
I swung the bat again. Danny’s face clouding my vision, Reina’s voice in one ear, Bianci’s in the other.
I could hear the sirens from a distance and the firemen calling out for survivors. I hadn’t had a chance to process that Danny was essentially a stranger to me, he was still the man I loved and he was gone. I couldn’t leave him.
Her voice smooth as silk as her words whispered against my ear, reminding me that Reina was a woman who laid down her life for the man she loved.
You need to find out if she’s involved in this shit before we go any further.