Page 23 of I Was Born Ruined (Death by Daybreak MC 1)
I jerk my arm from his grip and hit him, closed knuckles and all, right in the face.
At the same moment, Fem finally gets his feet and savagely lunges for Gaz. Before I can stop him, my brother pulls his gun out, takes aim at the husky and puts his finger on the trigger.
My scream is deafening.
“That's about enough o' that,” Beast says in that quiet, menacing way of his, grabbing Gaz's arm and twisting it so that the pistol falls uselessly to the floor. Fem's snarling and barking soothes when I drop to my knees and throw my arms around his neck, burying my face in his fur. “Get on your bike and go, brother,” he says, releasing Gaz and taking a small step back.
My heart is thundering and my arms are aching like they've been locked between the harsh metal teeth of a vise-grip. Sweat pours down my back and suddenly, I'm just panicking. Shaking, trembling, quivering. I can't stop my mind from rolling through the thoughts, those thoughts, those awful thoughts.
I slump away from Fem and put my back to the wall, covering my ears with my palms.
Memories rush over me like flames, consuming the last of my tentative sanity.Two years ago …I'm standing in the kitchen wearing a black pleated miniskirt, black lipstick, and a pleather vest that barely zips up over my padded tits. I've got nice, healthy A cups that I wish I could trade for Queenie's G cups. Why do I get small boobs and my sisters are both rocking massive racks?
“When is this goth phase gonna end?” Posey asks, bouncing into the kitchen in a pair of Daisy Dukes and a yellow tank with no bra. Now that she's turned twenty-one, she's spending all her time at the clubhouse, flirting with bikers and drinking. I can see her becoming Nellie right before my eyes and it's scaring me.
I don't want that for my sisters.
I don't want that for me.
“It's not a phase; it's an identity,” I tell her because I'm fifteen years old and I know everything. Everything. That's how most teenagers feel, right? But when I'm surrounded by people like Cat and Gaz and Nellie and Posey, it's hard not to see it as pure truth. The decisions they all make are just … ludicrous. I feel like Queenie and I are the only normal ones in the family.
“Um, okay, and even that sounds weird and goth.”
“Fuck off, Pose,” I say, and those are the last words I ever say to my sister.
Fuck off.
Fuck off.
Fuck off.
How can those be the last words? How can those be the final syllables that fall from my lips and squirm into her ears? They're so awful, like snakes. Like a venomous bite that I'll have to carry the scars of for the rest of my life.
Posey grabs a beer from the fridge and disappears into the backyard, throwing her legs into the pool and popping some shades on her face. That's my last image of her alive, but it's not the one that sticks in my brain when I close my eyes and call up her name.
Like a ghost, a specter from the past, I can only see the way she died.
“I'm home!” Queenie calls, letting herself in the front door. She's twenty-three now and finally looking for a place of her own to move into. She found an apartment last week and even went so far as to put down a security deposit, but Cat didn't like it. He said that part of town was too sketchy, that a ground floor apartment was too dangerous.
If he'd only let her move, if he'd only let her go, maybe she wouldn't have died that day.
There's not a second that passes that I don't wish it was me.
“Have you started dinner yet?” she asks me when she walks into the kitchen and raises her brows at my outfit. Could be the spiked boots with the three inch platforms, the fishnet tights, or the black and pink feather eyelashes. I'm not sure.
“Have I started dinner yet?” I ask, picking crackers out of a red Ritz box and popping them into my mouth. Um. No. “I won't cook for those people.”
And by those people, I mean, of course, Gaz and Cat and Nellie and Posey.
I'd rather starve than cook for them.
Queenie twists her blonde hair up on the top of her head and sighs.
“Spaghetti or fettucine?” she asks, because she's totally into pasta right now. I think it's a pregnant thing, but I could be wrong. I don't know anything about pregnancy except for the fact that Queenie … she's getting ready to pop.
Her belly looks like a beanbag and she sighs a lot when she walks, putting her hands on her lower back and murmuring curses under her breath.
