Page 46 of Retribution
“Distract me. Please. Everything’s coming back again and I’m not…” her soft voice cracked, “I’m not ready yet.”
“Okay … okay.” Cobra pushed away the anger and focused on taking her mind off of it. “When I ran away from one of many shitty foster homes, I hitchhiked to a relative’s house in Billings—that’s how I ended up in Montana. The relative was a distant cousin of my mom’s, and I remember a couple of times we went to visit her when my old man was deployed. So, as much as I settled in, I couldn’t keep my nose out of shit; as a result, she ‘asked me to leave’ after I graduated high school. While I was living with her, I met a neighbor who had the baddest-looking Harley-Davidson I’d ever seen. Turned out he was a member of the Steel Devils MC. He was in the charter chapter, so when my cousin kicked me out, I made my way to the national chapter in Missoula, where I ended up prospecting. It took me two years and a laundry list of bullshit tasks, but I got my full patch in the club and that was the best fuckin’ day in my life.”
Cobra hesitated and cracked his knuckles, unable to rip his attention from the back of her head as she sat in front of him. While the rest of the shitty world turned on its axis, he was grounded with only his worry for Dakota.
“Anyway, I got a reputation for being untouchable—a ruthless, calculating motherfucker, and they promoted me to their enforcer as a celebration of thosegifts.” He snorted as he remembered Grinder’s awe at the depth of Cobra’s rage. “I took my job seriously. If anything, my father had engrained in me a sense of not giving a fuck when you fought, you laid it all out on the table—much like he did when he was beating us or my mom. That fun little tidbit played into my life as an adult, and I would take on any fucker who stood in my way. My rage had an outlet—boozing, partying, kicking ass, and fucking. Pretty simple.
“After those two whining pussies in the bar touched my cut, I saw red, and the whole world rained down in blood. When I came back to myself, the fuckin’ badges were slapping handcuffs on me, and I was thrown into the back of a cop car. Those fuckers landed me in prison. And when I got out, after doing three years, I wasn’t too fuckin’ keen on doing more time, so I shut down and tried to get away from the violence. Too bad no one else got the damn memo because my reputation follows me like a brand on my skin.”
Cobra coughed and rubbed his forehead, as if digging up all this old shit was wearing him down just thinking about it. There was truth to it. Nomad had been a way for him to sort out his shit, removed from all the violence that he saw on the daily. It was a way to get clean and take a hard look at his life as a loner and see what really existed for him outside of his previous ways of coping with stupid shit and a fucked-up life. Everyone had a fucked-up life, but it was the choices you made afterward that sealed it.
“Prison must have been horrible,” Dakota said so softly that he almost didn’t hear her.
“It wasn’t a fuckin’ good time, that’s for sure. I learned the value of freedom and how much I was taking it for granted every day.”
“Did you exorcize your aggression?”
“Not exactly an environment where you can stop fighting, you know?” Cobra scoffed and cracked his neck, looking off into the horizon, his mind only seeing the violence in the prison yard. While he was in the joint, it seemed like the noose of living or dying tightened around his neck every single day. He shook his head, scattering the memories. “But I got out, and that’s all that fuckin’ matters.”
“Were you seeing anyone special during that time? I mean, it must have been lonely and you probably had a woman on the outside or, at least, after you got out.”
Cobra almost smiled as her voice grew a little bit stronger and surer, but the idea of having anyone in his life during that time was insane. After he’d been released, he needed to make up for lost time, so, for about a year, he’d fucked his way through a lot of the cities and towns he’d passed by.
“No one serious.”
He kept the details to a bare minimum, not wanting to scare her away. Cobra didn’t want her to think that she was just one of many who wet his dick. Dakota wasn’t—she was different and becoming very special to him.
“Have you ever had a serious girlfriend?”
“Nope.”
Dakota’s shoulders slumped a bit. “Oh,” she muttered.
“Sweetheart, you have to fuckin’ understand something here …” Cobra brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “I don’t do this shit. You and me? Talking? No way. When I’d hook up for a bit with a chick, we’d eat dinner together and co-exist.” He bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’m different with you. Don’t think this is my damn MO or something with a woman.”
He cradled her in his arms, clutching tighter each time she trembled.
