Page 8 of Slaughter
Because he was right. He was absolutely, painfully right.
I was waiting.
I just didn’t know what for. Or maybe I did, somewhere deep down in a place I was too afraid to look.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Angel slowly stood, his chair scraping against the worn linoleum floor as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. He tossed it on the table between us with a flick of his wrist, the bill landing right next to my untouched coffee. “When you figure it out, let me know,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless, his eyes refusing to meet mine. Then he walked out without another word, without looking back even once.
I sat there alone in the booth, staring at the twenty-dollar bill like it held all the answers I didn’t have. My chest felt tight, constricted, like someone had wrapped steel bands around my ribcage and was pulling them tighter with each breath. My eyeswere burning, hot and stinging with tears I refused to let fall. Not here, not in public.
Stacey slid into the booth across from me. “You okay?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“He’s right, you know,” she said quietly. “You’re not here. You haven’t been for a while. It’s like you’re waiting for something.”
I looked up at her. “What if I don’t know what I’m waiting for?”
She shrugged. “Then I guess you’ll know it when you see it.”
I drove home later that night in silence, the radio off, the windows down. The March air was cool and smelled of rain. That earthy, electric scent that came just before a storm rolled in. I thought about Angel. About the way he looked at me at the diner, his eyes searching mine for answers I didn’t have. About Charity’s questions, which had been more pointed than usual, cutting through my carefully constructed deflections like a hot knife through butter. About Faith’s concern, written all over her face despite her attempts to hide it behind small talk and forced smiles. About the hollow ache in my chest that wouldn’t go away, no matter how many miles I put between myself and that conversation. It sat there, heavy and persistent, like a stone I had swallowed that refused to digest.
I was waiting for something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what, but I knew it was out there.
Something I hadn’t found yet. Something that had eluded me despite all my searching, all my wandering through life’s twists and turns.
Something I would recognize when I felt it. It would hit me like a bolt of lightning or maybe wash over me like a warm wave. I would know it instantly, without question or doubt.
I just didn’t know what it was. Not yet, anyway. But I had faith that one day, when the time was right, it would reveal itself to me.
Chapter Three
Hope
A rumble woke me at two in the morning. The sound vibrated up through my mattress and into my bones. My room was infused with the faint, comforting scent of lavender from the sachet Faith had tucked into my pillowcase years ago. A small effort to keep old nightmares at bay.
I jerked upright, heart clattering in my chest, breath catching—caught somewhere between sleep and alertness. For a split second, I wondered if I was back in our old house, the one where unexpected noises always meant trouble. But the deep, throaty growl of the motorcycle engine was unmistakable as it cut through the quiet night. When the sound came again, rolling closer, my nerves tingled with a mixture of anticipation and old fear, the cold air sharp as I pressed my bare feet to the hardwood floor.
I moved toward the window, hands brushing against the cool glass pane as I parted the curtain. The moon was nearly full, washing everything outside in silver-blue light. The smell of dew and distant hay drifted up when I cracked the window open an inch, and the wooden sill was rough beneath my fingertips. I could see the driveway clearly, pale gravel outlined against the shadows, each stone gleaming like a tiny piece of the sky.
A single headlight pierced the darkness, and I caught my reflection—wide-eyed and tense—in the window glass.
The bike pulled up beside the porch. The engine cut off, and silence crept back in, broken by the persistent chirp of crickets outside and the faint, familiar click of the old clock in thehallway. Somewhere, the faint aroma of oil and leather drifted up from below. I pressed closer, my palms cool and damp against the glass, breath fogging the pane in nervous patterns.
Zeke stepped out onto the porch. He must have heard the bike too. Or maybe he had been waiting for it. He moved with that steady, easy confidence he always had. His Diamondback cut a bold shape in the moonlight. Zeke wasn’t just my brother. He was my best friend. Someone I trusted to keep my secrets. To keep my nightmares at bay when they threatened to overwhelm me.
The rider swung off the bike, boots landing with a heavy thud on the gravel. He was tall. Taller even than Zeke, who stood at six-three. This stranger must have been at least six-six. His frame was so broad it seemed to block out the light from the porch. Long black hair spilled down his back, wild and untamed. Even from my perch upstairs, I could see the power in his movements—controlled, deliberate, as if he measured every step. Something about the way he paused made my stomach flip with an old, buried anxiety: the memory of a night many years ago, when a different visitor’s arrival had brought nothing but trouble and a cracked window that never quite closed right after.
Zeke reached him, and they clasped forearms. The way the MC brothers did, something I had seen enough times to recognize as a gesture of trust and history. Their voices were too low for me to catch, but the sight of Zeke’s familiar, easy nod eased some of my nerves. He gestured toward the house, and the stranger followed without hesitation.
The two of them disappeared inside, leaving the porch empty except for the whisper of the wind and that lingering scent of gasoline and dust.
I stayed by the window, fingers tracing idle patterns in the condensation, staring at the lone motorcycle parked near the porch. A Harley, black and chrome, that gleamed as if alive in themoonlight. The seat was scuffed, and a single feather dangled from the handlebars, swaying gently in the night breeze.
Who was he? And why, after all this time, did someone else’s arrival stir up old fears I thought I had left behind?
I waited, straining to hear any sound from below. A door closing, footsteps on creaking boards, maybe laughter. But the house stayed silent, as if holding its breath. Zeke must have taken him to one of the guest rooms on the first floor, far from where the rest of us slept.
