Page 64 of Vandal Unbound

“Will you meet me there?” I know what I’m asking. No one ever goes out to Knox’s house. It’s his private domain. Certainly not at ungodly o’clock.

“On my way,” Havoc says without even asking the reason.

“Thanks, brother.” But the words come out hoarse.

“Vandal?” Daisy’s voice echoes off the concrete.

“See you there,” I say, hanging up on Havoc before I turn to face her.

She’s so damn pretty, even though she looks blurry from this distance.

“You don’t need to go,” she says.

I take a deep breath, but I don’t step closer to her. One step will become two and will become three, and before I know it, I’ll be back in that tiny apartment that the two of them have made so damn cozy.

“I do,” I say. “This isn’t the version of me either of you deserves. I told you that.”

I can see the conflict in her eyes, can feel it as surely as I feel the pressure of today bearing down on me. “But I can help you.”

I look down at my boot. “It’d be easy to let you try. But you can’t. My brothers haven’t been able to, and they know my every strength and weakness. And you deserve better than me half paying attention to you and Elsie when I’ve got the devil on my shoulder and the constant itch of withdrawal screaming at me to take a sip of something to make it go away. I’m gonna go, Daisy. I’m gonna try and beat this. Give me a few weeks to at least detox.”

She chews on her lips, then does the most unexpected thing.

She runs at me.

And I catch her.

Then she kisses me again, and I wrap my arms around her and kiss her back.

Those soft lips on mine.

The weight of her in my arms.

I let every bit of her hope and goodness and happiness sink into me because I don’t know how long it’s going to have to last for.

“Be safe,” she says, finally.

“I’m gonna text you Havoc’s number. You need anything at all, you call him. I know enough about myself that I’ll come running if you call and probably fuck up my progress.”

She hugs me one more time, and then I put her down, because I’m at real risk of not letting her go.

Then I jog down the stairs without looking back.

It’s easy to get on the bike. It’s harder to hit the road to Knox’s because it takes me past the site where I was taken. But I pause in the road where it happened as my engine idles. It’s too early in the morning for anyone else to be around. But the thought I had while deep inside Daisy comes back to me. To move forward, I’m gonna have to go back. And why not start here?

I allow myself to think about that night while pretty sober. To think about how I flew from my bike. How I felt relieved the van had stopped. And then how my heart stopped when I realized why.

How it felt to be dropped on the ground outside my clubhouse. How Knox and Havoc tried to reassure me, but the fear was frothing like a badly poured beer.

And then the surgeries. Plural. To fix me back up again. Not that I’m fixed. I still feel my ribs ache every minute of the day. But the pleasure with Daisy outweighed it.

I rub a hand over my jaw and force myself to sit with the urge to flee. My palms sweat thinking about so much trauma.

The crash.

The torture.

The shame.