Page 5 of Devil’s Torture

Too quiet.

“Miller.” His name rips out of my throat again.

No answer.

“Please,” the word breaks out of me as I sob.

My knees give out when I try to take another step, when I try to push just a little bit harder. Tears stream down my face as I reach toward the light.

The light.

Silent.

I should have been able to get closer. But I can’t do it.

Farther.

The rain comes down harder and I swear I hear the echo of his bike hitting the road again. And again. It reverberates through me.

“Please.” I sob, “Miller.”

My eyes snap open as I bolt upright. Air is sawing in and out of my lungs. When I press my hands to my face, it’s soaked with tears.

The worst part is not knowing.

I have no idea if anything happened to Miller on the road. It’s been ten years and I’ve never heard from him. It shouldn’t still hurt, but it does. I’ve just gotten better at ignoring it over the years.

I’ve had plenty of practice. The raw feeling inside me isn’t the only thing I’ve ignored over the last ten years. For me, there’s no such thing as the Devil’s Saints MC.

They’ve tried to reach out, but I ignore it. Because there’s no room in my life for people who lie to me.

When I moved out of the place I shared with Miller back then, it was because I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t be there. Not when I had no idea where he was and couldn’t reach him.

I tried. I don’t even know how many times I called for it to never go through. Eventually, I let it go. Well, I tried to let it go.

It’s not like I had much of a choice.

Still, when I moved into my new place, it only took a month for the rent to be paid in full for the entire year and for all my utilities to be paid on time every month. I’m sure it was done by the club, but I never went to the clubhouse again. I tend to walk the other way when I hear a bike now.

Except in my fucking nightmares. Apparently.

As much as I wish I was the kind of person who could have found a way to refuse everything being paid for, but I’m not. But for good reason.

The memory of the day I realized something was going on with me, that I wasn’t just tired, flashes in my mind. I knew. I knew it the moment I allowed myself to look past my grief and confusion at what else was going on.

I never imagined I would find out about my pregnancy under those circumstances. You know, with the father who knows where, for who knows how long. It wasn’t ideal.

But I still pressed my hand to my lower abdomen and whispered, “We’ll figure it out.”

We have. Barely, some days. Which is why I didn’t argue about the money. Even if I insisted, they’d figure out a way around the whole thing, like making up some long-lost relative loaded with a vault of coins and gold bars who left me everything.

It would look completely plausible on paper, I’m sure.

I don’t think the club knows about my daughter. If they did, they would have swooped in.

Which is why I chose to do a home birth with a doula. Only because everything was looking good. I didn’t want to go to the hospital and enter that kind of system.

No reason to raise red flags to the club.