Brawn: Lethal Darkness MC (14 page)

Paris

I was alone when I woke up. It took me a minute to realize where the heck I was. I thought I’d fallen asleep on the couch last night, but now I was in a bed. I racked my brain trying to figure out how I’d managed to get up and walk without realizing it, when I remembered a blurry scene I’d thought at the time was a dream of Micah picking me up and tucking me gently into bed. I guessed it must have been real. Weird. The way I remembered it, he was so soft and careful, almost tender with his touch. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. That was not Micah’s way at all. More likely, he’d slung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and dropped me off here.

Speaking of Micah, I wondered where he was. The other half of the bed looked like it had been slept in, but now it was cold. Either I was wrong and he hadn’t slept here at all, or he’d been gone for a long time, a few hours at least.

I sat up and swung my legs over the side. My feet came to rest on the cold floorboards, sending shivers up my spine. This place needed a rug. As a matter of fact, this place needed a lot of things. The way it was set up now, it felt more like a morgue than a home. If I was going to be living here, I would want to get some decorations, put things on the walls—anything I could do to keep it from resembling an abnormally roomy jail cell.

That would have to wait until Micah got back from wherever he was, though. For now, all I wanted was a shower. I felt crusty with sleep and yesterday’s make-up. I’d fallen asleep without washing my face, and now I could feel the raccoon eyes from my mascara smudging against the pillows. Some hot water would do me justice. Getting out of this wedding dress wouldn’t be so bad either.

I stood up but immediately collapsed back down. My legs felt weak and shaky for some reason, and the sudden motion had brought a sickening wave of nausea crashing over me. I put a hand on my stomach and felt it gurgling. It had been almost a week since I’d last noticed any kicking or had morning sickness. I’d almost forgotten all about the baby.

I closed my eyes and breathed carefully until the nausea passed and I felt my pulse settle down to normal again. When it had, I took to my feet slowly, keeping a palm flat on the bedside table for support. This time, I didn’t feel sick, thankfully.

Reaching behind my back as far as I could manage, I unhooked the top of the dress and found the zipper. I dragged it down and breathed a sigh of relief as the tight upper portion peeled off of me. I wriggled it down my hips and stepped out in my bra and panties, leaving the dress pooled behind me.

I found the bathroom jutting off of the bedroom and stepped inside, shutting the door behind me. It felt good to be in a small space, like there was nothing that could happen in here that was out of my control or that I wouldn’t see coming. I started the shower and the room began to fill with steam.

Looking in the mirror, I saw a nightmarish reflection staring back. Make-up was streaked across my cheekbones and my hair had begun to work itself loose from the tight coils I’d worn during the wedding ceremony. I raised my fingers to my scalp and began finding all of the pins keeping the hair locked in place. As I pried them off one by one, my hair fell around me in a blonde tumble.

I stripped off my underwear and bra and stepped into the shower. The water was blazing hot, and at first I could barely stand to stick a toe under the scalding stream. But gradually, I worked my way underneath until it was pouring over my head and cascading down my skin. I closed my eyes and stood there for a long time. The shower beat down blissfully on my neck and back, trickling between my breasts and the welts that the dress had left on my spine and hips.

I found some soap and scrubbed at my skin. I couldn’t explain why, but it was as if I was peeling free of something, like a snakeskin, and the me that stepped out of this shower was going to be a completely different person than the one who had first stepped in. Like I was embracing my new life in yet another way, after Micah and I had had our first bike ride and first night under the same roof as Mr. and Mrs. Youngblood. It wasn’t the worst name in the world, I supposed.

Then I shuddered. I was
not
about to let myself get used to this. One way or another, I’d find a means of escape.

Finally, after I’d soaped every inch of my skin and rinsed the suds away, I cut the faucet off. The silence of the room was perfect. I stood there for a moment longer, soaking it in, breathing in the warm air and letting it fill my lungs before it whooshed out in a long, tension-melting sigh. Then I climbed out of the shower and used the lone towel in the room to dry off my hair and body.

When I was dry, I wrapped the towel around my chest and opened the door separating the bathroom from the bedroom. After the scorching shower, the blast of the A/C felt like an Arctic breeze. I shivered and rubbed the goosebumps that rippled up and down my arms.

One glance at the wedding dress I’d left on the floor and I remembered that I didn’t have any other clothes with me. It was a weird thought, to realize that I’d left my whole life behind. My clothes, my belongings, all of it was still back at my father’s house. Did I just bring it all here? I didn’t like the idea of facing Daddy yet. It was too soon.

I decided to borrow some clothes from Micah for now. I found his closet, opened it, and saw a few shirts hanging inside. One of them looked wearable. I took it out and laid it on the bed, then padded back to the bathroom to put my underwear back on.

I rifled through the drawers beneath the sink and found an unused comb. As I started to brush through my wet hair, I realized with a start that I was singing to myself. I froze. I couldn’t get over how
normal
this all felt. Sleeping in a comfortable bed, showering, as if nothing in my life had changed.

But it had. Everything had changed.

I resumed combing, but I made sure I stayed silent. Despite the part of me that wanted to accept all this chaos with a smile, there was another, more stubborn voice in my head that refused. My father could threaten me into doing whatever he wanted, but he couldn’t decide what I thought about it. That was for me and me alone.

When I had finished tugging out all of the knots, I turned to go put on the shirt of Micah’s I’d laid on top of the comforter. I took half a step into the bedroom and froze.

There was a man walking through the doorway from the living room. “Hello?” he called.

I saw his head whirl just as I slammed the bathroom door shut and locked it. My heart was pounding a thousand beats a minute as I yelled through the wooden frame, “Whoever you are, leave me alone! I have a gun in here!” I didn’t have anything of the sort, but I figured that the man on the other side of the door wouldn’t know that. I looked around for something to defend myself just in case he tried to force his way through. All I could find was a plunger. I grabbed it anyway, fully aware that I looked like a massive idiot, crouching against a bathroom door in my underwear as I squeezed a plunger in my fists like it was a sword.

The man said something, but I couldn’t hear him.

“What?” I said.

“I said, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you, Paris. My name is Zeke; Micah sent me to check on you.”

I lowered the plunger slowly but I didn’t set it down just yet. The man knew my name, he knew Micah, and he obviously knew where this apartment was and had some way to get inside. He was probably trustworthy. But I was still going to be cautious.

I unlocked the door, twisted the handle, and let it swing open a little bit. I still couldn’t see him, but I felt the breeze of the air conditioning drift through the opening. “How can I trust you?” I asked. I kept my right hand wrapped around the plunger’s handle.

“Micah sent me, I swear. I work with him. I was at the wedding, remember?”

The door eased open a little farther and I could finally see him. It was a familiar face after all. He had a brown beard speckled with gray, kept trimmed tightly against his jaw, and dark brown hair that he swept straight back away from his widow’s peak. He’d been sitting in the front row, I remembered, with an expression that was neither a smile nor a frown, but instead somewhere in between.

When he saw that I was holding the plunger like a weapon, the corner of his mouth twitched up into a grin. “You’ve got a gun in there, eh?” He chuckled.

“Not quite,” I admitted. I pointed at the shirt on the bed. “Can you hand me that? I’m not dressed.”

I was surprised to see him lower his eyes immediately. My mental image of how a Lethal Darkness member acted certainly did not include modesty for an unclothed woman. He spun on his heel, picked up the shirt from the bed, and walked it over to me, all while keeping his gaze trained on the floor at his feet.

I took it from him carefully and ducked back behind the door to pull the garment over my head. It fell down almost to my knees. It was as ridiculous-looking of a dress as I’d ever seen, but it would have to do for now, at least until I got some new clothes of my own.

When I was dressed, I set the plunger down, opened the door, and walked into the bedroom. Zeke wasn’t in there. I kept walking into the living room and saw him seated on the armchair, facing away from me, one ankle crossed over the other knee. He heard me approaching and twisted around to watch as I came and sat on the couch to his right.

“I’m sorry to have scared you like that,” he said.

I laughed. He really did look embarrassed. If I had to be honest, it was kind of cute. A blushing biker; I never thought I’d see the day. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just glad you didn’t make me use my weapon on you.”

He looked at me with round eyes. “God forbid.”

I settled back and relaxed for the first time since he’d walked in. He seemed nice, and I liked how composed he was. Of the few of my father’s comrades I’d actually met, they all seemed like loose cannons, liable to explode at any minute. Like Micah, Zeke was different. He was clearly in control of himself. It made me feel safer to be around him.

“How are you settling in?” he asked.

I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could. “I’m not yet. But I’ll get there, I guess.”

He nodded. “I’m sure it’s a hard change for you.”

I wondered how much he knew of the circumstances that had led to this whole situation. There was no telling; he kept everything so close to the chest. I decided to play it cool. He seemed trustworthy, but I couldn’t see any advantage in rocking the boat. Better to go with the flow until I figured out the lay of the land here. “It is what it is,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I cringed. Zeke noticed and his eyes narrowed.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“No, it’s just, uh. Nothing, never mind.” I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I’d sounded just like Micah had.
It is what it is.
He was inside my head already.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Just a weird memory.”

“Gotcha.” He leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. “Well, anyway, the reason I’m here is that Micah sent me to see what you needed. You’re going to be here for a while, and he said I should take you out to get things—clothes, furniture, make-up. Whatever it is you’d like to have around here.”

I took a look around the empty room. “Oh, boy,” I said. Then I frowned. “But I don’t have any money.”

Zeke chuckled. “You don’t need to worry about money, Paris. Not ever again.” He stood.

I was still processing his words when he stood. “If you’re ready, we can go,” he invited, extending a hand to help me up from the couch. I took it and rose to my feet. Noticing something, though, I looked down.

“I don’t have any shoes,” I said.

He looked down and saw that I was barefoot. “Well, first stop is the shoe store, then, I guess.”

# # #

“How long have you known Micah?” I asked.

Zeke was sitting in a chair on the other side of the door to the dressing room stall I was in. I could see him crossing and uncrossing his feet over and over again. It made me chuckle. Who knew that the way to make a biker uncomfortable was to bring him into a women’s clothing shop? He’d looked downright terrified at every place we’d gone so far, although the more places we went, the more bags he had to struggle with. He’d given me carte blanche to get literally anything I wanted, and I took his recommendation to heart. I stopped bothering with price tags after the first few shops, and he didn’t even ask the totals when we were checking out. He just reached into his jacket and peeled crisp hundred dollar bills from the rubber-banded roll he kept in some hidden pocket. It seemed endless.