Holy crap.
Is this dude for real?
For some reason, I don’t know why but I feel as if going with Bear will lead me to the place I want to be.
Chapter One
Harley
When did my life turn to what it has become?
I used to be the life of the party. I loved to go out dancing and have a good time. I would drink but not get drunk to where I acted stupid. I had friends I would go out with. We would laugh and joke around.
Not anymore. I barely live a life worth living after the night my world changed. How could I have not seen it until it was too late? The madness in Charlotte’s eyes. Then everything else from that dreadful day. Even though it was a long while ago, it still feels as if it happened yesterday.
I can still feel Charlotte’s mouth on my body, her teeth raking across my nipples. Then of course there is what Mareena did to me with her mouth and fingers. I have nightmares still about her even though I know she won’t be able to hurt me anymore. She still has that power in my dreams. I live it more times than I like to admit to myself.
Since that night I’ve secluded myself as much as possible, going to work and coming back home where I lock myself away. Pretty much my friend, Luna, and I switched roles. I never understood why she refused to go out but having been told her story, I completely get it now.
The women from the Devil’s Riot try to check on me and I do my best to hide the pain I still feel deep inside. Don’t need them to know what I’d started to do, what I’ve contemplated doing. If they knew, Luna would be the first in line demanding her ol’ man get me the help she thought I needed.
That’s not going to happen.
I heard what Rachel went through due to hers, she’d ended up having another beautiful boy named Talon, about six months or so ago. I only know this because I’d been forced to go to a cookout at the clubhouse after he was born. Luna and Shadow are constantly trying to get me to come around. More or less it’s Luna using Shadow to bully me into coming. You don’t tell that man ‘no’ and not because he intimidates you into doing what he wants you to. No, it’s more or less Shadow looks at you, says what’s going to happen, and you go with it otherwise he’s simply going to drag you out whether you like it or not.
The day of the cookout, I’d been a nervous wreck. I always am around large groups, but that day was horrifying. One of the clubwhores, I didn’t know her name, cornered me in the bathroom. Told me I needed to stay away from the club if I knew what was good for me. Then she’d touched my skin, with the tips of her fingers while palming me between my thighs. I nearly threw up at the feel of her hands on me. She’s threatened to do to me, what had already been done and when she was finished, no one would ever want me again.
Embarrassed by the fact this woman I didn’t even know, knew something so traumatic about me I’d shoved her with all my strength and ran out of the bathroom. I ran smack dab into the one man I tried to avoid at all cost when I was around the club.
Neo.
He demanded to know what was going on and I refused to tell him. I merely kept pleading for him to take me home. I needed to go home.
Away from him and everyone else.
After that day, I never went back to the clubhouse, or told anyone what happened in the bathroom. Not even when Shadow asked me about it.
Needing to get away from everything and everyone, I ended up changing my phone number and moving across town into a neighborhood I thought was safe. The area was quiet, my neighbors stayed to themselves, and I didn’t have to worry about them speaking to me other than the typical ‘hello’. I even quit my job at the school. I used to love working with first graders, but I couldn’t be the teacher they needed. So, I’d left without notice and started working from home as a freelance editor. I worked with several authors each month. It wasn’t easy to get into but I’m doing it for the time being.
Everything was okay. I didn’t mind the solitude. I enjoy it really. At least a majority of the time when I was awake and could keep the dreams at bay.
I’d had to start taking sleeping pills again due to the horrible event at the clubhouse that just brought everything back to light. I try not to take them, but I can’t sleep without them.
Here recently it’s all become so much. I couldn’t stand to look at myself before and it’s to the point I can’t stand the feel of my own hands against my skin. I throw up every day when I shower, as well as, turn my skin so red it looks like a tomato from scrubbing it so harshly.
The demons who have emerge within my head keep telling me what I need to do, how I should just let it all end. At first, I fought them off, by giving myself what I thought I needed to get through it. I broke my razor and started something I never thought I would do. Cutting into my skin leaving fine lines of blood seeping from my body. With each cut it went to my head making me feel I was in control of something for the first time in a very long time.
I wake
