“You’re naïve too, Pink,” I say with a chuckle.
She narrows her gaze on me, then lets out a full-on belly laugh. Only then does Mamba break out of his haze and turn to face us. He closes the distance between us, his eyes flicking between each of us.
“What’s so funny?” he asks on a grunt.
Pinkie presses her lips together, rolling them a few times before she turns to Mamba. “Jag thinks I’m naïve,” she says in an overexaggerated whisper.
Mamba’s brow raises and he looks from her to me, then back to her. “You are,” he says, agreeing with me.
My lips curve up into a grin and I jerk my chin in her direction. “See.”
She shakes her head, her brows furrowing as she watches us for a moment. “Why do you think I’m naïve?” she asks, her voice sounding terribly small.
Clearing my throat, I don’t move from my place on the table, mainly because I’m in too much fucking pain. Instead, I turn to her slightly.
“You been through hell, Pinkie. We all know that. You enjoy sex and that’s great, you’re smart and mature, but inside you’re still just that twentysomething-year-old kid you were when you walked in here.”
“And you’re not the same way?” she asks.
“I am,” I agree. “But we ain’t talkin’ about me.”
“We’re all frozen in time here,” she says softly. “Every single one of us. Look at all the men. None of them got Old Ladies until their forties. That tells you something.”
Mamba hums then reaches out and loosely wraps his fingers around her bicep. He tugs her gently toward him and wraps his arms around her, holding her close to his chest. I watch as he dips his chin and touches his lips to the top of her head.
There’s nothing sexual about this moment, and yet it feels deeper than anything else that we’ve experienced. Mamba just holds her in silence for a while, the three of us alone in this room, the three of us going through some serious personal shit and none of us able to express it at all.
“Yeah,” Mamba finally exhales. “We’re all fucked up. Everyone is. That’s just the way the world goes. Maybe we’re all stunted, probably because we drown ourselves in pussy, booze, and riding free as a way to ignore the outside world. But we got one thing in here that doesn’t always exist out there, at least for us it never did.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
He lifts his head from Pinkie’s hair and looks at me, his lips curving up into a grin. “Each other.”
“You’re soft as fuck,” I grunt as I try to slide off of the tabletop.
He laughs at the same time Pinkie giggles. “Yeah,” Mamba mutters. “I am.”
“You gonna take Gator as your Old Man and just stop with the bullshit?” Pinkie asks.
Mamba takes a step back, then freezes in his spot. His eyes are wide and then he shifts them up to meet mine. He looks fucking terrified, as if I would give a fuck that he and Gator make it official. Everyone knows they’re in love with one another, not a fucking surprise.
“You think the club would be down with that? I don’t fucking think so,” he snaps.
I’m glad that he doesn’t deny anything. I’m surprised that we’re having this conversation. Maybe because it’s just the three of us, maybe because Mamba doesn’t hate me, I have no fucking clue, but I’m glad we’re having it—I finally feel like a Beast again, though I know that the feeling will be fleeting.
PAMELA
If I were a different person, I would be drunk, maybe searching for an unattached Beast to become attached to out of anger and rage, but I’m not that person. So, instead of retaliation and acting out, I do what any eighteen-year-old girl would do, I hide.
I hide all day long, though I make sure that I can see the warehouse from my hiding spot. I watch and wait for Pinkie to leave, but she never does. The three of them stay in there until the sun begins to set.
Then I watch as they walk out of the warehouse. My heart cracks at the sight of them together. Mamba is walking close to them, but it’s Jaguar that has his arm casually slung around Pinkie’s neck. He even tugs her close to his side and then I hear his laughter fill the quiet desert air.
I hate myself as I watch them.
I hate myself because I am so stupid and naïve. I’m childish. Why did I not see what he was telling me? I couldn’t see it for myself. He was trying to tell me that he only saved me because he felt sorry for me. I’m nothing more than a kid that he felt pity for.
Pinching my eyes closed, I chant over and over to myself, begging myself not to cry. Luckily, as I’ve done a million times before, I’m able to swallow the tears and gain my composure. I need a plan. I didn’t think that I was going to need one for the future, but I really do.
Stupidly, I thought that Jaguar would fall in love with me, make me his Old Lady, and we’d have a bundle of biker babies living happily ever after like the rest of the Old Ladies that I’d met. I wanted that too, especially after meeting them. I wanted to be a part of them.
“You okay?” a soft voice asks from right behind me.
Spinning around, I blink at the sight of Gisele standing in front of me. She lifts her hand, shoving her thumb behind her. “I saw you sitting out here all day watching the warehouse. Figured you just wanted to be alone, but then I saw them leaving and it was Jaguar and Pinkie. So…”
Her words trail off, mainly because she probably has nothing to say. Nothing that wouldn’t be pathetically sad and make me feel shitty, so she has the good sense not to actually verbalize them.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie.
She
