Lifting my chin in her direction, I turn back toward the door and tug it open before slipping inside. This moment, this church session is the second most important one of my life. The most important was them deciding whether or not I lived or died.
This decides if I can stay or not, if I can raise a family in the Beasts, if I will ever truly make any headway on becoming a member again. If they vote against me, I won’t be able to stay. Which means I’ll be an outcast.
They could kill me if they wanted to.
This club is for life, I can’t just walk away because I feel like it, but I also can’t have a wife and a family with no income.
Standing against the wall, I let my head fall back and I close my eyes as they talk. I can’t hear them, and it’s all for the better. I don’t need to know what they’re talking about, I just need to know the income.
“They votin’ on some serious shit,” Bones announces.
Lifting my head, I open my eyes and look across the room at him. He’s a few feet away from me, his gaze trained on me, a beer firmly held in his hand.
“My life,” I say, shrugging a shoulder.
His lips curve up into a grin. “Yeah, been there.”
I watch him for a moment, and he unashamedly does the same to me. “They let you live. Didn’t think they would.”
I remember Karma. He didn’t survive. Fucked Mamba up, fucked a lot of people up, but he was a traitor too. I’m sure that the situations are different, but it doesn’t matter. A traitor is a traitor, and I probably should have been put down.
“Me either.”
He dips his chin, his eyes focused on mine, connected and not moving. “Forgiveness is a motherfucker. They let you live, eventually they’ll forgive you, but I can tell by looking into your eyes. You regret it, you live with that guilt, and you’ll never forgive yourself.”
“I won’t,” I agree.
“So in the end, you’ll suffer more inside your own head than they could ever make you.”
“Yeah.”
The door opens and Gator sticks his head out, calling me inside. Gator jerks his chin for me to go ahead, and I dip my own before I turn from him. Stopping, I look back at him.
“That shit with Maci, you bringin’ her back?” I ask.
He shakes his head a couple of times. “Keeping her, doing what I wanted to do with her. Knowing the guilt it would cause me, not something I could live with again.”
“You wanted her?” I ask, surprised because as far as I know, Bones doesn’t fuck around on his wife.
He clears his throat but doesn’t confirm or deny my words. Instead, he smirks before he turns around and walks away.
Omission.
He wanted to keep her. Can’t blame him, she’s fucking gorgeous. Turning back to Gator, I clear my head of Maci, Bones, and even of Pamela. I need to be in the moment for what is about to befall me.
Chapter Thirty-One
PAMELA
Unable to concentrate on anything at all, I walk over to the largest group of women, hoping that I’ll be able to zone out in the bigger crowd, rather than a smaller group. It doesn’t work though. Instead, I’m met with smiles, and questions—so many questions.
Presley reaches out for me, wrapping her hand in mine and squeezes my fingers with her own. Turning to her, she smiles down at me. My eyes scan her body and I shake my head, unsure that I’ve ever really looked at her before. She looks so soccer-mom.
“You don’t look like a biker chick at all,” I point out.
She smiles. “I wasn’t before I met Silver and I didn’t change who I was for him, not really.”
“None of the women really look like biker chicks, well maybe except for Trista.”
“That’s because Tris was a biker baby,” Avah announces. “She was born here, raised with these men, by these men.”
I don’t know if I could tell them how I was raised. I’m sure they all know enough about me to know a little bit about that part of me, so I decide to just smile.
Always smile.
I have no desire to get into it, to go into detail about how I was raised, about my father. Who my mother is and what happened. I don’t think that Pinkie wants the world to know the details and I’m okay with that.
Honestly, I want to forget the first eighteen years of my life. I make a deal with myself, I’m going to do just that, I’m going to forget the first eighteen years of my life. They don’t exist. I wasn’t born until I rode through the gates of the Savage Beast clubhouse.
“Shit, that was fast, I hope that doesn’t mean it was bad,” a voice hisses behind me.
Vaguely, it sounds like Della, but I don’t look back to see if it was her. My focus is on the door of the clubhouse, the door where men are walking out in a single file line and headed straight for the food tables.
Presley is still holding my hand. The only reason I know is because she squeezes my fingers before she whispers. “Everything is going to be okay, babe.”
I wish that I could believe her. I want everything to be okay, I really do, but I can hardly breathe as I wait for the actual answer. I just don’t know what to expect, not from this group of men, not from this situation.
I keep watching, waiting for Dylan to make his way out of the building, but he doesn’t appear. Unable to stop my feet from moving, Presley lets go of me and I walk toward the clubhouse, toward that open door. I want to run, but I
