VENDETTA: A Bad Boy, Motorcycle Club Romance (6 page)

Emily

I killed a man.

I’ve done so many terrible things since my parents died, but I’d never stooped so low as to take a life. Sure, I’d fantasized about killing Santiago when we were out in the desert and the sand was abrading my skin, but it wasn’t real. Thoughts like that weren’t anything real.

This was real.

He died
so fast
. In my whole life, I’d never realized just how fast it could be over. His eyes were alive and his lips were sneering and then they were both blank, like no one was home. When his body fell backwards, it was like a piece of myself went with him, crashed onto the sharp ground and was just gone.

But it didn’t. I was alive and no matter how much darker my soul became when I killed Santiago, it was worth it to save Flash. Santiago raised the gun and leveled it at the man who’d risked his own life to help me and I didn’t hesitate. Taking careful aim, I’d pulled the trigger and ended him and it was all too much. Swaying, I forced myself to calm down. No matter what I’d done, I wanted us both to walk out of here alive.

Flash said something, but I couldn’t hear him. Everything was numb. When he started the bike, I felt his hands on me, felt him wrap me in close and then lifted my legs to the pegs. He drove faster than I thought was safe over the driveway and injured a man at the gate, but soon enough we were driving on a paved road.

He was alive. I was alive.

I’d taken a life.

Regret washed through me, sour and cold. But I knew that if I could rewind time and was in the exact same situation, I’d kill again. I’d aim and pull the trigger without a moment’s hesitation, because it was the right thing to do.

It had to be.

We drove north and I leaned into Flash’s big body, letting his heat soak into me while the morning wind whipped around, hot and dry. Even though it was summer and the sun was already heating up the roads until they glimmered, I was cold with the air flow around us. The towel I’d wrapped around my body wasn’t much protection.

The rumble of the engine helped soothe me, and I wondered where we were headed. He’d mentioned California and most of me wanted to be home, tucked away in my little bedroom that overlooked the ocean. Other parts of me wondered how I was going to start college now that I was coming home in disgrace. Uncle Dale hadn’t wanted to give me the money to go in the first place—even though I’d earned it—and the money I had saved up would cover tuition, but not an apartment or books.

“You work for me because I kept you off the streets,” was his favorite refrain from the time I was twelve and he realized that I had an aptitude for numbers. “Without me, you’d be nothing,” was another one he loved to throw out when he was so high that his pupils were like pinpricks. He’d grab me or backhand me then if I cried for fresh food or to go to the park the way I did before my parents died—and then he’d clean the entire building, sleep for two days and wake up normal until he smoked more crystal.

But his house was home and it was better than curling up in some tenement and hoping for the best. I didn’t exactly have many friends and the ones I did manage to make weren’t much better off than me. School had always been a struggle, since I was required to be home exactly 20 minutes after the bell rang if I didn’t want to get cuffed. Most girls were out at parties or on dates. I was heading back home to help my uncle out with his business because the good lord knows he wasn’t capable of handling it alone.

Then I met Tommy.

His eyes were like seawater and he smiled in the way so many of the young people who came to my house did: hesitant while looking down through his lashes. I recognized that look and the way he shied from his father when they sat down on my uncle’s faded couch together. Then he’d jerked his head toward the bar where I stood drinking a glass of water and looked at me. That was it for both of us, for awhile.

I should have known the innocence of him, the beauty, couldn’t last.

There on the back of Flash’s bike, I mourned for Tommy and the boy he’d been when we first touched hands while walking home from school together. My uncle and his father had systematically dismantled him, but in the end the choice was his own. Just like his choice to cheat on me and then tell me over the phone while I was in Mexico.

Then I let him go.

Loving someone is easy, I mused while Flash pulled off the main road and headed toward a cluster of buildings. It’s loving yourself enough that’s really difficult. Telling Tommy goodbye was hard, but it had to happen if I was ever going to really be free.

When Flash pulled the bike into a parking lot, climbed off and reached for my hand, I accepted his help. My legs felt like gelatin, probably a mixture of stress, lack of sleep and sheer nerves. Once I was steady, I thought he’d let go—but instead he guided me into the store. Spotting racks of clothing, my heart leapt. The anticipation of having something real to put on was staggering.

“Grab whatever you want,” Flash said. “I need to get a few things and make a call. I’ll meet you at the counter in ten.”

I nodded, not voicing my concern about being left alone. We were hours from the villa and no one had followed us, but I couldn’t get rid of the fear. It followed us down the road, nipping on our heels even when all I could see was road and sky.

He walked across the room and stood by the wall, pulling out his phone and starting to make a call. Then he looked back at me and nodded. I realized that he wasn’t going to leave me alone, so I turned away and started going through the clothing. Just knowing he was close by bolstered my confidence.

Disregarding a yellow sundress flowers on the hem, I looked for something more suitable for riding the rest of the way to California. The towel had done in a pinch, but I wasn’t sure I wanted so much of my skin showing while we were on the highway. Add to that the fact that stiff materials and coverage could help protect me in a crash, and all my dreams of a pretty dress or full skirt went out the window. One of my goals for my trip to Mexico had been to shop, but I hadn’t gotten around to it until the day Santiago grabbed me.

I picked out a pair of dark jeans and a white t-shirt, then pulled out a soft, long-sleeved button down to wear over them. Glancing over my shoulder to see Flash glaring at nothing while he conversed with whoever was on the other end of the line, I went over to pick out a bra and panties, socks and some tennis shoes. Guilt rose as my arms grew full, but I needed these things to get home. Maybe I could convince him to wait outside my uncle’s house while I gathered the money to pay him back.

When I looked for Flash again, he was gone. Panic shot through me in one large bolt, but then I felt a hand on my arm and turned back to see him there. “Get more than one outfit,” he said. “We’re still a few days out.”

“I can reuse this one.”

“Why won’t you get more?”

“All my money—not that I had a lot—but it was at the resort. I don’t think I’ll get it back and I don’t want you to have to spend your money on me. You’ve already done enough.”

“Get more things,” he said. “I want you to have clothes. Get a backpack and we’ll fill it up at the register.”

I nodded, responding to his authoritative tone. The last thing I wanted to do was reject any measure of goodwill from the man who’d risked his life for me. So I went back, grabbed two more pairs of jeans, some tank tops, a sweatshirt, a skirt I could wear at a hotel if it didn’t have AC, and some more undergarments, then found a navy blue backpack that looked like it could hold the clothing. On the way to the counter, I grabbed a pack of hair ties and some chapstick, then a bottle of sunscreen and a tube of toothpaste.

Flash met me there with a few items of his own. Grabbing the clothes and toiletries I’d picked out, he set them on the counter, waited for the woman to scan them and then paid with a large stack of money from his wallet. I glimpsed the California driver’s license nestled inside before he closed it with a snap.

“Is there a place she could change?” The saleswoman looked from me to him and nodded silently. Seeing a woman in a towel with a sexy, golden-eyed biker had probably shocked her into next week.

“Dressing rooms are in the back, near the bathrooms. Either is fine.”

“Thanks,” he said, grabbing my hand and taking our bags with his free one. We walked into the back and I disappeared into the bathroom with the bags I wrested from him. Looking in the mirror, I took stock of myself. My face was a little rosy from the morning sun and my hair was straggled down my back, a wild mess. Dry lips, too-large eyes and the bruises across my face completed the picture.
You look like a real winner, Em
.

Putting on the clothes made me feel normal again, but combing my fingers through my hair and pulling it back with a hair tie made me feel human. I dabbed sunscreen on my face and the exposed skin of my chest, then coated my lips in the chapstick. It tasted like grapefruit.

The shoes fit perfectly and I laced them tight, figuring we were in for a long ride to the border—which I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get across without ID. Surely there was some kind of official that an American citizen could talk to in order to get the proper paperwork. Flash would likely know what to do.

When I walked back out, he stuffed the other items into the backpack. I reached for it, but he stopped me.

“Put this on.” He held out a dark leather jacket that I definitely hadn’t picked up. I reached for it and ran my fingers down the buttery soft leather.

“This is too much.”

“You’ll be safer,” he said. Flash took the jacket back from me, dropped the backpack and held it up, waiting for me to put my arms in.

It fit perfectly.

“Thank you for everything,” I said, looking into his startling eyes. Already, I knew I was in serious danger of falling for this man in an irrevocable way. There was little enough kindness in my life, and I didn’t know how to react to someone who’d put me first. On an impulse, I wrapped my arms around him and rested my face against the steel of his chest. The closeness reminded me of what we’d done the night before, how he’d made my body sing between the sheets, but I didn’t pull away.

I wanted more.

He stiffened in my arms, then looked down at me with a question in his eyes. I smiled and Flash relaxed just a little, then bent to press his lips to mine.

“I’m going to get you home, Emmy.”

“I know,” I told him. And I did.

Walking back outside, he slid the backpack over my shoulders and put a few things in the pack on the back of the bike. I watched his strong hands close the zipper and sighed, wanting them on my skin again. But now wasn’t the time.

“What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to drive until nightfall, then stop and sleep. In the morning, we’ll do the same thing. What part of California do you live in?”

“Malibu, but I’m starting at Cal Tech full time soon.”
Or I am if I can convince my uncle to give me a cut of the profits without him punching me and then calling me ungrateful
. I couldn’t live at home, work for my uncle and go to school full time. Already, I knew it would be impossible to keep my grades up. He’d barely tolerated high school and the few night classes I’d taken. Pointing out that economics would actually help me be more efficient had swayed him.

He wasn’t going to be happy when I walked through his door, but I had nothing else to fall back on. Even the papers I’d need for a new ID were at his house.