“We’d go back to your place?”
“Yes we would.”
“What then?”
“Then we’d fuck like rabbits.”
“Charming,” I said, but I wasn’t as unaffected as I put on.
My lip quivered with emotion that seemed to rise up from nowhere. It was raw, a mixture of anger and sorrow. I wasn’t angry at him. I was angry at the situation I was in, and the fact that I couldn’t take him up on his offer, no matter how right he was about my life. I wanted to cry but I held it in.
“Don’t think, just do it,” he said. “We’ll be in California before Wolf even knows you’re missing.”
“Just do it?”
“I’ll show you what it’s like to be with a real man.”
For a second I lost it. I slapped him across the face. That surprised him. It had seemingly come from nowhere. Where did he get off? Did he honestly think I’d throw myself at him for saying something like that? Even if I could? He was insane. I put force into that slap, really hit him hard. I knew it hurt.
“What was that for?”
“Don’t ever speak to me like that. I’m not perfect, but the least I deserve is respect. You don’t even know me.”
“Don’t I?” he said, trying to lighten the mood again, but I wasn’t having it.
“Fuck you,” I said.
I was being unfair. I was blaming him for all that was wrong in my life. Through his shirt I could see the tattoos inked into his skin. They were intricate and so sexy on his perfect chest. I prayed he couldn’t tell how attracted to him I was.
“Look, I know Wolf. I know Los Lobos. I know how they treat their women.”
“You don’t know shit about me.”
“Everything doesn’t have to be the way Wolf says it is. Not everyone’s afraid of him and his cocksucker friends.”
“They’re killers.”
“They’re not the only killers.”
“Oh, that’s supposed to make me feel better? Leave one criminal to get in bed with another?”
“Now you’re talking,” he said.
He made me so angry. This was my life, and he was treating me like some random pickup in a bar. I suppose to him I was a random pickup in a bar.
“And what then?” I said. “After you’re done with me? After you’ve had your way with me and I’ve given you everything you want? What the fuck then?”
“Then we get married. Make babies. White picket fence.”
I slapped him again, harder than the first time. It was so hard my hand stung. I took pleasure from the fact his cheek reddened.
He shook his head. I’d angered him.
I was wearing a cheap necklace, a heart pendant on a silver chain, and he grabbed it in his fist and yanked it. The chain snapped and he put it in his pocket. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? That he’d stolen my heart? He hadn’t stolen shit.
“You’re cruel,” I said.
“Maybe I am, but I meant every word I said to you.”
“Give me my chain back.”
“I will, some day far in the future, when you don’t even remember I have it.”
I was going to cry, and I didn’t want him to see. I didn’t even know why. This guy was a primo asshole. He was toying with my emotions, pushing my buttons. He should have known better. He should have known I was trapped. You don’t walk up to a slave and ask them to go for a walk. It’s not fair.
I stormed out of the bar. As soon as the door slammed, I burst into tears. Fuck him. How dare he play with me like that. It wasn’t right. You don’t take the one thing a person wants most in the world and dangle it in front of them for fun. Talk is cheap. Where I come from, you either give a girl what she needs, or you shut the fuck up.
You don’t get to talk the talk and not do anything about it.
He could keep the shitty chain. Twenty bucks would get me a new one.
In the coming weeks, I forced myself to push him from my mind. And yet, nothing was the same after that.
Days turned to weeks and then months, and Wolf treated me worse and worse.
I didn’t even know the name of the jackass from the bar, but I couldn’t forget him. I couldn’t forget that there was someone out there with the balls to say, ‘Fuck Wolf Staten.’
And if he could say it, why the hell couldn’t I?
Chapter 2
Jackson
THE DAY OF MY FATHER’S FUNERAL.
I always knew it would be a violent death. What I hadn’t counted on was it having such an impact on me. It shook me up, brought me face to face with my own mortality. I was an only son, the last of the line, everything would end with me. That didn’t sit right.
I was out on the highway, headed to the Los Lobos hangout. I hated meeting those guys. They were nasty, and they had no clue how to live—no clue how to be men. I’d seen the way they locked up their women, terrified them, turned them into slaves. There was no honor in that.