Chapter 25 (Beggar)
Chapter 25 (Beggar)
Storm was the first one to accept that apology with a handshake that had me bumping my knuckles
against his.
He is doing good considering Kylie said he found his free time at the bottom of a bottle. I haven't seen
that bottle or the alcohol from it in his hands since I got here.
Most of them are doing good, Bull is himself for the most part beside he has cooled off on the booze
and weed.
The only part of this picture that is different is over 6 feet tall, with a scar under his eye- Zero. After I
met Quinn a few weeks back, I witnessed the two of them together.
When I first saw it, I waited for that hurt that a woman feels getting her heart crushed, it didn't come.
It was just anger. Think I passed the stages of silly emotions right about the time other girls began
experiencing them.
Saying I am happy that he is with her is a lie I wouldn't waste on myself. Nor is pretending he and I
didn't happen.
Which he seems to be doing really well besides those rare moments when he gives me that creepy
stare that makes me want to run the other way.
Mercy however doesn't think the same. She believes it is some kind of man thing.
She keeps saying Zero is going to be trotting his fine ass over to me any day now. But then the red-
headed woman that could probably snap my neck in a second is nothing short of Optimistic- A
complete opposite to After.
That woman, looks just like I did all those months ago when I first stepped foot in this clubhouse,
except she always has a knife in her hand. The way she plays with it warns everybody away.
Her lifeline is just death, piss her off and an early grave becomes inevitable.
I could see why they call her After.
She's exactly what one looks like when there's no more life to live. You just kept breathing, every
human emotion- dead. I rode that path months ago.
I am in the finishing stage, the one you get when you are just about done.
And it is because of that reason Zero and I just can't be, I know he knows it now but we haven't spoken
the words yet. Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.
But I need to, my just about done comes with sliding a knife in his brother's neck. He'll need the chatty
woman of his when I am done. There is no way I am backing down.
Quinn is new to the club, admittedly she is a solid person. She talks a lot about everything. I sometimes
wish she would shut up.
She is older than I, but her lightness to life makes her younger. She makes me feel like a cold-
hardhearted bitch most of the time. Especially when she is fussing over Zero like he is a baby and I am
imagining stabbing my eyes out.
So I tend to stay away from her. Not that I am avoiding her, I swear I'm not.
Since that night they found me, Zero has treated me like all the other women in the house, apart from
the two times he remembered that I wasn't.
Living with Kylie taught me that I am not worthless, that I am worth more than I think. All the zeros in
her bank account. She said she had a lot of them.
It makes me think of why she said zeros, was she trying to tell me something. I wish I could call her up
and talk to her. Knowing Kylie, she'd want me to stand up for what I want.
But my lessons in life came too hard, the price too high.
My humanity stripped until all I had was a shred, and that too now belongs to Zero.
In another life, he would understand the path I am on and love me enough to walk with me on it.
The thing is we only get one life and it isn't fucking simple. At least I can say I had him for a small time.
Not that I want him again.
I ain't never fought for a man and I never will. I got nothing to offer Zero besides pain and misery.
I may not be worthless but I am still a woman he met on the streets, a woman who happened to also be
the one who put his brother in a wheelchair.
Mercy, Whisp and Surprisingly Snake keep telling me to talk to Zero.
Truth is, I know I have to, but not for the reason they think. I need to tell him about his brother but every
time I look for him I chicken out.
He is either with Quinn or in the back by the horses or working on something by the barn.
When we are in the same space he either leaves or makes sure he is too far away from me.
But I catch him staring at those times I get up and run from the room, the man makes the air in the
room so thick that it is hard for me to breathe.
When Killer told me Zero moved on I was angry, but I understood that life with him in it wasn't mine to
live.
Now that I am here, I am constantly reminded that we did share something and memories I won't
forget, yet he has forgotten them so quickly.
“You've been cleared, that means training tomorrow, I was thinking an endurance warm-up, then some
muscle strengthening,” Spade slides over the back of the sofa I am sitting on, planting his ass right next
to me.
I hate it when people touch me, don't think that would ever change, besides from the few who can. But
I no longer shrink away when someone sits next to me.
Something in me changed, I know it's not the better kind of change, it never is. I am not sure what part
of me is different, not like I have many left.
But anger, my anger is something that lives in me, simmers in my blood everyday stirring and
increasing, knowing I have a job to finish.
Nightmares still ride me, some new, some old, but now my nightmares only come at night.
Killer is always there when they show themselves. He makes sure he is next to me, he doesn't give me
the opportunity to live in it for long.
Two nights back, I woke up with him holding me down.
His body pressed to mine. I waited for the hardness of his dick. But what I got was a hard glint as he
held both wrists in his one hand.
The silence in the room became the constant drumming in the air as my heartbeat crushed in my chest.
It wasn't easy realizing that the man above me took power over me because he could and he would.
Only the devil himself could release you of the hell you are in by just a look in his eyes.
Since the night when Kylie, him, and I rode to the hillside in Seattle, something has changed between
him and me.
There is a current growth, only I don't know what it is but it feels inevitable.
We both got nothing to give, yet this thing thickens a bit each day. It isn't sexual just inevitable.
When I am with Killer, I don't feel the small ache that comes from seeing Quinn and Zero holding hands
or laughing at one another, knowing I would never have it.
I feel acceptance that Zero and I are just a memory. Zero was an obstacle. A test from God, who still
held out hope for me, thinking my soul could be saved if I fell in love.
That thought just makes me smile, if God held out any hope for me it probably died a miserable death
when I killed any chance of my kid ever knowing who her father was, who her mother was.