Loving Me, Trusting You(42)

I keep him centered in my gaze, but out of the corner of my eye, I spot Mack. He's wearing a helmet with a dark visor, and he hasn't bothered to take it off. I hope that under that mask, he's got tears streaming down his face. I hope he hurts half as much as he hurt me. I watch him and wonder, doing my best to imagine how losing a family member would feel. At least Walker didn't betray them; he was killed. There's something different about that, more melancholy maybe but not as damaging. Betrayal is an emotion that's hard to come back on. All the positives in this world are built on trust, and once that's gone, it leaves you nothing to live by. So here I am, twenty-eight f*cking years old with a heart that can't feel, a brain that won't think, and a soul that's empty and barren.

I flex my finger on the trigger, tasting the surge of violence, the rush of power. Gaine did something to me when he kissed me. I don't know what it was, but I can feel my legs shaking and my stomach churning. I want to charge down this slope and out those gates, race across the dry landscape until I find the sea.

It's f*cking weird. I don't get feelings like this. Bitterness, sarcasm, pain, I understand these things. This … longing I've got growing in my gut is new, and I don't like it. I don't like any of the things Gaine's been doing to me lately. All these years I've managed to resist him and now, suddenly, he's cutting through me like a warm knife through butter. Why? When I killed Tray, I felt a wound being carved into my spirit, and all of this newness is rushing to fill it. I don't know what to make of it.

“Tray Walker was a good man, Mireya. Despite what you may think, he did a lot of good in this world.”

“I don't give two f*cks if he fed needy children or volunteered at a homeless shelter, that f*cker deserved to die. He's lucky it happened so quick.” When Will starts to interrupt me, I lift my gun in the air and shoot. Bodies stiffen, muscles harden, weapons are raised. I continue. “But let me tell you this, and I'm sure it'll make you feel better. There's no need for you to mourn your brother because you'll soon join him.”

“You uppity little cunt.”

That's it, all I need to hear.

I lower my weapon and fire at the nearest member of Broken Dallas. I don't know them, but they're here and that's enough for me. I don't shoot to kill, but I do hit the man in his calf, send him rolling back behind his bike as explosions erupt around me.

I stay standing during all of it, finishing off the rounds in Austin's revolver before slipping it into the back of my jeans. The chains on the sides of my pants come unclipped in an instant, and then I'm just out there, swinging them around and smashing the links of metal into faces, groins, bikes, whatever gets in my way. This isn't about killing anybody, at least not right now. This is about showing strength, seeing whose dick is the biggest.

I intend to show off a fierce as f*ck lady boner.

Mack appears out of the dusty melee with his eyes red rimmed and the devil's dance in his step. He comes at me with intentions that are nothing short of malicious and finds himself with a line of metal around his neck. When I was younger, right after I married Tray, I used to dance with chains. I'd put on some heavy metal and an outfit that would make a hooker blush, and I'd get up in front of the MC and shake my f*cking ass like there was no tomorrow, like that moment was all that mattered. It was fun, and I'll admit, I spent half of that period of my life in a drugged or drunk daze, but it didn't last. The honeymoon period ended and things went sour. Tray stopped asking me to dance and started making me. He stopped holding me in his arms and started pushing me into others'. He started treating me like I was less than his bike, less even than the dirt beneath his boots.

So I did what I'd always done, what he said made him fall in love with me. I showed him my spirit, I rode my girls through town and came back flushed and panting, but he wasn't the same. I don't know what happened to him or why, but it didn't matter, the moment I told him no and he laid his hands on me was the moment I died inside. Gaine thinks it was only Mireya Walker that passed away that day, that maybe he can get Mireya Sawyer back, but he's wrong. I don't want to come alive again because then I'll have to feel it all a hundred times worse than I do now. A necrotic soul doesn't bleed half as bad as a living, breathing, aching, loving mess. Es cruel, pero es la verdad.

“Have you missed me terribly, Mack?” I ask as I pull the chains tight around his neck and lift my boot up to his stomach for leverage. Dancing with those chains made me good at handling them. After all, it's not all that sexy if the dancer smacks herself in the back of the knee and goes down wailing, and it certainly isn't impressive if she can't flip and spin and twirl like a deranged baton girl in a beauty pageant. So here I am, dancer turned ass kicker and I am destroying. I make the chains as taught as I can, holding Mack's windpipes hostage as people spin and scream and kick around me.

I look at his reddened face, gasping for breath, hands outstretched and wonder how he felt when he was looming above me, taking things I never gave, hurting me in ways I never imagined. I thought of him as a brother, and he raped me. He raped me. He raped me.

With a scream of rage, I squeeze harder and bring Mack down to his knees, dropping him to the pavement like a sack of weevil ridden flour. Useless. My blood runs hot as the sun and my eyes start to blur, white hot memories of anger and rage crashing into me, taking over, destroying my sanity. I'm losing it again, and I have nowhere to fall.