Wild and Free (The Three #3)(15)

I was of a healthy weight. I didn’t starve myself, didn’t binge, didn’t purge. I also was a good kid. I could be sassy. I could get in trouble, but nothing bad.

I just constantly felt “it,” but didn’t know what “it” was.

When Mom tried to force therapy and drugs on me when I was eleven, Dad stepped in, doing the impossible—an antisocial, antiestablishment biker winning custody of his daughter.

It took him four years and three appeals, but he did it. And while he was doing it, he’d managed to put up court-ordered obstructions to Mom medicating me (but, alas, I was forced into therapy; however, this was an hour a week I didn’t have to put up with my mother, and my therapist was an all right guy, so it didn’t scar me).

“That hunger inside you, little girl, you’ll quench it,” he’d told me when I’d shared it with him. The gnawing pain, the desperation to get it gone, the lifelong struggle to learn to live day to day with it, like someone with a chronic illness learning how to cope and live life even though the debilitating symptoms never went away. “You’ll know it when you find it and I know my Lilah. You’ll get it, fight for it, earn it, beg for it, but in the end, you’ll win it and you’ll be whole.”

Dad had been wrong.

I hadn’t known it when I found it.

Looking at my purse, I knew.

The pain was gone.

I’d found it.

My God, I’d found it.

Moving from the chair to the table, I snatched up my purse, digging inside even as I aimed my ass to a chair and collapsed into it.

I pulled out my phone, activated it, hit the buttons, and made the call.

I put it to my ear.

“Yo, little girl, how’s tricks in the Promised Land?” Dad’s gravelly, slightly sleepy (no doubt I woke him, he usually didn’t get up before ten), two-pack-a-day voice came at me.

“Daddy,” I whispered.

His tone was alert when he instantly responded, “Where are you? I’ll be on my bike in five minutes. Do I need the boys?”

Tears gathered in my eyes and I sucked in breath to control them.

“It’s gone,” I told him.

“What?” he asked sharply.

“The pain.”

He was silent.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek as I slid an arm around my belly, holding myself close, holding the fullness tight to me. “I’m whole, Daddy,” I whispered.

“What’s his name?” Dad asked gruffly.

I closed my eyes and another tear fell.

Dad so totally got it.

“Abel.”

“Kickass name,” Dad muttered.

I smiled and opened my eyes. “He’s got a Sportster.”

“I already like him.”

I felt a giggle slide up my throat but swallowed it down.

“There’s more,” I told him.

“Fuck. The *’s married, I’m gonna rip his dick off.”

“He’s not married.”

Well, at least all indications pointed to that fact. That said, I knew absolutely nothing about Abel except he was a heretofore fictional creature walking the earth.

I decided not to share that with Dad just yet.

But I did share, “I…I actually kind of do think I need you to call the boys and come out.”

His gruff was back to sharp when he asked, “Why?”

“Abel kind of saved my life last night.”

“What the f*ck?” he bit out, and I could actually feel his movement through his words, either getting out of his recliner, where he’d fallen asleep watching something badass on TV (or porn), or rolling out of bed, leaving one of his bitches in it if he’d had company.

It was usually option two. As much as Dad was antisocial (this didn’t include “the boys”), he liked to get himself some enough that he’d put up with a woman, at least long enough for her to take care of his needs and make him breakfast before he got her ass out of his house.

At this point, I heard the door scraping open behind me and I looked that way.

Abel caught my eyes, and half a second later he was bending over me, his face an inch away.

“Why are you crying?” he demanded to know, then didn’t wait for my answer. He ripped the phone out of my hand, straightened, put it to his ear, and clipped, “You made her cry.” There was a pause before, “Yeah, I’m him.” Another pause before his eyes dropped to me and he muttered, “Right. Didn’t know. Just got in, saw tears on her face. Here she is.”

He then offered the phone to me.

I took it, my lips parted, my gaze never leaving him, and put it to my ear.

When I did, Dad must have sensed it with Dad Perception for he declared, “Already f*ckin’ love that guy.”

Abel moved toward the kitchen as I said, “I…well, that’s good.”

“Fucker handed off the phone before I could have a word. Give it back to him. Wanna know what’s goin’ down with you and want that from him.”

“We don’t actually know,” I told him. “He and his buds went after one of the, uh…guys who got away, but they didn’t get him. So we’re at a loss.”

“He went after him?” Dad asked.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.