Page 7 of Micro
She lifted a delicate hand to her mouth, and her eyes filled with sorrow, but if it was for them, I wasn’t sure they deserved it. I knew for certain thatIdidn’t.
“I’m so sorry! This is how you were injured? I was passing through town, and enjoying the sights, when I saw you crawling across the ground after your accident. You begged me not to call anyone, so I brought you back here, but you’re very close to the Rogues’ territory. Will that be a problem?”
I swallowed hard, because yeah, probably, but I was curious to know just how tight she was with them, because her ‘I went to school with them’ was just a little too polished for my liking.
Four
Hewasfinallyopeningup to me, because this was the first time we’d ever had a conversation that hadn’t started with some form of ‘I can’t talk about this shit’ or ‘it’s not safe for you to know’.
For another person, particularly a woman, those words would have been red flags, in fact, everything about how I found him would have been, but not for me. If he knew my background, and my connections, he’d maybe feel better about telling me his story, but then again, maybe not. Maybe I was exactly the person he shouldn’t be telling these things to, because what if they caused a conflict of interest for me?
“M… Lowell, are you safe here?”
He got my meaning, not about his safety right here on my land, but in this area, and shrugged.
“I mean, I’ve never had a beef with the Rogues, but that said, I am from another club, so there’s that. How tight are you with them?”
Damn. I swallowed hard, lifting my chin as I tried to formulate a story in my head, because the truth could put me in danger too.
“Woman, just the fact that you’re not speaking yet tells me all I need to know. Fucking hell, are you safe? Are you under their thumb or something?” Oh god no.
His hand caught mine as I reached up to play with my hair, something I often did when my mind started to race, and I needed to try and force my thoughts to focus on something.
“Woman,Soph, tell me you’re safe. If you need to get out, I’ll do anything I can to help you do that.”
Despite myself, I found myself whispering the word, “why?”
“Because I owe you. I owe you everything. I’d be dead right now, and while that’s probably still something that’ll happen before this year is out, every day I have now, every moment, it’s because you did something you didn’t have to do. You saved a broken man. You put yourself in danger, and went through god only knows what, to nurse me back to health. All I am now is because of you. You saved me, woman.”
His words were so heartfelt, and his hand so soft and warm holding mine, that I felt my heart literally beat a little faster, as I stared into his warm brown eyes. He seemed like such a sweet man, so it was even more bizarre to me that anyone could have tried to harm him. Why would someone harm such a gentle person?
“Soph?”
“I’m sorry, I was a little uh… can I be honest with you?”
Lowell nodded, still holding my hand in a gentle grip.
“Always, woman.”
“I can’t understand how a decent person like you got so caught up with the MC life, and ended up half dead like that. I’m not judging your life choices, but it just seems like you were meant for so much more.”
His mouth dropped open for a moment, and it almost looked like his eyes filled with tears, before he scrubbed the back of his hand over his face, and sat back, dropping my hand and putting distance between us.
“Yeah, well, at some point we all make bad choices, and we have to live with that. I’m not the guy you think I am, but I’m really wishing I was.”
It was at that point that he feigned being tired enough to try sleeping again, and I left him in peace, taking with me to my bed the sight of that wounded man, struck dumb by kindness, and words I was starting to think he’d never heard from anyone before. What kind of hell had he been through with his MC?
I sat in bed, once more looking up the Godless Warriors on my phone, and using the county I’d found him in as an additional parameter, and all that came up was a set of old news articles referring to a club by that name, run by a brutal man called Leif Jacobsen, who sounded like a real monster.
The articles all referred to them being suspected of, or arrested for, various violent crimes, and accusations of violence from women, and then, confusingly, a reference to the club being dissolved, after the president was found dead, with a number of his ‘brothers in arms’. But that was over a decade ago, so it can’t possibly be the reason why Lowell was left for dead just a few months ago, could it?
Micro
SomehowIsleptthroughthe last few hours of night, without more nightmares, and what made them worse was how much of my past, my real past, appeared in those brutal dreams. Did I know my upbringing was abusive, and that I saw things a young impressionable mind shouldn’t have to even know existed? Of course, but what could I have done to change it?
I did my best to become a man my dad could be proud of, someone he’d stop beating on, because I’d absorbed his teachings, and grown into… well, I guess an abusive asshole. Sophie, saying what she said last night, had really kicked me in the balls, because what she saw wasn’t even close to the real me, was it? I’d done awful things, and I’d deserved every fucking second of the pain I’d experienced, at the hands of my club brothers. The worst part though, for some reason I went after their old ladies?
Not only was that shit cowardly as fuck, but Jesus… I threatened them with a lot of stuff I still wasn’t convinced I could even follow through on, but I’d been trying, even then, to make my asshole father proud. It wasn’t lost on me that he wasn’t even around to know about any of it, so it was too little, too late, and it achieved nothing. Nothing except pain, and terror, for a bunch of ladies who really hadn’t deserved it.
