Lynn

By the time we enter the kitchen, which is empty like I expected it to be since everyone is outside working, I don't even remember wanting to leave, or how uncomfortable I was with that cowboy, or how scared I got that he's here with some terrible news that might uproot my mom and me. Scar always made me feel very secure and safe whenever he was around and it's happening now too, especially once we're alone.

I told the cops who abducted me, but I never gave my official statement before we left town. One afternoon, a younger detective working on my case came to the hospital on his day off to warn my mom and me that going against an outlaw motorcycle club was very dangerous, and that if I want to have a normal life, I should consider just disappearing. I still wasn't thinking very clearly at the time, but my mom took his words to heart. We left three days later, cutting ties with everyone back home. Mom asked me where I wanted to move to and I said California, because I knew Scar was from here. But my mom and me both changed our names, so it’s amazing Scar was even able to find me. But can Lizard find me just as easily?

"Would you like something to drink?" I ask, my own throat very dry.

"Just like old times, huh?" he says and chuckles. It takes me a second to realize he's referring to the old days when he'd visit me at the diner.

"Not really," I say and smile at him. "This time the drink would be free."

It was so easy to joke around with him back then and it still is.

He grins but shakes his head and takes a seat at the table, tapping the chair next to him. "I'm good for now. I'd rather just get this over with first. Sit."

I don't know if I should be offended that he considers this visit—the visit I hoped would come for a long time—an errand, or glad because it sounds like he doesn't have any kind of world destroying news for me.

I push both of those thoughts to the side and sit down next to him. He smells almost exactly like he did on the night he held me in his arms after rescuing me. Of petrol and asphalt, leather and denim, and something else, something faint but powerful that even in my delirious state reminded me of long summer afternoons in some wild field, of freedom, laughter and happiness. It still reminds me of those things.

"I'm no good with words, so I'm just gonna say it." He pauses just long enough to take a breath, but not long enough for me to get scared. "Lizard is dead and the rest of his MC are all dead too. Satan's Spawn MC doesn't exist anymore."

I'm frozen again, paralyzed, unsure what to think. My mind is a vast plain of white nothing right now. A chorus of very joyous voices is celebrating on one side and the dark clouds of my memories are gathering on the other. In between, I don't know what to think.

Scar is looking at me very intently, and it takes me awhile to notice.

"Was I wrong coming to tell you that?" he asks when I finally manage to focus my eyes on him.

I can understand my thoughts a little more clearly when I look into his eyes. The dark clouds aren't as threatening anymore either, but I still can't speak.

"I thought you'd want to know he’s not a threat to you anymore," he says. "And that he paid for what he did to you."

"Did you do it?" I blurt out without thinking about what I'm actually asking him— namely, whether he killed a man.

He shakes his head. "Wasn't me. I just made it possible for someone else to do it. Someone who had a score to settle with him too, maybe even a bigger one than you, but what do I know? Bottom line, he had a knife and the opportunity to use it and he did. But you don't need to know all that."

Don't I? I have no idea. I've always been a soft person, a sensitive soul, a gentle flower, as my mom puts it, right from the start. And what happened to me didn't toughen me up. It just made me even softer.

"I didn't think much about getting revenge for what they did to me," I answer him truthfully. "I mostly just thought about escaping and forgetting."

I only achieved one of those things, but he doesn't need to know that.

He nods his head thoughtfully, but I have no idea what he's actually thinking. "You don't have to worry about escaping anymore, you've done it. And you seem to have a good life here. I'm sorry if I unsettled you with this news and made you remember. I'll go now."

He stood up while he was talking and is now just holding onto the backrest of his chair. In a moment he's going to walk out of this kitchen and then I'll never see him again all over again. I don't know or understand much right now, but I do know I don't want that to happen.

"I'm sorry, you just really shocked me with this news. I haven't forgotten, so you didn't bring anything up that wasn't already up," I say and stand too with a vague notion of getting closer to him. His grin is very wide and I don't know what he's thinking, but it's definitely making me feel better about admitting I’m not over what they did to me.

"I'd like to buy you dinner tonight to properly thank you," I add more confidently. "I've been so quiet around you, but there's so much I want to say to you."

So much is an exaggeration. There's really just thank you. But I want to say it right very much. There’s also the fact that I liked him, I could tell him that, but if I just blurt that out now he’ll think I’m crazy.

"I get that it's hard for you to talk about it, so don't think you owe me anything," he says and I know he means it. But he couldn't be more wrong.

"I owe you my life," I tell him. "And now I owe you my peace of mind."

Truthfully, I stopped worrying that Lizard would find me years ago. There just wasn't any indication that he was looking for me at all.

"You don't owe me anything. As for dinner, I'll just say, hell yeah to that." His grin grows wider, and I'm no longer unsure about what he's thinking. The surprising part is that the idea of a date with him doesn't make me want to throw up, not even a little bit. It's starting to, as I begin to think about it, but it's pretty easy to ignore.

I tell him where to meet me and when, refuse his suggestion that he come pick me up at my house, since seeing a Harley drive up would probably give my mom a heart attack. She's not soft like me. She craves revenge, and she never stopped worrying that bad men were gonna find me and drag me back to hell. It's another reason she stays so close to me, to protect me, because she knows how soft I am. She bought a gun after I was rescued and had it with her at all times for the first few years afterwards. I think she still keeps it in her nightstand.

Scar seems disappointed when I refuse the ride, but grins at me again as he agrees to my plan, and again right before he leaves the kitchen. I smiled at him both times, just like I used to smile at him all the time when he came to the diner. I smiled at everyone back then, all the time, but it doesn't come naturally anymore. Right now it did. He grinned at me a lot back then too, I suddenly remember very clearly. I remember it even after he's gone and I'm starting to panic about being alone with a man in a restaurant—with a man who clearly expects more than dinner. That much was evident from all the grinning.

I haven't been on a date in twelve years. I hardly went outside after dark in all that time either. And I'm about to change both of those things in one fell swoop tonight.

But I know I'm safest with him, and I want to see him again tonight. So I just won't listen to that screaming voice inside my head telling me I can't go through with it, so I might as well not even try. I've been hiding for long enough. And I've waited for my first date with Scar for a very long time.

He saved me from Lizard once, now maybe he can save me from the memories of that nightmare. It's a vague notion, a hatchling of an idea that frightens me, but not enough to run away from it.

* * *

Mom gawked at me with her mouth wide open for a full couple of minutes after I told her I'm going out for dinner tonight. I said it was with Tammy, since she might not even let me go, if I told her who I was really going out with. She's just as thankful to Scar for saving me as I am, perhaps even more so, but she's a sensible, down-to-earth woman who has no illusions about who he really is. At least that's how she put it.

I didn't wait for her to start asking questions after I told her of my plans, just rushed upstairs to shower and get the smell of goat and horses off me. And dog too, since I took them for a long walk after Scar left and the cowboy started showing interest in me again until I absolutely couldn't handle his attention anymore.

Once upon a time, my life used to be all pretty dresses and evening gowns, makeup, hair styling and beauty pageants. Now I only own one dress, which still has the tag on it, since I've never worn it. But I'm wearing it tonight. I have no high heels to go with it, or I'd wear those too. I threw out all my feminine clothes after I was finally recovered enough to start planning for the future again. Mom's forever convincing me to buy and wear more dresses and pretty outfits, but buying this dress was the only time I caved to her pressure.

It's a pretty summer dress, with a wide skirt, a button up bodice and three-quarter sleeves. The dress itself is white, but it's covered with slashes of bright colors in shapes that look like abstract flowers. The skirt hits at mid-calf and has three-quarter sleeves, while the bodice buttons up all the way up to my throat, and no part of it is too tight. It's really just like wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a sweatshirt, which is what I wear every day. It's a huge step I'm taking going on this date, and I don't know how far I'll get, but I want to look the part.

And I won't think too hard about it, because otherwise I'll just change my mind and stay home, eat the dinner I know my mom is already halfway done making and watch some mindless TV show until I can't keep my eyes open. Then I'd get up tomorrow morning and live the same exact day I've lived every day for the last twelve years.

No.

I can go back to doing that tomorrow.

But tonight, I'm going to do what has been long overdo.

"You look gorgeous," Mom says, looking in through the open door of my bedroom as I'm checking my reflection in the mirror. "I keep telling you to wear dresses more often. Would you like to borrow my pearls to go with it? I'll go get them."

She rushes to her own bedroom before I can say anything, but my answer would've been yes anyway, so it's OK. I follow her, because I have to borrow some of her makeup too. I don't own anything except mascara and even that's all dry and flaky.

She gives me a very surprised look as I ask for her makeup, so I don't stop, just go find it in her bathroom by myself.

"You and Tammy must be going to a very nice place." It’s her way of asking why I'm getting so dressed up for dinner with a co-worker.

She's asking a lot more than that. Such as, "How come you're going to dinner out at all?" I almost never go out in the evenings, and when I do it's with her. This dinner date of mine came as a complete shock to her, that much is clear in the undertone of her voice.

"We're going to some nice Italian place that just opened." It’s not a complete lie, since that’s where I’m meeting Scar, but it’s still a lie and I don’t like lying, especially not to my mom. "It's been so long since I dressed up, so I thought I would tonight."

"You should dress up more often," she says, brushing my hair back from my face. "You're a stunning woman and there's no sense in hiding away."

None at all, except that…No, I won't think of that tonight!

"I wish you'd called and told me you had plans for tonight," Mom adds when I don't say anything. "But I'm happy you're going out with friends."

"I'm sorry," I say pick up the eyeliner. "It was a very short notice thing and the battery on my phone died."

For someone who doesn't like to lie I'm sure doing a lot of it today. And smoothly too.

Something in my mom's eyes tells me she's not buying my story for a second, that she knows I'm lying, and that she's very sad about it. But that could just be paranoia borne of my guilt over lying to her. But I have to know what's what before I tell her about Scar.

Back when we first met, I never told her about him either, since I didn’t think she’d approve of him. I don't know if she ever believed me that we were very close friends by the time I did tell her everything after he rescued me and disappeared.

I look away and pull my eyelid to the side to apply the eyeliner. And proceed to poke myself in the eye with it.

"Let me help you with that," she says and plucks the eyeliner from my hand before I even offer it.

I did my own makeup for pageants, since I turned sixteen. But before then, Mom used to do it for me, and she's still as deft at it as she was back then. She started entering me into pageant soon after my dad died, and had huge dreams for me, believed I could be Miss Illinois, maybe even Miss America. She envisaged this successful super modelling career for me, which was something she wanted for herself but never pursued, because she got married young and started a family. I used to want all those things too. As a little girl and later as a teenager. But by the time I was abducted, I'd begun to dream of other things too, of a career that didn't involve people gawking at me on stage.

But right now, as her deft fingers apply my makeup—not just the eyeliner, but everything else too—I'm back in those happier times, when me and my mom shared big dreams of my future which seemed bright, and everything was exactly as it should be.

But it's over as soon as she's done, and I'm looking at my face in the mirror. I'm all made up and pretty, my big blue eyes accentuated by black eyeliner, my eyelashes thick, long and curved, my cheeks rosy and my lips shiny and plump. I want to grab the tissues and wipe it all off. My hand's in a cramp, because a part of my mind is already doing just that.

Being pretty ruined my life. Not just ruined, it destroyed my life and all my dreams. It destroyed my mom's life too and all her dreams.

"What's wrong, Lynn?" Mom asks in a soothing voice, which never fails to collide with my heart and make me feel loved. Even when I was in that dark place where no light shone, where everything was just fear and pain and numb nothingness, her voice never failed to make me feel loved and wanted. I know she regrets nothing. She often tells me so, often tells me I should regret nothing either. We only get one life. I almost lost mine, but I got it back. And I've done the best I could to make the most of it. But my best isn't very good at all.

"Nothing, Mom, I'm fine, it's just been so long since I've seen myself with makeup on. It's a shock," I say and smile as best I can.

It's a far cry from the radiant smiles I used to give to the audience and the jury as they handed me bouquets and placed tiaras on my head.

"I should go, I don't want to be late," I say and squeeze her arm.

She stops me on my way out of her bedroom to clasp the pearls around my neck, then walks me to the door and watches me leave from the porch. Tomorrow I'll tell her who I went to meet tonight.

She'd stop me from going, or she'd want to come with me if I told her now. But I need to do this for me. And by myself.

It's the first step towards something new, something that deep down I've craved for a long time, but haven't been able to go after because of what happened to me. I don't know how far I'll get tonight, or if Scar is even interested in me that way. But I know I need to try, and that I have to do it without my mom holding my hand.