Chapter 6
BEFORE I STEPPED INTO the clubhouse, I took a breath. In a very short time, this club had felt more like a home to me than anywhere else I’d ever been and the men and women here felt more like family than anyone I’d ever known. I wondered if that lying ass had come here to fuck all of that up for me.
Could he? I was sure that he could. Perched at the bar, Laurent looked somehow bigger than I remembered him. Bigger, and more intense.
Over the thin shades, his sapphire eyes peered hard at me. His thin black beard and mustache were neatly trimmed. The big collar stood tall on his gleaming white shirt, with the neck wide open.
When he looked at me, it was like his eyes held me. I couldn't look away. It was like he had something on me.
He didn’t. If anything, I had the goods on him, but that wasn’t how he made me feel. He looked at me like he was happy to see me and ready to forgive. Him. Forgive me.
His eyes even looked bigger than I remembered.
“You been having fun with your new biker friends, Belle?” He smiled like he was looking at a naughty little girl.
I kept my voice even. “I wonder if I had as much fun as you did with my credit card.”
A little laugh sparkled in his voice. “Yeah, shit happens. What can I tell you?”
“You can tell me how much of that eye-bleeder pimpmobile I own.”
“Aww, baby. Even though you dumped me, I can’t stay mad for long. Come sit with me and have a drink.”
When I hesitated, he glowered and his voice rasped, “You’re mine, Belle. Don’t you forget it.” His eyes blazed. Laurent had never acted that way to me in front of other people.
Wait—I hadn’t left him. For a moment there I almost lost sight of what had actually happened, of how he’d run off with the last two months’ rent for our little apartment.
How he took the credit card that I had spent more than a year to build up and he blew it. How he left me broke, stranded, and out of gas with no phone service in the middle of the desert.
He could be explosive in private, but I only knew him to go over the tipping point when his “bulletproof” scheme-of-the-day backfired and blew up in his face.
All of Laurent’s ruses cam to that sooner or later. They always depended on him outsmarting someone, and most people turned out to be a lot smarter than Laurent planned for.
When it all went south, Laurent would barge back into the apartment, mean. Anger stepped out from behind cheap whiskey. Then he’d find something to blame me for.
Anything would do. It didn't have to be something I said, or even something I had actually done.
Could be the dishes or the way that a man had looked at me. I learned that if I said something, anything at all about Daddy at one of those times, it would save me the anxious wait, get the thing over and done with.
“You bitch, you fucking whore!” He'd come at me with his fists balled. His neck would stand out red, his face would flush and the vein in his temple throbbed.
When his arm shot out, his hand would be open. Most often he struck me backhanded across my face. Once or twice it was a wide swing and an open-handed slap.
My head snapped around and my neck jarred at those. Once, the back of my neck felt twisted for a week, and I thought he'd done me some real injury.
Most times, though, I played it up. Made like he’d hurt me much more than he really had. He stopped as soon as he thought he might have done some damage or when my crying brought him back to his senses. Not like Daddy.
Daddy wasn't all tied up in knots and conflicted about it. When he hit you, it was meant to cause you some pain. Getting the pain into you would help get it out of him. He was a bad man, and he wasn’t all twisted up and confused about it.
He knew what he wanted, and all of his thinking stopped right there until he got it. Then he’d figure out whether it was a good idea or not. “Win first. Plenty of time to examine the prize when it's yours.”
I wondered, not for the first time: had I endured violence because I was drawn to violent men? Men like Priest. Men like Laurent. Was I drawn to the men who would give me what I was accustomed to? Did I grow up with the feeling that that it was normal, or that I deserved it?
Or was there a deeper reason? Deep down, did I think somehow that I could have been the reason for Momma leaving Daddy, or whatever it was that happened to her?
There was no memory of Momma. I never remembered seeing her. I didn’t know the sound of her voice.
Daddy only ever said “your momma” three times that I could remember. Those were the only times I saw his eyes mist over. The only times I heard his voice catch. The only moments I ever saw Daddy’s lips tighten and his jaw muscles clench as he turned to look away.
Did I welcome the punishment because inside, I believed it was my due?
Or did I simply get hooked on a fix of pain every now and then?