Page 11 of Saved By the Rogue

I stopped going to school after that, gave up on my vague plans to head out to college and study art – I used to love creating, locking myself up in my room while my mom got hammered with her friends and focusing on painting with the crappy little set I’d gotten as a kid. But I didn’t need painting to make me feel better now, no – I didn’t need anything. I could just give myself over to this delicious sensation of being high and forget everything else.

The usual story. More, more, more, more drugs, more shooting up, until I was out of money and living on the streets – moved along by cops, shifted from doorways so I wouldn’t bring down the reputation of a good neighborhood. That was how I had ended up in this part of Atwood, how I’d ended up working with Chuck. When hefirst offered me a job, I had seen it as a way to earn enough to keep getting high, but the more time that passed, the harder it became to justify going back to what I had known before. I hated being sober, but I hated being high even more, the ugly, useless mess that I became was too humiliating to return to. I knew, if I kept going the way I had been going, I was just going to end up like my mother, and the thought of letting that happen had been more than I could handle.

That was eight years ago. Eight years since I had last used. There had been a few slips with other shit, drink and weed and coke, but I soon put a stop to that when I realized that I still didn’t have the off-switch that other people my age did. Much as I wanted to get out of my head, turn off my brain for a while, I couldn’t just restrain myself and have a couple of drinks.

I had thrown myself into painting instead, not that any of the guys knew anything about that. I knew the shit they would give me if they knew I was coming back to my apartment and playing Michelangelo behind closed doors. I used some of the skills I had developed to improve the tattoos we gave at the store, and I figured that was the best thing for it. I didn’t want them to find out what I was really up to, what I was doing when none of them were looking in my direction.

Now I was part of the Dogs, I had their reputation to consider too – and I knew Chuck would have no problem kicking me out if he thought I was doing harm to their business.

He was a hard-ass, but in the best way possible. He expected a lot from us, from the guys who worked for the Dogs, and that’s how I wanted it. He and Lee had pulled me out of the pit I’d been stuck in for so long, and if I had to stay sober to repay them for that, I could handle it.

Even if what was going on with Star was starting to make me question it.

I tried to focus on the painting before me, but I couldn’t seem to make the colors work. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, those bright blue eyes staring back at me as she asked me why I was doing all of this – why I was helping her the way I was, why I didn’t just turn my back on her. Had she dealt with a lot of that over the course of her life? People who just gave up on her.

I knew what that felt like. I couldn’t let her know what I had been through, what had brought me to this point – I knew what she would think of me, how she would look at me. She had to trust, and she couldn’t do that if she knew I was some barely-restrained junkie hanging on by his fingertips to a coffee to get him through the day.

Something in me wanted to keep it all from her, even though I knew there was no real reason for it. It wasn’t as though I was trying to impress her or anything. I didn’t know her like that, and I wasn’t going to try and take advantage of the situation that had been laid in front of me to get closer to her. And yet...

And yet, there was still a part of me that wanted to see just where this would go. My hand hovered over the window where she was sleeping in my painting, as though there was something I wanted to change about this picture.

Chapter Seven – Star

Poking my head out of the door, I glanced this way and that, trying to figure out if anyone was around. The place sounded quiet, compared to the raucous laughter I’d heard downstairs late into last night, but that didn’t mean that everyone was gone.

It had been nearly a week since I had arrived at the Dark Dogs compound, and I was still trying to wrap my head around exactly what it meant for me to be living here. Jaxon came to see me every day, bringing food, driving me out to pick up my stuff from the motel – I had to hang on to him on the back of his bike, hands gripping to his strong waist, trying not to think about what a mess my hair must have become beneath that helmet.

Jaxon had told me to stay in my room as much as possible, not to go out and get under the feet of any of the other guys who worked here – not that I had much intention of doing that, not at first, anyway. I was terrified of them, worried about what might happen if I put myself in their line of sight. These were criminals, after all, and I had no idea how they might treat me if they found out who my father was. Maybe they would blame me for some of the tougher restraints he’d brought on in Atwood, all to benefit his criminal supporters...

But, by now, I was getting bored. And if there was one thing I didn’t do well with, it was boredom. I felt as though I was losing my mind a little, unable to navigate everything that was going on inside my head. I needed to get a better idea of what was going on here, what everyone did in this place. If I was going to be living here, then it was the least I could do, wasn’t it?

I slipped out of the room and padded towards the stairs that led back down to the shop – the corridor at the bottom branched off in two directions, one, to the outside, where I’d met Jaxon, and the other, somewhere I had never seen before. Was that where they all hung out? I was pretty sure I’d heard them all down there earlier, and I wanted to see exactly what was so exciting about that place. There had been at least a dozen of them last night, judging by all the overlapping voices, the sound of bottles clinking, the smell of cigarette smoke drifting up the stairs, and I couldn’t help but wonder just how many of these guys there were in total. How many of them were there, spread out around the city? How many of them were out there...?

I snuck down the stairs as quietly as I could, having kicked my shoes off so I didn’t draw too much attention to myself. The only other person I had actually met of the Dark Dogs was Chuck, and I got the feeling he wasn’t too happy about having me around. He might have covered for me in front of those guys, but there was a heap of difference between that and actually liking me, right?

I pushed open the door to the left of the corridor and stepped into what looked like a small club room – a pool table sat in the center, a few scattered posters of scantily-clad women on motorcycles peeling from the walls, and a stack of empty beer bottles on one of the counters. An ashtray was overflowing in the corner, and I tutted and went over to empty it out. I’d never liked the smell of smoke – it always reminded me of my father in his study, chatting up some new potential investor in his campaign, the smell of cigars drifting down the hallway while he kept me out of the picture.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

I spun around, nearly jumping out of my skin when I heard a sharp voice remonstrating with me. I drew myself up to my full height – not exactly impressive, but still – and narrowed my eyes at the man who was speaking to me.

"I just came down to see what all the noise last night was about," I shot back at Chuck. He didn’t look impressed at my presence, but I refused to let it get to me. He had said it was alright for me to stay, I figured, so why was he acting like it was such a shock to see me here?

"Go back to your room," he growled at me, taking a step forward and narrowing his eyes in my direction. "You don’t want anyone to see you here..."

"I’ve been locked up in there for days," I protested, returning the empty ashtray to the counter. "I’m bored, I need to-"

"Boredom isn’t an emergency," he shot back at me. He was obviously pissed, but I’d always had this bad habit of responding to someone being mad at me with a sharp tone myself. My mom had done everything she could to try and coax it out of me, when I had snapped back a few times too many at the lecherous old men who came to my father’s fundraisers, but I had never been able to bite my tongue and play nice.

"I’m just cleaning this place up," I replied, gesturing around. "It’s a mess. You should be thanking me for-"

"Thanking you?" he exclaimed, a bark of laughter emerging from his lips. "You’ve got to be kidding me, right?"

He looked as though he was ready to swing on me by the time Jaxon appeared in the doorway behind us.

"What’s going on here?" he demanded, stepping between us, like he could sense how bad the situation had gotten.

"Your girl’s on the loose," Chuck told him, gesturing in my direction. I felt my cheeks flush, hearing him call me that. Jaxon’s girl. Not that I was, not that I was anyone’s girl, but if I had to be someone’s, I would have liked it to be him...

---