Page 9 of Condemned Soul

“You should have told me.” He comes at me hard and wraps his arms around my shoulders, slapping the leather on my back.

“I gotta get back to my cabin and check on Hayley, have Tac and Thorne come out here to clean this mess up before I bring her back tomorrow.”

I get on my bike and head to the Blue Spruce Resort, passing the main building that will become our clubhouse and taking the long track up to the cabins by the lake. Eventually, I plan to build myself a place on the top of the hill. A lodge where I can look over the whole compound, but right now getting the clubhouse ready and settling my brothers is gonna take priority over that.

I head inside and find Lacey flicking through a magazine at the kitchen table, while Hayley sleeps in the makeshift crib she’s made from a drawer she must have pulled from the spare room.

“You didn’t have a… It was the best I could come up with,” she explains, looking a little fearful of me.

“It’ll do for now.” I nod gratefully before I open the door and dismiss her. Then sitting on the chair beside the table where Hayley is resting I stroke my hand over her soft little cheek. The crimson mark it leaves on her skin is a reminder of the man I am, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

“Your momma’s wrong, I am capable of love. I feel somethin’ for you, baby girl. Somethin’ that makes me wanna protect ya from who I am.” I keep my voice low so I don’t wake her up. “Things are gonna be different from now on. You're gonna live a normal life, Hayley Carson, you're gonna go to school and you're gonna make friends. You're never gonna know hate and violence the way I do. You’re only ever gonna know the good in me, and the only way I can do that is to keep ya away from here as much as I can.” I get up and dampen a cloth, wiping it over her cheek to make it clean again.

I wake up with my chest tight and my lungs burning and then comes those first bittersweet seconds of the day when I forget that I lost her. I reach out my shaky hand and take hold of the picture I keep of her beside my bed and it all comes crashing back.

“Mornin’, darlin’.” I brush my fingertips over her face, same way I did when she was a baby, but I don’t feel her softness or her warmth, just cold, hard glass. “Guess we better fight another day, huh?” I drag my ass outta bed because, despite having lost her, I still have a whole lot to live for.

“Did you sleep okay?” Ella looks awkward as she stands in the kitchen of the cabin that Jimmer is letting me stay in.

“For the first time in ages,” I nod as I make my way to the cupboard to see if there’s any coffee stowed away.

“Mom, you should have told us sooner about these men who are after you. Nyx says they can be dangerous.”

“Oh, they are.” I stroke my hand over my ribs where one of the bastards stomped on me.

“How much is the debt and what was it for?” she asks, still looking confused by everything I confessed to her last night. I can’t exactly blame her. It came out of nowhere, but I didn’t really have a choice.

“Your da…Vincent was mixed up with some people he shouldn’t have been,” I admit, feeling my cheeks heat and my pride take another thrashing.

“You mean the agency?” Ella proves she knows a lot more than I thought. I convinced myself that Jimmer would have protected her from knowing about that kind of organization.

“I didn’t know what they were about, but when he disappeared, they came looking for him. They were demanding the money he owed and threatened to take everything. I had nothing left, Ella, no daughter, no husband. I couldn’t lose the house too.” I can see by the look on her face that she doesn’t understand me.

Myself and my daughter are very different people. She never did have any desire for material things.

“I used all we had in the savings to pay off what he owed and I remortgaged the house so I could keep up the lifestyle. But money runs out fast, and women like me weren’t raised to have jobs and make it in the world alone. I had to get more help.” Ella nods sympathetically but I can tell that she thinks I’m pathetic. Maybe I am. I can’t deny that I’ve made some bad decisions in my life, what’s hard is pinpointing which ones I regret the most.

“You really wanna go back to that bar in town where the bikers hang?” Carol looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

“It’s fun there, and that president guy was hot.” I finish painting my lips and rub them together.

“That guy is far too old for you and he’s dangerous. You've heard the way your parents talk about the bikers, Joanne, they’re all dangerous.”

“I’ve heard differently. Billy Henderson tells me that they keep the town clean.”

“Billy Henderson’s full of shit and you know it. Joanne, I have no idea why you would want to chase around after an outlaw when you have Vincent Jackson head over heels in love with you. He graduated from law school. Do you know what that means?”

“I don’t care what that means,” I tell her, fluffing up my hair in the mirror and adjusting my bra to make my tits look bigger. Those other women at the clubhouse must have had tit jobs done; theirs are enormous.

“It means that, pretty soon, he’s going to ask you to marry him, and you're going to be set for life. His daddy is going to make him a partner of his firm and you are going to continue to live this life that you are accustomed to.” She giggles as she throws one of the overly-priced frilly dresses my mother insists I wear when we attend anything important onto my bed. It’s a stark contrast to the leather mini skirt and corset top I’m wearing now.

“What if I don’t like the life I’ve been accustomed to? What if I want the full outlaw experience?” I often find myself imagining what it might feel like to be on the back of Jimmer Carson’s motorbike with the wind in my hair, or how it would feel to have that stubbly jaw causing friction between my legs.

“Then you're crazy, but as your best friend, I’m here for the ride.” She kisses my cheek and grabs her purse before we both head out the door.

The bar in town, where I know we’ll find Jimmer, is packed out the door and as we head toward the bar I look around hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

It doesn’t take me long, he’s over in the booth he was sitting in before, smoking a cigarette all by his lonesome.

---