Page 14 of The Other Princess

“Listen, from what I know, the things that went down were zero fault of Ever’s. I’ll be damned if you and your boys are going to walk in here and try to guilt trip her into thinking she’s the problem…” Kane started in on Deck, who was the last man standing from the Aces crew that had walked into Permanent Marks.

“I promise you, they didn’t come here for that. T-Bone’s been trying to get a hold of Ever, and when she wouldn’t answer he figured he could come apologize to her – again – in person while Trunk asked about getting work done by her. I swear no one came here with bad intentions.”

“And what did you come here for then?”

“I told you, I plan on making shit right since I wasn’t around before.”

“Seems to me her problems with that club started long before the shit with your boy J-Bird went down. My sister is her best friend, asshole. I know all about how shitty they’ve all treated her over the years. You were there for a lot of that.”

“I was a kid for a lot of that,” Deck returned. “For the rest I was a teenage, selfish fuck doing my own thing before I left for the military. I’m not saying I’m blameless, because I saw a few things and did nothing, but I also didn’t have the right to say shit. The MC has rules,” he continued trying to explain.

“Yeah,” Kane laughed humorlessly. “Rules that make it easy for big bad bikers to bully little girls and no one can call them out on their bullshit. I gathered that much all by myself, dude. Now, if you’re done here, your brothers already left, and I’m thinking you should join them.”

I honestly didn’t know what to say at this point. I didn’t feel like Deck deserved the things Kane was saying to him, but then again, I was so fucking done feeling the guilt and sadness everyone made me feel all the time. It’s as if it didn’t matter to my family or their extended biker family that they nearly ruined me for good. I was supposed to have just gotten the fuck over it since they all thought of it as being in the past. I couldn’t trust them any longer, and they were affronted by that fact instead of asking why or trying to prove any of them had changed.

Deck turned his full attention on me then. Before he could speak I held up a hand to stop him. “I was having such a great day with so much to celebrate for once, and I had already promised Lucy I would call Toby later. I didn’t plan on letting her down, but this is how it always is. I’m put in a position where someone tries to make me feel bad, and when I try to explain myself, someone else gets upset, and then I’m to blame all over again even when I did nothing, but show my emotions. I can’t help how I feel. You don’t understand, because you weren’t here for everything, Deck. You weren’t there when I had exactly one friend left. You weren’t there to read the new bullshit written on my locker ever day. You weren’t there when people were physically hurting me – people who were my friends before. You weren’t there when I didn’t even have anyone I could confide in about it at home, because there was only really one person there who would listen, and every time I burdened her with it she ended up in major fights with my father so I stopped telling her in order to spare her the hurt and the drama that no one spared me.

“You weren’t there when the only way out was a fuckin’ bottle of pills that I couldn’t even manage to get myself to swallow when not even family would show up to celebrate my sixteenth birthday. None of them were there! None of them gave a shit, not even my brother, not for a long time. None of them cared until the truth came out, and even after that… you see how it goes. Just like today. I’m still in the wrong for feeling the way I do about people who made me want to end my life. I promised Lucy, my fuckin’ therapist, and myself that I would never allow people to take me back to that point again. So, I’m sorry if I don’t want to jump right back in and set myself up for that particular failure, okay? I was happy today for the first time in a very long time, and now it’s gone again because the Aces High MC came walking through that door and stole it from me, even if that wasn’t their intention this time.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Zeke took me gently by my shoulders and guided me out of the room and back to the stairwell that would take me up to my apartment. “You gonna be okay up there alone for a minute?”

I nodded my head.

“Need you to say the words, Ever.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks.”

“Okay, go on up then. I’ll be up to check on you in a bit, so be expecting that.”

I sighed, knowing I let too much of my pain slip free once again. I imagined the guys at Permanent Marks weren’t going to want my kind of emo-drama hanging around much longer so I started packing my shit. I wasn’t sure where I would go, but damn it… I was actually too embarrassed to stick around here now that everyone knew I tried to kill myself.

Chapter 7

~ Declan ~

My gut twisted hearing her lash out the way she had, but to hear that Ever – one of the strongest, most vibrant women I know – had tried to kill herself, or even thought about doing it… That didn’t just twist me up it gutted me. As soon as she was out of sight I took a damn knee, right there in the middle of the lobby of Permanent Marks. I didn’t give a good goddamn who saw me do it either. There were very few things that had rocked me to my core over the years, but finding out just how low things had gotten for Ever was something I don’t think I will ever be able to fully process. The fact that my brother caused it, in part, and my MC family perpetuated enough of that hurt to cause that kind of reaction… I was sick.

“You really didn’t know?” It was a question, but I think Kane meant it as more of statement judging by the look on his face.

“No, I didn’t fucking know. Hell, if I had known things were that bad I would have come the fuck back home whether the military let me or not. I sure as fuck had no clue she would… even the thought of… fuck!”

“Your own family didn’t bother telling you?”

“My brother sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell me his part in this, because he would have known about the ass whopping he had coming. My dad, fuck, I don’t know what his excuse was other than to try to hide an embarrassing fuckup from trusting his youngest son. My mom never talked to me about Ever. She had hopes of marrying Jason off to the girl so she could have the daughter she always wanted. She never associated me with Ever like that, so I don’t think it would have occurred to her to tell me anything.”

“Well, shit. Sorry I jumped your ass then. I just heard so much of that shitty story from my sister over the years, that I was ready to go do battle for the girl. Hell, when she came begging Zeke to take her on as an apprentice before she was of age he was going to send her packing. I took him aside and gave him the short version of her story, not that I knew it all, apparently. I don’t even think my sister knew about the pills man, that’s… fucked. It’s completely fucked. I convinced Zeke to give her a shot so she’d have something. Hell, my parents talked about maybe taking Ever in, but my dad was always worried about blow back from the MC if he even suggested one of theirs wasn’t handling their kid right, you know?”

“I know a lot of people failed that girl,” I told him. “I know that when I came back and found out how bad things were I promised myself and my mom that I would make shit right again.”

“Why?” Kane asked, and I wasn’t sure what exactly he was asking until he clarified. “Why is it your problem all of a sudden to make things right for her?”

“She’s family. My family failed her so it’s only right that one of us tries to put her back together.”

“I think there’s more to it than that,” Kane explained wearily.

“If there’s more to it than that, it’s mine to know.” I gave him a look that said I wasn’t willing to delve any further into my personal reasons. Hell, I wasn’t sure I was ready to dive in that deep as to why I felt as strongly about this as I did. “I need to get out there and go try to make those two men understand some hard truths. I think it starts there.”

“Yeah, I imagine you’re right about that. Just do me a favor.” It hadn’t been a request, really, judging by Kane’s tone.

---