Page 66 of Savior

I didn’t have a lot of memories of my father, but I could clearly recall tracing the tattoos on his arms with my fingers. I could still hear the deep rumble of his voice, yet couldn’t remember ever hearing him say that he loved me.

Maybe bikers didn’t admit to things like that.

I’d had one interaction with him before Dakota’s wedding, and even that had felt like a fever dream thanks to a bout of pneumonia.

“How’d you meet him?” I asked, trying and failing to wrap my fingers around my glass.

“I’m surprised you didn’t already hear about my ‘mistakes,’” my mother said with a bitter laugh. “Your grandmother swore she’d do everything in her power to keep both of you from ever becoming me. Seeing how you two turned out, maybe it was for the best.”

“We became the women we are because of you; not anything she did. And I don’t give a damn what she told us. I want to hear the story of how my parents fell in love… from you.”

Her green eyes became distant. “If you’re expecting something out of a romance novel, I’m afraid you’re going to be let down.”

I shook my head before letting it rest against my fist. “I want the real story… all of it.”

“Okay.” She poured more tequila into our glasses. “Your grandfather actually introduced us—”

“Wait. Pops? How did he know my father?”

My mother sighed. “I made it sound better than it actually was. My father was a customer of the club’s. Only, he decided to stop paying for his drugs, so the club came to collect on the debt.”

“Did they beat him up?” I gasped, unable to picture Pops as an addict.

“I was home alone, Kate. They took me as payment.”

I’d known what my father was but never imagined him laying a hand on my mother.

Seeing my horrified expression, she hastily added, “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I was scared to death because I’d heard the stories about people crossing their club only to disappear the next day. When he came into the room, I decided that if he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.”

“You fought him?” I asked, thinking back to the night I left Nate. I might’ve counseled victims of trauma every day, but deep down, I was weak.

Scared.

I thought this was what you wanted…

The glass slipped from my fingers and fell to the island, sending droplets of tequila in every direction. I wasn’t going to let myself think about that right now.

She helped me mop up my mess before continuing. “I did. It turned out he wasn’t there to kill me. The club had other ideas when it came to collecting debts, but I was just naïve enough to think I could talk him out of it.”

“How old were you?” The tequila seemed to curdle in my gut at the thought of her being forced.

“Seventeen.”

“Mama,” I breathed, doing the math in my head. “Is that how… is that how you got pregnant with me?”

One tear slid down my cheek, then another. Within seconds, I was sobbing hysterically at the thought that I’d been the product of rape. The man I’d long seen as Christ-like was nothing more than a monster.

“No.” She reached for my hand and rushed out, “Listen to me. He didn’t force me, and you weren’t conceived that night—”

“But, but you were a debt,” I drunkenly sobbed. “You said it yourself.”

She blew out a long breath. “I was a rule follower who’d never stepped out of line. When I found out that my father had gotten in over his head with bikers, it sparked some sense of rebellion within me.

“Even without all that, when your father walked into the room, it took my breath away. It was in the way he carried himself like nothing could ever stand in his way. We were from completely different worlds, but I didn’t care. I gave into the recklessness and gave myself to him, willingly.”

“When did you get pregnant with me?” I sniffed, wiping the tears from my face. It was clear that the alcohol had loosened my tongue to the point of obscenity if I was asking about my parent’s sex life.

Her mouth turned up in a distant smile. “It wasn’t long after that. I was supposed to leave for college and Jamie was going to be nothing more than some summer fling I looked back on when I was old and gray. When I found out I was pregnant with you, I realized that I didn’t want a life of perfects. I didn’t want to do something just to check a box off my list.”

---