Page 19 of Rook

“There’s not a whole lot to tell since every day is pretty much like the last. You get up when they say to, work when they say to, exercise when they say to, eat when they say to.”

“What was your prison job?”

“I made shirts for some fucking company that’s too cheap to pay people a living wage to do the work.”

“That’s crazy. Wait, so you know how to sew?”

“Yep. I sew a mean button. And, you know, work the machine to make a whole shirt.”

“That’s a nifty skill to learn, though.”

“It is,” I agreed. The work was the most tolerable part of prison life for me.

“Did you have any friends on the inside?”

“No. But I was always a loner, so that’s not really surprising.”

“A loner who joined a biker club as soon as he got out? How does that work out?”

“They approached me. And I had nothing. I mean, it wouldn’t have taken me long to build something back up for myself. Believe it or not, hacking can pay pretty damn well sometimes. But I had no money to get a car, a computer, nothing. And then… Nancy. It just seemed like the only way.”

“Do you regret it? Since you’re not a people person, I mean.”

“No. Actually, it’s been surprisingly nice to have people. I, mean, yeah, I had my mom in some ways. But most of my life I never had anyone else I could count on or turn to. That’s different now. It’s nicer than I could have anticipated. Do you miss the club life?”

To that, she sat at a stop sign, leaning against the rest and exhaling hard. “I miss things, I guess. But it seems like you have a lot more loyal and caring club. I never really knew one like that.”

“Isn’t loyalty one of the most important aspects of a club?”

To that, she shot me a defeated look. “For the men, sure.”

With that, she focused back on the road. And I felt like I was watching as her walls built back up around her.

“Wanna go check my place out before we head back up to talk to Slash and the other guys?” I asked after we toured all of Shady Valley a solid four times.

“Sure,” she said, still shut down behind her walls, and I had the strangest urge to do whatever the hell it might take to pull her back out.

What the hell was that about?

CHAPTER SIX

Tessa

I parked the car outside of the martial arts studio. As we were climbing out—both of us armed with some items of mine to scatter around Rook’s apartment—a woman was making her way out of the front door.

She was black-haired and tattooed, with one of those perfectly curvaceous bodies. She looked like a damn goth pin-up.

“Is this her?” she asked, sparing Rook a glance but zeroing in on me.

Used to complicated female politics, I immediately felt less-than in my borrowed tee and jeans that I’d worn one too many days—making them saggy in the thigh and butt—and my un-made-up face.

At least my hair was clean and relatively tame.

I barely resisted the urge to reach up and self-consciously fix it. I was still getting used to the length and color, having chopped off nearly waist-length blonde hair and dyed it the turquoise color it currently was, trying on a new look. Part of it was because it felt like cutting off the old me and all of her choices and trauma. But it was mostly because brightly colored hair kind of stole people’s focus, making it less likely that they would remember my face if someone came around with pictures of me, asking if anyone had seen me.

“This is her. Tessa, this is Nyx. Nyx, Tessa.”

“Nyx. You’re Slash’s old lady, right?” I asked, wanting to keep everyone straight so they were more likely to accept me into their fold. The more everyone liked me, the more likely they were to protect me if it ever came to that.

---