Page 37 of Stripping Keys
Is that why he invited me?
The one thing I always knew about this picture was that he was the man my mother picked to become pregnant by. I don’t know what she planned after that, but it hadn’t worked in her favor. It’s why she hated me as she had.
As much as I wanted to hate the man in the picture, I couldn’t. He . . .
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Moving to the page behind it, I read the words.
She won’t stop ranting. Saying she’s going to make him pay. Pay for what he did to her. She came into my room and gave me another pill. I don’t like it when she does that. It makes me feel funny. I end up doing things. None of them I like doing. They’re supposed to be grown-up things. But I can’t stop when it starts. The feeling takes forever to go away. All I want to do is bad things.
Why can’t she be a normal Mom?
Instead, she makes me do bad things with men and women. She takes money for it and gives it away. All to satisfy herself.
There are other women here who do the same. I see them. They walk around in nothing but robes. Sometimes nothing at all. I at least get to wear sweatpants.
I have a single pair of clothes she buys every time I grow. Just for those times she has to take me out. It’s rare that happens. She likes to keep me locked away.
The pill is starting to work. I feel it. My body, my cock, that’s what she called it, hardens. Means I’ll go to the other room soon.
I wish my life were different, that he’d come for me and take me away from here. Save me from this life. Instead, he left me here. It didn’t matter that he doesn’t know I exist.
I don’t remember writing this, but I remember this notebook and the items within its pages. The drawings. The pictures I’d stolen from her. It even contained dollar bills. I had the idea to sneak money where I could. I planned to use it to start a new life.
“Brother.”
I jerk my head up to find Blow, Nines, Lucky, Shiner, and Sniper standing in the doorway.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Nines asks, coming closer, his gaze looking around. “What are you doing here?”
“You said you were never coming back here,” Shiner adds.
I blink and stare at them all.
“When did I say that?” I never said that. I would have remembered if I had.
Blow comes to me and squats down, takes the picture from the notebook, and looks at it. “You told us about this place about four months after coming to the clubhouse. Remember when the four of us,” he motions to him, Nines, Lucky, Shiner, then me, “we got shit-faced drunk. You were fucked up We knew you weren’t going to remember what you said that night. But we did. Kept it between us. Sniper had been there as well. He heard. So had Baller. It confirmed what Baller suspected.
“Baller knew?” That couldn’t be true.
“He hadn’t known the night he saw you walkin’, but he had a gut feeling,” Sniper remarks, his voice filled with anger. The anger was written all over his face.
“I knew the truth from then.” Nines grunts. “But Baller told me to keep it to myself. Said your life was fucked enough. You were home. Safe and had brothers. No reason to fuck with your head more.”
Baller had treated me like any other member of the club. Though, I hadn’t been around him long before he passed. A couple years at most.
“So, all this time you all have known about my past?” I still didn’t believe it.
“Keys, you’d been fucked out of your mind that night, you didn’t tell us details, but it was enough,” Blow answers.
“What made you come back here?” Nines asks, taking the notebook from me. His eyes scanned over the words, flashing with rage.
Sucking in a breath, I glance between them. Shiner hadn’t said anything yet, but he didn’t have to, his face said it for him. He was pissed.
Finally, I answer Nines. “Marla told me Griz and Marley were having a kid, and then she asked if I wanted kids. I didn’t answer, just left. Ended up here.”
“Place looks like it was closed up and no one has lived here in years.”
