FOUND: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (16 page)

Jerome choked me out.

Only when the ringing in my ears started and he began smacking the side of my cheek while I lay against the wall did I realize.

“Wake up!
Wake up
!” His words were muffled to the sound filling my ears. “I want you to hear this bitch! I need you to hear this! You going to give me that shit again, bitch? You got more than that coming up!”

He meant it. All pretense of apology disappeared. The only thing left in his mind was the need to punish.

The feel of his grasp lingered on my throat. I coughed and spat blood across the floor. Each wretch sending a painful shiver down my half-closed airwaves.

“Now listen up, whore!” He pressed his knee hard down across my breasts and locked me down. “I ain't getting through to you. I understand that. Now what I'm going to do is leave you here. Leave you with this food. Your favorite...”

I swiped out in vain trying to knock away the cold fries he poured over my face. He emptied the bag with obvious enjoyment.

“...I'll give you some time to think about what you've done. And I goddamn hope your stupid ass wises up and starts listening to sense I preach. Next time I ain't going to be so forgiving. I can assure you of that!”

I shook the fries from my hair while struggling to lift myself upright.

“There's a burger there too, but I'll leave that for you to unwrap.” He burst into laughter and the sound of his cackling followed him towards the stairs and out of the basement.

Coughs may have punctuated every word, but I screamed in defiance at his fleeing form. “You talk shit, but I don't think you've got the balls to do anything. Jerome - do it now you pussy fuck!
Do it now
! You're not scaring me for any longer!”

Inflamed, he rushed back down. “I ain't doing nothing! And let me tell you what, if I can't get you back bitch! I'm gonna make you suffer. You're going to hate every goddamn second of your shitty excuse for a life! But not now... I'm leaving your ass here while I go to the city with my money and my coke. I'm gonna have some me time for a few days. When you're eating from the stone cold dollar menu on the floor, I'll be partying! You better think about how you're going to survive on what I've left for you... Now enjoy watching my black ass leave you in this mother fucking dungeon!”

The grin on that smug asshole's face cannot be described. He might have done a one-eighty and walked right back up those stairs, but his pleased leer seared into my memory and still didn't disappear when he switched off the lights and slammed the door.

The hatred it set off within me blotted out everything else...

~ Chapter Seventeen ~

Our last full day together...

It was late on a Saturday. Well, late for when you're that age.

All of us had been playing out all day, though the grounding my mom and dad gave me the week prior forced me to head back for the ridiculously early hour of six. If you could have seen my face that day I'm sure it would have been a picture of grumpiness and frustration. I couldn't get over how everyone was still playing out while I was already in bed. To make it worse, they were having a special night at Boyd's watching horror movies. Mr Vendrell was often away on business, they kind – as an outlaw - he didn't exactly go into, and without a mother around Boyd's house was often free. Everyone was there tonight watching the scariest Boyd's cable could offer. He told me to climb down from my window and join them once it got dark, but I didn't have the nerve. How my parents would react if they found out was scarier than any horror movie.

At close to eleven I was still tossing and turning in bed. Part of my grounding was being tucked in at seven-thirty every night after dinner. I wasn't used to going to bed that early and getting to sleep was next to impossible. I was around thirteen and it felt like an attack on my growing maturity.

Though the second I did start to fall asleep a pattering against the window of my bedroom woke me up. Stones against the glass. It was Boyd's calling card.

I rushed from bed in my long nightshirt and carefully opened the window as quietly as I could. “Boyd?” I whispered down. “Boyd?”

My room was at the side of the house with nothing but trees to the side and the neighbors place in the distance. The lamps from the street didn't quite reach this far and all I could see was darkness. There wasn't any reply down below and I quickly began thinking that the whole thing had been a half-waking dream.

“Boyd?” I whispered down once again slightly louder and tried my best to peer down. The night was cool and chilling me to my bones.

“Boo!” A voice sounded to my left.

I yelped and fell to the floor. Jumping back up, Boyd was sitting in the tree by my window laughing his head off. I grabbed his striped t-shirt and half-pulled him through the window. With my blood pumping, I scolded him in low tones. “God! You nearly gave me a heart attack! What do you think you're doing hiding by my window?”

He was bent over, laughing so hard that he looked like her was on the verge of tears.

“Come on!” I punched him in his shoulder.

“I... I couldn't help it. I knew how scared you'd be.”

“You evil...” I playfully slapped him on his shoulder until he calmed down.

“OK. OK! I'm sorry... Forgive me?”

I sat back down on the bed. “You'll have to do a lot to make up for that.”

He reached into his jeans and pulled out a plastic bag. “Popcorn?”

I snatched it from his hand. “Is it salted?”

“Yeah, only salt. I know how you can't stand butter on it.” Boyd sat down next to me.

“Have fun tonight?”

“Yeah. We watched some old movie called
I'm a Teenage Caveman
, or something. It was about a neanderthal chasing up a school. You would have liked it.”

I swallowed a huge mouthful of corn, more than I could handle. “I bet Anita freaked.”

He grinned. “She did. She hid behind the couch from the start. She wasn't in a good mood.”

“Why?” I kept eating.

“Shaun says Kenny asked her out.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“She said he was horrible and she wouldn't be seen with him if they were the last two on Earth. He's too fat for her apparently.”

“That's cruel. Poor Kenny. He doesn't deserve that.”

He nodded, “She told him that before when they were coming to my place. I guess it explains why he sat there saying nothing all night.”

“He OK?”

“Yeah, Shaun and me talked with him when everyone else left. Told him he can do better.”

“He can. She---”

Boyd stopped me mid-sentence by placing a finger across my lips. His furrowed brow told me something was up.

He's coming!
He mouthed silently to me before ducking down out of sight beside my bed.

I sat there confused, still unsure of what was going on, until my door creaked open.

My dad stood in the hall wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. “Still awake, honey?”

I cleared my throat, nervous that he would recognize that Boyd was hiding just feet from him. My parents were great, but they would have killed me if they discovered I had boys in the house. That was a huge no-no for them.

I gulped, then answered, “Yeah. You know how it is. Can't get to sleep?”

“At your age?” Dad looked about the room, “You eating?”

He couldn't see anything except me. The only light on was my small bedside one and it didn't provide much light. Of course, I had made the error of forgetting about the open bag of popcorn in my lap. I glanced to the floor where Boyd's grinning face looked up at me. He was half tucked under the sheets.

“Yeah... I know you don't like me eating up here, but I stole some popcorn from the kitchen after dinner as I was still hungry.”

“I know what you mean, kid. Mom's vegetarian meat loaf weren't the best. Salted?”

I pushed my hand down the side of the bed and forced Boyd's head under while dad walked in. “You... You want some?”

“You know it. Salted's my favorite.” He reached over and took a large handful. My old man was a big man with a big appetite to go with it. In one grab he devoured nearly the whole bag. “That hit the spot.”

“Yeah... You off to bed now?”

“Yeah. Your mom will kill me if she doesn't get her beauty sleep.” He leaned over and kissed me on the head. “Night, kiddo. Remember to close that window. I don't want you getting a chill. Love you.”

“I will. Love you too dad.”

I watched while he left my room and closed the door. Me or Boyd didn't dare move again until the door to my parent's bedroom shut.

Boyd ducked up, “Wow I can't believe we got away with it.”

“Tell me about it. I've never had goosebumps this big. Feel.” I took his hand and placed it on my forearm.

He ran his fingers up and own my arm, “Huge. They almost feel like mosquito bites.”

“Hey!” I punched him in the shoulder again. “They are not!”

“C'mon Cassie – little
Princess Cassie
– you know I didn't mean it like that.”

We stopped talking and each stuffed our faces with the popcorn.

Boyd and me were spending a lot of time away from the others recently. We would seek out any moment where it was only the two of us, with him regularly inviting me over or him coming over here. It wasn't intentional or anything, it just happened. At thirteen I doubt either one of us could have vocalized what we were feeling, but the puppy love was there and already growing. I suppose that if he hadn't have left only days after it would have blossomed into something, like these things do. But it didn't. And the past is the past.

Still, what remains in my mind from this short period is the anxiety. The worry about what he was thinking about me. Did he feel the same? I needed to know. I had to know. It's like every pause gave me the opportunity to think the worst. Of course, it's natural to be nervous around someone you have feelings for. It shows that they're important to you.

With only the sound of popcorn being munched, I had let my mind wander and needed reassurance.

“Have you... umm... ever wanted to ask someone out. You know, like Kenny with Anita?”

Boyd kept his eyes on the piece of corn he rolled between his fingers.

“I mean...”

“I have... sometimes...”

The butterflies in my stomach burst into flight with excitement and apprehension. Did he mean me? In the brief moments before my mouth spoke again, I ran through a million and one possibilities. Was it me or someone else? Was it Clarissa from our class who all the boys went crazy for? I ran through everything when, in retrospect, the answer was right in front of my face. Only inexperienced doubt stopped me from seeing it.

I was too shy and fearful of rejection to flat out ask whether he meant me or not, so I did the next best thing. “You brave enough to tell me what she's like?”

He shook his head and seemed to be nervous for the first time in his life. “No.
No
. Of course not.
Umm
...”

“Well?” I was impatient and needed to know. “She ugly, or something?”

Only when thinking back do I recall the extent my question sent the color of his cheeks red. Quite something for the kid who never got scared of anything.

He laughed. “No... Nothing like that. She's pretty, for your information. Very pretty.”

“What do you like about her?”

He smiled to himself. “Her hair. She's got this long blonde hair that waves all the way down her back.”

Sitting tucked in on the bed, with popcorn surely stuck between my teeth, I let go of the hair that I had been locking between my fingertips. The startling thought hit me:
he could be describing my hair
. Silly as it sounds, that still wasn't enough to calm my teenage insecurity. I needed more.

“Does she go to our school? That doesn't sound like anyone in our grade.”

It didn't. It could have only been me. The only other girls with blond hair cut theirs short.

“Yeah. She's there.”

“Does she know you like her?”

He scratched his head. “
Maybe
. Maybe not... I don't know. How could I know?”

We sat on the bed facing each other, but neither of us could maintain eye contact with the other. This wasn't like us at all.

“Are you...
Friends
with her?”

Boyd didn't reply. He sat with his legs dangling off the edge bed.

I persisted, “Do
I
know her?”

He faced me, his blue eyes transfixing mine. It took me a good few seconds to even notice that his hand pressed firmly down on mine. His left palm wrapped all the way around mine.

“Boyd, why is---”

He silenced me for the second time that night by placing a finger across my lips. He wiped the fringe from my forehead. “Do you have to ask?”

Edging in, slowly and tentatively, he moved towards me and our lips met. Gently his melted into mine. Softly moving from my top to bottom lip and then back again. I don't know how long we actually kissed, it's almost like everything around us disappeared. All I remember is his warmth and the electricity running through my skin. The world turned from black and white into technicolor.

Then, completely out of the blue, the moment broke...

“Cassie? Cassie? You awake?” This time it was my mom who was quickly thumping down the hall.

Boyd's eyes were as startled as mine when he dashed up from my bed and jumped the five or so feet to the window. His legs scooted straight onto the branch facing my window.

“Cassie?”

I watched him half climb and half fall down the high tree next to my window.

“Cassie? Something the matter?” Mom, inside my room, now asked.

“No,” I answered while turning and sitting back on the window ledge. “It's nothing. Just getting some fresh air.”

“Got a fever? Your cheeks are all red,” mom sincerely asked without a hint of knowing anything was up.

I shook my head, though what I thought was
yes mom – it's because I just had my first kiss!