“How do I keep every man in the club from going after her if my own goddamned VP can’t keep his filthy hands off her?”
“Who told you?” I manage to sputter. It’s not that I need an explanation, I just need to make sure that Molly wasn’t the one who spilled the news. She may suspect what happened today after I’m gone, but I don’t want her to know for sure. If this little meeting is coming on the tail end of her confession to Lynch, they won’t be able to hide the truth.
“She’s used her fucking keycard more than once to go into your room.” Lynch hits me twice more.
My knees weaken making my boots wobble the crate under me. Stiffening, I try to stand taller. I know what’s coming, but giving up isn’t an option.
“She was in there over three hours the other night,” TJ adds as he pulls his knife from his belt. Even with only the single light hanging from the ceiling, it manages to seek and glint off the metal in his hands.
“Have you been inside my baby sister?” Lynch’s face distorts in disgust as he asks the question.
“S-she isn’t a baby,” I foolishly stammer.
The only blood I can smell now is my own as it clogs my nose, forcing me to take shallow breaths from my mouth.
Four hits in rapid succession, all of them to my ribs, are Lynch’s response.
“Have you been inside of my sister?” He growls each word slowly, and in my barely conscious state, I’m grateful he enunciates each one.
“I haven’t fucked her.”
His face twists up, shock at my truth clouding his eyes before he snarls again.
“I didn’t ask if you fucked her.” TJ stands a little taller on the other side of the room, and I know he’s chomping at the bit to get his turn. “Have you been inside of my sister?”
Silence surrounds us, the echo of nothing but my boots trying to hold on the only periodic sound.
“This will go a lot faster if you just fucking tell the truth,” TJ says in a bored tone, but I know better.
“I-I’ve been—She’s had her mouth on me.” Another hit to the face. “I’ve had my mouth on her.”
TJ winces, or at least I think he does. My left eye is swelling shut, and my right eye leaks with tears of regret for not holding her just a few more minutes, not kissing her again. I’m going to die today, and I’ll do it without knowing what she feels like from the inside.
Everything we shared was worth what I have coming, but the heartache I’m feeling from not being able to spend a lifetime with her will be an agony I’ll suffer forever in hell. I’m sure of it.
The pounding in my ears grows louder, and it isn’t until I hear TJ curse and look over his shoulder in the direction of the stairs that I realize someone is pounding on the door.
“Let me in!”
My strength is renewed at the plea in Molly’s voice, and even this close to death, I want to yell and tell her to stop, or she’ll hurt her hands. She shouldn’t suffer an ounce of pain because I couldn’t keep my greedy hands to myself.
“Why?” My eyes snap back to Lynch. “Why did you do this?”
I shake my head, but the rope scratching the tender skin of my neck is a brutal reminder that I don’t have much time.
“Please.”
“Don’t beg me now, Brother. Tell me why you went against a strict order.”
“Tell her I betrayed you.” His eyes widen in surprise. “Tell her I betrayed the club. Tell her I did something worse than l-love h-her.”
My last words come out on a sputter, the emotion too strong to hold it in any longer. Tears burn my injured eye, but the pain is nothing compared to the hollowness in my chest at the thought that she’ll blame herself. I’ll be gone without her knowing that even though she’s the one who came on to me, even though she’s the one who pushed me into action, it would’ve happened soon anyway. I was losing my mind with needing her, with loving her and not being able to tell her or show her how I felt.
I’ve been sick with it for the last year and a half. She never saw me outside her dorm or on campus the dozens of times I watched her. She’ll never know I drove two hours round trip just to watch her leave her building to walk to class. She’ll never know that my happy place, my wildest dream was to just be able to hold her, to kiss her lips at will. I had already given up on the idea of sex. I didn’t need that. I just needed her.
“Swear to me, Brother,” I beg with a cough because the rope is tighter now.