Christ, my heart is pounding with terror. All of the things those monsters did to me came flooding back in my dreams. All the things Crack did to me when no one else was in the room, every look, every touch, each time he forced himself on me.
Jesus Christ!
I stand under the hot spray of my shower, washing away the sweat my nightmare brought. It's three in the morning, I'm never going to be up in the morning for work. I'm an elementary teacher, well, I was until I was hurt. Tomorrow is my first day back and I want to prove that I'm ready for this.
Not that I like disciplining the kids when they've done something they shouldn't. I'm terrible, I can't even tell my niece no when she's screaming for something she can't have. Trust me, she can be a real madam when she wants her own way. She's just like her mother.
I imagine if I had a child of my own, it would turn into a brat because I wouldn't be able to say no. I just hate to see kids crying. I'm soft, I know. My mom tells me all the time.
Why am I a teacher when I hate upsetting children in any way?
Because apart from owning a horse ranch one day, teaching is all I ever wanted to do. Showing children how smart they really are, teaching them how to conduct themselves, is more rewarding than I ever thought it could be.
I know I went down the lawyer route at first, and I still don't know why I did that, but writing and teaching are what make me happy.
It means I'll always have something to count on. Something that's mine when I finally make my dream of owning and caring for horses come true. I want to run my own school on the grounds. I want to teach children who come from less fortunate backgrounds. I want them to be able to play with the horses during their breaks. To learn how to take care of them.
I want a big ranch-style house with plenty of acres of land for my horses to run free. I want stables and staff to help me care for them.
It's a big, expensive dream. It will cost me a literal fortune, but I work hard and I save everything I earn in order to make my dream come true. It'll take me a good while to reach my goal, that's why I'll keep working every hour God sends to make it come true.
It might be hard now that Jordan is gone, but I'll make it happen one day. You'll see.
There's no point going back to sleep now that I'm awake. Might as well watch a movie. I get dressed in clean pajamas, my hair blow dried, and my neck creamed with that medicated crap the doctor gave me to help my scar heal faster. My phone begins to chirp with an incoming message just as I'm about to choose a movie.
Who the hell could be texting me at almost four in the morning?
When I open it up I'm shocked to see it's from Hammer asking if I'm awake. He must be drunk, why else would he be texting me at this hour?
Willow: Yes, I'm awake. What's going on?
Hammer: I'm outside your place, I want to see you. Let me in?
He's outside my house at this hour?
What the hell?
Nervously, I open my front door. There he is sitting on my front porch swing. He looks frozen, but I doubt he even feels it. He's a big guy, a very big mountain of a man. Six-foot-four and packing muscle. His long, shoulder length, dark hair is blowing softly in the wind. My heart pounds for this man. I wish I could tell him what he means to me. But that's not what he needs from me, he needs a friend. I'm only grateful that he wants to be around me again after months of staying away.
“How long have you been out here?” I ask as he turns to look at me with a smile on his face. I can't tell if he's been drinking or not.
“'Bout twenty minutes.”
“Well, come inside it's cold out here.” He follows me inside and into the kitchen.
He looks like he hasn't slept in days. He's dressed as he always is, jeans, boots, a t-shirt, and his cut. All of those goddamn sexy as hell tattoos on his arms are on show. God, I could lick him all over and... Shut the hell up, Willow!
I hand him a coffee and take a seat at my table, trying not to look into his eyes. I seem to lose all thought whenever I look in his eyes. It's painful because he will never be mine.
“How are you feeling, Will? Now that Trace is gone?”
I shrug. “Fine, I guess. Wanna tell me why you're at my house at this hour?”
“Couldn't sleep. I feel shit for tellin' Shepard about Trace when you asked me not to.” I shift uncomfortably in my seat. He grabs my hand and holds it tightly. My core clenches and I have to press my thighs together to relieve the ache a little, which, of course, it doesn't. “I never meant to break your trust, but I couldn't stand watching that cunt acting like nothing happened the other day.”
“It's okay, I know you didn't do it to hurt me.” I stroke my thumb over his big hand. “What's really wrong, Hammer? You seem to have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“Lot on my mind, baby girl.” I smile shyly. He has no idea what it does to me when he calls me baby girl.
“Like what?”
“You. Me. Us.” He scrubs his free hand over his face. “I don't know.” I clutch his hand tighter, refusing to let go, even when he pulls back slightly. “I haven't been a very good friend to you these past couple months, Will, and for that, I'm sorry.”
“Don't, Hammer. You saved my life. What came after must have been hard for you. Hell, being in that room must have been hard for you. Especially after Cindy.”
He shifts and pulls his hand away from me, and I let him because I can see that he's still not over what happened to her. I don't think he ever will be.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.” It's all I ever seem to do where Hammer is concerned. We can't talk about Cindy because he can't take it. And he's the only one I want to talk about her with, because he's the only other person, apart from Coral, who understands how much it hurts that she's not here with us anymore.
“You didn't upset me, I just wish I could talk about her without the guilt eating away at me.”
“What happened to Cindy wasn't your fault, Hammer.” He looks away from me.
I know this hurts, but there's a reason he came here, and in order for me to understand what it is he wants from me, in order for me to give it to him, I have to make him see the truth about Cindy.
“Look at me, please.” He turns to look at me slowly. His jaw is clenched so tightly that the scar on his hairline is more defined than usual. “The day it happened,”
“I didn't come here for this, Will.”
“No, but I think you need to hear it. You need to know the truth.”
“I know the truth. She ignored me when I told her not to go out of the damn house, and it got her killed because I couldn't save her!”
Oh, Hammer, if only that were true.
“She didn't ignore you.” I swallow hard past the lump in my throat.
It's time for me to come clean. Well, it's time for me to make him listen. I've tried to tell him the truth a million times. I've tried to tell everyone. The only people that would listen to me were my mother and father. They told me not to force people to listen, that they would when they were ready to. To just let things lie because to keep going on about what happened that day wouldn't change a thing. But I have felt like such a fraud these past two years, keeping what really happened to myself.
“When you left that day, Cindy and I were talking about Jillian's wedding and how we needed to find outfits or we'd never be ready,”
Jillian was a friend of ours who went to school with us. Cindy became my best friend immediately. The four of us, me, Cindy, Tessa, and Jillian were the best of friends. We did everything together. Until Cindy moved away with her family when she was ten. She moved back to town almost twelve years later, but she didn't really know Hammer.
As soon as they met, she was hooked. A couple weeks later, she was his old lady. And it cut me up inside when I felt like it should have been me. But I didn't let it show. But can you imagine loving someone for so long and watching them with every other woman but you?
Yeah, it hurts. A lot.
Anyway, the day Cindy was kidnapped, I asked her to go to the bridal store with me to look for our bridesmaid dresses. Jillian wanted us to meet her there, but Cindy really didn't want to go. She said she had a bad feeling about things.
I laughed it off and told her that I was used to being warned about danger, I was the daughter, granddaughter, sister of bikers, after all. I told her we'd be fine, that nothing would happen to either of us and that we'd even be back before Hammer even knew we'd gone.
Little did I know that nothing would ever be the same again.
We had fun at the bridal store, we picked our dresses and even our shoes. We said our goodbyes and left. I'd driven us and promised to get us home quickly. Cindy was still worried, still had that uneasy feeling inside. But I tried to reassure her that everything would be okay.
I'd just put the bags in the trunk when two huge guys came up behind us. I grabbed Cindy and pushed her behind me. But the biggest one grabbed her and pulled her against him.
I begged the man to let her go. They said they only wanted one of us, they needed the other to give Shepard a message. I told them I was Shepard's daughter and they should take me. But according to them, their president wanted Hammer's old lady.