Page 8 of Tracked By Sasquatch

Instead, she kinda lied and said it wasn’t what the RBMC in Nebraska had thought. The marks were from consensual activities, and she’d chosen to be there and not contacted her brother. Pretty much proving herself a thoughtless piece of shit in their eyes. Zombie and Lucas’s anyway, they didn’t tell the rest what she’d told them.

Lucas never believed her. He knew her too well, so he was torn up about how she wouldn’t talk to him. Their president, however, was a different story; he trusted Lucas’s opinion of her but with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Shame pressed down in on her so hard she could barely breathe sometimes. Lucas set the tone with his brothers, so they had all these larger-than-life scenarios in their heads. She’d heard whispers. Some stared at her with a mix of pity and sorrow, which she didn’t deserve, so she’d clammed up even harder when she should’ve explained and put them at ease.

That was the worst part. She’d realized her silence was harming them more than her. Every time she saw the helplessness in her brother’s eyes, she retreated further and further.

Then the weeks turned into months. The look on her brother’s face felt like a gut punch anytime she saw him. Her shame dug its claws in deeper, and she became more withdrawn from the Bastards.

Including Hook. He was her best friend. Even after he got an ol’ lady and a kid, he didn’t shove their friendship aside as she’d expected.

His consistency had convinced her that she could finally, finally tell someone. Lay down that shame and share it, but he had not reacted as she’d hoped when she’d started to explain.

As expected, he told her she had nothing to be ashamed about. But then unexpectedly, he’d said… other things. Labeled some of her experiences wrong, and when she tried to explain it, he’d exploded and given her an ultimatum.

Tell her brother everything or he would.

She wanted that more than she wanted to breathe, because that would close that chapter for better or for worse, and she could move on.

That was her ultimate goal, after all. She and Lucas had always been so close, but she’d closed herself off and it felt like he was ready to wash his hands of her. She could feel his exasperation every second she was around him.

She missed her brother. She missed their relationship and she was the one who’d destroyed it.

Ultimately, she blamed her mother, but she had a more pressing confrontation first, and before that, she needed her confidence back.

Sucking up her emotional mind fuck she was doing to herself, she looked at Squatch. He was her gateway back.

She needed tonight.

One night, take the first sledgehammer to the wall, and then tomorrow… off to make the next swing.

“Okay.” She slid a few shots across the table and passed a coin to him. “Time for quarters. But let’s use this one.” She positioned the empty glass in the middle of the table. “I’m not drinking anything that a dirty ass coin has been in. Talk about germ soup.”

He gifted her with another one of those smiles. How had she ignored that attraction she’d had for him back in the day for so long?

SASQUATCH

Holy shit, he was fucked.

He’d ignored his attraction to Devin for months. Hell, years. Croon had put the word out and he was loyal to his brother, but fuck was she making it hard.

It was like she was looking at him, for the first goddamn time, really looking at him. Not just as the Bastards’ Enforcer or her brother’s club brother.

She was looking at him like a woman looks at a man. One she seemed interested in. If he wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t just sexually either, the way the club girls looked at him. There was something in her eyes that held a longing and dare he say, affection.

And it did something in the region of his chest.

There were a multitude of things people saw when they looked at him, biker scum, big scary asshole, dumb fucker with the vocabulary of well, a biker, a night of pleasure slumming it, but never the kind you take home for Sunday dinner with the parents.

He hoped that was the look in her captivating green eyes, because it caused something to bubble in his bloodstream like carbonation. It made him want. Want more than he ever had.

Maybe it was wishful thinking that had him reading into it. Either way, he was going to enjoy the feeling of being wanted. He could pick it apart later.

No one ever looked deeper, no one saw more to him. No one found him worthy. No one saw anything worth sticking around for.

Not even his own mother.

Until that moment, Squatch didn’t know how much he craved that, or how much he’d never had it.