My father hears me say it too. “Good,” he states over the phone.
I almost correct him to tell him I’m not alone and that Cill may be able to hear, probably everyone else around us too, but Cill takes my phone out of my hand.
His expression turns from concerned to serious in an instant. He’s silent as he raises his hand.
Fear slips down my spine and then over my shoulders, burrowing deeper inside as Cill’s expression hardens. Frozen to the core, all I can do is watch. With Cill’s hand raised, one by one the room is silenced. One by one their eyes move to the VP and then to me when they realize it’s my phone in his hand. The laughter stops. We’re surrounded by his uncle and his dad. Their friends. Members of the club. They’re all friends with my father too. They were friends growing up and now I grew up here. Cill grew up here. That’s how we’re part of the MC. We belong here. I tell that to myself over and over again. I belong here. I’m safe here. I am.
I’ve always been a part of this club, but as the room goes silent and Cill puts the phone on speaker, careful to mute himself first, I feel the walls caving in.
This must be some kind of nightmare.
“The cops are coming,” my father says into the dead silence of the room. If I wasn’t paralyzed with fear, I’d fall over or run. I can barely swallow, let alone move a limb.
“He says the cops are coming,” Cill says, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Kat. You’re going to be safe when the cops come,” my dad continues and I wish I could tell my father he’s on speaker, but he would want everyone to know too, wouldn’t he? If the cops are coming, everyone here should know about it. “Just let them arrest you.” My eyes widen in shock and then my mouth drops open. “They’re going to let you go, but you’re going to be arrested for your protection. You understand me?”
Cill’s dad, the head of the MC, the president, the man in charge, reaches in for the phone. As I peek up at him, his gaze is filled with a hate I’ve never seen from him. My hands tremble and I instinctively take a step back, my shoulders hitting the wall behind me.
It takes Cill wiping my cheek to realize there are tears streaming down my face.
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this,” I barely get out as Cill’s father turns his back on us and everyone in the rec room moves at the president’s command.
Cill stays in the hall with me, comforting me of all things and as if on cue, the sirens can faintly be heard sneaking in through the open windows.
My heart hammers and I still can’t wrap myself around what’s just happened.
I know, without my father telling me, there won’t be enough time to run. He’s giving me this information with only minutes to spare. My dad isn’t at the party because he knew this would happen and he didn’t want to risk getting arrested.
“He’s a rat,” I whisper as reality grips me and Cill pulls me in close to his chest. “It’s going to be okay,” he says. “I’ve got you.”
Oh, God, how could my father do this?
Cill rocks me and kisses my hair, whispering something but I don’t hear it over the pounding of my heart.
It’s surreal. This is the moment I know everything has changed and there’s no going back.
* * *
For four years, I live with this memory. The memory of everything crumbling before my eyes. Even with Cill’s arms around me, I knew nothing would ever be the same. I couldn’t have imagined what I’d have to live through next. What we’d both have to live through.
Cillian said it would be okay, and I wanted to believe him so badly. He promised he’d help me. He’d make it all right. I stood there trembling as he disappeared into the back of a squad car with his hands cuffed behind his back, the red, white, and blue lights scattered across the pavement.
They thought since he was only nineteen, he’d get a lighter sentence. And he might have, if he’d named names.
But he didn’t give up a single person. He took the fall for the club with a sentence of ten years, with the chance of getting out early for good behavior.
My father ran, but I stayed.
* * *
And my world changed forever.
Kat
Present time
* * *
The girl I was at eighteen is long gone. After everything that went down, she’s a forgotten memory and the woman I face in the mirror is guarded and reserved … for good reason.
In the last four years, nearly everyone I’ve ever known has avoided me at all costs. I suppose I’m lucky to simply be ignored and left on my own. Worse things have happened when crime families excommunicate members. It’s partly because I was only eighteen, Lydia told me.
From both of my past families, only one person remained my friend on each side. Lydia, thankfully, told her family to fuck off when they warned her to stay away. No one wants to be associated with a rat. Even if I didn’t do it, and it was all my father, I’m guilty by blood.
On the other side, the MC, it was Reed who made sure I was all right … that changed, though, so really I only have Lydia.
Just that thought makes my blood run cold.
“You feeling all right to go in?” Lydia, my best friend since we were itty bitty, pauses outside my house. She dyed her brunette hair a shade darker recently and the moonlight hits it just right, highlighting a bit of red as her fingers toy with the ends. Her gray sweatshirt is a size too big, making her look even smaller than she already does in those worn black skinny jeans.
“Feeling all right to go in?” I echo and her deep brown eyes widen as she looks back at me like I’m crazy.
With my free hand I dig the keys out of my purse, ignoring the uneasy feeling. They’re always falling down to the very bottom corner. Almost like they’re trying to get out.
“Seriously,” Lydia presses, a hand landing on my shoulder as she glances from me to my front door. “Are you sure you’re okay to go in?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I say and shrug, fiddling with the keys and then dropping every ounce of fear to move forward regardless.
“I mean, someone broke in, so it’s not fine,” she says, emphasizing the words broke in and waits for me to meet her eyes.
I shrug again. “I try not to let it get to me.”
That’s the best attitude for moving through life, I’ve learned. Don’t let things get to you or you could worry yourself sick and find yourself crying every hour of every day. Give yourself a few minutes to feel your emotions and get on with it. Keep your chin up.
That’s all I could do after everything with the MC fell apart, and it’s all I can do now. It’s made me a stronger person. Some people might have collapsed under the weight of that life change, and God knows I wanted to, but I didn’t. I carried on. Even when my dad vanished into witness protection and left me with nothing, I kept going.
I shift the bouquet of flowers in my left hand to the other one as we go up the steps, keys jingling as we go.
* * *
The benefit of working for the florist just outside town is that I get to take leftovers home on Friday. We’re closed Saturdays and Sundays, and my boss lets me have some of the blooms that look like they might not make it through the weekend. Only the freshest flowers for our customers. This bouquet of white peonies will have a happy home in the mason jar that’s centered on the hand-me-down table in the small kitchen-dining room combo.