Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35499 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35499 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Legion's clothes hang off me like a child playing dress-up. His shirt smells like him—motor oil, and soap, and something darker underneath. My fingertips brush against a tear in the seam, tracing it like braille. The fabric's worn thin from years of washing.
My mouth is so dry and my tongue isn't working right. Whatever Marcus gave me has left my throat parched as prairie dirt. I'd kill for a water, but I’m not gonna ask. Can't speak. Not here, where every word feels like it might be priced differently than what I'm used to.
The air hangs thick around me—cigarettes, and whiskey, and male sweat. Like breathing through a filter of secrets and testosterone. Smoke drifts in lazy circles beneath the dim lights, never quite finding its way out.
Like me.
A bead of sweat slides down my neck, disappearing into the collar of Legion's shirt. I feel… empty. Like someone scooped out everything inside me that was important and left just enough behind to keep breathing.
Three days tied to that bed with Marcus hovering over me, feeding me drugs, and lies, and cherry pie.
I don't know that I'll get over this. I can't see a way.
And while all these thoughts circle me like the smoke, the clubhouse breathes around me. Men move through doorways on the far side of the room, their boots heavy on the floor. Their eyes slide over me—curious, suspicious, calculating—before moving on.
I'm cargo. Something Legion dragged in bleeding.
A complication.
The lights buzz overhead, not bright enough to chase away the shadows in the corners, just enough to make sure nobody trips over the furniture. Just enough to see the blood dried on my wrists where the zip ties cut in.
I bring my knees up to my chest, hugging myself. Making myself smaller. I feel like I'm in the wolf's den. Sitting here in borrowed clothes, with no shoes, no phone, and no idea what happens next.
The room is loud in a silent way.
Men shuffle cards at a table in the corner, the snap of worn paper against wood the only real sound. Someone coughs. Ice clinks in a glass. A chair scrapes. But it's the quiet that presses in on me—the weight of all the words they aren't saying.
No one talks directly to me, but they're all looking.
Quick glances, sidelong stares, eyes that measure and dismiss in the same breath. A man with a gray beard scratches his neck and mutters something to his neighbor. They both turn to study me like I'm an exotic animal that wandered into their territory. Another leans against the bar, whiskey in hand, watching me over the rim of his glass. His gaze doesn't waver even when I catch him.
Leather cuts, patched vests, scarred knuckles, tattoos that don't mean art—they mean warning.
These are not my people.
They all look hungry.
Not the kind of hunger that gets satisfied with food. It's deeper, older—the hunger of men who've spent their lives taking what they need because nobody ever gave them anything.
These men don't believe in filters or appearances. They've stripped life down to its bones—loyalty, territory, survival. The neon beer signs and tattered pool table are just dressing on something much more primal. It hums in the air like electricity before a storm.
I don't belong here.
Behind the bar stands a glass-fronted case filled with liquor bottles—the good stuff, I'm guessing—secured with a padlock that's hanging half-open. Like they can't decide if they're protecting it from outsiders or each other.
Overhead, a ceiling fan turns with a slow, rhythm. It clacks once every revolution, the sound becoming a metronome to my scattered thoughts. Marking time in a place where minutes disappear.
I shift my attention to the clubhouse walls, desperate for something to focus on besides the men watching me. They’re a chaotic collage—photographs, plaques, and club memorabilia stacked like sedimentary layers of history. Everything's coated in a film of dust and neglect, like these memories aren't meant to be polished, just preserved in their original grit.
The photographs draw me in—finally something I understand. Pictures. Documentation. Evidence. My mother's obsession, my childhood prison, my professional language.
These aren't studio portraits with perfect lighting. They're snapshots of club parties, ceremonies, initiations. Men with arms thrown over each other's shoulders, standing before motorcycles or around fires, their eyes dead-serious beneath the brims of caps or bandanas. Not a single smile among them. Not even a hint.
This isn't the kind of family that takes Christmas card photos or gathers for professional portraits at JCPenney. This is the kind that buries its secrets six feet under and drinks until the memories blur around the edges. The kind that measures loyalty in scars and silence.
The images feel loud somehow. Gritty. Greasy. Like a prayer said backward. They don't invite you in—they dare you to look away.
I search the faces, wondering if Legion is in any of these frames. Wondering what stories these walls would tell if they could speak. What confessions they've absorbed from drunken mouths at three in the morning.