“What do you mean, all bets are off?”
Puck gave a harsh, humorless laugh. “I mean I’m done dancing around you. You got hurt, I felt bad. But tonight you grabbed me and now I’m out of patience. We didn’t have history between us, you’d be under me already, Becca. And I won’t pretend to be something I’m not. I want a woman, I take her. I keep her until we’re finished and I call the shots while we’re together. No games. This is your last out.”
My thighs clenched and I knew what I wanted to say. Then my mother’s voice cut through my head.
Little slut.
Had she felt this way about Teeny? How many times had she let her body do the thinking for her?
“I call the shots while we’re together.”
Puck let my hand go and I stilled, clutching him for an instant longer. Then I let go and pulled back.
“Thanks for the ride home,” I managed to say, my voice unsteady. “And thank you for clearing things up. I’ve got to get to sleep. It’s been a long day and I have school tomorrow afternoon.”
He froze, a cold and frustrated statue. I clambered off the bike, forced to lean a hand against Puck’s shoulder to steady myself because my legs had turned to rubber. Then I made for my door. I kept expecting him to say something, or maybe come after me.
A part of me wanted him to.
Wanted him to take away the decision, to force me so I wouldn’t have to own up to the fact that I needed him so badly it hurt. Life would be so much easier if I wasn’t responsible . . . But who am I kidding? My life has never been easy. Puck stayed silent until I reached the stairwell door, then spoke one last time.
“I took your choice away five years ago. Tonight I gave it back to you. Consider us even.”
FIVE
My bed felt like a pile of rocks.
No matter how I twisted and turned, I couldn’t get comfortable. Puck’s words ran through my brain, twisting around and fucking with my nerves. Mom’s phone call echoed through me, too. She hadn’t called back, but I knew better than to try and call her myself. Not if Teeny was on a tear. Part of me almost wished she wouldn’t call, and I know that makes me sound like a shit person. But she destroyed everything she touched. I hated how talking to her made me feel, then hated myself for picking up the phone when she called again. Most of all, I hated all the hope and excitement I felt every time I thought she might actually leave him—it always led to disappointment.
By five I realized the whole thing was pointless. Might as well just get up.
Coffee couldn’t replace sleep, but it helped. So did my favorite playlist. By the time I fired up my Singer sewing machine the first light of dawn was streaking across the sky. I still had some silk from the kimono I’d used to make my makeup bag. Danielle’s words came back to me—maybe I really could sell some of them? They were certainly unique . . .
Two hours later I put the finishing touches on an entirely new bag design. The sun was up and my eyes were heavy, but I stumbled back toward my bed feeling satisfied and settled. I’d catch an hour of sleep before school—that should tide me over. Maybe I couldn’t control Puck or my job or my mom . . . but when I sat down in front of that machine, beautiful things came out. Things nobody else could make—things straight from my heart.
That had to count for something, right?
—
Usually I only heard from my mom every couple of months.
Her phone was deactivated half the time because she was always behind on her bills. She’d disappear for five or six weeks, then I’d get a call out of nowhere from a strange new number. Other times she’d email me from a public computer, or give me a quick call using someone else’s phone.
Like so many things about our lives, I grew up without realizing there was another way to exist. Most people would find it strange or uncomfortable, going without a reliable connection to the outside world. With me and Mom, that’s just the way things were. When the bills got paid, life was good. The rest of the time we made due.
Mom had always been a motorcycle club groupie, so I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t surrounded by big men and loud bikes. It sounds bad, but I wasn’t entirely unhappy growing up. Before Teeny I remembered traveling and doing fun things with other kids.
Then everything changed.
Before she met him things were good, even though we’d been living in our car for a while after the last man she’d hooked up with dumped her. We’d slept in the car lots of times over the years, so I wasn’t scared. She used to make a game of it and that was fun. Then one day Mom dropped me with a friend and disappeared for a week. When she came back, she told me I had a new daddy, his name was Teeny, and that we were all going to be a family together. That’s when we moved into his house.
I loved it at first—I had my own room and everything.
When school started that year, I’d gotten to ride on a big yellow school bus with a bunch of other kids, and I even made some friends. At eight years old, kids tend not to notice the fact that a girl in their class hasn’t had a bath in three days, or that her clothes are too small. The teachers were onto us, of course—I remember strange people in suits coming to the house, checking our cabinets for food, and asking my mom a lot of questions—but I still felt like I fit in.
Then slowly I realized something wasn’t right.
For one thing, I didn’t get invited to play with other kids after school, or to their birthday parties. For my tenth birthday I had a party and only one girl came. Her mom didn’t drop her off. She just stood around, watching nervously while my mom fussed with my cake, and then they left before we even had a chance to play games. Slowly I learned that I was biker trash, and even if the kids didn’t know it, their parents did.