Page 22 of Broken Skulls (Rebel Skull MC #7)

Chapter Twenty-One

Elizabeth

T ank’s girlfriend, Kelsie, chatters away as she delivers my last meal for the day. I slide down the wall, waiting for her to leave. When she doesn’t, I sigh and open the little door.

“I want you to know Tank feels terrible that he didn’t see what was going on with you,” she rambles.

“He shouldn’t. Thank you for dinner.” My response is clipped, and I hope she hears my tone and moves along.

My shoulders fall when she doesn’t. I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I don’t. She’s obviously a sweet person. I’m just not sure I’m up for a conversation about Tank.

“He called me a little bit ago and said he didn’t get any sleep.”

When I don’t say anything, she continues. “He hung out with JD while the rest of the club slept.”

“They should have gotten some sleep. They’re going to need it.”

It’s Kelsie’s turn to be quiet.

“Tank doesn’t owe me anything. I lied to him.”

I stir the pasta around my plate mindlessly in the light that brushes across my lap from my little confessional.

“What did he do to you?”

Not even Jacob has asked me that.

“I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me the details. Jesse and I both see it. Willow, too.”

My heart warms a little at the thought of being understood by these women. It feels strange.

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. I just can’t.”

“Okay.”

I work on my meal while she hums on the other side of the wall. When I shove my plate back through, she sits up, locking eyes with me.

“There’s this spot not far from here. There are a lot of dragonflies there. Would you like to go see them?”

Kelsie was the first person to show me kindness in a very long time. I can’t tell her no. “Sure,” I say, even though I’m anything but sure.

As soon as we’re outside, she leads me over to her car. “It’s not mine. This is my mom’s car.”

I blink my eyes, shading them with my hand. Everything is bright to me, even though the sun is low in the sky.

“Wow, I love it,” I say, rushing over to the Volkswagen Beetle. “It’s so cute!” I let out a little laugh. The world always looks so much different after sitting in Jacob’s room.

“She’s had it forever.”

It’s a short drive from the junkyard before she stops in front of a cabin. “This is Petey and Katie’s house. I figured we’d come here. It’s much quieter than over at the warehouse.” She points across the lake.

“What’s the warehouse?”

She waves for me to follow her down to a little dock. “It’s the clubhouse. Some of the club members live there.”

As soon as I look over the water, I see them. Hundreds of dragonflies. I lower myself beside her.

“What do you think?” she asks, her gaze boring into the side of my face. “Much better than that plastic dragonfly outside your window at the nursing home, huh?”

I nod my head. “I’ve never met a group of people like all of you.”

Kelsie laughs. “I felt the same way when I first came here. It feels a bit like entering a fantasy world.”

She sets her shoes aside, and I watch as she rolls off her socks. “I wasted a lot of time worrying that it would somehow end and they’d send me away. Take my advice, don’t waste time. These people are the real deal.”

“Including you.” I follow her lead, taking off my own shoes.

It makes her smile to see me joining her. It’s sweet and genuine. It patches a part of my heart. I’m so happy for Tank to have found someone like her.

“I’m trying to be real. It’s hard when I’ve had to be something that I’m not in order to survive. I have to be very conscious about it. It’s exhausting.”

Again, a warm feeling spreads through my chest as she listens, genuinely interested in what I have to say.

“I’ve spent so much time pretending, that I’m not really sure who I am,” I continue.

Her arm wraps around me. “There’s no better place to remember than here.”

I let her keep her arm around me as we stare across the lake.

It’s peaceful for a bit, but as the lake begins to darken an uneasiness builds and builds in my gut. Maybe they won’t find anything. Maybe I imagined it all. Maybe he got rid of everything.

“Why don’t we go up to the warehouse and wait for the guys to call?”

I nod, anxious to hear from Jacob.

I’m starting to wonder if Kelsie really brought me here for the dragonflies. I think it was because she couldn’t stand the thought of me waiting alone in that dark room. But as the night rolls on, I begin to crave my retreat in the darkness. I feel safe there.

Eventually, the women’s phones begin to ring. I switch seats, moving close to Lily when she answers hers and then pulls it to her ear.

She speaks quietly. When she notices me sitting right beside her, she puts a smile on her face. She keeps it there, tightly, but she can’t hide the tears that pool along the bottom of her big doe eyes as she listens to, I assume, her husband on the other end of the line.

“I’m glad you got him,” she says after several minutes.

I know she’s saying it for me to hear, but I only hear what she’s not saying.

“Okay, we’ll see you all soon.”

I glance around, just now noticing that most of the women have stepped from the room. Only Lily, Jesse, and Jesse’s daughter, Billie Rose, remain.

“I want to go back to Jacob’s,” I say, rising from my chair.

“I’ll take her,” Jesse tells the others, grabbing her keys from a hook by the front door.

Lily reaches out and touches her arm, but Jesse brushes it off. “I’ve got this.”

When we pull out onto the road, Jesse lights up a joint and hands it to me. “So, the guys found some really fucked up shit at your teacher’s house.”

I take a long draw, holding it in. When I try to hand it back to her, she shakes her head. “You’re going to need all of it.”

I take her advice and continue smoking. “Yeah,” I say on a sigh, turning my focus out the window. “Something went wrong. I can feel it. Jacob got hurt, didn’t he?”

“Not exactly.”