Page 19 of Property of Thrasher (Kings of Anarchy MC: South Carolina #1)

“I did things I didn’t want to,” she said, voice steady as a metronome set slow.

“Because he told me they proved I loved him. Because he told me wives do things for their husbands. Because he told me ‘no’ was a sin against him and God. That wasn’t love.

That was control wrapped in a word that should have protected me. ”

I thought of the man the church wanted to hand me back to. The way they smiled with their mouths and not their eyes. The way they said “God’s plan” as a loaded gun.

“So when I got here,” Lyric went on, “I told myself I’d never confuse the two again.

Sex is something I can want or not want.

Love is the feeling that is inside. It means I’m more of a better me with someone than without them.

And those two things can happen together or separate.

If you liked sex with Thrasher, that can be true all alone.

You don’t owe it anything more. You don’t owe him anything more—claim or no claim—unless you decide you do. ”

“How do I decide?”

She laughed, soft and a little sad. “One day at a time. One touch at a time. One choice at a time.”

I closed my eyes and let my head tip against her shoulder.

The memory fresh of him came back again.

The ride we shared, my arms around his middle, the scent of leather and soap and gasoline, the way the wind pressed us together so that I couldn’t tell where I stopped and the rest of the world started.

I remembered his hands after, how careful he was when he figured it out, like I might crack if he moved wrong.

I remembered the claim and how something in me liked it because it sounded like being kept, and something else hated it because it sounded like being owned.

“I don’t want to be a possession,” I explained and she nodded.

“Then don’t be,” Lyric retorted, as if it were the easiest thing. “Say it out loud when you see him. ‘I’m not your play thing. I’m me. If you want me, ask. Don’t tell.’ See how he handles that.”

“What if he doesn’t handle it well?”

“Then he’s not a man you keep,” she said casually. “That’s our new life. We don’t accept less.”

I imagined saying it. I imagined his face.

Thrasher liked control. But he’d also listened.

He’d stopped when I flinched earlier, right at the start, when my body remembered fear before it remembered want.

He’d asked if I was okay. He’d waited until I nodded.

He didn’t push. The claim came after, not before.

It didn’t erase the asking. It simply complicated it.

“I keep thinking about the word ‘first’ like it’s supposed to change me,” I admitted.

“Like, I’m supposed to wake up different.

But I woke up and my knees still creaked when I stood, and I still needed coffee, and my shirt still smelled like the dryer.

The only thing that changed is I know what a certain kind of wanting feels like in my body now. ”

Lyric smiled without looking at me, eyes still in the leaves.

“That’s what it is. The knowing. BJ tried to make me think sex was something done to me.

It’s not. It’s something I do. Something I have.

Something I can refuse. Something I can ask for.

If you liked it, Mel, you can like it again.

If you don’t like something about it, you can say that and see if he listens. ”

“He did listen,” I said, surprising myself. “In the moment, he was absolutely laser focused on me.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s a start. Also, you should know because I’ve asked the girls and Tiny too.

Claimed doesn’t mean married. It doesn’t mean you stop being a person.

It sure as hell doesn’t mean he gets your yes without asking each time.

If Thrasher wants you, he can show you with actions that don’t make you smaller. ”

I picked at a loose thread at my cuff. “Do you think I’m dumb?”

“For having sex?” She snorted. “No. For liking it? Also no. For wanting safety? Definitely no. For worrying about what it means? That just means you’re careful. If you want the official Lyric protocol, it’s this: protect your heart, protect your body, use your words, and carry cash.”

I laughed. “Carry cash?”

“You never know when you’ll need to call a cab and get gone.”

The laugh left me lighter. The fear that hummed steady under my skin dialed down a notch, like someone had finally found the right switch.

We let quiet happen. A pair of girls in matching aprons cut across the lot toward the bus stop, their conversation filled with laughter.

Somewhere inside, a man yelled, “Yo, where’s the mop?

” and someone else yelled back, “Check the closet, genius,” followed by the kind of laughter that said they weren’t mad.

Lyric nudged me. “Tell me everything else.”

“About last night?”

“About your head,” she said. “Your body is your business. I’m not asking for a play-by-play. Unless you want to brag, in which case I am fully prepared to be jealous.”

Heat climbed my neck and pooled under my ears. “No bragging. It hurt a little. Then it didn’t. Then it did again after, the way a pulled muscle complains once you stop moving.”

She nodded like that made sense. “And your head?”

“Loud,” I said. “Then quiet. During it, my head was…quiet, actually. After was loud again. Today was loud. I kept expecting to feel shame. Like I should be broken open with it. But I’m not. I’m just okay and aware. Like when you turn off a fan and you hear how much silence has sound.”

Lyric’s mouth tipped. “That’s the good stuff, you know. The quiet in the middle.”

“Is it?”

“Feels like it to me.” She flicked a glance toward the side lot, where a few bikes were lined up.

She looked like a woman who had walked barefoot on broken glass and now stood over it learning to trust the floor.

“I was scared to tell you about Tiny. I thought you’d say I’d just traded one control for another. ”

“I had that thought,” I admitted. “For half a second. Then I pictured his face when you talk. He looks at you like he’s reading a language he didn’t know existed.”

Her laugh came out startled. “He does, doesn’t he?”

“It’s weirdly sweet and also weirdly hot,” I said, and we both giggled like we were a mash-up of the girls we used to be and the women we were now.

“You know what else he does?” she asked after our laughter softened.

“He asks me before he touches me in new ways. He’ll say, ‘I want to try’ and then he watches my face.

If I frown, he stops. If I smile, he keeps going.

It’s probably basic to other women, I guess.

But it feels like magic when you’re used to your face not mattering. ”

I swallowed. “That is magic.”

“You can ask for that,” she said. “From Thrasher. From anyone. You can make a list of the magic tricks you allow.”

“I like that,” I said. “A list.”

“Number one: If he can’t make you laugh, don’t take your clothes off,” she said, counting on her fingers.

“Number two,” I offered, “if he makes you feel dumb for saying what you want, don’t let him in your head.”

“Number three: Text a friend your location.”

“Number four,” I said, “enjoy what you enjoy. If you don’t enjoy it, change it or stop.”

Lyric grinned. “Now you’re getting it.”

We went on like that for a few minutes, half joking, half serious, building a code out of the scraps of our old lives, weaving it into something we could use.

It felt like sitting at a table with needle and thread, stitching our names into the hem of our own clothes so nobody could pretend not to know who they belonged to.

A shadow fell over the far end of the concrete, then moved on.

The sound of a bike rumbled to life, low and promising.

My body answered in a way my mind was still catching up to.

I didn’t hate that about myself. I didn’t love it either.

I just noticed it, like you notice a summer storm building over the trees.

Lyric leaned her shoulder into mine. “If you want to see him again, see him. If you don’t, don’t.

If you want to see him and tell him the new rules, do that.

None of this has to be permanent. Not the claim.

Not the fear. Not the confusion. You’re allowed to be in the middle for as long as you want. ”

“What if he says I’m his again?”

“Say you’re yours,” she said. “Say that if he wants to be part of that, he can ask.”

I liked the shape of that in my mouth. I pictured saying it. The image scared me and steadied me at the same time.

“What about you?” I asked. “What do you say to Tiny when he claims you?”

She smiled. “I tell him I’m not a patch he can sew on. I’m a person who chooses him back. And I do. I’m choosing him back. That’s the difference.”

We fell quiet again, but it wasn’t the heavy kind. It was the kind you can put your feet up in. The kind you can breathe in without counting.

“Thank you,” I said after a while. It felt small for everything she’d just given me. She knew me well enough not to make me reach for fancier words.

She bumped my knee. “Always.”

A car door slammed on the other side of the building.

The shift change was happening. Evening would bring a different crowd, louder laughter, rougher shadows.

I knew I’d have to go back in soon, change into my jeans and tank, tie my hair up again.

But for a few more minutes, I let myself lean into the shade and into my cousin and into the fragile net of rules we’d woven.

“Do you ever think about going back?” I asked, surprising myself. I never asked that. I never wanted to give the thought a chance to come to life.

“To Montana?” Lyric snorted. “To the people who decided who we were before we had a chance to find out? To the man who called me wife like it meant owner? Hard pass.”

“What about the parts we miss?” I pressed. “The mountains. The cold mornings. Our family around Grandma’s old table for every holiday.”

“We can make new tables,” she stated. “We can hang a picture of a mountain and call it a window until we get a real one.”

I smiled. “Maybe I don’t need a mountain. Then again, maybe I do.”

“We’ll get there.” She said it like a promise she believed in, and because she believed it, I found a little slice of belief for myself.

We headed toward the back door, the metal push bar warm from the day. The hallway inside smelled like whatever the kitchen had been cooking—fried something—and lemon cleaner. Voices bounced off tile and metal. The world was still the world.

Before we split—she toward the kitchen, me toward the laundry—Lyric caught my arm. “Hey,” she said. “Last thing.”

“What?”

“Enjoy it,” she said, and her grin went wicked and soft at the same time. “If you want it, enjoy it. That’s allowed.”

It took me half a second to realize my face had heated again. I rolled my eyes at her, but the smile tugging at my mouth gave me away. “Bossy.”

“Generous,” she corrected. “Don’t confuse the two.”

I hugged her again, quick and hard, then let go before either of us could make a joke to hide how much it mattered.

Back in the laundry room, the machines spun like planets, steady and sure.

I loaded a basket and tugged it onto the folding table.

A white sheet slid across the steel, the cotton cool under my palms. I smoothed a corner to make it neat, then another, then another.

My hands remembered. My body remembered other things now too.

That didn’t make me new or ruined. It just made me here.

The door cracked open and somebody I didn’t know stuck their head in to ask where the mop was. I pointed—third closet, left side—and they thanked me and left. I stood for a second with my hands on the folded sheet and let a thought drop into the space of me like a coin into a deep well.

I could want things. That could be true. I could say yes. I could say no. I could say not yet. I could say ask me again in a different voice.

I could tell Thrasher I wasn’t a patch. I was a person. If he wanted to claim me, he could learn what it meant to be claimed back by a girl who didn’t belong to anybody but herself.

The sheet made a soft thud when I set it on the stack.

I pulled another one over, the edge of it whispering against the metal.

The room hummed. The late sun painted a stripe of light across the floor where the door didn’t quite meet the threshold.

Dust danced in it. I watched it, and everything inside me felt a little less like a hooked fish and a little more like a girl with lungs that worked.

Later, when I finished the shift and the sky blended from black to deep purple, I would walk out back again. I didn’t know if Thrasher would be there. I didn’t know if I wanted him to be. Both answers were allowed.

What I did know was this: if he was there and he said that word again—claimed—I would tell him mine. I would say the words Lyric gave me and the ones I’d discovered tucked under my tongue. I would see what he did with them.

Maybe he’d ruin it. Maybe he’d surprise me. Maybe I’d surprise myself.

The dryer dinged. I moved through the motion of opening it, heat rolling into my face, the smell of clean cotton like a promise that even if nothing was ever new, it could still be fresh.

I pulled a towel out and it was warm against my cheek, and I realized sometimes small things were enough to get you from one day to the next.

Sometimes advice that sounded simple—enjoy it—was the hardest task and also the right one.

I folded the towel. I kept going. I thought about Lyric’s grin, about Tiny remembering creamer cups, about how love and sex might sometimes share a collar and sometimes run in opposite directions, and how maybe I didn’t have to leash either to live.

When my break came, I texted Lyric a heart and a mountain emoji. She sent back a coffee cup and a tiny cow for no reason. I laughed at my phone like an idiot. The sound bounced off the metal and didn’t sound lonely at all.

I went back to the table. I smoothed another sheet. The white of it glowed in the last of the light. I wasn’t a patch. I wasn’t a secret. I wasn’t a thing to be handed over to any man under any name.

I was Melody Holton. And whatever I decided next—yes, no, not yet—I was going to make sure the voice saying it belonged to me.