Page 14 of Rattler’s Revelation (Demon Dawgs MC: Las Vegas #6)

I take a deep breath and study the faces of the two people I don’t want to know my deepest and darkest secret. Considering my reaction, I can’t avoid it. There’s nothing left to do but dive in and get it over with.

“In my senior year of high school, I was dating this girl. Her name was Hannah Dandridge. We were chemistry lab partners. When we started dating, she had just broken up with her boyfriend, who was a member of the football team. I thought she was over him, but I discovered she started seeing him again behind my back. She dumped me to get back with him. I was hurt and angry.”

“She sounds like a bitch,” Bianca says, making me smile.

“No, she was young. So was I. I should have realized she still had feelings for him, but I ignored the signs. The truth is, they belonged together. They’re still together.

They both went to college, where he was drafted into the NFL.

They’ve been married for five years and have two kids.

I’m happy for them. Now. Then. Not so much.

Back then, I was happy to keep hating them both.

That’s when I met a guy named Tommy. He was happy to fuel my anger. ”

“Why?” Rattler asks.

“Because he was a bigot who hated black people, especially black men who got the pretty white girls,” I say flatly as I stare across the park.

“I never considered myself a racist, but I let Tommy influence me into believing that I lost Hannah because she preferred black men to white men. My pain turned to hatred for her and him.”

Bianca sucks in a breath, but says nothing. I’m afraid to look at her. I slide a glance at Rattler, who watches Bianca for several seconds before turning his attention back to me. “Is that it?”

I run my hand down my face in disgust. “Not even close. I wish I had stopped there, but no. You see, there’s something you both need to know about me.

I’m bisexual. I fell for Tommy. I fell for him hard.

He didn’t know, or at least I don’t think he did.

He never acted like he felt the same, but he made sure we became close friends.

Looking back, I think he chose me because of Rafe.

I think he hoped to turn Rafe to their cause. ”

“Their cause?” Bianca asks.

I flick my eyes to hers to see her watching me with sad eyes. At least she’s not looking at me with disgust. That’s probably coming, though, I can’t fool myself.

“I didn’t know Tommy was a member of the Keepers of the Third Reich.

I didn’t find out until much later when I was hanging with him and a few of his friends.

They were racists and bigots. I knew it, but that didn’t stop me from hanging around with them.

I wish I could say I distanced myself from them as their rhetoric grew, but by then, I was too angry and bitter to see how fucked up they were. ”

“You obviously figured it out,” Rattler says. “How?”

“Give me a minute,” I say as the pressure grows until I can no longer breathe.

This is the worst part of my story, and I know once I admit everything, I’ll likely lose everything, too.

I let myself take in Rattler and Bianca’s features before they fill with the disgust that I know will come when I finish my story.

The bands around my chest loosen when Bianca takes my hand.

“I get the feeling that what you’re about to tell us is bad,” Bianca says. “You think we’re going to look at you differently for it, right?”

I stare into her exotic gold eyes and nod.

“We all have things that we’ve done that we aren’t proud of,” Bianca continues.

“I know I do. I imagine Rattler does, too?” We both look at Rattler, who jerks his head down in a nod.

Bianca reaches for Rattler’s hand so that the three of us join together through her.

“Before you tell us your secret, why don’t I share mine? ”

I consider stopping her, but the truth is, I could use some time to steady myself before I dive into the rest of my story. I nod for Bianca to go ahead and share her story.

“My dad had a heart attack and died when I was five. He left my mom and me behind. We lost the house, so Mom moved us into an apartment. We did alright. She worked as a blackjack dealer and earned enough to keep us comfortable. One night, after her shift, two men and a woman mugged her for her tips. They hurt her. She reported the attack, but refused to go to the hospital. I found her dead the next morning. She suffered from internal bleeding and passed peacefully during the night. That’s how I ended up in the system. I was twelve.”

I squeeze her hand and see Rattler has done the same. We’re both looking at Bianca with the same thought. There is nothing either of us would be unwilling to do to make her happy.

“Bianca…” we both say, but she shakes her head.

“I’m not looking for pity. I need you to understand how I ended up in the system.

My parents left me, but they didn’t abandon me; they didn’t leave me because they wanted to be rid of me.

Losing them both made me angry. Being in the system as an older child is hard; it’s harder when you’re pissed off at the world.

Not many families wish to adopt an angry and standoffish twelve-year-old girl.

I know things could have gotten much worse.

Maybe the universe felt it had punished me enough because I managed to avoid the worst of the foster homes.

I ended up in a few that weren’t all that bad.

The last one was the best, which makes what I did so much worse.

The night before my eighteenth birthday, my foster parents took me out for pizza and ice cream as a treat.

Everything was great until they explained that once I turned eighteen, I would no longer be their foster child.

I think they tried to explain that they would still help me, but all I heard was that they didn’t want me.

I was hurt and angry. I couldn’t sleep that night, so around two in the morning, I ran away to avoid facing them.

But I didn’t just leave. I stole from them.

They had money they’d been saving for a trip, and I took it.

I took other things that I could carry and pawn off.

They had given me a home, and I repaid them by stealing from them. ”

Rattler squeezes her hand while I comfort her. “You were a kid and had lost your home. It’s understandable.”

She gives me a sad smile before shaking her head.

“That’s no excuse. I paid them back, with interest. However, I could never face them.

I betrayed two people who had opened their home to me and treated me with kindness.

You’re right, I was only eighteen, about the same age you were back then.

I understand how emotions can lead you to do things that you later regret.

I would never make that same mistake today. I imagine you feel the same?”

I nod, understanding what she’s trying to tell me. She isn’t going to judge me today for a bad decision I made years ago. I suck in a breath and hope she feels the same after she hears the rest of my story.

“As I told you, I started hanging around with Tommy and his friends. These friends were several years older, so they bought us beer, which I happily drank. One night, we went to my high school’s football game, where I saw Hanna with her friends.

She was cheering on her boyfriend. Seeing her pissed me off.

Tommy suggested we have some fun, and since I was bitter and drunk, I agreed. ”

Bianca’s hand quivers in mine. I squeeze it. “We didn’t hurt Hannah or her friends. Although what we did wasn’t much better.”

I try to retract my hand from hers, but she refuses to relinquish it.

“Tommy explained that they had been given a job to teach someone manners. I didn’t know what they meant.

They had baseball bats and spray paint, so I assumed they were going to bust up a car or a building.

I figured it was juvenile shit. Fuck, was I wrong.

I started to worry when they knocked on the door of a nice house in a nice neighborhood.

Before I could voice my concerns, the owner of the house opened the door, and all hell broke loose.

By the time I entered the house, the owner was on the floor with his head covered in blood.

When I heard a woman scream, I yelled at them to stop.

They dragged the wife from the kitchen and ripped her clothes.

When I tried to stop them, one guy decked me and said they were going to have some fun with the bitch.

A little girl came running into the room.

She was screaming at the guys to stop. Tommy lunged at her, but I knocked him out of the way and grabbed the girl before racing outside.

I lowered her over the neighbor’s fence and told her to run to the neighbor for help.

Then I called Rafe. I went back into the house to see if I could help the parents, but I was too late.

Tommy and others were gone. The parents were dead on the floor. That’s where Rafe found me.”

At the end of my story, I can’t bring my eyes up to meet Rattler’s or Bianca’s.

Bianca squeezes my left hand while Rattler grabs my right.

I finally lift my eyes to see the two people who have come to mean so much to me, staring back with concern.

I don’t see the hate or disgust that I expect to see, so I’m able to let out the breath I’ve been holding.