I swore and curled the hand that wasn’t holding my phone around the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white. My voice was gruff and uneven when I told her, “I’ll feed you whatever you want to eat, Poppy.”
She made a strangled noise and then cleared her throat. “I have to get back to work. I have a group meeting after work tonight, so I won’t be by your place until after seven or so.” She hesitated for a second and then quietly handed over, “My favorite is cheeseburgers. I could eat them every day of the week.”
She didn’t look like she’d had a cheeseburger in years but if that’s what she wanted I would make sure she had the best one Denver had to offer. “Cheeseburgers it is. I’ll text you my address and see you later tonight.”
She mumbled a hasty good-bye and I hung up, anger at everything she’d had to suffer through coursing thick and heated through my blood. She deserved so much better and I was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that I really wanted to be the one to give it to her.
Thoughts firmly on Poppy and what other kinds of horrors she’d had to endure through the course of her marriage, I drove through downtown Denver and made my way to my garage.
Back when I was younger and Zeb and I had too much time and too much youthful curiosity on our hands, we’d spent many a night at illegal parties held in this very same building. The place had history, both personal and collective, so it meant the world to me that I’d been able to save it. The ancient brick had been slated for demolition so that some developer could come in and build more trendy condos and shops to cater to the LoDo sprawl. I’d scraped together enough money from the sale of my first full rebuild outside of school. It was a 1970 Barracuda that was still winning medals at car shows across the country, to lease the space for a year. I continued that pattern for five years—build, sell, pay for the lease on the building, barely getting by until I got hooked up with Nash Donovan and Rowdy St. James. It started out as a mutual admiration for muscle cars and ink and turned into something that allowed me to get my hands around a major part of my dream. Those two introduced me to Rome Archer, who came at me with a business offer I would have been a fool to turn down. Rome wanted to be a silent partner in the garage. He helped me buy the building outright and set me up so that instead of bleeding money back into the business, I could actually start earning a real living. Rome was the only reason I was able to finally afford a down payment on a house. I owed those Marked Men more than they would ever know.
I parked in the spot that was designated for my Caddy. There was a small office attached to the garage where customers could wait and where the gal that handled all the paperwork and scheduling of projects worked. I’d tried to set Kallie up in that position, thinking the garage could be ours, that we could make our dreams come true together, but she barely lasted a week before I’d had more than one of my guys threaten to quit if she wasn’t gone. She hated how dirty the garage was and she didn’t give two shits about the classics we worked our asses off to breathe new life into. The girl drove a freaking Audi, for God’s sake, even when I offered to find her and build her whatever she wanted. I should have known then it wasn’t meant to be. It was a beautiful car but it had no soul and no story.
Snorting at the thought, I stopped short when a baby-blue Hudson Hornet came pulling in through the open gates. It was a ’53 if my guess was right, and I was pretty sure that it was. It was an incredibly rare year, so rare that this was the only one I’d seen outside of a hot-rod magazine or a car show. I watched the car roll to a stop next to the Eldorado and took a minute to admire it. I was named after this car, at least that was what my mom told me in one of her few lucid moments when the drugs and demons I couldn’t see loosened their hold on her.
A man stepped out, tall, with salt-and-pepper hair, silver sideburns, and expensive mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a dark canvas coat much like the one Happy had ruined last night over the unofficial almost-winter uniform of all Coloradans, a button up flannel over a thermal. I thought he looked vaguely familiar but so many people came in and out of the garage, a lot of them just wanting to look, that I couldn’t be sure we’d ever met before.
I lifted my chin in greeting. “Nice ride.”
He repeated the gesture. “If that’s yours then I return the sentiment.” He indicated the Eldorado with the flick of his fingers.
I shrugged. “It’s mine. She was the first rebuild I ever did. My high school shop teacher felt sorry for me and let me buy her for a song right before graduation. He helped me finish her up and to this day he stops by once a month to see how we’re both holding up.”
The man made a face that I couldn’t read and shifted his weight on his feet. He seemed nervous but I didn’t have time to stand around chatting about my Caddy. I had a Wayfarer that I was trying to restore and finding parts for the old girl had proven to be a real bitch.
“If you need something specific, go in and talk to Molly, my receptionist. She can point you in the right direction. I can tell you now I don’t have any original parts for a Hudson on hand but I know a guy that is a wizard when it comes to tracking down the unfindable.”
The older guy took a step back and leaned on the side of his car like the wind had been knocked out of him. He had really cherry taste in cars and looked pretty cool for an old guy, but damn, the dude was weird. Everything about him seemed tense and a little bit off.
“The garage is yours?” The question seemed like it was ripped out of him.
I shrugged again. “Yep. All mine.” I motioned toward the door that had the “Open” sign on it and inclined my head, eager to get to work. “Like I said, Molly can give you a hand with whatever you need. I’d be happy to get my hands on that Hudson if you need someone to work on it.”
The guy cleared his throat and shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Uh, yeah. I might be back. I just rolled into town for a quick visit and your garage came up when I started poking around asking about who might be able to handle a rare classic. I was looking for something specific. I didn’t think I’d find it so quickly.”
I nodded because I knew how hard it could be to come across the original parts you needed to do a whole rebuild. “You can find anything if you look hard enough. I guess I’ll see you around.”
The guy nodded again and this time he grinned. “Didn’t catch your name, kid.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him. This whole exchange was getting stranger and stranger by the minute. “Wheeler, Hudson Wheeler. I’m actually named after your car.”
The guy flinched and the grin on his face died. “It’s nice to meet you, Wheeler. I’ll be back.”
Without offering up his name in return, he disappeared back into his badass car and pulled out of the parking lot in front of the garage like the cops were after him. I waved a hand in front of my face as the hot rod kicked up dust, and wondered what in the hell had just happened.
Today was a day full of loaded conversations and I’d never considered myself much of a conversationalist.
Poppy
I feel guilty, you know?”
The girl that was speaking couldn’t be any older than sixteen. She was fairly new to the group meetings, but every time she spoke we all went quiet and listened intently. She seemed so strong, so much tougher than I was. Her father had hurt her in unimaginable ways, and when she tried to tell her mother, the woman had accused her of lying and trying to break up the family. As a result the girl had run away from home and had spent the last several years living on the streets. The things she did to survive, the way people took advantage of such an innocent soul, made me so angry. Someone should have been there to keep her safe, just like someone should have been there to keep me and Salem safe from my father’s tyrannical rule. Just like someone should have kept me safe from Oliver and his ruin. That was the entire purpose of these group meetings: to help us all realize that we weren’t alone, that our stories were shared by women across all walks of life. We were the
re to keep each other safe. The thing that tied us all together was that we were still here, we survived, and that made us bigger and better than the people that had done their very best to destroy us.
I was watching her so closely and she must have felt my stare because her eyes landed on mine and held as she kept talking. “I feel like I don’t deserve a nice house and nice clothes for school. I feel like having all these friends and being popular is all just a scam that I’m pulling on everyone. I feel like I’m in the wrong life.” She gave a bitter laugh and lifted a hand to wipe away a lone tear that trailed down her cheek. “Why should I still be here planning on going to prom with a really nice guy that treats me like I’m something special when so many of the girls I met while I was on the run don’t get a shot at the same thing? What makes me special? Why did I get a chance and not one of them?”
It was a common theme that she described. Guilt about moving on and finding peace after living a nightmare for so long. Apparently her aunt had gotten suspicious when her mother wasn’t able to offer up an explanation as to where her daughter had gone. The girl’s extended family had launched an all-out manhunt to find her, and when they did they were appalled by what they found. They knew all along her father was abusive and dangerous. They’d been trying to get her out of the house for years until her mother and father had gone on the run to protect their dirty little secret. She’d had people in her corner that loved her, but wasn’t allowed access to them, kind of like the way my parents did their best to keep me and Salem apart after Salem left home. Under my dad’s thumb and surrounded by my mother’s passive agreement, I never had a chance to let the idea of rebellion take root. I only wished I could have been as brave as this young woman.
“Eventually that guilt will lessen and you’ll appreciate the fact that you get to have a chance at all the things you deserved from the beginning. It’s part of the conditioning you were subjected to for so long for you to think you aren’t worthy of the good things that are going to come your way, but you are, all of you are.” The woman that ran the group was a survivor herself. She always spoke to us in a calm, even tone and it was apparent to all of us that she took our healing and progress very personally. This wasn’t a job for her: helping women that had been abused live beyond the damage done by their abusers was her life’s calling, her passion. I admired her so much for turning her pain and experience into something that was beneficial for others to learn from. “Good things will find you if you are open to them.”
Without thinking I blurted out, “How do you know that something or someone is actually good? I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been fooled by something that seemed to be good but turned out to be really, really bad.”
When Oliver first started courting me after I moved home after my disastrous first year at college, he seemed nice enough. He was really into me and treated me like a total gentleman. He courted me like the preacher’s daughter that I was and never pushed for anything I wasn’t ready to give. He handled me like I was something delicate and he never, not one time, brought up the supposedly shameful reason I’d had to run back to my less than understanding family with my tail tucked between my legs. That had been reason enough for me to give him a shot after I told myself I was swearing off men forever. I felt broken but he assured me over and over again that what had happened wasn’t my fault.
I should have known … like always … that it was a front. Any man my father practically handpicked for me, a man that was active in my father’s church, and believed the fire and brimstone my dad spouted nonstop, couldn’t be okay with what had happened to me and the choices I’d made.
On our wedding night Oliver called me a whore and yelled at me for an hour about not being a virgin and saving myself for him … even though he knew the nightmare behind why I wasn’t untouched and inexperienced. From there the abuse spiraled and worsened until I was having to hide bruises and marks all over my body. Sometimes the words hurt worse than his fists did and all I could do was question how I let myself end up in a situation that was a thousand times more horrible than the one I’d run from.
Both the teen and the counselor turned their attention to me and I realized that everyone in the small group was watching me. Typically I didn’t say much, I listened and learned. It helped me feel not so alone and less like a fool to know I wasn’t the only one that should have known better. This was probably the first time I’d ever actually spoken up when it wasn’t my turn to add something to the conversation.
The group didn’t use names, to protect anonymity, so the counselor motioned to me with a soft smile. “Well, you can’t ever be absolutely certain something or someone is good because things can change on a dime. Even the happiest and healthiest of relationships can collapse over time and even the best of circumstances are prone to experiencing a rainy day. All you can do is listen to your gut, pay attention to any warning signs and any red flags that are presented. It’s up to you to determine if the good outweighs the bad in whatever you face from here on out. You have the tools. You have earned them by surviving everything life has thrown at you.”
I bit my lip and cocked my head to look at her questioningly. “But my judgment has led to the worst experiences in my life. What if I can’t tell if the good outweighs the bad?” Unwittingly my thoughts turned to Wheeler. He was the first person I had let slip past the iron guards I had put in place since enduring Oliver’s torture. I refused to let anyone close, emotionally or physically, because if I had enough room to run, then there was no possible way I could be hurt again. I kept a wall up between me and the rest of the world, and so far, it had served its purpose, but now I was wondering if it was keeping all the good out as well as the bad.
There was a lot of good in Wheeler. A person would have to be blind not to see it. He seemed like a nice guy, he respected my personal-space issue, he was ridiculously good-looking, and my libido that I thought was long gone lit up like Christmas lights around him. I genuinely didn’t mind being alone with him or being close to him, which felt like a mini-miracle at this point. I liked the way he looked at me and I liked the way I felt compelled to look at him. I didn’t want to hide around him.
The flip side of all of that was that I was smart enough now to not ignore the negative that was also circling around the attractive mechanic. He had a baby on the way that he clearly wasn’t ready for. Soon fatherhood was going to have to be his first priority, not calming a skittish girl that had an obvious crush on him. He had a tumultuous relationship with his ex and I wasn’t sure he was anywhere close to being over her, which had the potential to lead to a whole lot of heartache if I let him get any closer than he already was. Plus, there was the big unknown, the big what-ifs that kept me awake at night and made me wonder if I could ever actually let anyone get as close as they would need to be if I ever wanted to have a real relationship.
Oliver had hurt me in the worst ways a man could hurt a woman and it wasn’t the first time. Sex with him had never been particularly pleasant, it always felt like some kind of punishment for him not being my first. Before Oliver, my only sexual experience had been with the man that I convinced myself was my true love. Sex with him had been exciting, something new and forbidden, since I grew up in such a conservative household. I honestly couldn’t get enough of it. It made me feel free and far more in charge of my life than I had ever been … at least it had until I got pregnant at barely eighteen. At first, I thought it was meant to be. I was foolishly in love and had no problem spinning unrealistic fairy tales around the college football-star that told me whatever I needed to hear in order to get into my pants. I was picturing a life together, a happy little family, but all of that was painfully unrealistic and woefully naive. I told my knight who came clad in cleats and a jersey about the baby, expecting him to be as excited as I was, and was heartbroken and destroyed when he told me to get rid of it.
It was like a slap in the face. I thought college and this perfect boy were my way out, the escape I’d longed for
from my father and his long-reaching influence, but in a heartbeat all those dreams were shattered. He told me I was nothing, just another stupid freshman girl that was willing to spread her legs for the campus golden boy. He laughed at me when I cried and scoffed at me when I told him I thought we were going to be together forever. He walked away still laughing but came back months later when I refused to terminate my pregnancy.
Even without him I was planning on keeping the baby. I was going to face my father’s wrath, stand up to his scorn, and suffer through his disownment if it meant I could be the best mom ever. I was convinced this baby was meant to be, that it was a sign that I had a bigger purpose in life than being the perfect daughter and proper little wife he’d trained me to be.
The baby’s dad convinced me to come over to his place with promises of reconciliation. He told me he was done sleeping around, that he only wanted me. He promised that he loved me. I was stupid. I was so desperate for it to be real that I forgot about his ugly, twisted reaction when I told him we were going to be parents. As soon as I knocked on the door, I knew I’d made the world’s biggest mistake.
He yanked me into his apartment and proceeded to beat me within an inch of my life. My dad was a dictator and a tyrant, but he used his words and withheld his love to secure obedience and submission. I’d never had anyone lay their hands on me before. It was terrible. To this day, I could still taste my own blood, blood I choked on as he hit me over and over again, making sure that his blows were focused on and around my still-flat stomach. He wanted to punish me for defying his wishes, but more than that he wanted to make sure there was no way I left that apartment still pregnant.
He got his wish. After fifteen minutes I passed out, and when I woke up I was back in my own dorm room and I knew something was seriously wrong. There was blood everywhere and I felt like my entire body was being turned inside out. I crawled to the tiny bathroom and it was there that my body did what it had no choice to after the football player was done with me. I lost the baby as I sat on the bathroom floor, bleeding, alone, and torn apart in too many ways to name.