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  When I had just moved to town, Tex had taken me out on a date. Mind you, this was before Rage and I were an item. He picked me up in his beat up old truck that looked like it was on its last leg, insisted on driving to a burger joint, and wouldn’t let me go in. The next thing I knew he was coming outside with a bag that was perfectly sealed, smelling heavenly, and two milkshakes. The man wouldn’t tell me what he got, but I let him get away with that. I was okay with the mystery, the mystery of what he’d purchased, and the mystery of him.

  He’d driven us down to the waterfalls that our town was named after. It was the middle of summer, a little bit before the sun went down, and we had a picnic, watching the sunset pass by the falls, feeling the light mist of the water over our skin. It was something that you’d see out of a Nicholas Sparks movie.

  He’d gotten a chocolate and a strawberry shake, chicken tenders, a burger, and fries. Exactly like our first date.

  “It’s good to see you laughing,” he says softly, ripping the burger in half, handing one end to me and keeping one for himself, then splitting up the tenders between the two of us, and lastly, the fries.

  “You remembered everything, except for one.” I spotted an extra cup under one of the shakes and grab it, setting it free. Tex was too quick and removed the lid to one shake. I pour half of it into the cup and grab the other, watching the pink strawberry shake flow over the chocolate. Tex hands me the lid, and I shake it up, combining both flavors of the chocolate and the strawberry.

  “Never could understand how you do that,” he chuckles, shaking his head.

  “I can’t understand how you drink them separately!”

  I had a lot of thoughts floating through my mind, worries and fear plagued it like cancer. I knew that nothing was certain in the future, but for right now, I knew everything was going to be okay.

  Chapter 7

  Never reveal everything you know.

  - @Prime Way of Life

  Roxy

  Tex hauls my butt out of the motel before five in the morning. I wanted to murder him. I even started imagining ways I could take the man down. Kicking him in the balls, slapping him in the face – then it hits me like a ton of bricks, how would one hundred and thirty pound me take on a man packing at least two seventy-five that was pure muscle? Ha! I wouldn’t.

  We were on the road for another three and a half hours before we weren’t staring at a highway anymore. Tex pulls off to a backroad, we hit unstable gravel, rolling over pothole again and again. “Are we close?” I growl out at him, holding onto the seats to stabilize my insides, screaming in agony at the hit of every bump.

  “We’ll be there in a minute.” And Tex was telling the truth. Maybe a minute later we pull up to a small cabin. It wasn’t much. It looked like something you’d come to on the weekends for a hunting retreat. I’d just hoped there was running water, a bathroom, and a stove.

  “So, who owns this place?”

  Tex was quiet for a moment. “It’s better if you don’t know.”

  “Now I want to know - who owns this house, Vince?” I ask him, using his real name, hoping that would stress the importance of my question.

  He pulls the truck up to the house, shifting the gear from drive to park, and turns to me, staring me dead in the eye. “Me.”

  Disbelief, that was the first thing that comes to my mind. He has to be joking. No way would he bring me to his house.

  “What. No. Why the…” I clamp my hand over my mouth, looking at his house and back to him. My disbelief goes to anger in just a few moments. How could Tex have the audacity to bring me here? Did he want us to get caught? “He will find me here. How…why would you bring me here of all places?” I scream at him in blind rage.

  “I understand why you’re scared, Rox, I really do. Rage won’t find you here. I’m hiding you in plain sight. Just trust me with this, okay?”

  “He is going to find me, and you’re going to lead him straight here!” I argue, tears threatening to spill. No. I would not cry anymore over Rage, over my past – I needed to focus on the now, not the future, and sure as hell not the past.

  Tex takes off his seat belt, settles back further into his seat, and taps his fingers against his knee. “Do you really not trust me, Roxanne? I’ve risked everything for you. Don’t you see that? I lied to my psychopathic best friend, a man who has men everywhere, so I could get you to safety, because I care about what happens to you more than I care about myself. Shit!” He slams his fist against the horn, causing it to beep abruptly, ripping open the car door, and slamming it shut, beelining towards the house.

  Crap.

  I really just fucked things up.

  ***

  I stay in Tex’s truck for at least an hour before I muster up the courage to go into the house and find him. I got it; we were both in a situation that was frightening and damming to both of us. I was on the run from my abusive ex, and as Tex said earlier, “psychotic” husband, and he was the man helping me escape Rage’s grasp. There was no manual on how to move forward, on how we were supposed to think, or feel, but for the life of me, no matter how much I tried…I couldn’t stop being afraid.

  I kept thinking of Rage barreling in and finding me, of hurting Tex in some way. Honestly, I could handle being taken back. I knew that I wouldn’t survive very long. He’d make an example of me, he might even kill me publicly in front of the entire club, but what I absolutely couldn’t stand is if he hurt Tex – Vince. That man didn’t have a cruel bone in his body. He was the type of man who gave and gave until he couldn’t give anymore; the type of guy who would give you the shirt off of his back. Fuck, he was the type of guy who risked it all and took you away from your abusive psycho of a husband, who is also his best friend, or maybe, was his best friend.

  I bravely get out of the truck and walk up to the cabin. I carefully open the front door, knowing that I was very well walking into a war zone, and go straight in. There was no room for the politeness of knocking when I needed to apologize to him. After thinking of everything I was feeling, I didn’t even consider what he was going through, what it must have been like to be in his shoes right now.

  “Vince,” I mutter, looking through the vast space of his cabin. It appeared so much larger than it did from the outside. There is a decent sized living room with a kitchen on the other side, it has a cute little island with three barstools, and there is a doorway straight ahead. I glance around, not seeing him within my sights, so I head straight for the door.

  I shouldn’t be just barging in; that’s what I told myself. That was bullshit. I needed to barge in. We needed to talk. Just as I was about to open the door, it swings wide open, and he stands there, and we just stare. Even after knowing each other for all these years, our bodies had an unspoken language. There was so much that we needed to say…I wondered if we ever would.

  “I –”

  “No,” He snaps, glaring down at me. “You’ll let me talk. There’s a lot of pent up shit inside me. I should’ve said this to you years ago, not now, and sure as fuck not like this.” I didn’t argue or speak at all. I simply let him work through whatever it was that he was thinking. He changes his stance, leaning more against the doorframe, eyes locked on me like a target.

  It was quiet. You’d be able to hear a needle hit the hardwood floors beneath us, and you could cut the tension with a butter knife. “When you moved into town senior year and showed an interest in me I felt like the luckiest guy around, and it wasn’t because of your drop dead gorgeous looks. Rox, you took a fuckin’ minute to get to know me. You didn’t want to know me because I was tied to Rage. You wanted to know me for me. Shit, I’d like to think you started dating me because you dug me. As soon as Rage saw I was interested in you he went in for the kill. He took you from me like I didn’t even exist. I knew back then he didn’t love you the way I was starting to. It was all a ploy for him, he just wanted to take you away from me. And he did. I shouldn’t have let him. And that’s what I did, I let him rip you away from me
.”

  I thought long and hard about how everything happened, and he was right. Tex and I weren’t a “couple”, but we were dating, we’d gone out on five or six dates over the course of a couple weeks. Rage expressed interest in me, and it was like Tex just forgot I existed. He wouldn’t talk to me at school. He only spoke to me if we were at the clubhouse and others were around, just to be courteous. I’d always wondered what the reasoning behind his sudden change of heart was. It turned out that it was as simple as this. He was letting his friend have me. I wanted to slap him across the face for it. I was a woman, not a possession. You can’t just give a person to your friend.

  “I let him take you away from me. If I had fought harder you wouldn’t be in this situation, you wouldn’t be getting beat on a daily basis, you wouldn’t be objectified, or shared amongst other clubs. Fuck, Rox. I wouldn’t have treated you like that at all. I would fucking love you, like I always have. You want to know why I avoided the shit outta you? Why I’d leave, why I’d go on runs that I wasn’t needed on, why I’d go to other clubhouses and check on progress? I couldn’t stand watching you go through what I could have prevented. Fuck!” He slams his hand into the side of the wall, and the drywall cracks beneath his punch. Tex leans further into the doorframe, ducking his head against the wood.

  “I could have prevented everything, if I’d just… fought for you. I was a coward, firefly. I was a fucking coward.” I stand before the strongest man I know, seeing him crumble with regret because of a choice he made in the past. What he didn’t realize was that he wasn’t the only one at fault. I made my choices too, they may not have been the right ones, but I was at fault as well.

  “Vincent,” I say softly, taking his hand in mine. I feel the tears welling behind my eyelids, knowing that there is no way I could stop what was about to happen. Years of regret were overflowing on both of our ends. “You aren’t at fault for any of this. I made my choices too, as stupid as they were, I was the one that made them. We both made them.” I rub his hand softly, feeling the callouses.

  “I regret not fighting for you,” he admits, staring down into my eyes.

  I couldn’t believe what I was about to say. It was the most honest I’d been with myself in years.

  “And I regret not choosing you.” That did it – the warm tears come down in an overflowing rush and slide down my face. Tex yanks his hand out of the wall. I could see the white residue of the drywall on his hand. He rubs it on his jeans really well and cups my face with both of his hands.

  “Rox, stop your cryin’. We’re both filled with a shitload of regrets. We just…need to break the pattern. We need to stop making decisions we’ll regret.”

  “What do you mean?” I inquire.

  His eyes don’t waver from mine, and a small smile tugs at his lips. “You don’t want him anymore, do you?”

  “No. I haven’t wanted him in years, Vince, not with…not since everything that’s happened.”

  “Then, why now? Why did you come with me now?” he asks. It is both the hardest and easiest question I have ever been asked. I didn’t fuckin’ know why I had never left before. I was stupid. I was beat the fuck out of until my brain just shut down. I wanted to go back and strangle that naïve little girl I used to be and slap the shit out of her until she woke the hell up and realized being with Rage was not her fairytale. That she had the man, the prince, right to begin with.

  “There is nothing I can say that is going to make any sense of it. But it was time. It was way past time, and I lost my baby. I lost him to that monster I used to love, and that was that. I saw the light, Hallelujah, and all that shit, Vince. I just wish I had seen it sooner.” I would probably wish that for the rest of my life.

  “I’m not going to make the same mistakes again, Roxy. I have a chance to have you, and you can sure as fuck bet I’m not gonna fuck this up.” I couldn’t believe what he was saying to me. He wanted to be in a… relationship with me? It had to be a joke.

  “You…you don’t know what you’re saying. Rage has…he’s fucked me up, okay? I have trust issues. I’m paranoid. He’s scarred my soul beyond recognition. I’m not the same girl you knew years ago.”

  “I know exactly what I’m saying. I want you. I’m not missing out on the chance of us again. We’re all a little fucked up, aren’t we? All of us are paranoid, shit, I even have some trust issues, none of us are perfect. You aren’t some broken little puppet Rox, you will never be like that. You’re so much stronger than you think.”

  “I…” Vince puts a finger over my lips as if to shush me.

  “Do you really think I’d go to these lengths to keep you safe if I didn’t cherish everything about you? If I didn’t love you for everything that you are and ever will be? I fucked up by letting you go. I fucked up by letting Rage do everything he’s done to you for all these years. No more. No more regrets. Now it’s you and me, let us find what we weren’t given the opportunity to explore, Rox. Give us a chance, please.” He leans his forehead down to mine, hands still cupping my face.

  He is right. He is so much more than just being right.

  I close my eyes for a split second, reflecting on everything that happened the past few years. I moved to our small town when my father had a transfer for his job with the Army. I met Vince at school and gained a friend, who turned into a little something more. Then, my father was killed in a traumatic accident where no one could have predicted it, and I lost everything. I leaned on Vince, and on Rage too. Eventually, Vince disappeared, and Rage became my constant day to day life. The abuse started shortly thereafter. Ever since then, it’d been a daily struggle, every day I’d wondered if that was the day that he’d finally be rid of me – that he’d kill me.

  I hated living life like that.

  Vince gave me an option to leave. He risked himself for me.

  I thought I could find the man I always wanted in my husband, but it turned out that I couldn’t. The man I always wanted was the man who walked away from me so his friend could be happy.

  I lean up on my tippy toes, pressing my lips gently against his. His right hand drops from my face, snaking around my body until he is holding the bottom of my back. He kisses me back, gently, slowly, we were exploring each other, getting reacquainted after all of those years apart.

  Why did I choose the bad guy when my good guy was right there?

  “I’ve missed you,” I mumble into our kiss, and I did.

  I didn’t realize it until right then, but God, I’d missed him so damn much.

  Chapter 8

  Feelings that come back are feelings that never went away.

  – QuotesofLife101.net

  Roxy

  It’s been three days since I’ve been here and since Vince and I shared that kiss, a rekindling of our past relationship – if that’s even what we call it. My feelings are so mixed up in my head right now. Part of me is happy that I’ve let go of the pent-up emotions I had towards him, and then there’s the other part of me that’s terrified out of my own damn mind because I know that me being up here in his cabin is going to be nothing but a ticking time bomb until Rage finds me – or us.

  I sink further into the comfortable fluffy couch that sits in his living room, underneath lies a beautiful carpet that is filled with reds, blues and yellows. It reminds me of something that a Native American tribe would have made, something that maybe he bought at a reservation. The entire cabin is light and bright, cream see-through colored drapes cover the windows, the wood is a light oak hardwood and the walls match it perfectly. I have to wonder if the house looked like this when he bought it or if he designed it to suit his needs.

  I turn the channel until I am watching old re-runs of Chuck Connors playing the Rifleman. Ever since I was a kid, I always enjoyed watching older television shows, whether it be westerns or gangster movies. There was always something beautiful about the level of acting that the older actors had opposed to the newer ones nowadays.

  The past three days haunt me like no oth
er. I can see every choice I made, how I let my heart out on the line and slept beside him that night – continuing to do so every single night we’ve been here. If I think long and hard about it, I have to wonder if I want to be so close to him because of all the years we spent apart. Years of us avoiding each other as much as we could. He flat out admitted it, and subconsciously I was doing the exact same thing. I don’t think I would ever admit what I was doing to his face, though.

  We’ve been living in a fantasy, there is no denying it. For three entire days we haven’t once discussed the ugliness of my reality, but I suppose maybe it is our reality now. There isn’t a moment that passes by where I don’t think of my son. In anything I do I can find a reminder of the life that was growing inside of me. In the light color of a soft shade of blue, or even staring at the deflated soccer ball that is right next to that one pine tree out back. There are constant reminders, and it is nothing but pure torture.

  Every minute I have to remind myself that things happen for a reason. I truly believe that. If I have learned anything through life it is that one statement. Things do happen for a reason, the only problem is that sometimes we don’t really know why, but it’s our job to figure that out.

  “You alright there, firefly?” I smell him before I see him, the scent of his masculine body wash floats through the room. A mixture of mint and something earthy. I wanted to know what that other smell was so badly, it served to hit my nostrils, bringing me out of this thought filled haze.

  “Yeah, mhm,” I mutter, bringing my legs up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. “I’m just thinking”

  “Never would’ve guessed,” Vince tells me sarcastically. I hear his bare feet padding against the wood floors until he’s next to me on the couch, wrapping an arm around me, pulling me to him.

  He’s shirtless, in a pair of worn denim jeans. Right now, I’d love to just enjoy the sight of him, but I just can’t force myself to do that. There are just too many unknown factors. I keep waiting for that other ball to drop, for Rage to come blazing in here and take me back home. I wonder about what’s going to happen when he finds out that Vince, or Tex as the brothers call him, was the one to take me away. I’m not only scared for me, but for Vince too.