“I know you would have,” Sienna said, and I jumped slightly. “Sorry, I could see your brain running over it all, and what I meant was that I know you’d have helped me if you’d known. The officer my parents reported it to, the one who led the investigation, just so happened to be her mom’s best friend’s husband, and he determined there was insufficient evidence to charge her with it. Her lawyer said the same thing and argued that accidents happened, even though this one was tragic, and the law couldn’t hold her accountable for it.
“She claimed I’d tripped on the stairs and that she’d tried to catch me before she could put the pencil she was carrying in her bag, and that’s what they went with. I was able to get a protection order, though. My lawyer did manage that much, at least. And, like I said, she was ordered to get help for her anger issues a few years ago, too, so…” she trailed off, shrugging a shoulder.
“Don’t dismiss this, Sienna. What happened and what she’s continued to do to you isn’t right.”
“Oh, I’m not dismissing it. I’ve just taken the power away from her. She still holds enough that I have issues leaving my home, and that’s more than she should be able to hold over me. I refuse to let her keep me hostage anymore. I’m focusing on what’s ahead of me, instead of what’s behind me.”
When she nodded down at her side, I resumed tattooing her, wondering at it all. There were no doubts in my mind what she’d told me was true, and that should say a lot about precisely who Hazel was. A stone-cold, lying, malicious, heartless bitch.
Sienna kept mentioning the fight she had mentally, and knowing even some of it, all I could see in her was one of the strongest people I’d ever met. Physical strength was relatively easy to gain and exert—mental not so much.
While I worked on her, we spoke through what we’d done with our lives, and I managed to get her to laugh properly a few times by telling her some stories. She was interested in The Broken Eagles and the brotherhood I was part of and commiserated when I told her briefly about what some of the women had been through.
But then she told me what she did for a living, and I had an idea. She was a pottery maker and painted her art on the side of them. I loved doing things like that and drew almost every night as a way to relax before I went to sleep.
Maybe if I offered to help her with some designs and showed an interest—even though it’d definitely be a genuine one—she’d say yes, and I’d get to see her again.
So that’s what I did. She didn’t say yes, but she did give me her number before she left, with the birds carrying away the power of what’d happened on her side.
Chapter Two
Sienna
“I can’t believe I missed it,” Maddie huffed down the phone after I told her about my day. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d made the appointment to get your tattoo done? I’d have swapped days off with Karen.”
We’d been best friends since we were five, and even moving away from Tennessee to Utah hadn’t changed that. When I’d told her I was moving back, she’d started making plans until it was time, and then she’d driven out with a U-Haul and helped me. Maddie was everything that was beautiful in the world, and I loved her like a sister.
“Because I have to adjust to being on my own, Mads. I’m twenty-nine, don’t you think it’s time?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t come with you. Have you seen the guys who work there?”
“Yeah, Jordan Quinn was the one who did my tattoo.”
There was a silence, and then she asked, “I thought one of them looked familiar. Is he still as hot as he was in high school? I’ve seen him from a distance, but I’ve never had the opportunity to do it up close.”
Smiling to myself, I stretched out on the couch, wincing as it pulled the raw skin on my side. “He’s hotter than high school, honey, and his arms are covered in seriously awesome tattoos now. I couldn’t stop looking at them.” Then, knowing this part would get her, I added as breezily as I could, “Oh, and he’s part of one of those clubs where they ride motorcycles called—”
“The Broken Eagles,” she breathed, sounding like I was telling her the best news in the world.
“That’s the one. I hadn’t heard of it, but they sound like they’re good guys.”
“I don’t know about good, but I know they’re all hot. Seeing them is the highlight of my day.”
I could just picture her staring out the window at the doctor’s office she worked in, watching the street for them to drive down it every day. “I’ll take your word for it.”