King (Rogue Rebels MC 2)

When I looked up at Charity, I noticed the look of sympathy she had in her eyes. I didn’t want her to be sympathetic. I wanted her to help me find a black shirt!

“I would have offered you one of mine, but you’ll float in it,” she said and smiled. She liked to self-depreciate herself. She was what…a size 16? She was big and curvy and had the kind of boobs I was jealous of, but she liked to call herself that ugly word… “fat”. To me, she was beautiful and needed to embrace her body more.

“Don’t be silly, Charity, you seriously need to stop talking about yourself that way,” I said, bending down to fling clothes out of boxes as I rummaged through them.

“I’m being honest. You’re skinny, I’m not…which means that my smallest black shirt…you know, the one whose buttons keep popping open when I wear it, will be five sizes too large for you,” she continued in that same tone and I rolled my eyes at her.

I still hadn’t found it.

I was hunched on the floor now, flinging clothes around me. I was going through box after box but there was no sign of a black shirt anywhere.

“What the hell am I going to wear? Everything is in boxes. I need to be appropriately dressed!” I barked at nobody and nothing in particular.

“Just calm down, Ava, we’ll find you something to wear,” Charity said and I shook my head, still frustrated with everyone and everything. I knew I had no reason to be taking it out on her, but I was trying so hard to keep my emotions in check and now things were beginning to get a little out of hand.

“What am I going to do?” I said, a tear rising in my voice and she jumped out of bed and came over to give me a hug.

“I’m gonna go check the laundry and see if I can find something for you to wear, okay?” she said and I nodded my head and threw her a smile. I was grateful for having a friend like her, and I’d stopped myself from erupting.

The only way was the way forward and the sooner I left my frustrations behind me, the easier it would be for me to move on.

Charity left the room in search of a black shirt or something appropriate that might fit me, and I remained on the floor, flicking through clothes and other possessions…most of which I couldn’t even remember buying.

It was strange to see that my whole life had fit into five boxes. Five perfectly square cardboard boxes were the sum total of my life. I was just glad I hadn’t adopted the puppy I was going to last Christmas, this whole ordeal would have been a million times more difficult if I was also responsible for another soul.

With my arms sunk into one of the boxes, I tried pulling out a silky material which I thought could be the black silk shirt I remembered buying some years ago. Instead, when I pulled it out, I saw that it was a silk scarf and I dropped it from my hand, like I’d touched lava.

It lay on the floor innocently at my feet. Orange and beige patterned, one I used to wear quite often, not necessarily because I liked it…orange was never really my color…but more so because it was one of the first gifts that Blaine had given me. And when I spent the day with it tied around my neck, it reminded me of him and I liked that feeling, of belonging to someone.

Blaine and I had met a year after high school, well, my high school. He already had a high-flying job and a career. The fact that he was a little older gave me a kind of thrill that I hadn’t experienced with other guys before. High school’s sloppy kissers and awkward dancers had turned into this man who had a job, could afford to rent an apartment by himself and last more than three minutes in bed.

The foolish twenty-year-old me believed that she had met her dream man. The foolish twenty-year-old me didn’t realize that there were other signs to look out for. That it wasn’t exactly paradise I was living in.

Within six months of dating, he had asked me to move in with him and I was more than thrilled to have an opportunity to leave home. I should have gone to college, I should have studied to become a Vet Tech like I always wanted to, but instead, I settled for playing house with a man I didn’t really know.

Blaine had the makings of a good boyfriend.

He opened car doors for me, held out my chair at dinner, replied to my messages and left me little gifts in the bathroom before he left for work. These were the signs I was looking for. I believed these were indications that I’d found my soulmate.

What I hadn’t been looking for, was the way he looked at me, if the smile reached his eyes when I cracked a joke. If he kissed me goodnight when he went to sleep. If I always went to bed with him by my side.

I was younger than him, and he had me believe that I didn’t understand what it was to have a real job and real responsibilities. He always claimed that he was out earning a living for us, to build a home for us and the fact that he worked hard and worked late into the night; were supposed to be testaments to how much he wanted us to have a good life.

In my hand now was the scarf that I had discarded on the floor. The gift he had given me on our third date and the one I liked to wear often, no matter how garish it looked with the clothes I had on. And as I held it in my hands, I could still remember that time he didn’t come home the entire weekend.

One whole weekend. Asshole.

He barely answered my calls and only replied to my texts to let me know that he was alive and well. When he returned, he warded off all my questions with the excuse that he was caught up in meetings and couldn’t leave the office.

That was when I started looking for other signs. I tried to rack my brain and think about all those nights he hadn’t returned home, or if he did return home late; how he had been drinking and how his clothes smelt of someone’s else’s perfume. He’d always made sure that I was aware he worked with a lot of female colleagues, but how close were they working together for their perfumes to have rubbed off on his clothes?

That weekend away was a line he had crossed and after mulling over it for two days, I decided to confront him.

I was twenty-three by now, working two part time jobs and still dreaming about a life surrounded by animals. My daily schedule had revolved around Blaine’s up to this point, and I wanted to know if it had all been in vain. If he had been cheating on me this whole time.

When I confronted him after work that evening, I could see the rage in his eyes. I hadn’t realized how much he hated being questioned. We had shared a quiet, vanilla relationship with scheduled sex once every four weeks if I was lucky. I hadn’t ever raised my voice to him before and the fights we had; always ended with him taking me out to dinner or buying me something expensive. The fact that I was challenging him for the first time, didn’t please him. Not one bit.

I continued to grill him. Questioning the late nights. The perfume. The weekend away and his slap came out of nowhere. He’d caught my jaw and it felt like a punch and I fell down to the carpeted floor from the force.