Verek (Savage Kings MC - South Carolina #3) - Lane Hart Page 0,5
need you fucking with her head! Now, this is my goddamn table and it’s my decision how we go after these men, unless you want to challenge me for the gavel?” he asks, picking the wooden mallet up by the handle.
I grit my teeth together but don’t answer. I don’t want to be the fucking president, not that I think I would have enough votes even if I wanted to try and overthrow Roman. All I want is to finish this shit for Tessa so she can move on with her life.
I can’t even argue that he’s wrong about letting me see her.
It’s my fault she left the club the night she was abducted. That’s why I have to be the one to make it right, to try and make amends by killing the men who hurt her.
Tessa
* * *
“So, how was your weekend?” Dr. Burgess, my psychiatrist, asks as soon as I get seated on the light blue sofa in her office.
“Fine,” I answer truthfully. Living with Charlotte and Roman isn’t ideal, but it’s better than being alone back in Raleigh. Or with Paul. And I definitely can’t tell her that Friday night, Roman and the Savage Kings were able to find one of my attackers and that he’s currently being held hostage and tortured for the other names.
“Are you still having nightmares?” she asks as her pen moves across the notepad in her lap.
God, I hate that question. What I have are not nightmares. They’re real. Every night when I close my eyes and drift off to sleep, I’m right back in that damn van. I feel the same terrifying helplessness, knowing the horrors that await me but being completely unable to prevent what is coming. I thought I was going to die when I woke up in the storage facility with tape over my mouth. A man I didn’t know and hadn’t seen in the van was on top of me, inside me, biting my breast hard enough to make me bleed while the others held me down. When he finished, they locked my head and wrists in the stocks and…well, that’s when I wanted to die because what they did to me hurt so much. I never knew pain like that existed. I don’t know how a human body can survive such agonies.
It’s not a nightmare. It’s the events I survived just eight or so weeks ago, replaying on a constant loop in my head. The only peace I get is at the end, when I’ve been left alone for hours that feel like days in the cold, dark unit, before I hear Verek’s voice and see his face when he carries me out of that hellhole. Only then can I finally sleep soundly for a few short hours before it all starts over.
I retrieve a pack of gum from my purse, peppermint flavor, and unwrap a stick to put in my mouth. Ever since that night, the scent has been soothing, comforting whenever I’m upset. Once I’ve started chewing it, I finally answer the psychiatrist. “Yes. I still have trouble sleeping because of…nightmares,” I say, using her preferred word.
“Are you taking the sleep aid I prescribed?” Dr. Burgess asks.
“No,” I tell her honestly, biting down hard on my gum. “Those made it harder to wake up, so I stopped taking them.”
She scribbles down more notes.
“What else is new besides your living arrangements?” she asks. “Have you spoken to Paul?”
“No. I told you I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Because you don’t think he’ll respect your boundaries? That he’ll try to touch you without your permission.”
“Yes, that’s part of it,” I agree as I stare down at my fingers twisting in my lap. “I don’t want to lead him on. We’re not getting back together, so I don’t think I should speak to him at all.”
“It’s still nice to have friends.”
“I have friends. I have Charlotte and Roman. My former coworkers, Bev, Sydney, and Ruth. Oh, and, um, Verek,” I reply, even though I haven’t seen Verek in a week, since I left the treatment facility. He used to visit every day, and now he only sends a couple of texts a day, asking how I am.
“Let’s talk about Verek for a moment,” she says.
“What about him?”
“The two of you are just friends, but he was visiting you every day while you were an inpatient, bringing you flowers and telling you funny stories to cheer you up?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I reply, sad that the peppermint gum