Six-Gun - Winter Travers Page 0,12

thing before, but I couldn’t do it.

She shook her head. “No, I wanted to talk to you about me.”

Oh. Well, that wasn’t what I expected. “About you?” I repeated.

“Yes, honey. You and I are much more alike than you think.” She raised her hand to the bartender and asked for two glasses of water. She took a sip and sighed deep. “You know when Barracuda and I were hooking up?”

I nodded.

“Well, we weren’t hooking up. He was helping me get away from my ex who liked to beat and rape me when he had a little too much to drink.” She sighed and her eyes connected with mine.

Her words hit me like a freight train. “What?” I gasped. Strong and powerful Mitzy had been raped and beaten by her ex? How?

“Yes, honey. I’ve been in your same shoes.” She sighed. “I was in them for two years, though. For a long time I thought I deserved everything he did to me. I was late coming home. I forgot to buy milk. I didn’t make enough dinner. No matter what I did, there was always a reason to hit me.”

Holy shit. “I’m so sorry.” Here I sat, feeling sorry for myself when Mitzy had been through the same thing as me. Possibly even worse. For years.

“You don’t need to apologize, just like I’m not going to apologize to you for what happened to you. That doesn’t help. It doesn’t do anything to make the pain go away.”

“What makes the pain go away?” I was dying to know what I needed to do, think, or say for me to feel normal again. To not think on some level, I deserved what happened to me. I was doing something bad, so then something bad happened to me. I got what was coming to me. That was the only conclusion I always came to.

Do bad things, and bad things happen to you.

“Nothing.”

Her word hit me like a ton of bricks. “What?” I whispered.

She reached out and clutched my hand. “You learn to live with it and know you’ll never let it happen to you again. You take back the power taken away from you. Everything you do from now will be you lifting your middle finger in the air and saying fuck you to Jester and any other man who thinks they can take your power away.” Mitzy raised her middle finger. “Barracuda and the Royal Bastards taught me that. They helped me find my power again when I thought it was lost forever.”

I had only been working at Skinz for a little more than a year. I had always only known Mitzy as the badass bitch she was. “I don’t even know where to start to begin to think like that. I keep blaming myself for what happened to Billie Jean and I.”

She nodded over my shoulder. “That’s where that man comes in. He wants to help you. I’ve seen the way his eyes stay on you. How he searches for you when you move from his line of sight. He’s not looking for anything more than to help you find your way back. To find your power and lift your middle finger to the whole world. He just wants you to be the badass bitch you were before. He’s gonna help you find her.”

I blinked back the tears in my eyes. “How, Mitzy?”

She squeezed my hand. “Just let him be there, Memphis. Give him everything you can’t handle. Hell, you don’t even have to talk, Memphis. I can’t tell you how many nights I just sat there with Barracuda. Neither of us talking. It was nice just knowing he was there.”

“You two never…”

Mitzy shook her head. “No. Everyone thought we did, but there was never anything more between us than he helped me heal. To find the person I am now.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Six-Gun. “But what if he wants more? What if he isn’t like Barracuda.”

Mitzy drained her glass of water and stood. “He might want more, but I can tell you he is like Barracuda because he wouldn’t let anyone into his clubhouse who wasn’t. They may call themselves Bastards, but when it comes to women, children, and the innocent, they’ll do everything they can to protect them.” She rested her hand on my shoulder. “You’re going through a lot. I’m not telling you to sweep it under the rug. I’m telling you to face it head-on and find a way to live. Don’t let Jester win by