The first girl snorted. “What the fuck ever! You and I both know he can’t keep it in his pants. Poor girl’s going to get a rude awakening, especially when I see him tonight. She’ll watch him melt into me like he always does.” I narrowed my eyes at her.

“He doesn’t come back for seconds, Nicole,” Jade replied. “Except for Christy, but even that lasted, like, ten days. That had to be his record.”

“He’s fucked every girl in the bar. He’s out of options. He’ll come back.”

“Doubt it. Time to move onto someone else. Sara’s good for him.” Jade, defending me? Huh.

“But he was the best fuck of my life. You gotta give him that much credit, right?”

Jade laughed. “He was good. I’ll give him that.”

“And that girl isn’t half as pretty as me. She’s walking around in, like, hobo jeans and that ugly ass top. Come on. It’s a no brainer. She’ll be out before the night ends.”

The Sara I’d turned into the last few years would have shrunk into the back of the toilet stall, let them have their dirty say regarding things they had no business about. She would have been passive, allowed the hate to be aimed at her, allowed the words to sting her, and she would have shut her mouth and accepted it. She’d have let them continue to demean her and make fun of her, and she would have waited until they left the restroom before she got out. Then she’d have felt sorry for herself, pitied her existence and hated how weak she was.

That was the me that batted nobody an eye so that all attention was centred somewhere else. Attention was a temptation that might have brought back old feelings of the negative sides of me. The sides of me that got irrationally angry and violent. I wanted to be the old me minus those negative sides. I suddenly realized there was nothing stopping me.

I stood up and opened the unlocked stall door. The noise of the rusted metal scraping against itself stopped their conversation. When the door opened, both of their heads were already turned to me. I looked at the blonde bitch who was supposedly prettier than me. Loaded with caked up make-up and hairspray, I concluded that she most definitely was not.

Then I turned my gaze to Jade. Yep, looking at the splash of freckles and the roundness of her face, this was indeed Jade Smith, my grade school bully. She’d left me alone after Jaxon had turned his sights on her and given her the same treatment she’d placed on me. After that year of bullying he stopped, and she never spoke to me again. We attended different high schools and only occasionally bumped into the same social circles growing up, but we never said a word to each other.

She looked more shocked than her friend, with her big brown eyes practically leaping out of her face. I thought she was frightened the way her lips quivered and opened as if to say something – what, an apology perhaps? – before shutting them again.

“I wonder what you could possibly try to achieve by talking about shit you have no idea about,” I started, staring at them both in equal measures. I kept my voice calm and still, but resolute enough to cause them to stiffen in the unpredictability of the situation. “Does it make you feel better? Does it make you feel happy that you spout bullshit – as if to compensate for your own fucking insecurity? Like fucking children standing there, mouthing me off like you know anything about me, or about him. So you fucked him once and he doesn’t want you anymore – now you have to turn your sights on me and degrade my character that you know pathetically nothing about? You fucking make me sick.” I stared long and hard at the blonde now, turning my complete attention to her. “Get some dignity. Wash your fucking face and start dressing your fucking age.”

Anger clouded her face, drowning out its former surprise.

“Did I say something to upset you?” I challenged with a raise of my brows. I hardened my voice. “If so, open your fucking mouth and say it to my face.” I waited with bated breath for her to speak. She wouldn’t.

“Grow the fuck up,” was my last line before I turned away and stormed out of there.

My adrenaline was high and my legs were charged with energy. I hurried back to the door where Damien was still standing. I didn’t look at him as I sat back down on the chair and brought both hands together. I was angry, but not at one particular thing. I drowned out my thoughts by closing my eyes and counting from one to a hundred. I remember my therapist once telling me that distraction was key to reigning down the intensity of my anger. My mind was trying hard to stew over every fucking thought that wanted to be analysed – and I knew it would make my anger worse, so I counted away, squelching that need that stuck out like a fork in a road in the back of my mind.

I don’t know how long I sat there, eyes closed, counting away. All I know is I’d counted to a hundred half a dozen times when a hand rested on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and looked up at Jaxon’s concerned face. My internal-self screamed at him because he was the reason I was like this, but my outer-self smiled warmly up at him.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his hand out to me.

No. “No,” I answered, surprised by my admittance.

He didn’t look surprised. “You want to get out of here?”

“Yes.”

I grabbed his hand and let him steer me out of the bar. Feeling the warmth of his skin against my own helped enormously. My heart was still battering against my chest, but the anger was on standby. The counting had done wonders, thank fuck.

Once outside of the bar and into the fresh, moist air, he walked me to the car and stopped. We were alone in the parking lot, but you could hear the noises from the bar littering the air around us.

“What’s the matter?” he asked me.

I let go of his hand and rested my back against the wet passenger door of his car. Then I crossed my arms and took a long moment to decide my words while staring up at the firmament blackness overhead. I don’t know why I always thought of lanterns when I gazed at the stars. It was suddenly so silly to be angry; I’m just a human, and up there is a chasm of worlds being born. How silly to think I was significant at all… A pretty pessimistic thought process, I know, but just that thought alone extinguished that anger on standby. The world was too great to be angry right this moment. But I could still feel disappointed.

“I think you know what’s wrong,” I finally whispered, keeping my voice levelled.

“Bringing you here was a mistake.” Exasperated, he ran a hand through his hair. “I never should have brought you here to see all this.”

“But that’s who you are now, isn’t it?” I replied, motioning to the bar. “It’s fucking ominous as hell for me, Jaxon. You go in there and you speak behind closed doors, and then you get out and you obey his commands, and then you fuck every pussy that walks within a metre of you.”

He winced at my last few words. “It’s not entirely like that--”

“That man is dead, isn’t he? The one that attacked me at the motel. The one who is clearly in the Black-Backed Jackal gang because his brother – donning that fucking leather jacket – walked in asking for it–”

“His brother is in the gang, but Brett wasn’t.”

“But now you’ve crossed them, haven’t you?”

He looked around us quickly. His cautious eyes wandered over every inch of the parking lot. “Stop talking about this out here in the open.”

“Is he dead?” I already knew the answer, I just wanted him to say it.

He pressed his lips together and glared at me. “Don’t ask questions you don’t like the answers to–”

“You’re just going to keep closing the lid on it, aren’t you?” I exhaled in irritation. “What’s so hard about answering it?”

“Because I’m answering you, and I value you so goddamn much, Sara.”

What the fuck ever. I shook my head, welcoming the exhaustion in my chest. Talking about the demise of that man was pointless. Jaxon wasn’t going to say the answer out loud.

“Fine,” I breathed, equally glaring back. “You can keep that answer to yourself, but you will tell me what you’re up to with that man.”

“Strictly business, Sara.”

“Is it drugs?”

Angrily, he retorted, “No, and I’m not talking about it out here of all fucking places.” His impatience shone while he continued to look around us.

“Then take me home and discuss it with me there.” There was no way I was going to drop this. I needed to know what the fuck he was involved in because if it included the Jackals, then it wasn’t pretty.

“I can’t right now,” he replied, reaching to grab my hand again. “I’ve got to stay back. I came here to tell you that Damien’s going to give you a lift to my apartment–”

I ripped my hand from his grip again. “Are you serious right now? Why do you want me gone?”

“It’s clear you aren’t going to have any good time in there with all those men.”

“But it’s okay for me to leave you in there with all those women, right?” I countered. I was still far from angry, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to sound like I was. If anything, I was distraught by what I just learned in that toilet stall.

“I would never do anything to deceive you, especially after tonight–”

“Jade Smith,” I interrupted sharply.

His face didn’t register – but then again, I’d learned that Jaxon was a good liar. “What are you on about, Sara?”

“I already gathered in there by the way those guys were placing dibs on me that women get passed around like fucking church plates on Christmas. It’s pretty obvious you’ve had your share of them.” I ignored the conflicted look on his face. “But Jade Smith, Jaxon? The girl that bullied me and made me hate waking up every single morning – her? Are your standards so low that you’d hurt me in the process?”

For the longest time, he didn’t reply. He wouldn’t even meet my eye. I started to regret bringing this up now, especially when it meant so little compared to the real problem – which was what the fuck Jaxon was up to with these kinds of people.

“I don’t know what to say,” he finally said. He looked at me with resignation. The mask was off, and I saw the weariness in his eyes as he heaved a shrug. “I was hurt for the longest time. I won’t lie and say I don’t remember her. I knew what I was doing, and I could have walked away. I didn’t, though. At that point you’d moved on and I was trying to forget you. I’m sorry.”

I glazed over most of his words, too consumed in the pain of what he’d been up to.

“I’m sorry, Sara,” he repeated. “You promised the long haul, remember? Please, don’t break that promise. I’ve made mistakes – fuck, I’ve made so many – but I need you, and I’ll do anything to prove to you that I can be just as I was before. You need to give me that chance, and I promise, I promise with everything in me, I won’t disappoint you. We’ll talk it through, everything you want to know I’ll explain. Just not right this very second outside of this bar at the risk of being heard.”

Too lost for words, I succumbed to his wants and nodded. He moved into me and planted a soft kiss on my unmoving lips. Suddenly feeling detached, I looked over his shoulder as his arms wrapped around my hips.

“I promise,” he repeated. Chest against chest, I could feel his heart beating riotously within its confines. His palpable fear of losing me was multiplying with every second I didn’t respond. “Please, Sara.”

“Okay, Jaxon,” I whispered. When he kissed me again, I moved my lips against the softness of his. Still, I was detached. There was an unfamiliar tremble in my bones as the unsettling and unanswered questions weighed down on my mind.

The sound of footsteps nearing us interrupted our kiss. We turned and saw Damien making his way over. Jaxon dug into his pocket and pulled out a key chain. He pulled out one key and handed it to me, telling me it was his apartment key. He instructed Damien to drop me directly at the apartment door and make sure I was safely inside. Then he went back into the bar and I was following Damien to a black SUV.

*****

Five minutes into the drive and I was losing my shit. This was not what I signed up for! I didn’t come to Gosnells only to wind up here in some strange ass predicament that involved bikie gangs and other weird gangs inked with scorpion tattoos who called dibs to fuck me.

Suddenly the entire week’s events came crashing down on me and I was sweating up a storm when Brett’s face shone itself in my memories. The stench of his alcohol in my nose, the wild craze in his eyes, the dark intentions that radiated off of him when he cornered me in that room.

Then shame washed down the fear as I remembered fucking Jaxon thereafter. What in God’s name was I thinking fucking him after almost getting raped by another man? What kind of psychological fucked-upness was that? To boot, I deceived a good man who, instead of being angry at me, defended me!

Five years of burying my anger, learning to control my actions, trying to change for the better only to relapse the second my feet touched down in this god forsaken cesspool of a town. All recent certainties were no longer certain. When Jaxon had me promising to stick by him tonight, he never mentioned this, and although I’d been aware of a danger looming presently around him, I never once anticipated this kind of it.

Yet despite all of this, the unsettling feeling I had beneath the surface of my being was in regards to something entirely different. As if I was missing a certain piece to this crazy puzzle I couldn’t put my finger on. Always it tried to course its way into my thoughts, and the second it was achieving tangibility, it scurried back off into my veiled subconscious.