CRASH (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) Read Online Free
Author: Daphne Loveling
of heavy drinking and partying, to stave off the demons we had all glimpsed today. Myself included.
3
Cherish
I t took me three days to get to Lupine, Colorado.
Three days of getting off of one bus, waiting hours for the next one to arrive, and living in a more or less constant state of panic that someone from the WFZ Ranch would find me and drag me back home.
I knew that the leader, Harlan Radleff, would never let me go without attempting to find me and drag me back. It had happened before. People who left and never came back were bad for the interior harmony of the community. The idea that anyone would want to leave that earthly paradise would send whispers and rumors skittering around the Ranch, and Radleff and his men wanted to avoid that whenever possible. I just had to hope that the precautions I had taken to avoid being followed would be enough to keep them from figuring out where I was until eventually they just gave up.
Only a handful of people had ever tried to leave in my memory. And when, inevitably, they were brought back, they were kept in isolation for a few days, far from curious eyes. When they finally rejoined the community again, they usually said that they had fallen ill from some malady they had picked up outside the Ranch and had to be nursed back to health. Their drawn expressions and tired eyes seemed to corroborate that explanation, but I think many knew better.
Usually, once someone had tried to leave and failed, they didn’t try again. In fact, I could only remember one person ever getting out successfully and not returning. That person was who I had come so far to find.
I had been wearing the same set of clothes since my escape, and hadn’t been able to bathe except by wiping myself off with wet paper towels in bus terminal restrooms. I had almost run out of the money I’d managed to bring, even as careful as I had been with it. I was exhausted from the little bits of fitful sleep I had managed on the road, having been too afraid of discovery to let myself nap in bus stations.
On the morning I finally got to Lupine, I used most of my remaining money treating myself to a real breakfast in a diner to fortify myself. Then I spent the next few hours making inquiries about the person I had come to see. Mistakenly, I had thought that once I was in Lupine, the hard part would be over. It turned out that tracking him down was more difficult than I imagined it would be.
In fairness, I didn’t know what I had expected. All the information I had — the sum total of all the things I had heard about him since he had disappeared — was his name and the name of the town he was said to have gone to. And that he was a biker.
Not like a bicyclist. A motorcycle rider. And to hear my brother tell it, he was probably a rapist and an axe murderer to boot.
Which raised the question of why in heaven’s name I was trying to find him in the first place.
The truth was, I didn’t see that I had much choice. Maybe other people in the world were just stronger than I was. It had taken me more than a year to finally convince myself that I had to leave the Ranch — that any life on the outside would be better than the life I was condemned to there. I had spent months of planning, secreting away clothes and money that I would need to get away and start fresh somewhere else. I had spent countless nights lying awake, practically paralyzed with fear that Isaiah would find where I had hidden those things and beat me, then haul me in front of the leader and the council for my punishment.
After all of that, I had somehow found the courage to actually leave. But the only way I was able to manage to convince myself to actually go through with it was by telling myself that there was someone out there on the other side who would help me. Who had to help me. Even if he didn’t want to. Simply because he was the only one who could.
At the restaurant where I bought juice, eggs, and hash browns, I asked the waitress if
3
Cherish
I t took me three days to get to Lupine, Colorado.
Three days of getting off of one bus, waiting hours for the next one to arrive, and living in a more or less constant state of panic that someone from the WFZ Ranch would find me and drag me back home.
I knew that the leader, Harlan Radleff, would never let me go without attempting to find me and drag me back. It had happened before. People who left and never came back were bad for the interior harmony of the community. The idea that anyone would want to leave that earthly paradise would send whispers and rumors skittering around the Ranch, and Radleff and his men wanted to avoid that whenever possible. I just had to hope that the precautions I had taken to avoid being followed would be enough to keep them from figuring out where I was until eventually they just gave up.
Only a handful of people had ever tried to leave in my memory. And when, inevitably, they were brought back, they were kept in isolation for a few days, far from curious eyes. When they finally rejoined the community again, they usually said that they had fallen ill from some malady they had picked up outside the Ranch and had to be nursed back to health. Their drawn expressions and tired eyes seemed to corroborate that explanation, but I think many knew better.
Usually, once someone had tried to leave and failed, they didn’t try again. In fact, I could only remember one person ever getting out successfully and not returning. That person was who I had come so far to find.
I had been wearing the same set of clothes since my escape, and hadn’t been able to bathe except by wiping myself off with wet paper towels in bus terminal restrooms. I had almost run out of the money I’d managed to bring, even as careful as I had been with it. I was exhausted from the little bits of fitful sleep I had managed on the road, having been too afraid of discovery to let myself nap in bus stations.
On the morning I finally got to Lupine, I used most of my remaining money treating myself to a real breakfast in a diner to fortify myself. Then I spent the next few hours making inquiries about the person I had come to see. Mistakenly, I had thought that once I was in Lupine, the hard part would be over. It turned out that tracking him down was more difficult than I imagined it would be.
In fairness, I didn’t know what I had expected. All the information I had — the sum total of all the things I had heard about him since he had disappeared — was his name and the name of the town he was said to have gone to. And that he was a biker.
Not like a bicyclist. A motorcycle rider. And to hear my brother tell it, he was probably a rapist and an axe murderer to boot.
Which raised the question of why in heaven’s name I was trying to find him in the first place.
The truth was, I didn’t see that I had much choice. Maybe other people in the world were just stronger than I was. It had taken me more than a year to finally convince myself that I had to leave the Ranch — that any life on the outside would be better than the life I was condemned to there. I had spent months of planning, secreting away clothes and money that I would need to get away and start fresh somewhere else. I had spent countless nights lying awake, practically paralyzed with fear that Isaiah would find where I had hidden those things and beat me, then haul me in front of the leader and the council for my punishment.
After all of that, I had somehow found the courage to actually leave. But the only way I was able to manage to convince myself to actually go through with it was by telling myself that there was someone out there on the other side who would help me. Who had to help me. Even if he didn’t want to. Simply because he was the only one who could.
At the restaurant where I bought juice, eggs, and hash browns, I asked the waitress if
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