Was it too hard to move forward? Would she always be looking back with the guilt?
“How’s your food?”
Looking up, she stared into Whizz’s face. His beautiful dark eyes that were filled with light and dark, called to her. He’d been through a similar pain. Like him, she didn’t see what he’d been through. Lacey saw the man he was. He’d have made a brilliant father. She couldn’t give him children even if he wanted them with her.
“The food’s good.” She offered him a smile, which he returned with one of his own. “Did you want kids?”
Whizz blew out a breath. “I don’t know what I wanted. Kids were way off the mark for me. I liked to play. I’ve got an entire computer network set up in my room at the clubhouse. You’ve seen it. I’ve not thought about ever having kids.”
Lacey smiled, glancing down at her food. “Yeah, I expected to see an endless list of porn. I was quite surprised that there’s nothing on there.”
Darkness clouded his vision. The smile disappeared for the merest fraction of a second. If she hadn’t been watching him closely she wouldn’t have seen him withdraw from her. Lacey saw it, and it broke her heart. Whizz had a lot of secrets about his time, just like she did. She’d lied to Dalton in the past. She remembered everything that happened to her, the pain, the humiliation of it all. The man before her knew all about pain and trying to forget.
“I used to have a lot of porn.” He shrugged. She watched him move his pancake around his plate. “There were a lot of things I used to do.”
“Alan took it all away?” He winced at the name she spoke. She knew what that was like. For the longest time she couldn’t bring herself to say the name Gonzalez or to hear it. Living with a club intent on revenge, she’d learned to get over her issues with hearing the name.
“Yeah, he took it all away.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” She wouldn’t judge him. Lacey knew more than most what it was like to think all the time about what happened.
Whizz was silent. She stared at him as he took a bite of pancake then swilled it down with some coffee.
“When it was over I thought I’d be able to handle everything that was thrown at me. It was hard. I had all these pains and aches from the torture that I needed to recover from.” He stopped talking to take another bite to eat. She kept eating, watching, and listening to him at the same time. “The boys visited me and for a short time I could forget about the reason I was stuck in hospital, but then I’d catch one of them staring at me. There wouldn’t be a look of disgust or pain on their faces. No, I saw the pity, and it would bring it all back.” He stared off in the distance somewhere past her shoulder. She knew what it was like to remember, to be jolted back to another time. Reaching over the table, she gripped his hand, offering him the comfort he needed. “Those times were the worst. They’d leave, and everywhere I turned I could see him. I knew he was dead, but it was like his ghost was everywhere I turned. I would listen to music to drown out his voice. I could hear him, see him, and know that he’d changed me. The bastard was dead, but he was right there in my head, taunting me.”
Whizz’s jaw tensed, and she saw him gritting his teeth.
Opening her hand, she locked her fingers with his, holding him as he finally released the truth for her to hear.
“He talked throughout it?”
“Everything he did to me he talked. I remember thinking it would be a hell of a lot better if he shut up. The silence would make it easier.” He stared into her eyes, and she saw the fear that he’d suffered. “For a long time I thought I was going crazy because of the voices I was hearing. I’d scream and start throwing shit around, trying to fight what wasn’t there. The nurses would have to come and sedate me throughout the night for me to sleep. I’d thrash around, tearing my stitches open, but the night terrors were the worst. I was back there, and it was all real again.”
“The sedation rarely helps,” she said. “You’re asleep, but the dreams are just groggy. You need to run but because of the drugs you can’t run fast enough.”
He nodded. “You were sedated?”
“I had to be.”
Whizz tightened his grip on her hand. “Yeah, I read your file. I know what happened.”
She smiled at his words. “The computer whizz at work.”
“It’s why I was named that.” He gave her a smile. “When I got back to the clubhouse, it wasn’t the same. Nothing was ever the same. Butch had left the club for Cheryl and his fear of hurting her. When I went to my room, it was all the same, yet I was different. The women, the club whores expected me to be the same. To fuck at the drop of a hat. I couldn’t. I couldn’t get hard, and I didn’t want anyone touching me. That was the hardest. Being in crowded rooms made me sick to my stomach. I stayed out of the way. It was easier to stay in my room than to leave it. My room offered me salvation while the open world took everything away.”
She remembered the crowded rooms and the touching. Lacey hated being touched. The only person she’d ever accepted touch from had been Dalton. Whizz was the one man she wanted his touch, craved his touch more than anything else.
“I didn’t drink. I couldn’t bring myself to drink as I hated the loss of control. I needed control. It was the one saving grace in my life. Drugs were out of the question. In the hospital I lived on the drugs even when I didn’t want them. The last thing I wanted to do was take them again. The world was groggy, but I was still alive.”
“So you worked out?”
“Yeah, working out helped me to focus my mind. I was no longer thinking about Alan but the club. I worked out. I got tired, and I was able to sleep. I got stronger. The stronger I got, the more chance I had of helping in the future.”
“You were strong in the first place, Whizz.” She knew he couldn’t have not been strong to get into The Skulls.
“I wasn’t strong enough to stop being taken.”
“You couldn’t have changed that. No one could.”
“Still, I made a change, and no fucker is going to get the better of me.”
Lacey nodded. She didn’t want to let him believe otherwise. It didn’t matter how strong he was. When it came to the drugs, he couldn’t fight their effects.
“What about the nightmares?”
“They never disappeared. Some nights I was able to work myself into falling asleep and sleeping so deeply that I didn’t dream. Other nights I wasn’t able to.”