Free Greatest Height (New Adult Biker Gang Romance) (Night Horses MC Book 6) by Sarah Sorana Page B

on metal.
     
    I was totally fucking losing it.
     
    When I got into my apartment, I shut and locked the door and leaned against it with my eyes shut for a moment, breathing hard.
     
    My eyes snapped open.
     
    I thought I’d been safe living with my parents, but people took me from my own fucking bed.
     
    I thought I was safe at school and guys I’d known for years tried to rape me on a cold institutional floor.
     
    How the hell was I safe here?
     
    I searched the apartment.
     
    It was a studio, so it didn’t exactly take very long, but I was really fucking thorough. Forget anywhere a man could hide, I checked any space, any crevice or drawer large enough for a grapefruit.
     
    I didn’t find anything I hadn’t put there with my own two hands.
     
    I dragged my bed in front of the only door into the place and sat on it.
     
    It wasn’t enough.
     
    I tried to shower. All I wanted was to scrub the feel of William’s hands off of my body.
    That was what I really wanted out of life right now.
     
    Fuck me, though, I couldn’t do it.
     
    I couldn’t bear to shut the door and be in a closed space. The medicine cabinet started to look like a locker, and the bile rose in my throat.
     
    Instead of getting clean, I ended up bent over the toilet, throwing up everything I’d ever eaten.
     
    I was a total fucking mess.
     
    All I needed was enough time to pull myself together, and I could call Merle.
     
    Merle would know what to do. He always did. He always helped me.
     
    I could pull myself together.
     
    I took a deep breath, resting my forehead on the cool edge of the tub.
     
    “I can do this,” I said out loud.
     
    Saying it helped.
     
    Hearing how quavery my voice was didn’t.
     
    I said it again.
     
    “I. Can. Do. This.”
     
    This time, my voice was stronger. It filled the room.
     
    I went into the main room, my eyes only darting around a little. I found my phone.
     
    I texted Merle - “I need you. Really bad day. Dinner?”
     
    Nothing.
     
    I played a few rounds of a silly game, waiting and waiting for him to reply. He usually did right away.
     
    Maybe something happened to him.
     
    Maybe he was dead somewhere, or in prison.
     
    Maybe he’d gotten in a fight with some asshole like Bill again and was in a ditch, or a hospital.
     
    Maybe he’d crashed his bike.
     
    Fuck, why did I have to date someone like Merle? There were way too many bad things that could have happened to him.
     
    “Come on,” I groaned, shaking my phone, as if that would magically make a text appear.
     
    One finally did, but only after twenty minutes.
     
    “Sorry. Talk 2mr.”
     
    What the fuck? He never used shortcuts in his texting, he was super proud about writing properly even though, in his words, “he wasn’t educated worth a tinker’s damn.”
     
    More than that, he never put me off.
     
    This was…
     
    Was he mad at me? Was there someone else?
     
    I pictured a beautiful blonde girl, tough and busty and everything I wasn’t, grabbing his phone from him as they kissed.
     
    “Who’s that?” she’d ask, holding it up and showing him my text.
     
    “No one, baby,” he’d say. “No one as special as you.”
     
    He’d laugh as she sent back “Sorry. Talk 2mr.”
     
    “Now, where were we?” she’d ask him, and they’d laugh and laugh and go back to what they were doing. In his bed.
     
    Okay, I was just being ridiculous.
     
    I had no reason to think that Merle was cheating on me.
     
    I mean, he had been a little distracted lately.
     
    He’d not talked about what he was doing outside of hanging out with me.
     
    He hadn’t really tried to kiss me.
     
    Oh my God, there was someone else.
     
    He was sick of me and he felt too bad for me to tell me, so the asshole was just stringing me along.
     
    I couldn’t believe it.
     
    Merle had never been anything but kind and wonderful to me until this week. What had I done to make him hate me?
     
    No, he didn’t hate me. Okay.
     
    He was