Ride And Obey MC

Twenty-Eight

Danielle POV

When I step through the door, the silence is heavier than usual. I shower, towel off, and change into something comfortable, but I don’t bother with the lights as I sink onto the couch. It’s still early. I could’ve gone back with Knox. He asked. I wanted to. But I needed time to think. Space to breathe.

Sam asked me if I was only here because I felt obligated to be. At the time, I brushed it off, but now I can’t shake it. Maybe he’s right. Maybe, in the beginning, I stayed because I thought I owed it to him. Because everyone told me that if I tried hard enough, I’d remember everything. That I’d feel the same way I used to. That love would come back once the pieces did.

It’s been five years.

And I’m not getting closer to him. I’m drifting further away with every forced conversation, every awkward kiss on the cheek, every attempt to fall back into a version of myself that no longer exists.

The front door creaks open and I look over my shoulder. Sam steps inside, drops his keys in the bowl, and starts unbuttoning his jacket like this is just any night. I didn’t expect him back so soon.

“You’re home early,” I murmur, keeping my voice even. I didn’t want to sound like I’d been thinking about him, but I didn’t expect to see him before midnight either.

“Didn’t plan on being late. I’ve got an early start tomorrow,” he says as he tosses his jacket onto the hook. He moves toward the couch and drops beside me, glancing at the television. “Are you actually watching this?”

I follow his gaze to the screen. Spaceships. Aliens. A genre I don’t even like. “Yeah,” I say with a dry smile. “I’m riveted by galactic warfare.” I toss him the remote and he chuckles as he catches it.

“How long have you been sitting here with that crap on?”

I shrug. “No clue. Long enough to forget I put it on, apparently.”

“You’re still awake too. That’s a shocker.” He chuckles as he pulls my legs into his lap. “How was work?”

“Same as always.” I don’t elaborate. Nothing changes there. The customers blur together, the hours pass, and Greg still hovers like a watchdog more than a boss.

“Greg mention the promotion yet?”

I shake my head. “He’s not going to give it to me, Sam. He likes me, sure, but not enough to promote me. Not someone like me.” I don’t say what I’m really thinking, that being promoted means arriving early, staying late, talking to strangers, and being alone with delivery guys. Things I can’t always handle.

“If he doesn’t, then he’s an i***t,” Sam says. I want to argue, but I don’t. It’s easier to let the words pass. He doesn’t see what Greg sees, he doesn’t see the way I flinch when a man raises his voice, or the way I can’t bring myself to look new staff in the eye.

“I was thinking,” he says after a pause, “for that week I’ve got off, instead of going to some busy place or city, maybe we go somewhere quieter.”

I blink. “You want to go somewhere quiet?”

“Yeah. I mean, you’ve been stuck here since the accident. Maybe the noise, the crowd, it’s all just too much. Thought it might help to get away from it.”

“We could try,” I say, though I don’t feel anything behind the words.

He nods like that’s all he needed to hear. “It wouldn’t be completely in the middle of nowhere. Just somewhere calmer. If there are restaurants, they’d be quiet. Fewer people. Less pressure.”

He stands up, stretching as he moves to the kitchen. I watch as he grabs two cans from the fridge, then returns and hands me one before flopping beside me again. He doesn’t say anything after that. Just goes back to watching the screen.

I stare at him.

He looks exactly like the man in those photographs. The same face, just older. In those pictures, I look in love with him. But sitting here now, beside him in the quiet, I don’t feel it. Not even a flicker of it. I’ve been trying so hard to fall back into that love, to revive something that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. And in doing that, I haven’t even built a friendship with him. We were never rebuilding. We were forcing something dead to breathe.

Maybe that’s where I went wrong. Instead of starting from the ground up, I kept reaching for a feeling that vanished the night I was left bleeding in that alley. I kept chasing it like it was something I’d dropped, and not something that had been torn away from me.

The police say I was going to see my sister. That I mentioned her at some point. But I haven’t spoken to her in years, and she still hates me. She hasn’t replied to a single message I’ve sent since I got out of the hospital.

Apparently, when they found me, I had a small overnight bag. That’s how they guessed I was heading somewhere. But the alley where I was found isn’t near her place. And it’s not near mine. It’s on the other side of the city.

So where the hell was I really going?

I force myself to think. To dig back into the fog. Sam said I used to talk about my sister a lot. That I wanted to fix things. That I carried guilt for how we left things. And maybe that’s true. Even now, with no memory of why we fought, I feel it. That lingering ache of unfinished business.

But would I really have just taken off and gone to see her without telling anyone? Without preparing myself?

I don’t know.

I don’t even know what kind of woman I was five years ago. I know the facts, sure. I have the memories. But the feeling behind them is gone. They play like clips from someone else’s life. I see myself smiling, hear myself laughing, but there’s no weight to any of it.

If I was going to my sister’s, maybe she turned me away. Maybe I was walking to work after that. Maybe I was just wandering, unsure of where to go.

And maybe, just maybe, I ran into the one person I should’ve feared all along.

The silence in the living room stretches far longer than it should. Sam shifts beside me, and I know he’s been watching, waiting for the right moment to try and pull me close. His hand brushes along my thigh, slow and deliberate, like he’s testing the waters. I don’t move, but it’s not permission.

“You’re miles away,” he says, voice low, almost careful.

I nod, eyes still fixed on the television I haven’t actually been watching for the past half hour. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m chasing something. A flicker. A sound. A half-formed memory that keeps slipping through my grasp just when I think I’ve caught it. Wet pavement. Cold air. The rhythmic thud of hurried footsteps.

He leans in and presses his lips to my neck. I go still. Not because I want him to stop, not exactly, but because I’m trying to remember. I need to remember. That night, where I was going, what I was doing, what the hell happened. Maybe if I push harder, maybe it will all come rushing back.

But it doesn’t.

Instead, he kisses me again, deeper now, and his weight begins to press me down into the cushions. My breath catches. I feel his hand slide behind my neck, the other bracing on the couch beside my head. He’s careful, but he’s heavy. He lowers himself until I can’t move.

“Sam,” I murmur, voice barely audible.

He doesn’t pause.

“Stop being dramatic.”

His mouth finds mine, but all I taste is fear. A jolt tears through me like lightning, and I can’t breathe. The room spins as my mind folds in on itself.

The memory doesn’t just return, it crashes.

I’m not in the living room anymore.

I’m back on cold concrete. My head hits hard. There’s a ringing in my ears and a searing pressure in my chest. A man’s hand grabs at my hair. My palms scrape against a brick wall as I try to twist free. I smell damp earth, blood, and something sharp, like sweat and cologne soaked into old leather. I feel the weight of him on me, crushing, suffocating.

He growls something in my ear, something I’ve heard before.

“Stop being dramatic.”

The same words Sam just used. The exact same tone.

My entire body locks. My scream claws its way up my throat, raw and violent, and I shove at him, at the pressure, at the memory. My nails scratch skin—Sam’s, not his—and he jerks back in alarm.

“What the f**k?” he says, staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Are you serious right now?”

I scramble upright, heart hammering so fast I can barely keep my balance.

“I kissed you,” he says, throwing his arms up. “That’s it. Don’t make this into something it wasn’t.”

But I can’t hear him properly. My ears are full of phantom echoes. The slap of boots on concrete. The gasping sobs I made when I couldn’t scream anymore. The voice in my head, mocking, cruel, and familiar.

I stagger to my feet, limbs trembling so violently I can barely stay upright. I reach for the wall, then drop to the floor as the panic finally overtakes me. My lungs won’t work. My fingers are numb. My throat is tight, and no air is moving.

“I can’t f*****g do this with you,” Sam says coldly. “I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but it’s not fair to keep punishing me for it.” He grabs his jacket and storms out, the door slamming hard enough to rattle the windows.

I’m left on the floor, shaking.

Dragging myself toward the bathroom, I crawl over the hardwood, my palms slick with sweat. The doorframe is a blur in my vision, but I pull myself through it and collapse against the cold tile. The temperature bites at my skin, but I don’t move. I curl into myself, arms around my knees, and rock slowly as I try to find the rhythm of my breath again.

But it won’t come.

All I can feel is the concrete beneath me. The way it scraped open my shoulder when I was shoved down. The weight of hands forcing me still. A laugh in the dark. A whisper in my ear that promised I’d asked for this.

And through it all, a voice I almost recognize. One I’ve heard before. Not in that alley. Not that night.

Earlier.

In another life.

But no matter how hard I try, the name won’t come. Only the memory of fear, pain, and silence.