A Dream of Summer (Bleeding Angels MC Book 3) (2 page)

I push myself up off the stair and, walking back to the family room, I feel all the muscles in my body.  It’s like the adrenaline that had been flooding through me has finally petered out and now my body is getting its revenge.  I sit down heavily on the couch, feeling more tired than I ever have in my life.

My mother doesn’t say anything for a few moments, but I know without looking at her that her attention is trained on me.  “What, momma?” I ask, wearily.

Her eyes are soft and kind as she looks at me, arranging herself on the couch so that she’s facing me.  It’s been years since we had a conversation, years since she was even able to follow a simple sentence.  It feels more than a little surreal sitting next to her, talking like this as if there’s nothing strange about the fact that she’s back in the world with us.  I don’t say any of this out loud, it’s too much to take on board and analyze right now.  There’s a lot to deal with already without trying to piece together some sense of my mother’s illness and seemingly-miraculous recovery.  She’s here when I need her most, I’m not going to question the whys or the wherefores.

She brushes an imaginary strand of hair out of her face and seems to be weighing up whatever it is that she wants to say. 

“You’ve spent years not talking,” I remind her flatly.  “Now is the time to speak if you have something to say.”  Distantly, I know that I’m probably coming across as harsh, but the time for tact and tip-toeing around things has officially come to an end.  We’re in a war, there’s no time for the niceties.

“What happened to you?” my mother’s words are as direct as mine were.  But the uneasy way she looks at me tells me that she’s not sure if she’s going to want to know the answer.

I squirm uncomfortably in my seat and suddenly find the couch’s worn floral pattern incredibly interesting.  “What do you mean?”  It’s a pointless question, I know that before the words are even out of my mouth.

My mother fixes me with a look that I haven’t seen in years.  It was the look she used to give me if I lied about something blatantly obvious; like the time Jake and I had broken the window in the kitchen playing ball when we were kids and I’d told her it must have been a raccoon.  I smile faintly at the memory, but a wave of emotion rolls over me as I think about Jake.  I have to push the thought of him out of my head if I want to help him.  There’s no way that I can do what needs to be done while I’m being a basket-case.

“Your clothes are filthy and your dress is missing more than a few buttons.  Your face looks like you’ve just done a few rounds with Mike Tyson.  Should I go on?” she shakes her head in frustration as she gets off the couch and heads towards the kitchen.  “Are you coming?” she turns, hand on her hip in a gesture that I remember so well. 

I follow her dutifully, taking a seat at the kitchen table without saying anything as she busies herself boiling some hot water and opening and closing cupboards in a frenzy.  I can’t help but follow the path she wreaks around the room, she’s like a whirlwind.  It’s seems like all the energy that she’s been storing up over these past years has finally been unleashed on the Summers’ kitchen.

She pulls up a chair opposite me armed with a bowl of hot water, salt and one of Sally’s good dishtowels.  “I don’t think you’re supposed to use -,” I start to point out but I’m cut off by the expression on my mother’s face.  Her expression tells me that she doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the dishtowels.

She gently dabs at my face and I’m surprised when she dips the towel in the water and it turns brown.  I must look like I’ve taken a dirt bath.

“So?” she touches the towel to the corner of my mouth and I jerk away as I feel the sting of the salt in the cut.

“Ouch,” I complain but I let her carry on.  I know that whatever she’s doing is going to help.  “I suppose the walking into a door excuse wouldn’t really fly.”  It’s a poor attempt at a joke but, right now, it’s the best that I can do. 

My mother doesn’t say anything, instead she just waits.  It was a tactic I remember well.  It was the silent treatment.  Whereas my dad would talk until he was blue in the face, my mother would keep quiet, knowing that the weight of the silence was so much more oppressive than the barrage of questions.  This was one of those times.

“I went to see Ryan,” the name comes out of my mouth like something that I’m trying to spit out.  It’s strange, I feel like I’m betraying Jake all over again, just by saying Ryan’s name.

My mother nods, all business, still concentrating hard on wiping the grime off of my face.  “Sally told me you mentioned doing something for Jake.”

The thought of what I’d been prepared to do makes me feel sick and the bile starts to rise in my throat and tears prick behind my eyes.  I recognize the signs - my breathing gets shallow, like I can’t get enough air in my lungs.  It’s the start of a panic attack, but this isn’t the time for it, I can’t cope with this now.  I push it away, bottling it up for a time when I have the luxury of coming apart at the seams.

“What happened, Aimee?  You don’t have to deal with this on your own, not anymore.”  My mother’s face is close to mine and there’s something so reassuring in her words that they make me want to put my head on her lap and curl up beside her like I did when I was a little girl.

So I tell her.  Just like that the words come tumbling out, falling over themselves in their eagerness to be out and not something that I’m holding onto by myself.  I tell her about the offer that Ryan made me and the fact that I kept it a secret from Jake because I was worried that he would do something stupid if he found out what Ryan had asked of me.  I tell her about going to ‘Wheels’ and how scared and alone I had felt.  I tell her about Ryan acting like I was his whore that he could do whatever he wanted with, how he couldn’t finish the job and then let his frustration out on me, how he’d lied to me, tricked me to get Jake.  There are times when I choke up but I don’t cry and I carry on telling the story, as if having it out there and not inside of me anymore is a way of exorcizing this particular demon.

“I never knew that anyone could actually enjoy hurting someone else so much,” I wince as my mother presses the towel against my cheek.  “He gets more pleasure out of it than anything else, I’m sure of that.  And he’s good at it,” I admit, knowing how easily he had gotten to me.  The way he treated me and the things he did will stay with me for a very long time.  I feel like he raped me without actually finishing the act.  It’s a sensation that I don’t think I’ll shake, not ever.  It feels like he broke me, like there’s a vital piece of me that he took away and broke apart and I don’t know how to replace it.  The edges are sharp, they haven’t been smoothed out.  I wonder if I’m always going to be like this, missing a part of myself.

“He always was a little piece of crap, even when he was little,” my mother’s voice interrupts my depressing train of thought.  “I guess he hasn’t improved with age.”  I’m surprised at my mother’s reaction.  I suppose I had expected some judgement, anger, disappointment in me, something, anything other than what she had just said.

“You’re...you’re not angry with me?” I try to keep the shock out of my voice but I’m not very successful.  “You don’t think I’m a...a slut, a whore?”  I hate that the words seem to stick in my throat; I want to get them out.

“Don’t ever call yourself that!” she points at me with a force that belies the semi-catatonic state she’s been in for the better part of a decade.  “You’re nothing of the sort, do you hear me?” she asks, hands on her hips.  “I asked if you heard me,” she repeats and I remember how she used to rule our house with an iron fist.  My dad was the good-time guy while she was the disciplinarian.  It’s only now that I wonder how hard it must have been for her to always be the one doing the hard part.

“Yes ma’am,” I look down at the table automatically, suddenly feeling like a small child again.  “I heard you.”

She nods, signaling that part of the conversation has been resolved, but if only it were that easy for me.  Ryan had a way of saying things about you that made them feel real. 
Slut.  Whore.
They were the same words that Suzie had used and they had sounded a bell deep within me, as if they just reaffirmed what I was thinking about myself.

“And angry with you?” my mom continues and she seems genuinely surprised that I would have thought that was a possibility.  “I’m scared for you, scared of the danger you could have put yourself in,” she motions towards my bruised face.  “But how could I be angry with you for trying to do the right thing?” It’s a question that I suppose doesn’t really require an answer. 

She cradles my cheek in her hands like I was eight again and she kissed my scraped knees to make them feel better when I fell of my bike.  It’s a moment that I never thought I’d have with her again.

“But now Jake thinks that I...that I...” I can’t even finish the sentence.  “And I lied to him, I kept this huge secret from him.  He’ll never trust me again.”  It’s a statement of fact and I’m surprised at how little emotion there is in my voice.  “But I suppose it doesn’t matter,” I say after a few seconds.  I lift my head out of my mother’s hands. 

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” My mother gives me a cautious look as she throws the dirty dishtowel into the even dirtier water.  Her voice is raised and it’s the first time that I’ve seen her angry in so long I’d almost forgotten what it looked like.

“It doesn’t matter what happens between Jake and me.  All that matters is that we get him back,” I set my mouth in a hard line.  The words are out of my mouth before I have time to measure them, but I know that it’s the truth.  I ache for Jake, I feel a physical pain at the fact that he’s not here with me.  But that’s not what’s important anymore.  The only thing that is of any importance anymore is getting him back from the Angels.

My mother pushes away from the table and grabs the bowl up, sloshing dirty water onto the kitchen table as she does.  The bowl clatters in the sink as she stands over it, gripping onto the worktop.  But it’s not supporting her, she’s using it to keep something contained inside of her.  She’s pushing back at whatever it is that’s trying to get out.

“You’re so much like your father,” she says eventually, her voice both fond and accusatory.  “He would do anything, anything that he could, if he thought that it would make a difference, if he thought that it would make things better.  It’s what made him a great man.  It’s also what got him killed.”  The last word sounds harsh as it falls in the Summers’ spotless, comforting kitchen.

“I know.”  It’s the only response that I can give.  She isn’t telling me anything that I haven’t already thought about a hundred times already. 

“I can’t lose you too,” she whispers, without looking at me. 

I don’t say anything, because I can’t promise that she won’t.  I’ve already made too many promises that I’ve had to break.  There’s no sense in making any more. 

We both jump when we hear Sally step on the squeaky last floorboard of the stairs.  The sound breaks the tension between us, but Sally is intuitive enough to know that something has happened.

“Everything alright here?” she looks uneasily between her best friend and me, trying to ascertain where the discomfort has come from.

“Fine,” my mother says brightly.  “Except I think I may have ruined one of your good dishtowels,” she holds up the specimen she’s referring to.  It had been white, now it was a disturbing shade of reddy-brown.

Sally lets out a laugh, it sounds forced but we both smile back at her like we haven’t noticed.  It’s the first bit of normality in this crazy night.  “I think I’ll forgive you,” she smiles at my mother with a warmth that for some reason makes me think of Suzie.  This was how I had always thought the two of us would be, growing up together, having kids together, being friends forever.  But that was just one other thing that hadn’t worked out like I had planned.  It had gotten to the point where it seemed like making plans was something reserved for the lucky people, not us, not the ones left behind.

“I’ve left out something for you to sleep in,” Sally’s voice breaks through my grey sky thoughts.  “It’s going to be getting light soon and we should all try to get some shut-eye before we fall down.  I’ve put you in Jake’s old room.”  Her smile is kind but she clearly sees the look on my face and changes tack.  “Or we could put you in Jonah’s room, but we only have a cot on the floor.”

“Jonah’s room will be fine, thanks Sal,” I say quietly as I get up and slowly make my way out of the kitchen.