Broken & Burned (26 page)

“Doc.” Dragon said and the single utterance was weighted. Doc sprang into action and I closed my eyes, sending up a silent prayer of gratefulness to whatever power that be that he
was
here. Trigger’s face was carefully neutral as he helped Doc stem the bleeding.

“What you got in there?” Doc demanded.

“Thirty-eights.” Sparks responded mildly.

“You don’t want him to die you best drop him at an ER.” Doc said harshly.

Sparks nodded to several of his MC minions standing by and they dragged Spaz’s limp body out. I felt hot and cold at the same time watching the blood smear across the concrete but I knew, I just
knew
that the men I was with, Dragon, Dray, Trigger and Doc needed me to put on a good show, needed me to be tough as nails on the outside. I could freak out later. Right now I just wanted away from all of this. What do you know? Apparently watching the man that shot me get shot back
did
bother me.

“My leg hurts. I’d like to go home now if you please.” I said to the men and my voice was steady and calm which was not at all how I was feeling on the inside.

“We square then brother?” Sparks asked Dragon.

“Yeah. We’re square.” Dragon said and held out his hand. They clasped arms.

“Glad t’ hear it! Griz, take the lady home.” He said and yelled out, “Prospect! Clean up this mess!”

We turned and followed Griz out. He took us back to the Sacred Heart’s club house. I went inside and held all emotion in until the goodbyes had been said and the door was safely shut behind us. Then I hobbled to the nearest sink, which happened to be the kitchen’s, and I threw up Ashton’s lovely meal. Dray was there, a cool hand pressed to my forehead, the other rubbing uselessly up and down my back. He said nothing and I gasped for air and fumbled for a glass of water. Trigger was on my other side and pressed a full glass into my hand. I rinsed out my mouth.

“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” I blurted out.

“Don’t be Baby.” Dray said quietly and he was as shut down as I had ever seen him. I was grateful I wasn’t the only one effected, we just handled it differently.

“Been a couple years since we had to be privy to something like that.” Trigger commented dryly. Ashton looked on, golden eyes worried as she looked over her man who had blood on his hands.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They shot him.” I said breathlessly, “The man who shot me, they shot him in the leg.” I said and wiped at my mouth.

“Oh.” She said and markedly relaxed. A hysterical bubble of laughter escaped my mouth and I slapped a hand over it.

“It’s okay.” Dray said and held me from behind, keeping me upright, pinned between him and the counter. I nodded rapidly.

“There’s a difference,” I said breathlessly, “Between hearing about it all your life and seeing it up close and personal…” I said.

“Yeah there is,” Dragon agreed, “But, you handled it like a pro, Darlin’. You did your man and this club proud tonight.” He said. They left me and Dray in the kitchen, his leather clad arms tight around me, gripping me to his chest as if he were afraid to let go.

“I understand if you don’t want to stay.” He said quietly, voice anguished. I closed my eyes. What woman in their right mind would wish to after seeing something like that? I smiled a little to myself.

“I don’t feel bad that he shot him.” I said softly, and Dray was silent, waiting for me to continue. “I feel bad that I don’t feel bad… Is that crazy?” I asked. While watching the brutal act had bothered me, the fact that he’d been shot, that he’d had to endure what I had, that didn’t bother me in the slightest. I fought down another wave of nausea. Oh God. What kind of monster did that make me?

“If it is then I’m fucking nuts.” Dray stated sardonically, he sighed.

“You’re not nuts… I think we’re both the product of our upbringing.” I said. I had to rationalize this somehow… He turned me in his arms and looked me in the eye. I wrapped my arms around his neck and shoulders and stared him in the eyes.

“That mean you’re sticking around?” he asked lightly, but his eyes told me the true cost of what it was for him to ask me, to give me the choice. I pressed my lips to his in a chaste kiss. I wouldn’t subject him to my mouth after he watched me puke, not without brushing my teeth.

“That’s the second time you’ve watched me puke and the third time you’ve seen me at my worst and you’re still here…” I said practically.

“No place, I would rather be than by your side Em. Question is, can you handle bein’ by mine?” he searched my face and whatever he saw there must have reassured him some because his hold on me lessened.

“I love you Dray, good bad or indifferent, and there is no place I would rather be than with you.” I said and his eyes closed as if he were savoring my words.

“Still before you commit you should know it all.” he said and my heart dropped. He opened his smoldering dark eyes and it was as if the fire had gone out, they were drowning in such deep sorrow.

“Okay.” I whispered reluctantly, wondering,
did he really have to do this right now?

“Come on, let’s get you laid up and we’ll talk.” He murmured. I nodded mutely unsure if I could handle any more truth and consequences tonight.

Dray led me through the common room and into the back. Everyone was quiet and I almost felt as if I marched towards some kind of death. What could he possibly need to tell me? What was possibly so important after seeing such things? I swallowed hard and tried not to be afraid, because whatever it was… whatever it was, if it was worse than what I’d just seen, maybe ignorance was bliss. Maybe I was better off just not knowing.

He shut the bedroom door behind me and helped me into bed. My leg hurt and my face felt hot and my stomach still churned and Dray sat down on the bed by my hip and looked so fucking solemn I wanted to scream at him to stop, that whatever it was he didn’t have to tell me tonight, that it didn’t matter, but I could see it in his eyes he needed me to know whatever this terrible truth of his was, that he needed to unburden his soul and for whatever reason the time was now.

“It’s not always like this Baby.” He said and took my hands in his, smoothing over the backs of my fingers with his thumbs.

“I know, Dray. Look whatever it is you don’t…” he cut me off.

“Yes I do, you need to know that it’s not always like this, but when it is, when the shit gets heavy and it
will
get heavy from time to time, you need to know what I’ve done, what I’m capable of and that I’ll do it. I’ll use it to protect you and the people of this club.” He was so earnest I simply nodded mutely and let him have his say.

“I’ve done worse shit than what you saw tonight. Just last spring in fact.” He held his breath and I blinked. Worse? Worse how?

“W-wh-what did you do?” I stammered.

“I helped kill Ashton’s husband. I mean I was there, I… I hid in the man’s own damned panic room all fucking day and I held him down while Reaver shot him up with heroin. I helped get him into the tub and just stood there and watched while Reaver fucking toyed with him. Reaver fucking stood there, and told him why he was going to die and then he cut his wrists and I just fucking stood there Em. I just fucking stood there and watched the man bleed to death.” I stared at him and blinked.

“Why?” I asked. Dray blinked at me and confusion flashed across his face.

“Why what?” he asked, caught off guard.

“Why would you do that?” I asked and we stared at one another across a chasm of silence for what felt like forever.

“It was either him or Ashton… and I needed to do it, because I did something terrible to her Em.” He swallowed hard and his shame spilled out of him. He told me everything. About how he’d treated Ashton when she’d first arrived at the MC, about the Spring lake run, whatever that was, and how he’d gotten drunk, how he’d wanted to scare her off but also… how he’d wanted her for himself. How his father had intervened and how he’d taken his beating from Trigger and just, all of it… Every single sordid dirty detail. I stared at him, completely shocked.

“Please say something.” He pleaded, and I did, probably the worst thing I could have possibly said in that moment.

“I think I just want to be alone right now…”

Dray…

Her words hit me like a hammer blow to the center of my chest. I stared at her numbly for a second and nodded dumbly and got up. I slipped out the door and shut it behind me and moved back out into the common room. Just about everybody had gone except for my old man. He took one look at my face and his crumbled in sympathy. He kicked out a chair across from him.

“Sit down before you fall down Boy.” I took the seat and he poured a shot of tequila. I grimaced as the phantom smell of blood invaded my nose but picked up the shot anyways and downed it.

“I told her everything.” I said and my pops raised his eyebrows.

“Sure that was the smart thing to do?” he asked.

“No dad… No… I don’t know.” He poured another and I downed it.

“What’d she say?”

“She said she wanted to be left alone.” I poured the next one and downed it. He slid the bottle out of reach and leveled me with a smoldering look that made mine look like puppy dog eyes.

“No screaming?” he asked.

“No.”

“No crying?”

“Uh there were tears, but not like wracking sobs or hysterics or nothing.” I frowned, the world beginning to swim as the alcohol hit, I had a pleasant buzz going but I needed more than that,
this
called for a roaring drunk.

“She just needs time to think boy. Sort out everything she’s feeling. Give her time.” He said sagely.

“How do you know?” I asked hollowly.

“Yer mom was the same way. If she started screaming and crying all hysterical like I was up shit’s creek without a paddle. She did the quiet stuff, it was kind of fifty-fifty on if my hide came out of whatever it was in one piece.” His words were cold fucking comfort.

I put my head in my hands.

“What if I fucked this up past fixing Pops?” I asked and his hand descended onto my shoulder.

“You love her?” he asked me. I looked up at him and didn’t even fucking care that the tears showed.

“I’ve never felt anything like what I feel for her, it’s like it’s just… too huge for words. Like they don’t make a word big enough or grand enough for it. I don’t know how this fucking happened. I gave this girl my whole damned heart and I don’t even know when I did it.” I looked at him and I think he flinched in the face of my raw pain but then my alcohol addled brain realized he was looking behind me. He must have had the good shit on the table. I turned, dreading seeing Em standing there but the person who actually was made it somehow worse.

“Fuck man, really?” I asked and laid my head on my arm on the beat to shit table. Trigger hooked a boot around one of the chair legs next to me and pulled it out, dropping his tall bulk into it.

“Your girl’s cryin’” he said, “My girl’s in with her.”

“Fuck, I fucking broke the best thing I ever fucking had.” I moaned and Trigger chuckled.

“Don’t count my Sunshine girl out. Ev just went through a hell of a thing and you, my young friend, just piled it on. It was an honest mistake Dray, just give her some time to process. She may surprise you yet.” Trig clapped me on the back and I held out my hand. My Pops put another shot into it and I drank it down.

“Last one there Junior. You need to slow your happy ass down.” I heard my dad say, but my head was back on my arm. I was already grieving the loss of the first girl I think I’ve
ever
loved though I think the booze was helping that along to some extent.  I don’t remember ever feeling so… squishy.

“That’s a good word. Squishy.” I mumbled aloud and the two other men laughed a little.

“Oh lord, he’s feelin’ that Tequila.” I heard my pops say. “Between his momma and me I’m not sure how we popped out such a light weight.

“He’ll be feeling it worse in the morning. I’ll have Doc hook him up to an IV, last thing he needs to deal with is a killer hangover. I think he’s been punished enough.” Trig was wrong. So wrong, this was too much, the potential of losing Everett for good, after her being the first really
good
thing I’ve ever had in my life… it was too short; it was too fleeting! I had to do something, I had to do something drastic. I stood up abruptly and swayed on my feet. Trig was suddenly up beside me, hand on my back, the other on my chest. I looked down at his tattooed arm and blinked in confusion.

“What’re you doin!?” I asked, wait, did I just slur?

“Uhhh question is, what’re
you
doin’?” my dad asked, and he had his amused look on his face.

“I gotta fix thish.” Yeah okay, I was definitely slurring, I’d only had like three shots! What was in that fucking tequila?

“How you planning on doing that son?” my dad asked and leaned way back in his seat, crossing his arms.

“I’ma ask her to marry me.” I declared and both of them busted up laughing at me. “Aw fuck you guys!” I tried to shake Trig off and moderately succeeded but then my dad was there.

“Sit down boy.” He ordered and I dropped back into my seat. He poured a round for the three of us.

“I ever tell you about the time I almost lost your momma?” he asked me. I blinked at him owlishly.

“She musta kicked your ass out a half a dozen times when I was growing up.” I said and it was true. My dad scowled.

“True enough, I deserved it.” he drank down his shot as if to clear a bitter taste from his mouth, “Of all the times she did though, she always said the same thing… ‘I love you Dragon, you and only you and this isn’t forever just until… and she’d lay down the law. I’m talking about the time I almost lost her for good, before you were even thought of.” He grew real quiet and I shook my head and widened my eyes to try and get ‘em to focus.

“You an’ mom were always tight, there wasn’t any time like that… was there?” I asked. This night was getting to be too fucking much for all of us.

“Sacred Hearts was a few years old, I met your mom at the bank where she was workin’ an’ it took me weeks to convince her to take a ride with me. Anyways, we were hot ‘n’ heavy…” I interrupted him.

“Ewe, gross that’s my
mom
you’re talking about asshole.” And my dad barked a laugh and reached across the table and slapped me upside the head.

“Don’t interrupt.” He schooled me and then went on with, “Anyways. I guess she’d just found out she was knocked up with you and I was heavy into the drug running and the rivalry with the Wraiths and I went out and got m’self shot.” I blinked at him. My dad had taken a few bullets in his time, most of them before I was born, only one in the time I could remember.

“Mom freaked out?” I guessed.

“To put it mildly. I’m up on the bar at the old club and Doc is pulling a slug outta my chest,” he slapped a hand over his chest, up near his shoulder and grimaced with the memory, “and Tilly’s a standing there crying all silent and looking all lost and then it was like something just flipped her switch. She starts screaming at me about how she isn’t going to raise no baby like this and I’m wondering what the fuck she’s on about but before I can say anything she’s telling me it’s over and done and she never wants to see me again, she’s moving back in with her ex-boyfriend and she’s out the fucking door.”

“What’d you do?” I asked.

“I let Doc finish what he was doin’ and got fucking drunk. That’s what.” I blinked.

“How’d you get her back?” I asked.

“I didn’t, I let her go. She came around a day or two later and we talked. Your momma loved me son, I don’t know why. I sure as hell didn’t deserve a woman like her, but all the same, she loved me and I loved her enough to let her go. Just fate, or God or somebody had a different idea and fuck if I don’t regret it every day because it was my stupid shit that got her killed.” His words broke on a sob and fuck the glass, he took a fortifying pull right off the bottle. I blinked stupidly and he passed the bottle to me I took a pull.

“Naw dad. The fucking assholes that killed her got her killed and we killed them.” I said.

“Doesn’t matter son. It ain’t gonna bring her back.” He said and dashed at his eyes with the back of his hand. This was the most emotional I’d ever seen him get over it, I felt like I’d seriously just been sucked into the mother fucking twilight zone!

“So what’re you sayin’?” I asked, “That I should just let Em go? Push her away so nothin’ can happen to her?” I asked.

“No. I’m sayin’ you don’t do what I did. Don’t fucking waste the time you get with her, you keep her, you protect her; you spend every waking fucking moment you can devote to her by her side. Don’t you backslide into that shit no matter how appealing the money, you keep your woman and this brotherhood together and safe against all comers. Boy, we ain’t got any fucking control over what happened to your girl, her getting shot in the leg was the damnedest thing and had nothing to do with us but we fixed it the best we could. This life ain’t easy for any of us but we got each other. You lean on me, you lean on Trig an’ Reaver an’ the rest of your brothers when shit goes sideways. You take comfort from your woman and when you have ‘em, you give a future to your kids.” He looked at me and we stared at each other for long minutes.

“I was just trying to be upfront about all of it. Honest about what kind of man I’ve been…” Trig stopped me.

“That’s the problem Dray. You’re focusing on the man you’ve
been, were
, past tense. We’ve all done some terrible fucking things. We all got our ghosts and our skeletons and shit, but that’s the past. Instead of focusing on our past, young brother, we should be focusing on our
future.
Doesn’t mean we should forget what we’ve done because Lord knows, we may need to be those men again, like we were tonight, but the difference is
why.
Before it was for all the wrong reasons… Now it’s for all the right ones. We got people we love, people who care about us. We gotta stay whole for them and keep them in one piece too. Carve out what little bit of happiness we can in this life before it’s over.” Trig clapped a hand on my back reassuringly and I stared for long minutes at the scarred wooden table top, the wheels turning in my head.

This is what they had been trying to impress upon me for a really long time but before Everett I didn’t have anything I cherished, worth protecting other than the brotherhood, but even then… I was young. Hell,
I
am young and behind on the fucking curve. The heat of my anger curtained me off from everything for far too long. If I’d spent a little less time raging internally about the unfairness and injustice of it being my mom who’d had to die instead of me or any of these other guys… I scrubbed my face with my hands.

I would give Everett her alone time. Give her the night. I wasn’t laying down without a fight though. If my mom and dad could make it work, then we could too. I had a lot to fucking think about.

“I got a lot of shit to catch up on and learn.” I said at last and sniffed, tears burning my eyes. “Thanks Trig. Thanks Pops.” I added.

“No thanks necessary Boy. You have a way of carryin’ yourself. I think Trig can agree that sometimes we all forget you’re only twenty-two, then shit like this goes down and it reminds us. We’ve all been here with our women at one time or another. Feeling like it’s the end of the world and it’s broke past fixing… I gotta say though, you picked a damned fine one in that Irish girl. Something tells me she’s gonna get past this, you two got some talking to do for sure but this ain’t the end.” My dad put a cigarette between his lips and handed one to Trig. Trig smiled and took it, I pulled out one of mine. We were silent save for the clicks and flicks of lighters as we lit up and sucked the smoke into our lungs. My dad blew his first drag out his nose and I smiled.

“I remember when I was a kid and you used to do that.” I said and smiled fondly. My Pops chuckled.

“Had the whole damned club calling me “Puff” for a year or two.” He said to Trig and the big man laughed.

“As in Puff the…” we all three chorused the last, “Magic Dragon!” we stopped and smoked some more.

“I’m not singing that shit.” My Pops said.

“Me either.”

“Yeah no, breaking out into song is my girl’s thing… and maybe Squick’s.” Trig said.

“What is
with
that anyways?” I asked.

“Squick’s gay.” Trig said and I raised an eyebrow.

“Figured as much.” My dad mumbled. I looked from one to the other of them.

“I ain’t got a problem with it as long as he doesn’t go hitting on me, but how’s that going to work? If he wants to patch in, that requires honesty and loyalty of the highest order, can’t have him hiding that kind of shit.” I took a smaller pull off the bottle, I was finally evening out. Drunk, sure, but I felt like my wits were more about me. A little too much too quick at the beginning there. Fuck of a head rush.

“He don’t come clean, he don’t patch in. It’s as easy as that, anyone has a problem with it we settle it with an old school ass kicking. Let ‘em face off.” My Pops said.

“Squick may be lanky as fuck but the kid’s quick and what he lacks in the ability to dish when it comes to heavy hits, he’s not a-fucking-fraid to fight dirty. I’ve seen him do it.” Trig said.

“Meh, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” my Pops said on an exhale, the smoke curling heavy around the three of us. We sat quietly, smoking, drinking and just generally trying to wind the fuck down from being wound tighter than a fucking Timex.

“Think there’ll be more trouble with this new crew?” Trig mused aloud.

“If there is, we’ll handle it.” I said quietly. I felt like I was back in the driver’s seat when it came to my emotions, which made me in turn realize just how under my skin Everett had gotten but I couldn’t be sorry. I’d been angry and depressed for so long it was like she breathed color and life into my otherwise gray world. Everything had been strictly black and white before and it was like seeing in color for the first time. I swiped a hand over my face and tried not to think about it, tried not to worry about whatever decision she’d come to, even though I felt my heart pick up with panic at the mere thought of her leavin’.

“That was some bullshit and we all know it.” My Pops said with a gusty sigh, he leaned back in his seat as far as it would go.

“Agreed, since when does any club worth two shits involve bitches and Old Ladies in the club politics?” Trig’s expression was dark.