DAMON: A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel (13 page)

T
ricia and Damon
stopped in Jacksonville for their last night before hitting Miami. The remainder of the ride had been full of half-hearted efforts to return to the easygoing, joke-filled, happiness of their earlier days.

“What’s the difference between a hippo and a zippo?” Damon asked.

“I don’t know, what?” Tricia answered.

“One’s a little heavy, and the other’s a little lighter,” he said, adding in some air drums for effect.

Tricia’s laugh was so forced that it made her cringe after it escaped her throat. Two days ago, she might actually have found that funny.

Later, she tried her own hand at lifting the mood.

“I read that Clearwater, Florida, has the highest rate of lightning strikes per capita in the U.S. And Key West has more
bars
per capita than any place in the U.S.”

“That must have been why Hemingway liked it so much,” Damon said thoughtfully.

“Which? Clearwater or Key West?” she tried on a playful smile to go along with her joke, but Damon’s look withered her. “I was joking…”

“Oh,” Damon said. “Sorry.”

And so it went. All the efforts had failed. It was both of their faults, and neither of their faults. It was just the way things went.

Damon checked them in to a little, local-owned beachside hotel with a restaurant attached, where they had dinner, both picking at huge plates of corn and shrimp and potatoes. Tricia was mumbling her way through a story about a family vacation in Panama City that had gone sour when she managed to get a sunburn on her eyeball when Damon put his fork down and interrupted her, looking straight at her bowed head.

“Why is it that you think I’m doing the wrong thing?” Damon asked. She looked up quickly, wondering how long he’d meant to ask her that. “I just want to understand. Everything I’ve done, gone through…it’s all led me to this. And it feels right – a kind of wrong-right, but right nonetheless. But I can tell you don’t agree.”

Tricia blushed, chewing her food slowly to give herself time to think of a response. His green eyes demanded an answer. Her heart wanted to lie. The kind of lie you tell someone so they feel better. A white lie. But this was no white lie. Nothing about any of this was white. It was all the darkest black.

“I thought I would feel better,” she finally said, putting her fork down and giving him her attention. “I thought I would feel better, seeing my ex locked up. Seeing those assholes behind bars. The ones who hurt me, punished. I thought it would all be okay after that. But it wasn’t. The person who was hurting – the woman I was when it all happened – she didn’t go away. She was still inside me, and nothing that happened outside of me could change that.”

“You haven’t stopped hurting,” Damon said, stating the fact blandly.

“No, I haven’t,” Tricia said. “Not entirely. It’s happening slowly. And…”

Her voice trailed off as they stared at each other. Did he know what she was going to say, what she was trying to say? How could he not? Hadn’t they been speaking without speaking since the moment they met?

“You’re helping,” she finally said, reaching across the table to grab his hand, the movement feeling bold even though they’d shared so much more already – their whole bodies, their whole hearts. “You’re helping more than putting them in prison ever did. The scared girl inside me – she fades away, when I’m with you.”

He seemed to stiffen, and Tricia recoiled, wondering if she’d been wrong this whole time. Maybe they didn’t really operate on the same frequency after all. Maybe it had all been in her head. And that scared girl she’d been talking about suddenly seemed to be right beneath her skin, and fighting to break out. Take over. She willed her body not to shake. She dropped her eyes, unable to look at him and realize that everything she’d thought had been wrong.

“I know,” Damon finally said. “Tricia, look at me.”

She blinked down at her food before dragging her eyes back up to meet his. He reached across the table, grabbed her hand and turned it over, stroking her palm with his thumb. The slightest act, and yet it filled her with everything she had ever wanted to feel: comfort and warmth and an aching desire.

“I always want to be the one who makes you feel better,” he said. “I
will always
want to be that man. But I can’t be that man until I take care of this. Do you understand?”

She shuddered then, wilting under the intensity of his gaze. She wanted to say yes, to say what he wanted to hear. And she
did
understand. All too well.

But she couldn’t lie to him. Not about this.

“I understand,” she said, pulling her hand away, her heart wincing at the sudden loss of his touch. “But I don’t agree with you. You want to be the one who makes me feel better. Why can’t you try to let me do that for you? I can be enough, Damon. You can let me
try
to be enough.”

This time, he was the one to look away, his jaw set rigid. His hands fisted. Tricia saw, for a flashing second, the man underneath the man. The violent one, the unsettled one, the one whose soul would never be completely calm, no matter how well he hid the storm. She saw the boy.

“You won’t be,” he said, rising from the seat. She wanted to grab his hand, pull him back down, ask him to stay. They didn’t have to talk about it anymore, they could talk about something else. Anything else. Just as long as he didn’t leave like this, in anger. “I wish you could be, but you can’t. You’re everything I want, Tricia…”

His voice trailed off. He pulled a fifty from his wallet and threw it on the table. Only then did he look at her again.

“But I can’t give you everything I want to, I can’t be the man I want to be for you, until this is done.”

“It’ll never be done,” Tricia said, speaking quickly in hopes it would give him pause. “It’ll never be done until you
let it be done.
And going after him isn’t how you let it be done. It’s not how you let go.”

“Tell that to the woman he attacked,” Damon said, shaking his head. “Tell that to
her.
Tell
her
he doesn’t deserve to…”

His voice trailed off again, and Tricia felt cold in her stomach.

He’s not just planning to fight him,
she realized.
He’s planning to kill him.

“I’m going to take a walk,” he said. “I’ll see you back at the room.”

“Damon, don’t…”

But he was already gone.

For the first time, Tricia wondered how much he’d ever really been
there
to begin with. They'd sat next to each other, been with each other pretty much exclusively, for days now. They'd made love. But he'd never been fully there. Not while he was keeping this inside. Not while he was keeping it from her.

J
enner knew
this was his chance. After he was ushered back to his room that night, he held the little phone in his trembling hand. Someone might hear him talking. The phone might be dead. A million things could get in the way of the one phone call he needed to make. The one that would save his skin.

H
e had waited too long already
. He’d hoped to figure out whether or not he would be brought along on the ride to Miami, as Crow had suggested. But no one had felt it necessary to tell him one way or another, and he’d been unable to pick up any clues from overheard conversations. All he knew is that whoever was going, they were going soon. There was enough bustle and movement in the clubhouse that could only be explained by a mass migration.

H
e pressed
the power button and the screen flashed on; he held it under the pillow to muffle any sound it might make when turning on. It buzzed a few times in his hand. He pulled it out. Being from a time before cell phones, he still had a phonebook in his memory, and now he called upon it, dialing Kennick’s number slowly, carefully.

I
t started ringing
. He pressed the phone to his head so hard that his ear hurt.

P
ick up
, Kennick,
he thought.
Pick up, rom baro, pick up, pick up…

“
H
ello
?” the voice came in strong and clear, and Jenner stifled his sigh of relief. He kept his voice low, whispering into the phone as he spoke.

“
D
on’t hang up
,” Jenner said. “Don’t you dare hang up, Kennick.”

There was a long moment of silence on the other end of the line, a sharp intake a breath.

“Jenner,” Kennick said, his voice injected every curse and vile word in English
or
Romani into the two syllables.

“I know where Damon is,” Jenner said quickly, knowing that the sooner he gave a little bit, the sooner he’d get his in return. “And I know he’s in deep shit.”

“The fuck…” Kennick’s surprise was clear.

“And if you want me to spill, you’re gonna have to promise to help me,” Jenner said quickly, before Kennick could say anything else.

“Help you?
Help you?
Motherfucker, I should fucking
kill you,
after what you did to us, what you did to your own damn people, your
familia,
you piece of shit, I should…”

“You’re wasting your breath, and my time,” Jenner hissed. At any moment, the phone could run out of minutes, or one of the Steel Dragons could come barging in, as they were wont to do whenever they wanted to remind him who owned his ass. “They’ve got me locked up at their clubhouse, somewhere in Maryland. Near a town called Colony, I think. If I tell you where Damon is, and what they’re planning to do to him, you need to help me get out.”

“Who? Who’s got you locked up?” Kennick asked. “And what the fuck do you know about Damon being in trouble?”

“Who do you think? You’re smarter than this, Kennick,” Jenner said, irritated. “The Steel Dragons. They thought I double-crossed them, and they’ve been holding me here. I don’t know where…”

“Shiiiiiiit,” Kennick said. “I knew we weren’t cleared of those bastards yet. Where is Damon, Jenner?”

“Do I have your word?” Jenner asked. Jenner’s word wasn’t worth shit. But Kennick’s was. Kennick, and his brothers, were cut from a different cloth, and Jenner knew it. Even though Jenner had actively tried to destroy them, once they gave their word, they’d act on it. It was a matter of honor, pride. Jenner had plenty of pride, but not the right kind.

The silence on the other end of the line grew long. Kennick knew that once he promised, he’d have to live up to it. Jenner counted on that.

“Fine,” Kennick said, spitting the word out. “You tell me what’s happened to my brother, and I’ll do my best to get you out. You can’t tell me where you’re at, so I can’t promise we’ll be able to do it, but I’ll try.”

“If you follow them, they’ll take you to me,” Jenner said. “And…I might end up in the same place as you. Where Damon is. I can’t explain it all right now. I’ll need money, once you get me out. I’ll need cash to get away so they can’t follow me.”

“Fine, fine, whatever,” Kennick said, angry. Jenner knew how a gypsy felt, backed into a corner. It’s how he felt every day that he was in the Steel Dragons’ clutches. He felt no pity for the situation Kennick was in.

“He’s in Miami,” Jenner said, speaking quickly now. The sooner he got the words out, the sooner he could hang up and trash the phone and feel safe again. As safe as he could in the Steel Dragons’ lair, anyway. “He’s got some fight up there.”

“Damon’s done with fighting,” Kennick said, distrust sliding into his tone.
Fair enough,
Jenner thought. Kennick had no reason to trust him, anyway.

“Apparently not,” Jenner retorted. “Because he’s gone up there to fight some
gadje
, and the Steel Dragons are paying good money for that man to do him dirty.”

“How?” Kennick demanded.

“I don’t know,” Jenner said, telling the truth – a rare occasion. “All I know is that they want revenge, and Damon is walking into a trap.”

“Fuck,” Kennick hissed. “Where’s the fight? Who’s it against?”

“I don’t know – like I said, it’s somewhere in Miami. They don’t exactly tell me the details of their plans, Nick. Everything I’m telling you – I was lucky they told me.”

“Goddammit, Jenner,” Kennick said, sounding suddenly exhausted. “God. Dammit.”

The phone beeped. Jenner’s hand tightened around it; an automated voice came on.

“You have two minutes left on your plan. If you’d like to…”

“Shit,” Jenner said. “Kennick, I’m running out of time. I have to go.”

“Wait…”

“No, I have to fucking go,” Jenner said. “You go find your meathead brother, and then you come find me.”

“I swear, Jenner, if this is some fucking trick, if you’re working with them and…”

“I’m not,” Jenner answered through gritted teeth. If Kennick could see him then – in his little shithole of a room, scarred and lonely and grateful just to be alive – he wouldn’t have any doubts. Jenner wasn’t doing this to make up for his sins. He was doing it to escape his own personal hell. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust me, but this time, you better. For Damon’s sake.”

“You’re not coming back here,” Kennick said. “I hope you know that.”

“I know,” Jenner said, mentally counting down the seconds before his only lifeline cut off.

“Oh,” Kennick said. “And your grandmother died. You weren’t there for her funeral. No one missed you.”

Jenner felt a stabbing pain in his heart. For all his dirty deeds, all his little acts of evil, he still had people he loved. His grandmother was one of them. So was his mother, and, to a much lesser degree, his cousins. He never let himself linger on the memory of how he’d lost them, lost everything that mattered to him, in a foolish quest for power. It hurt too much. And now…

The phone cut off before Jenner could respond. He kept it pressed to his ear long after the automated voice told him he was all out of time.

My only chance,
he thought, again and again, like a mantra.
Kennick, you’re my only chance.

The irony of that didn’t escape him. Fate could be unbearably cruel. He’d had enough good things once, but didn’t realize it, only wanted more. And now the rest of his life depended on a man who he’d tried to destroy.