Leave a Trail (10 page)

But he met Isaac’s eyes and said, “Yeah. I’m ready.”

“You lied to us, Badger. Every day. You lied straight to my face.”

There was no way to explain everything that had been in his head, that still was in his head, no way to make anybody understand the hole he’d been in. Was in. Certainly not Isaac, whose will was stronger than anybody’s Badger had ever known. Badger couldn’t believe Isaac had known a second’s weakness in his entire life. Not even when he was paralyzed. Fuck, he was sitting right in front of him. He was
riding
. And he’d been paralyzed. How could somebody like that understand a pussy like him?

Without any way of making Isaac see, Badger just dropped his eyes to his lap and nodded.

“We can’t have that, Badge. As brothers, we have to be straight with each other. Always. Trust is all we’ve got, and it’s been in short enough supply. You understand?”

Again, still staring at his limp hands, Badger nodded.

“So what are we gonna do about it?”

“What you have to. I understand. I’m not cut out for the Horde. Too weak. I know. I’m sorry I let you down.”

Isaac didn’t answer. He was quiet for a long stretch, but Badger kept his head down.

Eventually, Isaac spoke again, his voice softer than before. “When we took you on as Prospect, you were a pimply-faced little shit. Skinny as fuck. And you’d quake in your boots if a patch so much as looked at you twice. Len fought for you when he brought your name to the table, and he convinced us to give you a chance. But I was sure a puny little pup like you would wash out fast.”

He leaned forward, his hands on his knees. Badger looked up then and met his eyes. He saw no condemnation there, and the lack of it stunned him.

Isaac went on. “But then the Ellis shit got hot, right after you came on, and you were in it, Badge.
You were in it
. You didn’t back down. You took a fuckin’ bullet guarding Lilli, and you came right back. You came out of that Perro hell alive. You’re not weak, little brother. You’re not. You’re tough as fuck.” He took a deep breath. “You know, I know about wanting to quit. Wanting shit to just end. There were lots of times when I was laid up that I just…wanted it over. Especially when I didn’t even have my hands. Those days, if there’d been a way, I’d’ve checked out. So I understand feeling too weak to face what we have to face. I got through it because I wasn’t alone. I had Lilli and Gia, and I got through my shit because they still needed me. They wanted me. I couldn’t do it alone, so I didn’t. I leaned on my family.”

The thought of Isaac wanting to end things boggled Badger’s mind, but it wasn’t the same. Isaac had lost almost everything. Badger merely couldn’t deal with the pain and fear he’d been living with since the fall. He wasn’t man enough to overcome it. Show and Len had. He was the only one not strong enough.

“It’s not weakness that’s the problem here, Badge. It’s trust. You are not alone. You fell because you’re acting like you’re alone. You didn’t trust us enough to let us hold you up. And you lied. You put us at greater risk every time you went on a run fucked up.” He leaned forward even farther and wrapped his big paw around Badger’s arm. “Did you go on a
weed
run fucked up?”

Badger’s first inclination was to deny it, to lie. But he paused, took a breath, and nodded.

Isaac released his arm roughly and sat back. “Fuck. You see our problem?”

He nodded again. He saw—he’d seen at the time, too. He’d known how bad he was fucking up
while
he was fucking up. But he hadn’t been able to stop.

“That’s a lot of trust you’ve lost, Badge. Trust you gotta build back up. You want that kutte back, you gotta build that trust.”

Isaac was offering him a second chance. His heart sang at the thought of getting his kutte back. For a brief, glorious second, he felt good. He felt hope. But then he realized that he had no way of building back the kind of trust he’d squandered. “How?”

“I don’t know, little brother. I don’t know.” With that, Isaac stood. He laid his hand on Badger’s head for a second, and then he left the room. Davey came in right after and took the chair out.

A second chance without any hope of attaining it. Meaningless.

~oOo~

Len came to see him the next day. He was feeling well enough that he thought he could have gotten dressed, gone out, moved around a little, but he was still locked in, still without anything to do but confront his own mind. He’d thought a lot about what Isaac had said, and what he hadn’t said.

He wasn’t feeling so hopeless. There wasn’t much hope, but he felt a little. Enough to make him restless in his cage.

Len came in and sat on the end of his bed. Badger was up and pacing. “I need to get out of here, Len.”

“No can do, Badge. Not until Tasha says you’re all the way through it.”

“She hasn’t been here for…” He wasn’t sure. “Like…two days or something. How would she know?”

“She’s paying attention. And she’s a doctor. Why don’t you sit?”

“I’ve been sitting for days. I need out. Fuck, I’m goin’ crazy.” He didn’t know how to start fixing anything or if he even could, but he knew he couldn’t from this room.

“Badge. Sit. Now.”

Len had sponsored Badger when he applied to prospect, and he’d been his mentor since long before that. When he was still in middle school, Badger had ridden his Huffy down the road to Len’s and asked for work. Len had given him work—shit work, hard, grueling tasks that made Badger sometimes want to weep from the exhaustion. But he’d paid well, and he’d paid even better in knowledge, teaching Badger everything there was to know about horses. He immensely admired and respected Isaac and Showdown. But Len was his guide. That it was Len who’d torn his kutte off his body had hurt more than anything else.

Now, he did what he was told and sat, on the side of the bed, pulling his leg up and turning so that he could face Len. No more looking away. That had to be the first step. There were steps, right? Twelve of them, or something. He didn’t know what they were, but facing himself and everybody else had to be the first one.

So when Len looked him hard in the eye, even his eye patch seeming to see into him, he looked right back.

“I want to talk about Hav.”

At that, Badger almost looked away anyway. He couldn’t do that, couldn’t talk about Havoc. But after a single blink, he made himself hold.

“What’s your last memory of him?” Len’s gruff voice was quiet, and it broke in the middle. He cleared his throat.

What Badger remembered about that day, that place…was pain. Fear. Helplessness. Hopelessness. He remembered the room they’d taken him into again and again. He remembered them taking his skin—and what they’d done to it. He remembered horror and pain vividly, but little else.

He didn’t remember Havoc almost at all from that time. He didn’t remember Len or Show much, either, but it was far worse not to remember Havoc. He’d died there, and Badger had no memory of it. That felt like a betrayal of his brother, and there was no way he could undo it.

He shook his head. And then he dropped his eyes, ashamed.

“S’okay, little brother. I want to tell you my last memory of him—the one before he died. Because it’s about you.”

Badger looked up.

“You were in real bad shape. We all were, but, Badge, you were dyin’. Right there in front of us. They’d caved in your chest, and they’d…fuck, they skinned you alive, and you were dyin’. Hav wasn’t in much better shape. They’d taken all his fingers and just left his hands to bleed. He was worried about you. He couldn’t get a pulse on you, because of his hands, so he called me over when I woke up. I found a pulse, but you were on the way out. I told him to let you go. I’m ashamed of it now, but I was out of hope, and you were sufferin’ so bad. Jesus, it hurt me to see what they’d done.”

Badger felt ill—enough that he looked around for the bucket he’d been using—but he didn’t stop Len from telling the story.

“Hav wouldn’t let you go. He got you to talk a little and he asked you to find one good thought. Your best thought. You said you didn’t have any, and he called bullshit. He told us his best thought. He got you to say yours. You don’t remember?”

The urge to puke had passed, in favor of the urge to weep. Badger swallowed to stop the sobs massing in his throat, but he didn’t try to dam the tears. Those he let fall. He shook his head.

“It’s okay, little brother. I’m glad you don’t remember. Even with what I felt that day, I can’t imagine what it was like for you. But Hav kept you going. He helped you find something to fight for. You told us your best thought. You know what it was?”

He knew what his best thought was. He didn’t know if he’d said it out loud, and he didn’t know what to say now.

“It’s okay, Badge. Show was still out of it when you said it. And I haven’t said anything. He doesn’t know.”

So, then, he had said it out loud.

“Adrienne.”

“Yeah.”

“I hurt her.”

“Yeah, you did. She’s okay—she’s pretty much healed now. And I don’t think she’s holdin’ a grudge. She asks about you every day. But you did hurt her. That day, when you said she was your best thought, and I thought you were dyin’, I was mad. At you. For wasting that chance when you had it. Wasting it because you’re afraid of Show. Well, you made that worse. He will kill you now if you so much as nod in her direction. But I say you figure out how to fix that. Because you don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever.” He punched Badger lightly on the arm. “You love her?”

“I hurt her.”

“Not what I asked, Badger.”

Did he love her? He’d made himself not think about that much. He’d tried hard, anyway, not to think about that. He and Adrienne had started a friendship with a kiss. A really incredible kiss. That had been four years ago. Since then, they’d only been in the same place six or seven times, when she’d come for a visit.

When she was in town, they’d hung out a fair amount. Not really doing anything—watching movies, riding horses, knocking around in town. They’d made out a few times, but nothing more than that. Not even any over-the-clothes action. And she’d initiated everything. Of course, until recently, he’d never made a move on any girl. Not even the club girls. He’d been a total pussy that way. And every other way.

He’d stopped everything at kissing, because Show had been clear that Adrienne was off limits, and he was not about to go against a brother—and most certainly not Showdown.

But they were good friends, and they’d kept in close touch online and by text and video chat. He’d thought they were close. And he knew it was him who’d broken that, who’d pulled away. He also knew that she was hurt and confused.

“Badge.”

“Yeah. I love her. But I hurt her. And not just when Show stopped me. I knocked her down the day before.”

“Shit, kid.”

“Yeah.” Badger looked down at his hands, which had done the things he’d described. He curled them into fists and slammed them down on his thighs. “Fuck.”

“Remember what Hav did to Cory?”

He remembered. Hav had hit his old lady in the head with a sledgehammer. But it was nothing like what he’d done. “That was different. That was an accident. And he was nuts after his sister…”

Had been beheaded by Martin Halyard. Which was how they’d ended up in Chicago, killing Halyard. Which was how they’d ended up in the Perros’ House of Pain.

“He was outta his head. Right. And we made space for that. Cory made space for that. Right?”

Unsure what Len’s point was, Badger just stared.

“What you went through, Badge—that’s crazy shit you had to deal with. More than even me or Show. I’d say you were a little nuts, too. Adrienne believes you didn’t mean to hurt her, and I do, too. And everybody knew what happened with the drugs could happen. Tasha told us you would probably get hooked. We told you to let us know when you were in trouble, and we were looking out so we could catch you. There’s space for you, too. But you have to give
yourself
some space so you can trust us. We can’t trust you if you don’t trust us.”

“I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Stay clean. Man up. Take your lumps. And talk to Show. Be straight. I think I can get you your kutte back when you leave this room if you can get right with Show. If you can’t, then I don’t know what to say. Because, Badge, he sees a little bit of Daisy in Adrienne. What she might have been. That makes Adrienne real special to him, and seeing her hurt—if you don’t get right with him…you gotta get right with him.”

Badger nodded, but he had no earthly idea how to get right with Show, who’d seen him at his very worst, hurting the girl in whom Show saw his murdered daughter.

There was no way to make that right.

~oOo~

When he was a kid, every Christmas Eve after church and supper, Badger’s mom and dad would let him and his older brother, Jason, have their filled stockings. The family had never had much money, but they’d always had full stockings and one or two presents under the tree. When they were young enough to believe, Santa came while they were at church. Santa was eventually revealed to be their dad, who only went to church for weddings, christenings, and funerals. But before they knew better, their dad always had a big story about helping Santa unpack his sack. Then he and Santa would sit on the porch for a spell and share a smoke.

Before they could have their stockings, though, they had to sit in front of the television, all four of them, and watch their mom’s favorite Christmas movie on VHS:
Scrooge
, with Albert somebody or other. Some English guy. There was singing. Badger—Justin, in those days—had always thought it was pretty lame. It was old, and there was, you know, singing. But they’d sit there with their tantalizingly full stockings dangling from the mantle, drinking homemade virgin eggnog and eating sugar cookies shaped like stockings and Christmas trees and sprinkled with colored sugar, and they’d watch. Their mom sang every song. And she always cried at the end.

And when it was over, they tore into their stockings, which always had a bunch of cool, junky little toys and good candy.