Remember Me (Defiant MC) (12 page)

They talked for hours.  Maddox said things he’d never known were important, like how his mother had made him peanut butter and apple sandwiches every day for a year because it was all he would agree to eat for lunch.  Gaby listened and held his hand.  In time she talked about her own mother and the pain of a long, lingering death.  When he finally kissed her good night, it wasn’t a casual passion but something else.  Something he already knew to be far more precious. 

Once he awkwardly asked Jensen if he minded but his brother shrugged it off.  He said he had more important things to worry about, like picking their father up out of his vomit and misery and requiring him to live.  

“Besides,” Jensen had said with bitter weariness.  “It doesn’t make a damn difference because you never keep a girl around for longer than a week or two.” 

But Jensen was wrong for once.  Maddox was suddenly uninterested in other girls.  He only wanted Gabriela.  It was more than her body, although he was half crazy from waiting for her to be ready.  He wanted to hear her voice and show her the view from the Scorpion Mountains as the dusk shadows fell across their town.  He just wanted to be with her.

She’d said it first, the word ‘love’.  She’d said it the night he was a centimeter away from entering her before he stopped himself.  All the hot times he’d had already didn’t matter.  He’d give it all up.  Goddammit, he loved that girl. 

They fought often.  She told him he was far too smart to be barely skating through school.  And what would he do after graduation in a few months?  Had he even thought about it?  Maddox never wanted to talk about any of those things.  He figured he would eventually get licensed and mess with pipes, like his old man.  He didn’t want to hear about other options and he sure as hell wasn’t planning on putting in any more time at school no matter what Gaby had to say about it. 

She had her own plans.  She’d hinted a few times that her goals didn’t mean to keep her in Contention City.  Maddox didn’t want to talk about that either.  He cracked a beer and stopped listening.  When she tried to yell her way through his vagueness he stalked away, ignoring her exasperated cry. 

“Maddox, you shit!  I love you.” 

The fight was nothing.  She would still love him later.  It wouldn’t be much longer, he knew, before she would love him completely.  When that happened, all the garbage which kept them at odds would fall away.  He figured she knew exactly how he felt.  He also figured that when she said she loved him it meant she trusted him. 

It was the worst error in judgment he’d ever made. 

Maddox wasn’t the one who stole the car.  He ran into Chaz Coletti when he was still buzzed and smarting from his fight with Gaby.  It was a Caddy and obviously belonged to one of the snowbirds who found their way to the southwest to escape the cold which seeped into their old bones.  Maddox knew the two girls who were with Chaz.  They were juniors and he’d messed with them both before but that was long before Gabriela.  Chaz wanted to drive down to Phoenix just for the hell of it and Maddox agreed that getting out of Contention City for a few hours was a great plan.  He leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes, vaguely aware that the girl on his left was vomiting out the window. 

What happened after that was a little bit of a mystery but when Maddox opened his eyes it was daylight and there were people everywhere.  He knew most of them.  Chaz had driven the goddamn car into the middle of the Contention High track field
and then stopped.  Chaz was blearily sputtering over the state of things as he wrestled the front seat.  Maddox discovered he couldn’t get up because someone’s head was in his lap.  It was one of the girls and she wasn’t wearing a shirt.  She groaned and nestled her face in his crotch as his classmates tittered and exclaimed. 

The flashing lights should have been expected.  It was a stolen car, after all, and they were all wasted and trespassing.  After he unwillingly gave his fingerprints, he was confronted by his brother.  Jensen was furious with him.  Jensen had been angry with him countless times in the last eighteen years but this was a more base and rancorous emotion
than he’d ever received from anyone.  Mad’s older brother called him a no good fuck and smacked him around as the other officers laughed. 

Maddox didn’t fight back.  Jensen was a police officer and anyway, he scarcely noticed the blows.  He was consumed with terror.  Gaby.  He had to talk to Gaby. 

Jensen wasn’t in any mood to be indulgent.  As he tossed Maddox into a cell, Mad noticed his brother’s wild expression.  He knew Jensen wasn’t really in his right mind these days.  His eyes were hooded from sleeplessness and too much drinking.  He was trying to keep their father from pitching overboard while assuming the role of responsible adult.  Still, Maddox had to try. 

“I need to make a phone call,” he told his brother. 

“Fuck you,” Jensen growled.  “I’m your fucking phone call.  You’re gonna sit your sorry ass in there until you grow some decency.”

Maddox sat bleakly in a corner as Jensen left him alone.  Chaz was retrieved by his parents within an hour and the girls were at the medical center for suspected alcohol poisoning.  Maddox listened to the hours tick past and waited.  Priest didn’t come for him.  Jensen didn’t return.  Finally an older officer named Romero opened the door and told him to get the hell out.  They were done holding him.  Maddox glanced at the clock on the station wall before hurrying outside.  Ten hours had passed.  Anything could happen in ten hours.  And anything did. 

As Maddox watched the world continue to darken from a nameless peak in the Scorpion Mountains, his mind was dark as well.  He remembered it all; arriving home to find his father passed out on the back porch again.  Then he opened a door only to see his girl in his brother’s bed.  The two of them were sleeping with their limbs wound together as if they’d always been lovers.  They were startled when he howled with rage.  He hated them and told them so.  Gaby was still furiously hurt, calling him all kinds of dirty names as it became apparent she’d listened to everything she’d been told.  The hell with her. She didn’t even bother to talk to him before opening up her legs and fucking his brother. 

Jensen had been quiet throughout the tirade and there was deep pain in his face when he tried to approach Maddox. 

“I have no brother,” Maddox coughed, pushing him away.  Then he turned to Gabriela, who was standing in the middle of the room with a sheet against her naked body, tears streaming down her face.  “And you’re nothing but a filthy slut after all.”   Her sob of agony might have made him pause if he hadn’t already turned to stone.

He couldn’t endure them.  He moved into Chaz Colletti’s basement and no amount of Priest’s entreaties would force him back under the same roof with Jensen.  On the day of his high school graduation, which he refused to attend, Priest came to him and quietly divulged the fact of Gaby’s pregnancy. 

All those things couldn’t be undone.  Maddox didn’t hate them anymore.  He wondered if he ever really had.  He’d spent so long wandering through a fog of angry hurt, numbing it with sex and hard living.  If his mother had lived she would likely have forced a reconciliation far sooner.  But now Priest’s death was forcing it. 

Maddox made his way carefully down the mountain in the dark.  His bike was exactly where he had left it as he’d known it would be.  He drove slowly down to the streets he’d grown up
on and found his way back to Priest’s house once again.  The lights were all on and a red Ford pickup was parked in the driveway.  He almost walked right past the woman.  She was standing in the shadows, beyond the reach of the dim porch light.

“So you’re Maddox.”  She moved into the light and his eyes went reflexively over her body.  She had a nice body.  She noticed the attention and smiled. 

“I don’t remember you,” he said honestly.

“We’ve never met,” she admitted, taking a drag from a cigarette.  She appeared to be an unnatural blond but her figure was fine and to Maddox she looked pretty damn good standing there blowing smoke on his father’s porch.  Then he heard Jensen’s voice inside the house and instantly he knew her name. 

“Casey,” he remembered.  “That right?” 

Jensen’s wife grinned at him. “It is.”  She didn’t miss a beat when it came to looking him over and moving just a few inches too close.  “So you’re the bad boy biker brother I’ve heard so much about.”   She was being coy.  Mad was suddenly wary of her.  He didn’t like coy women.  Their intentions were usually mixed up in things he didn’t want to deal with. 

“Glad to meet you,” Maddox said mildly. 

“Are you?” she asked with false shyness.  She shifted purposely so his gaze would travel to her long legs.  The red skirt she wore was barely decent. 

Even as his dick rose with involuntary interest Maddox felt a strong dislike for her.  Forget the fact that she was his sister-in-law; this was his father’s house and his father was inside gasping his last breath. 

Jensen appeared on the porch.  With one look Maddox could tell he was already half wasted.   Jensen didn’t seem especially irked by his presence, so Maddox figured Gaby must not have told him about their argument earlier.  Casey appeared annoyed by her husband’s intrusion but Maddox just pushed past his brother and entered the house. 

He saw Miguel seated at the kitchen table stacking dominoes.  Maddox remembered those things. They’d been his once, his and Jensen’s.  His nephew smiled nervously at him.  

“Hi, Uncle Maddox.” 

“Hey, kid. You got my permission to call me plain Mad.” 

“Mad,” Miguel said thoughtfully and then shrugged.  “Okay.” 

He found Gaby in Priest’s room.  She was leaning over the bed talking to his father in a soft voice which tore at him. 

“No,” she shook her head.  “He didn’t leave.  He’ll be back soon.”  She looked up and relief flooded her face when she saw him in the doorway.  “See?
Here he is.”

Priest’s head creaked painfully in his direction.   His voice was weak and rough as sandpaper. “Hey, boy.”

Maddox sat carefully on the end of the bed.  He didn’t look at Gabriela.  “Hey, Dad.”  As his hand sought the old man’s, he tried not to openly grimace when he found little more than bone.   “I’m here.  I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

A spasm overcame Priest and his face twisted into a mask of pain.  Then, just as quickly, it relaxed.  “You stay out of them mountains, Maddox.  Your mom, she worries.” 

Maddox’s head dropped.  Priest was in the past again.  “I will, Dad.”

Priest’s eyes closed and he frowned.  “And Mad, you keep close to your brother,” he whispered and then fell into unconsciousness. 

Gaby checked his pulse and then gently tucked the sheet around him.  “He’s just asleep,” she told Maddox. 

Mad nodded silently but he was having trou
ble with all of this.  Priest McLeod had served in Vietnam.  He had endured horrific conditions as a POW and returned to the states to find a country vastly changed from the one he had left.  He was one of the original road hogs born out of a time of rebellion and a quest for elusive freedom.  Decades later, when Maddox was a boy, Priest’s bike occupied a shrouded retirement in the garage.  Occasionally Priest would roll it out and tend to it lovingly, sometimes taking one son or the other on a fleeting coast around town.  But it was always brief and benign.  Maddox knew his mother had something to do with Priest leaving that era behind.   Sometimes old friends, those who remained hard road warriors, would show up in Contention and Priest would turn to tough talk and alcohol for a few hours as Maddox watched with fascination.  But Priest always waved goodbye to those pieces of his past, returning to his family and his plumber’s tools without any visible regret. 

“Dad,” Maddox whispered with grief and touched his father’s frail forehead.  He heard a stirring in the doorway and saw Jensen standing there with an anguished look on his flushed face.  His brother held a bottle in his hand and he took a long drink before shaking his head and shuffling away. 

Maddox jerked his head to the spot where his brother had been standing.  “How long has that been a problem?”

Gabriela looked sad.  “A while.  Started getting bad after the shooting three years ago.  Since Priest started sliding downhill it’s gotten worse.  He used to be able to hide it from Miguel.”  She paused, looking uncomfortable.  “He can’t seem to hide it anymore.” 

Sharp female laughter echoed from the living room and Maddox glared in the direction the noise had come from.

“And what about her?”

Gaby’s face darkened and Mad could read her dislike for Jensen’s wife.  “Casey’s a piece of work.  I don’t get into their business but it doesn’t seem like a good deal.” 

“No, it doesn’t,” agreed Maddox.  Then he figured if his brother was dumb enough to put a ring on trash then he probably deserved what he got. 

Gabriela had crossed her arms and was watching him.  There was a challenge in her face which he remembered well.  She seemed to be waiting for him to mention the harsh words spilled earlier in the afternoon, but he wasn’t going to address that here.  He answered her gaze, silently telling her to go to hell if that’s how it was going to be. 

Gaby’s face changed and she suddenly seemed soft.  He saw her begin to reach out a tentative hand but he didn’t want that either.  He left the room. 

Jensen was sitting at the kitchen table with Miguel.  He was slurring his words and having an unsuccessful go at setting the dominoes.  Casey stood in the kitchen, drinking a wine cooler and rolling her eyes.