Fuse's Hold

by E. C. Land

  “I know. But we’ve still got other shit to deal with too. Such as finding out more on Lyrica’s twin, Simone, as well as see if there’s anything else that could come our way from that bullshit.” I couldn’t agree more with this.

  Once Fuse has Lyrica back, he’ll have his head more focused and able to figure shit out. ‘Til then, we need to stand by him and have his back as he takes care of his ol’ lady and helps her heal.

  Chapter Four

  Lyrica

  “Is she going to be okay?” a voice so familiar I swear I’m dreaming still as I wake up.

  “She will, but it’s going to take some time for her to heal fully, Fuse. Her wrist was broken, her leg also in two places. Three of her ribs were fractured and that’s not even the extent of it all. We had to put her in an induced coma to help her heal some a week ago when Mountain got her here. Her brain had swelling that concerned us all. But she’s getting better. You know this.” That voice, I know it too. And the woman said, Fuse.

  Meaning I was right. I heard Fuse’s voice and I’m still dreaming a wonderfully torturous dream as I wait for Leonard to reap more of his pain on me.

  “Yeah, but you all started to bring her out of it yesterday and she’s still not waking up,” Fuse says, sounding miserable.

  “I promise she will, Fuse. Lyrica’s in the best place she can be right now. I know Mountain and his men didn’t want to take her to the hospital up there, but she’d needed immediate attention months ago, it looks like,” the woman says. She sounds like Angelina.

  God, I seriously must be out of it. Normally their voices are more at a distance and I’m looking in on them in my dreams.

  My heart stills when I feel a hand wrap around mine. That touch feels all too real for this to be me dreaming.

  “I know, Angelina, I know,” Fuse breathes, also confirming the voice belongs to my friend.

  “Try to rest, Fuse. I won’t tell you to go home and rest since we both know that won’t happen. Now just try to do so while we wait for her to wake,” Angelina mutters. Footsteps can be heard moving away. “I’ll be back to check on her in a bit.”

  “Thanks, Angelina. But remember, Pit will flip his shit if you don’t slow down some. He’s already told you a few times this week,” Fuse mutters, his voice still close and I assume his hand is the one holding mine.

  I wish I could open my eyes to see him, but I can’t they’re too heavy for me to open.

  As I hear Angelina go to answer him, I fall back into the darkness.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  The annoying sound of beeping draws me awake and I open my eyes slowly. Glancing around the room, I stop at the sight of Fuse’s head lying on the edge of the bed. One arm draped carefully over my legs while his hand on the other side holds mine in his.

  Oh. Shit. It hadn’t been a dream. It was real.

  Fuse is here.

  Tears sting my eyes at the sight of him sleeping. He seems to be tortured by his dreams as he sleeps, causing me to wonder what he’s dreaming of.

  How did I get here?

  Where are we?

  It can’t be home. The last place I remember hearing the men talk about is up in Montana near the border into Canada.

  I suck in a breath as everything slams into me at once. The last beating I’d received. Men coming and taking me out of there. A brute of a man holding me in his arms, another speaking soothing words as he took care of me. The trip where I’d stayed out of it only waking to find my head pressed into a lap. Bumps in the road causing me to whimper.

  Now here I am, staring at a sleeping Fuse. The one man who’s been a constant thought in my head for I don’t know how long.

  Why is he here?

  He hates me.

  There’s so much going on in my head, I can’t think of anything else as I stare at him.

  Fuse must sense he is being watched. Opening his eyes, he meets mine and immediately lifts his head off my lap, releases my hand, and stands to his feet.

  “Fuck, you’re awake,” he utters, reaching out and tenderly cupping my face in both his hands.

  I don’t say anything as he does this. Instead, I close my eyes and soak in the feel of him touching me. I’ve been through hell and this touch right here is all I’ve ever wanted to feel while I’d been there.

  “I’ve fuckin’ missed you, ma douce. So fuckin’ much,” he rasps.

  Um.

  Tears I’d been holding back spill down my cheek only to have him wipe them away.

  “You’re safe now, Ly. I’m not ever lettin’ another motherfuckin’ thing happen to you. I know you’re not ready for anything, but I’m tellin’ you now, you’re mine,” he declares soothingly.

  Oh. My. God.

  Those words I’ve wanted to hear for years, but this shit can’t be true now. Not after everything I’ve been through. I’m damaged now and not worth him wanting.

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out but a croak.

  “Here, ma douce,” he murmurs, pulling a hand back enough to reach out and grab a cup off the table next to the bed. Fuse holds the cup with the straw pointed toward my mouth for me to take a drink.

  I do but do it slowly as this is the first time I’d had anything cold in such a long time. I want to savor the coldness of it.

  Fuse pulls the cup away and sets it back on the table and completely releases my face. He sits back in his chair, reaches out, and takes my hand in his. I don’t miss the gentle way he takes my hand in his. Or the harsh breath he lets out.

  Diverting my eyes from him, I finally find my voice. “I wanted to die,” I whisper, telling him the truth.

  “I know you did, Ly. I’m fuckin’ grateful you didn’t. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he whispers just as quietly.

  “You don’t mean that,” I say, staring down at the cast on my other hand. Remembering the feeling of it snapping when Leonard slammed me down a set of stairs.

  “Lyrica, I do. You’ve been through hell, but so have I. I haven’t stopped looking for you the entire time you’d been missing. Swear to fuck, baby, you are the only thing I could focus on. I needed to get you back and didn’t know if I’d see you again. You haunted my dreams and every thought—you’re mine. I’ll help you heal in order to get past this all,” he rasps gravelly.

  “But I’m not worth it. They didn’t just break me, Fuse, they destroyed any part of who I am. You’re better off without me,” I whisper, tears spilling down my cheeks.

  “Ma douce, I know you think that now, but I’m not gonna give up on you. Let me worry about holding on to you and guide you through it. I’ve got you,” he mutters, causing my heart to shutter.

  Lifting my gaze to his, I find his eyes looking at me with something I rarely saw in them when he looked at me, but it’s also mixed with what I’ll assume is determination.

  Determination to do as he says he wants and that’s holding on to me.

  Chapter Five

  Fuse

  The first time I saw her again, my heart plummeted straight to my stomach. Not only that but a wave of anger I’ve never felt before. One my dad told me consumed every man in our family, or so his father told him.

  I’d been ready to rip those assholes apart before for taking my woman. Now, I want to make their pain feel tenfold for what Lyrica has felt.

  Over the past week, I’ve not once left the hospital. Mountain and his men pulled up to the clubhouse with her. Angelina took one look and demanded she be taken straight to the hospital where she works. The woman is a bad woman when she needs to do something. They tried to get me to leave, but like Angelina, I refused. But Pitch Black finally talked some sense into his ol’ lady due to her being pregnant. They’d only just found out a few weeks before and were keeping it to themselves at Angelina’s request; however, I got put in the conversation as well when my brother stated she needed to also think of their kid she was carrying.

  Throughout this time, my brothers have taken turns coming up to bring me food and
clothes. I shower in the room’s small as fuck bathroom, but it works for what I need it for. The ol’ ladies come up and spend time as well, Faith especially. She and Lyrica are more like sisters and she’s feeling it as deep as I am that Ly was hurt in such a way.

  I made a vow to myself, while waiting for Angelina to bring news back, when I’d been waiting in the ER’s waiting room. I vowed to hunt them down and make them pay. Cut, the Montana charter medic, he told me something that she’d said about killing a man and how she’d wanted to die.

  There’s a battle ahead of me in regard to my woman’s healing and I’v e got a lot of work ahead of me.

  With her being put into an induced coma, I’d been freaked the fuck out at the thought of her not ever waking up.

  Then to wake up to her staring at me, I felt all my emotions at one time. I knew I needed to take things slow with her. Ease her into everything. Help her overcome all the bullshit she’d been through. But I needed for myself to let her know I’m with her every step of the way. That she’s mine and I’m not giving up on her. I needed her to know that even if she doesn’t want it right now, I’m holding onto what we have or could have.

  After I made my determination known, I hit the call button to the nurses’ station and told them she’s awake.

  Angelina came rushing in and immediately went into doctor mode to take care of her friend. I sit in my chair, staying directly next to Lyrica. Anyone needing to do anything can do it from the other side. I’m not moving. I refuse to be farther away than I have to be from her side.

  Pulling out my phone, I shoot a group text to all my brothers, letting them know Lyrica’s awake.

  Lyrica doesn’t speak during the time Angelina is in here. She simply nods or shakes her head. I also notice Lyrica doesn’t meet her friend’s eyes head-on. Instead, she cast them to the side.

  Finally, alone again, I don’t say anything but rather reach out and hold her hand, allowing her to merely feel.

  When Lyrica speaks again, she shocks the hell out of me. “You’re the only thing I thought about when they had me. I dreamed about you when they allowed me time to sleep,” she whispers mutely that I swear I didn’t hear her right, but I know I did.

  “Ly,” I rasp, giving her hand a small squeeze.

  “No, please don’t say anything, I’m tired and want to go to sleep, but I wanted to tell you first, thank you. You kept me sane when I wanted to be anything but. Your presence makes me feel safe, so I can finally sleep peacefully knowing you’re here,” she murmurs, this time meeting my gaze head-on.

  What do you say to something like that?

  “Sleep, ma douce, you’re safe and I’ll be here when you wake up. I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her and clear my throat. She’s my world and I don’t know if she even understands any of it. But I’m starting to, and I’ll do everything in my fuckin’ power to keep Lyrica feeling safe.

  There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I will, or I’ll die trying.

  I watch as her eyes flutter closed, and she falls asleep once again. Sitting forward, I lift her hand, cautious of the IV in the back of her hand. I cup it between mine and press a kiss to her knuckles.

  When she gets out of here, I’ll be taking her home. A home that will be for her and me both. One that will be where I help her heal from the horrors she’s endured this past year and she’ll find the spirit within herself again.

  Sighing, I gently lay her hand back down on the bed next to her and release it in order to grab my phone. It’s time to get to work and focus. Meaning I have men to hunt down, find, and bring them here for me to toy with until I’m ready to give them over to Bart. He’ll enjoy the treat I give him when I’m done. Because they don’t say grind bones for nothing. When I’m done with the fuckers who hurt my woman, there won’t even be a bone of them left as I grind them in a woodchipper or meat grinder before tossing the rest into the bayou for the gators to enjoy.

  They’ll regret ever touching my Lyrica, ma douce. My motherfuckin’ ol’ lady.

  Chapter Six

  Lyrica

  For the past two months, things have been about me resting and not once stepping out of Fuse’s house after he’d carried me through the threshold. This is the only place I stay. I refuse to leave the confines of this house. I’ve opened windows on nice days and sat there staring out.

  I don’t speak much to anyone else, but I do speak with Fuse, though that’s also only a handful of words at a time. They all tried to get me to talk, maybe tell them what’s happened, but I can’t. Not because I don’t want to talk about it but because I don’t want them to know the extent of the horrifying things I’ve done or had done to me.

  Being that I’m still wearing a cast on both my wrist and ankle, I’m still bearing the reminders of what happened to me. I also have a few bad scars that show—one of them running from my ear, down my throat to the top of my breasts.

  It seems so much has changed in the time I’ve been gone, yet all still the same. Tiny had her baby the other week and I’ve not seen him yet. According to Nora and Brielle, who, along with Faith and Angelina, came to visit with me, it seems Chains isn’t wanting to let Tiny too far from him after Dorian was born. Angelina said the birth this time went well for her.

  Sighing, I look out the window as I use my good hand to brush my hair out of my face. Hair that is even longer than it’s ever been. After getting out of the hospital and Fuse bringing me here, the first thing I demanded was to take a shower. He hadn’t wanted to give in to me on this, but he did.

  I needed it. Hell, I still need it. Every day I wrap both casts up to keep them from getting wet and get into the shower with the water so hot it could burn you. I scrub my body until it’s nearly raw. I keep trying to wash the filth from me. To cleanse what Leonard and his men did to me from my body.

  I’m scared I’ll never be able to be clean again.

  At night, I know I scream in my sleep. I wake myself up, or I did in the beginning. Fuse heard me the first night and after that, he waits for me to go to bed and then joins me. I don’t think he knows I know, but I do. My dreams are riddled with horror, but the moment he pulls me into his arms, it’s as if a safety net is thrown around me, keeping them from touching me.

  I still have the nightmares, but when I’m sleeping in his arms, they’re not so bad.

  My mind is all over the place and I can’t seem to find a way to focus. It’s as if part of me were still back in the clutches of those vile men.

  I don’t even want to think of them as men. They’re monsters, every last one of them.

  I grew up in a somewhat okay household with parents who actually spent time with me when they could. I knew they weren’t my real parents. They were honest with me. Told me that they adopted me right after I’d been born along with my twin sister. One day though, she’d been in an accident and she’d died. It hurt when my parents told me about my sister and I still feel the pain of it.

  I rarely think of her and I don’t think of my parents, who died the year before I met Faith and moved in with her and Alec. Living with them had been some of the best years, which led to me moving here with Faith when by chance, her ol’ man found her again and reclaimed her.

  Glancing back down at the sketch pad in front of me, I take a good look at the drawing I’d been doodling. Thankfully the hand in a cast isn’t my hand I use for drawing and such. Before I’d been kidnapped, I’d been working in the club’s tattoo shop in town as a receptionist and learning how to use a tattoo gun.

  The guys who work at the shop under Lynch and Throttle had seen my drawings, figured if I could do that on paper, I could do it on skin. I just needed to learn. The day I’d been taken, I had done my first one on Jasper under the watchful eye of Noé.

  As I stare at this one, I can’t help but think of it as a great piece to put into art on skin—my skin, in fact. I have a couple tattoos, nothing massive and this is something I’d want.

  Maybe I could ask Fuse to get one of them to come
here. I highly doubt it, though.

  The crunch of feet against gravel draws my attention back to the window to find Tyres coming toward the house. Fuse explained to me how they’d all decided to build houses within the gate of the clubhouse, but it still doesn’t stop me from feeling completely safe. He also told me Tyres’ house was going up between his and Chains.

  I continue to follow Tyres as he makes his way up the steps of Fuse’s house and goes to the door. He doesn’t bother knocking. I’m sure he saw me sitting in the window and figured he didn’t need to knock.

  It’s not my house so I can’t say anything. Not that I mind anyway. Tyres is a character all of himself and I find him amusing. In the past two months, though, this is the first time I’ve seen him.

  Tyres steps into the open family room, where I’m sitting on the bay window bench seat. I forget to breathe at the tormented look in Tyres’ eyes as his gaze meets mine.

  “Hi,” I murmur tentatively while trying to keep the tremble out of my voice.

  Without a response, he moves. His feet bring him to me and he scoots my feet to the side and sits on the edge of the seat near me, eyes going to the drawing in my hand. “Ly,” he murmurs, anguish pouring out with the simple word.

  “Are . . . Are you okay?” I ask, unsure if I should have asked or not.

  “I should be the one asking you this very same question,” he mutters, shaking his head as he lifts his gaze to meet mine once again. “I’m sorry I haven’t been by sooner to check on you. Honestly, I feel responsible for what you went through and I don’t know how to deal with it. I have no problem gutting an asshole, but with what you endured, I can’t live with it.”

  Tears prick my eyes at the words spilling from Tyres’ lips. I know what type of man he is. I also know he’s an awesome dad to his little girl. But to have him blame himself for things he didn’t have a hand in hurts more than I thought anything else could.