by Hazel Parker
“Wait,” she commanded, “I meant that I need to take you to the hospital, not that you should just bleed out!” Vance laughed lightly, softly to avoid aggravating the wound, but it didn’t seem to work completely because she saw the wince he tried to hide.
“I’m not gonna bleed out,” he promised. “I’ve had worse. We patch this kind of shit up all the time. I can get to the guys; should’ve gone there first, anyway.”
“You’re not going anywhere like this,” Nina commanded.
“I’m not going to a hospital. Not like I’ve got insurance, anyway.”
“Then you’re going to have to walk me through what I’m supposed to do, then, because I’m not letting you leave with a gaping hole in your stomach.”
He laughed again, this time more genuine. “It’s not gaping,” he claimed, but Nina begged to differ. “The first thing you need is rubbing alcohol. You’ve gotta wash out—ah, fuck,” he breathed, cursing against a wave of pain. “Gotta wash it out so I can see how deep it is. Might not need stitches at all, if we’re lucky.”
Nina nodded. “I have some in the first-aid kit.” She’d always been a planner, someone who prepared for the worst, and kept a fully-stocked first-aid kit both at home and in a cabinet here in the office, plus an emergency kit in her car. A little excessive, but now, she was glad that she had it, because she really needed it.
She hauled the heavy box out of the cabinet and heaved it onto the desk, pushing paperwork and pens and binders out of the way so she had room to look through it. Nina took out everything that she thought she might need, including rubbing alcohol and gauze and adhesive, leaving the sterile sewing needle in the case, still hoping that she wouldn’t need it. Wetting the gauze heavily with the isopropyl alcohol and sanitizing her hands once more, she knelt down next to Vance’s chair and waited. Her hands hovered nervously above the wound, afraid to touch it until he made a small “go ahead” gesture with his hands. Then, she pressed the gauze to the wound and pulled away when he hissed in pain.
“I’m sorry!” she squeaked. “I told you, I don’t know what I’m doing!”
“No, no,” Vance reassured through a tight jaw, “you’re doing good. It just stings. It’s supposed to.” She still didn’t feel certain, but it was at least reassuring enough that she allowed him to guide her shaking hands back to the wound without protest, this time holding the gauze steady even when he flinched and groaned. It hurt her heart to watch him go through this and it was even harder to be the one putting him in more pain, but it had to be done, she knew, or it could get infected, and that could be deadly. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her, one which turned her stomach sour.
“You’re sure that this is just a cut, right?” she asked. “It’s not, like, poisoned or anything?”
Vance guffawed at that statement, and though Nina felt embarrassed at the reaction, it was nice to see something distract him from the pain, if only for a moment.
“Red, I’m a biker, not a pirate,” he chuckled. “Nobody’s slicing me with poisoned blades.”
“I just had to check,” she muttered. Setting his hands on the gauze for just a moment, she pulled her hair into a ponytail, something that always helped her focus when she was having a hard time doing so, and took a deep breath. He flinched when she replaced her hands over the cut, but this time she held steady.
“You’re doing fine,” he muttered once more. “Keep pressure on it for a few minutes; see if the bleeding slows down. If it doesn’t, I’ll need you to sew it up.” Nina tried to keep her expression blank even as she heard those, some of the most horrifying words that had been spoken to her in a long time.
“I’m sorry about your shed,” Vance apologized, and Nina felt her heart sink.
“Can we not do this now?” she asked, but he shook his head.
“No time,” he replied. “You’re just gonna— fuck! — just gonna kick me out again after this.”
“That’s not—”
“—Don’t tell me it’s not true,” Vance cut her off, “because you’re going to do it. You’d be stupid not to.”
She sighed, long and low and full of all the emotions that she’d been holding in since the moment that she’d met him. Frustration and anger and attraction and desire and probably a lot of other things that she didn’t even want to admit to herself yet swirled around in her stomach until she felt butterflies fluttering inside it. She wanted to kiss him. She knew that she couldn’t.
“Why didn’t you respond when I texted you?”
“You deserved the peace of mind of being able to get rid of me for good,” he said.
“That’s not what I wanted.”
“But it’s what you needed. I could tell. Believe me, it’s not like I was doing it for myself.”
So he’d missed her, too. That was unexpected, but relieving. However, instead of swooning at his selflessness like he had probably anticipated, Nina felt a little pissed off by the confession.
“Why does everyone always insist on doing things for my own good?” she asked. “My ex used to do it, and now you. Do you not think I can handle myself?”
Vance frowned. “That’s not it,” he insisted, his eyes now more alert than they’d been since he came into the office, filled with a fire that compelled her to listen to him and to trust him. “I just have to clean up my own messes, especially if they’re affecting you.”
“Well then,” she decided, “that goes two ways. You wouldn’t have been hurt if your ex-girlfriend didn’t think you were dating me, right? That’s why she’s mad?”
“Nina, it’s more complicated than that. You had nothing to do with this.”
She held the gauze tighter to the wound, hoping that the extra pressure would, if nothing else, get him to shut up for a minute.
“No,” she shut him down. “If you get to protect me, then I get to protect you, too.”
“You’re doing more than I should even be asking of you just by not slamming the door in my face now,” Vance said. His breathing had evened out a bit and some of the color had returned to his face now that he was sitting down, and when Nina dared to lift the gauze, she found that the bleeding had slowed, at least a bit, but hadn’t come close to stopping.
“I think it’s time for a hospital,” she said. “Seriously, Vance. You can’t really expect me to give you fucking stitches in my office.”
He smirked slightly at her, intentionally dodging the statement. “I like it when you curse,” he said. “It’s sexy.” Nina flushed pink but rolled her eyes.
“Is that seriously what you’re choosing to focus on right now?”
“Better than thinking about the pain,” he admitted. Well, that was probably true, but still. “I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’ll make it all the way back to the other guys without passing out. If you don’t do this for me now, I’m only going to bleed out on the way there.”
Nina swallowed against the lump in her throat and nodded, reaching into the bag for a sewing needle and a fishing line. She disinfected both with alcohol, then threaded the fishing line through the eye of it.
“You’re sure you want me to do this?” she asked, and Vance nodded.
“We don’t have a whole lot of options,” he said. She moved toward him with the needle, only stopping when he jumped back in alarm.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m doing what you asked me to do!”
“Yeah, you’re not touching me with that if I’m sober,” he warned. “You’ve got to have some booze around here, right?” Nina hesitated, not wanting to risk getting him so drunk that he couldn’t tell her what to do next but also not wanting him to feel the pain. In the end, she decided that the worst case scenario was that Vance would pass out drunk and she could just call an ambulance to deal with him, so she stood up from her perch next to his chair, setting the needle down carefully on her desk so she didn’t lose it, and reached into the bottom drawer of her desk for an old bottle of scotch. She’d only ever drank from it a
handful of times, so it was mostly full, and she didn’t bother with finding a cup before handing the entire fifth to him. Vance didn’t seem to care, putting the glass to his lips and chugging for several seconds, probably taking in several shots worth in one go, and shuddering as he handed it back. He groaned at the burn of the alcohol but managed to keep it down without gagging, which she thought was impressive.
“Okay,” Vance said, “give that a minute, then we’ll get started.” Nina used the break to sanitize the needle and fishing line again and her hands for a third time. When he finally nodded, his posture far more relaxed than it had been previously, Nina began to pull the needle through the wound on either side, pushing down her own nausea and telling herself over and over that it was just like sewing fabric, counting the seconds in her head to distract herself from Vance’s pained grunting, until it was over after what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes.
“You did good, Nina,” Vance said when she finished, slurring his words slightly from both the exhaustion and the alcohol.
She bit down on her lower lip and mustered all the confidence she had inside her, hoping that his altered state of mind might be enough to rope him into agreeing to something that she could hold him to later.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’m involved in this, now,” she reiterated. “You’re stuck with me, now. I could stand just to step aside and let you handle this when it was about my motel, but now they’ve hurt you, and I’m not going to let you deal with that alone.”
Vance sighed. “I’m not alone,” he argued. “I’ve got the guys—”
“Some help they were tonight,” she scoffed. “Face it, Vance. You need someone else on your side. Someone who’s closer to the bar and who knows you. I want to know what’s happening before it happens, and the only way to do that is to join you.”
That seemed to sober him up pretty fast. “You can’t seriously be saying that you want to be a Rebel King.”
She shrugged. “Maybe not,” she admitted, “but I don’t want to be on the outside looking in anymore. I don’t need to ride with the club, Vance, but I need to ride with you.”
Something that she loved about Vance was his eyes; the way that she could see his emotions in them and guess what he was going to say next. He usually kept a sort of icy look about them, meticulously cold and devoid of emotion, but sometimes, when Nina spoke, she found a way to melt it away and get a glimpse of everything that was behind it. She was able to see the warmth, the passionate fire, the lust, the love. He cared about her more fiercely than anyone ever had before but now she’d taken the red pill, so to speak; she knew that she could never truly feel safe again unless she embraced some amount of strategic danger. Teaming up with the Kings was a purely tactical move, but teaming up with Vance—well, that was something else entirely.
“It’s not like we haven’t talked about it before,” Vance caved a little. “Aces—the leader—he thinks it might be a good idea to have more of us sticking closer to Agua Dulce. I told him that you wouldn’t want a bunch of bikers running around your motel all the time and causing trouble, but if that’s not how you feel…”
“You mean like letting some of the Kings stay in the Oasis, like you did?” she asked, and Vance shrugged.
“At least for the time being,” he replied. “Having some of the guys around here all the time might be a good deterrent, show the Disciples that we’re not going anywhere.”
Nina nodded, considering that possibility. It was a little scary to think about getting that involved, but she trusted that Vance wouldn’t let her do anything that might put her in harm’s way if he could help it.
“I could live with that,” she finally said. Vance already seemed to be drifting off to sleep, so she made sure that he took his shoes off and got into bed properly before shutting the door and making her way to her own house. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t ready for whatever was going to happen tomorrow, so she’d need a good night’s sleep in order to figure out how to fake some confidence and convince Aces that she would be an asset rather than a liability.
Chapter 28: Vance
He only vaguely remembered even making Nina the promise that he’d take her down into the desert to meet with the Rebel Kings, but Vance fully regretted doing so. He’d spent much of the morning trying to talk her out of it in every way he could think of, telling her of the bodily danger and the illegal ties and the solitary, committed lifestyle of being in a club like his, but none of it was having any effect on her. She seemed to have made up her mind, and although that was one of the qualities that he liked most about her, right now, it was irritating as hell. He needed to find some way to convince her to change her mind, but he’d already exhausted every possibility he could think of.
“Are you ready to go?” Nina asked. She’d come to his room pretty early with breakfast, frozen waffles that she’d toasted at home, and fruit, plus a cup of coffee for herself and a glass of orange juice for him. She’d told him that he shouldn’t be drinking caffeine while he was healing, and though that sounded like bullshit, he had bigger things to argue with her about.
“I am,” he began, “but I don’t think you are. Nina, you’re making a big mistake, here.” She rolled her eyes, tying her shower-damp hair up in a ponytail.
“Not this again,” she complained. “I told you that you’re not going to change my mind. This is happening. I don’t have another choice.”
“You have lots of choices.”
“None that will actually keep me safe.”
“There’s no guarantee that this will keep you safe, either,” he pointed out. She seemed to consider that for a moment but not in a way that implied that it was something she hadn’t considered yet.
“I know,” she finally replied, “but it’s the best bet I’ve got. I don’t want to rely on you to protect me. I want to do it for myself.”
Vance respected that. It was part of why he’d joined the Kings himself, honestly—because after all the tragedy in his life and all the things that he’d lost that were out of his control, he wanted to make one choice that would give him some power, some leverage, the ability to do what he wanted when he wanted to do it and prevent anyone from stopping him. However, Nina wasn’t like that. She didn’t strike him as vengeful, as he’d once been when he was young, or fearful or power hungry. The one saving grace that prevented him from shutting her down altogether, from riding away on his bike and requesting a change of location and never seeing her again, was that she seemed ready for whatever this life choice was going to throw at her. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy and she wasn’t romanticizing it in her mind—a mistake that he’d allowed Amelia to make and had vowed to never fall prey to again. Nina was a sensible, smart woman who was making a well-informed, if totally insane, choice for herself.
He ran a hand through his long hair, wincing at the soreness in his abdomen. Nina saw the flinch and was by his side in a flash. He’d checked it in the shower and found it to be not even as bad as he’d thought it would be. The cut hadn’t been too deep—he probably could have gotten away without stitches, if they’d really wanted to take that chance—and he knew that he was out of the woods in terms of safety, but it didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. Just because he’d ridden on worse, didn’t mean that he liked doing it.
“Are you hurting still?” she fretted. “You don’t think it’s infected, do you? Did I do the stitches wrong?” Vance laughed, quelling her worry with a hand on her shoulder.
“You did fine,” he reassured. “It always just aches like a bitch for a few days. It’s not infected. You already checked, remember?”
Indeed, Nina had insisted on pulling up the wound’s dressing that she’d placed last night and checking it for signs of excess redness or heat or fluids, then had sanitized it again and redressed it in new bandages. Honestly, he’d probably gotten better care here than he would have at a hospital, anyway, with the way Nina was mother-henning.
“Sorry,” s
he apologized sheepishly. “I know. I’m just nervous.”
He looked her in the eyes sincerely. “You don’t have to do this,” he reminded her. “There are other options.” She shook her head, a few strands of red hair that were too short to be captured in the ponytail swishing in front of her face.
“I’m doing it,” she confirmed. “I’m ready when you are.” Well, there was no sense in pushing off the inevitable, he thought. If she was really, sincerely committed to this, it was better to start riding earlier than later. He shoved his helmet into her hands and watched her zip up the closest thing she’d been able to find to a leather jacket: a brown nylon bomber coat that hung way too large on her. She looked up to catch him watching her and she blushed under his gaze.
“I know it doesn’t really fit,” she admitted. “It was my dad’s. One of the only things that I still have from him.” Vance couldn’t help but smile at her. She was always open and genuine, so different from any of the other people that he’d ever been around and certainly the opposite of how he normally was. She brought those qualities out in him, however, with her patience and warmth, and he found that he really liked the person that he was around Nina.
“It looks good on you,” he complimented with a playful half-smile. He wasn’t lying, but the teasing still made the flush in her cheeks deepen.
“Let’s just go,” she said, sounding flustered. With one final shake of his head to convey that he still thought this was a terrible idea, he grabbed his keys from his jacket pocket and started out toward his bike with Nina following close behind.
Even when their destination was somewhere Nina had no business going, she loved being on the back of Vance’s bike more than anything in the world. He wasn’t sure what had changed her opinion of motorcycles but the change was noticeable: this time as she was on the back of his bike, she was holding tightly to him but not as though her very life depended on it, and she occasionally demanded that they go faster, whooping and hollering when they leaned into turns and accelerated down empty stretches of highway.
