Long Way Home

by Katie McGarry

  Chevy shifts so he’s under the covers with me, moving so that I can nestle exactly where I want to be—my head on his chest, my arm around his stomach. Chevy holds me tight, his fingers tunnel into my hair and then eventually discover my temple. He starts that slow circle massage and my eyes eventually close.

  “I’ve got you, Violet. I swear to God I’ve got you.”

  And there’s no more thrumming.

  Just his heat, warm covers, his heartbeat, his promise, the rise and fall of his chest and my body wrapped around his.

  This. Just this. I’m finally home.

  CHEVY

  Violet: You look tired.

  Me: I am.

  Violet: Have you been able to sleep?

  Me: Not since the hospital. Only when I slept with you.

  Violet: Me either. There’s this buzzing in my head that keeps me awake. I wish there would be silence. Everything seems too loud now. Like a TV with a broken remote.

  Me: I get it.

  Violet: I thought you would.

  “SHE’S QUIET,” SAYS OZ. “I don’t like it.”

  I pocket my cell, wanting to keep the messages between me and Violet private, then pick the football up off the ground. I glance over at the wraparound porch. Violet’s on the porch swing and she places her cell on her lap, but doesn’t look in my direction. Doesn’t let on at all that we’ve been chatting back and forth, sharing secrets via short words on a screen.

  Her legs are propped up and she’s listening to her younger brother, Stone, who is in the Adirondack chair next to her. He’s telling her about some movie he and I watched last night.

  In fact, he’s told her about every movie he’s watched while Violet and I were gone and while she was in the hospital. As long as he has her attention, he’ll keep talking, and knowing Violet, she’ll sit and listen. Even if we hadn’t been kidnapped, Violet has always given Stone her time.

  I make a mental note that one of us will have to swoop in and give her a break. “Violet’s listening to Stone, that’s why she’s quiet. She doesn’t interrupt him unless she has to.”

  “It’s more than that,” Oz says.

  It’s a warm day. Sun’s shining. White clouds. All the poetic shit. Fall’s like this in Kentucky. Rainy and cold one day, warm and sunny the next. Keeps going like this until December and then it’s nothing but gray clouds and balls-fall-off freezing until mid-March.

  I’ve been here at Cyrus’s for a few days. Violet was released from the hospital last night. Right before they were about to release both of us, she hobbled to the bathroom and vomited.

  Hospital kept her until she could hold food down. Some doctors thought it was a stomach bug. A few thought it was an allergic reaction. Others thought it was some sort of Acute Stress Disorder. After she got over that, the specialist kept her in for her knee. First they thought they were going to do surgery, then the MRI showed the damage wasn’t as bad as they thought. They ended up giving her physical therapy for treatment.

  Either way, I hated being away from her.

  “Razor’s quiet.” I motion to our best friend, who’s walking across the field, away from us. “You don’t complain about him.”

  “He was born quiet. She was born to tell us what we’re doing wrong.” Oz takes after his mother with black hair, and like his father, he’s tall, has fists like a brick wall, and he’s a patched-in member.

  He’s a year older than me and, like Razor, I consider him a brother. Violet, Razor, Oz and I grew up together on this property. Slept in the old log cabin house that Cyrus calls home. His wife, Olivia, used to help us catch fireflies in this field on late summer nights.

  Across the yard is a two-story three-car garage that was converted into the clubhouse for the Terror. The day is nice enough that the garage doors are rolled up. Some of the guys inside are watching the TV over the bar. A few are playing pool in the corner.

  The four of us learned how to crawl on those sticky floors, played tag in the crowd during the hundreds of family dinners the club had as we grew up. Hell, I first found the courage to take Violet’s hand on the picnic table Pigpen’s currently sitting on as he drinks a beer.

  He’s been Violet’s shadow since Eli left town with Cyrus a few days ago.

  “Violet’s talking,” I say.

  The look of utter disbelief is warranted. Violet is talking again, but she’s not herself. Spends more time silently watching than letting her thoughts roll off her tongue. It’s making every guy in the club, including me, edgy.

  But then again, I only got to see her in a crowded hospital room, and since she’s been home, her brother has been stuck tight to her. As much as I want a few minutes alone with her, Stone deserves this time with his sister. He needs to know she’s okay and that it’s not his fault we were taken.

  “Leave her be, okay?” If Violet wants to stay quiet, she can stay quiet. If she wants to run through the clubhouse like a crazy person and break every glass in sight, she can do that, too. “Violet saved her brother’s life. Saved mine, too.”

  “I’m not coming down on her, I’m concerned. I know Violet and I haven’t gotten along lately, but I still love her.”

  My gut twists because that’s how I feel about her silence, too, but Violet’s got too many people in her face hoping and praying she’ll return to normal. Each hour that passes, I’m beginning to realize they want her to act normal so they can start to feel better about what happened. It’s how people are also acting around me.

  They smile too big. Pause for too long. Can’t seem to find easy conversation. It’s uncomfortable and it doesn’t help this strange sensation that I’ve had since leaving the hospital. Like the rest of the world is moving in fast-forward and I’m creeping along in slow motion.

  Fucking sucks.

  Razor turns and raises his arms. Rebecca finally cleared me to start exercising. It’s been driving me insane to do nothing but watch TV. The faster I can get back to football, the faster my life will return to normal.

  I pull my arm back, then launch the ball into the air. A perfect spiral with a perfect arc. Razor catches it and I circle my shoulder. Every damn muscle in my body was bruised and due to the inactivity is now stiffer than roadkill.

  “Looking good,” Oz says.

  It’s not the throwing I’m concerned about. That’s not my job. It’s the running while plowing through a line of guys, all while catching. I hold my hands up and Razor fires it back. Like I asked, he threw it to the side and I jog the few feet. I’m able to easily catch it, holding it close to my chest.

  Thanks to muscle memory, my feet automatically cut right as if I’m in a game and need to lose my defender. But I don’t do a full-on sprint. Instead, I throw the ball back to Razor and pause to stretch.

  The deep grumbling of multiple motorcycle engines. Cyrus and Eli have been gone since I woke up here after my hospital stay and it pisses me off that nobody’s told me why they left or where they went. The group of six guys pull off to the side of the clubhouse and park. They cut their engines and the yard goes quiet.

  After the last guy swings off his bike, the birds chirp again in the thick forest of trees surrounding Cyrus’s property and the clubhouse springs to life as the guys who were hanging out near the bar pile out into the yard. They offer quick hugs and fast pats.

  Cyrus glances in my direction. Normally, I’m a patient guy. Would let Cyrus come to me when he’s ready to talk, but I must have left all my patience in that hellhole basement.

  Most of the guys head into the clubhouse, but Cyrus stays behind. “Saw you as we drove up. You looked good making the catch.”

  Not discussing football. “Where have you been? And don’t tell me on a run for the security business. We both know that would be bullshit.”

  Cyrus strokes his long beard and he regards Violet
on the porch. “She doing okay?”

  No. “Cyrus.”

  He settles his dark eyes on me. Cyrus is not only the head of this MC, but the head of this family. He’s a McKinley, Eli’s a McKinley and so am I. I don’t fool myself into thinking I won’t look just like Eli in twenty years and be a carbon copy of the man in front of me at fifty.

  “We’ve been in Louisville, talking with the police.”

  A muscle in my jaw twitches and Cyrus catches it.

  “That’s it? You spent days away talking to the police? You’d think they’d want to talk to me and Violet instead of you.”

  His expression darkens. I talked to the police the night we got back to Snowflake, but we haven’t been interviewed since. Pushing back, demanding information, that’s not like me, but I’m not an idiot. They may have met with the police, but they also met with the Riot. “Did you meet with Skull? Are they going to turn Fiend over?”

  “We’re letting the police handle this,” Cyrus says.

  A nonanswer. Because club business stays within its members and I’m not a member. Even if I was, there are things some members never know. For years, I watched Razor struggle with this, but accepting my place had never been an issue for me, until now.

  “I would think letting myself be kidnapped so I could save Stone and then offering myself as a human shield for Violet would be enough to get me in the know.”

  Cyrus places his hands on his hips, and right when I’m ready for him to try to deflect the conversation again, he tilts his head to the clubhouse. “Church. Now.”

  He walks ahead, I follow. We enter the clubhouse and one by one the board members watch as we pass, then also fall into line. Cyrus’s hand slams on the door to the stairs and he jogs up. First door on the right and I walk into Church.

  This room is a sacred place for the club, but it’s not a place of worship. It’s where decisions are made, problems are dissected. It’s a place where whatever is discussed stays. To be in here requires trust from one person to the next.

  I’ve been in here before. Snuck in with Oz and Razor when we were kids, but I haven’t been in here in years. Cyrus tore our asses inside out when he caught us playing in here. He taught us then that we needed to respect this club and its ways.

  If he couldn’t trust us, he said, how could we trust them? Brotherhood, family...it requires trust.

  Place looks the same as it did then. Huge black Reign of Terror banner on the wall with the half skull and fire blazing out of the eyes and fire raining down around it. The long wooden boardroom-style table is in the middle with the chairs gathered around it.

  Cyrus takes a seat at the head of the table and the rest of the board members drop into chairs. Razor’s dad, Hook, is in here and so is Oz’s dad, Man O’ War. Besides me, Pigpen is the youngest guy in here and then there’s Eli. Not officially a board member, but he is the most respected man in the club.

  “Did you meet with the Riot?” I ask, and all heads turn in Cyrus’s direction. I don’t have the right to ask that question as I’m not patched in and everyone will back Cyrus up if he doesn’t answer.

  “We met with the police. We meant what we said. We are going full letter of the law on this. In fact, the police want to meet with you and Violet tomorrow night. They want to show you pictures. Have you confirm the people they’re looking for.”

  “I’m in.” I’m assuming Violet will be, too. “What else is going on?”

  Cyrus shares a long glance with Eli, and when Eli looks over at me, he tugs on his earlobe. “Chevy, you aren’t patched in yet.”

  Anger kicks me hard in the chest. “Are you kidding me? I risked my life and this is how I’m treated?”

  “How do you want to be treated?” Eli asks like he can’t see I’m thirty seconds from flipping the table.

  “With respect.”

  “Then you’re saying you want to be part of this club? That when we hand you a cut you’d accept without hesitation, because we know how your mom feels about us and we know how you feel about her. We also know that Violet broke up with you over us. It’s a shit thing for us to ask, but when push comes to shove, are you able to handle being a part of this club when the two women you love the most are going to hate you for it?

  “Because when you become a member, you understand what’s said in this room, stays in this room. That anything pertaining to the club stays club business. Even when doing so causes problems for you in other areas of your life. Can you handle that?”

  Violet

  THANKS TO CHEVY and me being kidnapped, Cyrus’s log cabin and the clubhouse across the yard are crawling with Reign of Terror members. They flow in and out of both buildings like the busy worker bees that they are. There are men who belong to this chapter, and men who belong to other chapters. Most of them took turns watching over my hospital room, the hallway leading to my hospital room and every entrance to the hospital. I should feel gratitude, but I can’t help the twinge of malice.

  If it weren’t for this MC, I never would have been kidnapped.

  Brandon sits in the chair in front of me on Cyrus’s porch and he’s gone into excruciating detail about Jurassic World. It’s not the first time he’s seen it. In fact, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it with him, but he saw it with Oz and Razor while I was in the hospital and Brandon needs to feel like I didn’t miss anything while I was gone.

  He wants a pet raptor. Yes, he understands they aren’t real, but Brandon likes to live in pretend worlds sometimes and more often than not I indulge him in stepping a toe into his fantasy realms, if only because reality is too exhausting.

  I used to tell him no on the pet raptor, as if such a thing could really happen. But after this past week, I wonder if science could get on the ball, create one, and if so, how much rabies shots for it would cost. That is if genetically engineered, fictional raptors can get rabies. I bet I wouldn’t have been kidnapped if my pet raptor was riding shotgun.

  The front door squeaks open and Mom and Oz’s mom, Rebecca, step out onto the porch. They’re laughing and they hold trays full of meat and cheeses for sandwiches. They glance over at me and their giggles fade. Rebecca still smiles, but Mom’s grin falters. Just a fraction, but enough that I caught it.

  “Are you hungry, Violet?” Mom asks.

  I shake my head no, and she frowns completely.

  “Let us know when you are hungry, and we’ll bring you some food and something to drink,” Rebecca says.

  “I’ll get it for her,” Brandon says. My heart squeezes, then drops. He hasn’t let me out of his sight since I was brought to Eli’s this morning from the hospital. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Rebecca winks good-naturedly at him. “And you’ll do a good job, too.”

  She goes down the stairs and Mom follows her because Mom likes to follow. Brandon resumes his description of the raptor cage.

  I stopped talking after my conversation with Justin. Don’t know why. Didn’t plan on it. In fact, I wasn’t aware I was staying quiet until the second day of my stay at the hospital. They brought in a shrink who diagnosed me with Acute Stress Disorder. I guess it’s like PTSD, but they can’t diagnose PTSD unless I’ve had these types of symptoms for a long time.

  Pigpen got excited because he made me grin when he told me he thought PTSD stood for Probably There’s Something wrong but Dunno what.

  Amen to that.

  I talked to Chevy. At least I think I did. I haven’t really had a chance to see him since the first night at the hospital, at least not without an audience. I did talk to the shrink, though, and it caught him off guard that I was willing to mumble a few words to him and not much to anyone else. After not talking, it’s weird to start again.

  Maybe pride’s in the way. People want me to talk and now that silence is present it feels like a loss to open my mo
uth and do what everyone desires.

  Won’t lie—I don’t like losing. Never have. Not that this is some sort of a game or competition, but doing what the club wishes, what my mother wishes...at least this is something I can control.

  Speaking.

  Sounds like something a dog should do. Speak, girl. Sit. Now shake. Roll over so I can rub your belly. Do you like that? How about if I scratch behind the ears? Go fetch, girl.

  I’m giving you attention now, but you’re not as smart as me and won’t notice when I leave you to go do something real important and you’re too weak to be a real companion. Now stay here while I go. Don’t move and be right here with your tongue hanging out and tail wagging when I get back.

  You’re such a good girl.

  Speak.

  Girl.

  Yep, not happening.

  Mom doesn’t mind being a dog. She likes being told to sit and stay. Likes it when someone pats her head and gives her attention and then is fine with being left behind to sit in front of the fire waiting for her master to return home.

  I imagine she’d be a labradoodle because she’s fancy like that. Specifically bred to be something different than the raw rest of us. Hypoallergenic. Cute and pretty and squishable.

  Like right now she’s across the yard flittering about the clubhouse helping the other “Old Ladies” make dinner. It’s a warm day, so the bay doors of the clubhouse are rolled back and I can see most of what’s going on from the porch.

  Mom wears her Terror Gypsy cut. It’s black leather like the men’s cut, but there’s no half skull with fire blazing out the eyes on the back. Just the name of the women’s support group, Terror Gypsy, and a single patch that contains the name of the member they’re an old lady to. Mom’s patch says Frat. Still causes my chest to ache whenever I see his name.

  Even though he’s dead, Mom will always be a Terror Gypsy. Just like I’ll always pay for this MC’s sins if I stay in this godforsaken town.

  It’s the old ladies’ job to support their men and support the club the men love. They’re woman and can never be a part of the Reign of Terror. The most respect they’ll receive is that cut and a single patch underneath.