I was just waiting for the day when it all goes to shit. Rage had done a decent job at club politics thus far. It won’t stay that way for long, though. He was a ticking time bomb. I was his best fucking friend, and I’ll be the first to tell you that.
Rage’s time would run out one day, and if I had to guess, I’d say that would be pretty damn soon. He’d been getting sloppy over the past few weeks. Time and time again Roman and I had to go and clean up his messes. If we didn’t, chaos would already have ensued. I’m fucking shocked that it hadn’t already.
I make my way down the gravel filled lot until I am just in front of the clubhouse doors. I was not ready to go in, to start the drink and fuck fest I know Rage would want me to partake in. He is fucking exhausting. The man knows how to party and how to fuck shit up – how he keeps the club afloat is beyond me. He only stays sober enough to bark around orders and make somewhat decent business decisions.
There was a time when I used to appreciate his input, where I could respect whatever was coming out of his mouth. Those days had long passed; he’d been going down this turmoiled shithole for the past five years. Almost everything that he says now is garbage; all bullshit and no one should listen. When I really think about it, I hadn’t respected him in a long time. It has been too fucking long since I’d taken one word that had come out of his mouth seriously.
I suppose that all started to change when he thought it was best he be the one to test the product, the coke, the women, it didn’t matter. It all belongs to him. So, he felt the need to try it all out. Shortly after that, everything else started to change. That is when he stopped fighting the boys and started laying his punches into his wife.
Roxy.
I tell myself time after time that it wasn’t my place to interfere. It is his marriage – it was not my place. But really, fuck that shit. Fuck it. I was not going to stand by and watch him kill her in front of us.
I had wondered for years why she didn’t run. I’d always fucking wondered about that, and still I somehow didn’t know. She stays, where she knows it wasn’t safe, and took every beating that she was going to get.
I’d seen men beat their wives. I’d seen men beat their wives with reasons. Was there a good enough reason to beat a woman? No. There wasn’t. It doesn’t matter, though, we are all part of the club life. There are no rules there. In a sense, we make the rules. I was making a vow to myself now to do better. To do everything that I could to make this club better, and I would.
I grab my pack of Marlboros from my back pocket, thanking the lord that none of them are soaking wet. Making my way around the side of the building, I yank out my lighter, bringing the flame to the end of my cigarette.
That’s when I see her.
She is just lying there, lifeless.
Her body is like beautiful canvas. I could see the emotion that she must have felt written on her face. Her hair was flowing around her head, her body limp from exhaustion. My eyes flicker to something moving. I instantly become enraged as the blood flows from under her. I don’t think – I act.
I rush over to Roxy and scoop her body into my arms. She feels lighter than the last time I had to do this and take her to the hospital; she’d lost fucking weight since I’d been gone. I glanc down to her face, her eyelids softly fluttering.
“Ssssh, I’ve got you firefly. I’ve fucking got you,” I whisper softly to her as I jog over to the back of the clubhouse where my room is. I didn’t know how I got so lucky to end up with the only room that had a back entrance. I scoop my room key out of my pocket and open the door quickly, searching for the keys to my truck. It only takes me a moment until they are in my grasp.
Now, I am just hoping I was not too fucking late.
***
The doc tells me I got her to the hospital just in time. After years of living here and Roxy’s usual beatings, they’d come to know her, and fall in love with her spirit like we all did. This means that they’ve come to know us as well. All of us. The ones who pitied her for staying. The ones who didn’t stand up and do a damn thing to protect her.
I was tired of being one of them.
I was the reason she was here. She joined our senior class a week before homecoming. I knew the girl didn’t have any friends, so I asked her to go with me. It didn’t hurt that she was naturally beautiful, she still is. Her lightly bronzed skin made her look like she was kissed by the gods, and that straight flowing brunette hair paired perfectly. She was beautiful in her own unique way.
We ended up dancing two times at homecoming, both agreeing it was a dump. I’d bought my first Harley back then and offered to take her for a spin. Little did I know that the bike ride would turn into the beginning of her abuse. My father had just walked out on my mom, and mom didn’t know how to handle any of that shit, so she went north, and I didn’t blame her at all for making that choice. She wanted an escape. After she left, I had practically nothing. I had an opportunity to go with her, but I declined. I wanted to finish out my school year there – at home.
I wasn’t worried about a place to stay, a roof over my head, or even feeding myself. I knew that I’d be fine. I had Rage, my best friend, my brother. He’d watched out for me when we were kids, and I did the same for him. Our bond was to never be broken, we’d always be there for another.
Rage and I had been friends for ages, he’d dropped out of school and started the Demons of Hell MC. I was his first patched in member, his VP, his second hand.
He gave me the sense of family that I didn’t have at home – the club gave me the brotherhood I needed when everything was falling apart.
I never would have had imagined that the small biker group we created about would turn into this. Our numbers were growing day by day. We instilled fear into many who opposed us, and even the ones that joined us.
Roxy and I had two dates after our homecoming dance. We’d talked and laughed like we were long lost souls. I saw something with her. That is, until Rage stole her away from me. He scooped her up out of my grasp like I didn’t matter. I’d said the hell with it and let it happen. A girl wasn’t worth losing my friendship, or at least that’s what I told myself.
I blamed myself for this, for everything. This was all my fault, and I couldn’t sit here and deny that it wasn’t. If things had just gone differently… I think of what I could have done, if I had just stayed away from Rox – if I didn’t even blink in her direction, she wouldn’t be here today.
It was no matter, though. This shit wasn’t going to keep happening. I didn’t give a shit anymore. Yeah, Rage was my best friend. Even being my best friend, it didn’t give him a right to be doing what he had been doing for years. She was so close to death this time.
The docs wouldn’t tell me shit because I was not family, but I was no idiot. All that blood, her eyelids fluttering that entire time. It was close. Too fucking close for comfort. She’d been down that road so many times. I thought long and hard, still not able to understand why she never tries to leave, why she’d always stay. I didn’t want to think that Rox has a death wish, but she may have.
There is no way to say for sure what fucking happened before I came back home. I just knew that no matter what, she wouldn’t tell me. I doubt that she was going to be honest with the doctors who were treating her. Every time this has ever happened she stays quiet, not speaking of her abuse, not letting any of us in on what actually happens. I witnessed some of her beatings myself, clenching my fists and grinding my teeth. I was a coward, I was the man that should have defended her. Instead, I did nothing.
Rage has done a lot of shit to Rox. Public beatings, beatings behind closed doors, offering her body up to anyone who wanted to use her in any way. It was sickening. If I had a wife, I would not be fucking offering her up to anyone who wanted her. She’d be mine – off fucking limits. Rage though, he didn’t care. I wonder if that was how he views her, as a thing bound to him; as a piece of property that he holds all rights to, or as a human being.
I’d have be
t on the first half.
“Mr. Carmichael?” I turn to look at the blonde woman who is walking towards me in the patient seating area. After Roxy becoming a frequent of flyer here, I knew almost every doctor, nurse, and tech that was on payroll here. But this woman? She was new blood.
“That would be me,” I tell her as I get up from my seat. I extend my hand and flash the smile that I knew turned all women into mush. She shakes my hand for just a moment before she began to speak to me. I could tell by her tone of voice and body language that things aren’t good.
“Mr. Carmichael…” She pauses midway through speaking and goes silent. I don’t miss the way she stares at me, chewing her bottom lip like she wants to say something to me, but was refraining from doing so.
“Cough it up, doc. What’s going on with Roxy?” I urge her to tell me what I wanted to know. I was not her enemy, I just hope she could see that.
“I know you aren’t family. I know that, and I’m risking a hell of a lot by telling you any of this. The nurses here seem to trust you, they seem to think that you are the only decent human being besides Roxy that lives in that fucking motorcycle gang. I’m telling you this because I trust my team. If they trust you to be a decent human being, then I do too. Do you understand?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Follow me, then,” she orders. I follow close by as we walk past the nursing station and down a long hallway filled with rooms for patients. She opens a doorway into another room which looks to be a small office, flicks the light on, and shuts the door behind me. “I shouldn’t be fucking doing this. I could lose my medical license for this.”
“I got it, doc. You won’t lose your medical license. Tell me what’s going on.”
The doc scoffs at me, like what I said to her is insulting. I supposed it is. Who am I to promise her that she won’t lose her medical license? “Roxanne Stevens is lucky to be alive tonight. She was on death’s doorstep when you brought her in. I thought that girl was going to be in a fucking body bag, do you understand? That’s how far gone she was. She’s stable. For now. I don’t know what’s going to happen, I can only tell you that if something like this happens again, she will die. She is not strong enough to keep taking these god forsaken beatings over and over again. This time, she lost her child. I don’t know if she’ll bounce back like she has before. This time, it’s different.”
This time she lost her child.
My mind is repeating it over and over again in my mind. I wanted to think that I misheard her, but I knew I didn’t.
“She was pregnant?” I ask, looking at the doctor to confirm what I thought I heard.
“It looked like she was around five months. I’ve already completed her DNC, she’s had two blood transfusions, and I’m keeping her hydrated, on antibiotics and painkillers. I’m doing everything that I can to give her a fighting chance. I need you to do the same thing.”
“Heard loud and clear, doc,” I mutter, knowing exactly what I was going to be doing.
I was giving her a fighting chance.
Chapter 5
The heart gets confused when it’s constantly told I love you by the same person who destroys it… -R.H. Sin
Roxy
I couldn’t get over the beeping. It just keeps beeping and beeping and fucking beeping over and over again.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
It was then that I realize where I was. A feeling all too familiar washes over me. It was the fear, which quickly turns to acceptance. I’d been there too many times before. I supposed now I could call the hospital my home away from home. I was definitely here enough to call it that.
I move my arms under my body and position myself so that I could sit higher up on the hospital bed, a position that I thought would give me more comfort, but instead, it just gives me agony. I feel as if my insides have been ripped out of me, and the pounding in my head wasn’t helping one bit.
“The monitor doesn’t lie. She lives.” I take a look at the doorway of my room and see Hal, the nicest nurse and the only one who wanted to be in a room with me. The rest feared that they’d be taken, beaten as badly as me, or perhaps, turned into a drug mule. The list could go on and on. Hal though, nope, he was my buddy.
“No one’s gonna ever knock me down. Don’t you know that by now?”
“You, my dear, got your ass knocked down, and you needed some help getting back up,” Hal chastises me. He enters the room and shuts the door slowly behind him. He takes a good look at me before he is right next to my bedside. He keeps himself busy by changing the bag of fluids that was hanging to my left.
“It was the worst this time, you know. You coded twice on us,” he whispers, looking down at me.
I shut my eyes tightly and try not to think of the horror I know I’d endured. I try to think of anything else; rainbows, puppies, those stupid little kitten happy birthday cards you see at the store. Not about what Rage said, not even about the look on his face as he did what he did to me.
He loved every second of it.
“My son died, didn’t he?’ I ask, praying to God that what I knew in my heart wasn’t true. I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted my son. I wanted some shred of happiness, not that place, not the fucking nightmare that I chose to live in.
“You and I know both know that boy is better off anywhere other than that club. If Rage didn’t do this now, he would’ve done it after he was born.” I listen to Hal, knowing that what he said was nothing but the truth. If Rage did this to me, I knew that it would have happened to our child as well. It would have only been a matter of time. Deep down, I knew that, but it didn’t do anything to console the hurt in my heart.
Rage is a monster, through and through. Some part deep inside me knew that when I first started dating him. I hoped I could change him. I thought we were like a fairytale. I was the sweet Army brat who just wanted to settle down. He was the man with the broken past. If only I had known then what I know now. Even back then, I knew about his demons, about his tendencies, and still I chose him. I tried my hardest, but in the end, I couldn’t change one part about him. Thinking back, I was a dumb girl. Hell, maybe I still am.
“I know,” I murmur, salty tears spilling slowly from the corner of my eyes. Just because I knew didn’t make it any easier. I wanted my child more than anything in the world. At least then I’d have something to live for, not just this – trapped life.
“You’ve been out for a couple days. A couple more and you should be able to get out of here. Rox, please tell me you’ll leave. That you’ll get the heck away from this town.”
“I’d never lie to you, Hal. You’re my friend, and you know I won’t just leave. You know why.” I offere him a small smile, hoping that it would tone down the emotion in the room. But it didn’t, it didn’t at all.
I wanted to smack myself. Here I was telling Hal, why, when why didn’t matter anymore.
I was as good as dead. I lost Rage’s child.
But did it even matter anymore? Why would I get out now? Maybe there was a part of me that deserved to die at this point. I had a choice before. It was a shit choice, but it was one. I could have left for my boy. I could have run to the ends of the Earth and bought him the chance to be born, just maybe. And then he would have been safe and alive, and I could have died. I could have put him somewhere he would have never been found by Rage. Rage might not have ever known.
Whatever was coming for me, I had to be strong, but on the inside, I was being ripped apart. I didn’t realize until this moment, with my womb empty, that the only reason I had to still be living and going and trying was my beautiful boy. I don't know what I thought would happen when I was really showing or when I had him. I could not see Rage being okay with it unless he saw his successor, and then, he would endure more abuse than I ever did to make him tough, to make him in Rage’s image, but I damn sure wanted to find out. Find out if I could be a good enough mother and get him the hell out and raise a better man than the o
ne who donated his sperm to create him. Now, that was gone. I had nothing left. But I was still here.
***
Out of everyone that Rage would’ve sent to pick me up from the hospital three days later, I least expected it to be Tex. Truth be told, I hadn’t seen the man in a bit. We were both good at avoiding each other in the club. Or – scratch that. I was good at avoiding him whenever he was in the club.
There were some days I couldn’t avoid him and had to face him. Those days were the absolute hardest for me.
I didn’t know why I put myself through avoiding Tex. It was not like he was this horrible guy that I couldn’t stand to be near; he was the complete opposite. When I thought about it all, it hit me like a freight train.
I avoided Tex because I was ashamed of myself, or more importantly, for the decisions that I’d made which have brought me here today.
There was a time where I could have made the right decision. Tex would have been my right decision, and still, I chose Rage. I chose the wildcard. Look how well that worked out for me thus far. In the end, it didn’t matter. I made my choices, and now I had to live with them and the consequences that surrounded them.
“What time am I supposed to be back?” I ask Tex, who was leaning against the doorframe staring at me. He looked different than he did a few weeks ago. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but his entire demeanor seemed to have changed. He wasn’t tossing around jokes or smiling like he normally did when I saw him. Right now, he seemed quite furious, or maybe aggravated. Maybe he was annoyed he was given the prospect’s job of picking me up from the hospital and taking me home.
Kolt, our newest prospect, was normally the one that picked me up from the hospital. The fact that Tex was doing it made me a tad nervous. It raised all of my red flags. Alarm bells were ringing on a constant loop inside my head. All I could seem to think about was how Tex was probably delivering me to my fate. He was going to take me straight to Rage, and that would be the end of my life.
Havoc- Reapers MC Boxset Page 3
