by Jayne Blue
“I love you,” he said into my hair. Over and over again, he murmured the words between kisses. And he walked with me, still locked in his arms, to our bedroom. I rolled that phrase around in my brain – our bedroom – as Hammer laid me down on the bed.
Kisses rained down on my neck, and then my collarbone. And then his hands were everywhere, tearing away my clothes. My shirt was gone, off, destroyed I suspected. Hammer’s now scratchy stubble slid up and down my chest, the bra, the only barrier between us. He pulled it down, away, and his lips found my breasts. My nipples were pebbled, hard, under his touch.
My body strained to be closer to his. He dragged down my pants, my panties, everything, and his lips followed where his hands had been.
I was impatient now; I was frantic. I had gone from wanting him to know I forgave him to wanting him inside me. I wrapped my legs around his hips found what I wanted. This time he moaned. I felt his hard length straining against me. I pulled his shoulders down, closer to me, I held on to him. Hammer used his strong hands to draw my hips closer to him.
He entered me, and I almost couldn’t stand it. The emotion, the intensity, the way it was between us was more than I knew how to process.
I know a tear escaped my eye, and I couldn’t say why, other than I felt love, relief, ecstasy, and fear of losing all of it in an instant.
“I love you, Daniella,” Hammer breathed the words into my ear. And I surrendered everything I had to him. Our bodies moved together, we came together, and we held on to each other, hours after everything else faded away.
Nineteen
HAMMER
I watched her, she didn’t know it, but I watched as she strained to cut the white paint in and not get it on the ceiling. She was wearing cut off jeans, an old t-shirt we’d found in one of the kid bedrooms, and tennis shoes.
Her hair was short now, white blonde, and looked nothing like the beautiful cinnamon waves I loved. I’d cut it under her watchful instruction. She was brave about it and I’d winced at every lock that fell. She rocked this glamorous, chic looking hairdo though. If she walked by, you’d think she was a movie star. Not the effect I was hoping for. I wanted us to lay low. And we had. We went to town once a week or so, but mostly, as the summer warmed, and the Upper Peninsula came alive, we stayed here, enjoyed it together, and got to know each other.
That blonde hair though. She was goddamn striking. I had no idea how to make her less so. But at least, if anyone came around asking shop owners, or clerks, or gas station attendants in Manistique, had they seen a beautiful girl with long dark hair, the answer would be no. But there was a platinum blonde knock out that was as friendly as she was gorgeous. For those reasons, I tried to keep us here, at the cottage. And she tried to keep busy.
So, we were painting.
Before that, we’d been weeding. Before that, we’d removed the wallpaper. Daniella was always coming up with ways to turn this old cottage into something that, admittedly, thanks to her efforts, now looked like something out of a magazine.
“You’re being overly careful. White on white. The whole point was to eliminate the possibility of errant brush strokes.” I was holding the ladder because it was a great view, and she insisted on taking her physical safety with a grain of salt.
“Pshh,” she waived me off. And I was left to continue to hold the ladder and to continue to be amazed by how close we’d gotten in the last few weeks.
I never talked about my time in the service with anyone, even Sawyer or Steel. It was full of gritty sand, frustration, blood, and loss. But with Daniella I did, when she asked.
“You’re a hero, you have medals. I looked it up.”
“What?”
“Yep, there was an article on the highest medal, and you have it.”
“How did you find it?”
“Harrison McCall. I found your real name, signed, on that card your Grandma has framed in the kitchen.”
“You’re sneaky,” I’d said to her.
“I like the name, Harrison. Why don’t you go by that?”
“Another life, another, time, another family, Hammer is the name I got when I patched in, and it stuck.”
“I read what you did too. Can you talk about it?” She pushed me a little, pried open the moments I’d suppressed. I found myself talking about it.
“I was in my second deployment, in the Kamdesh District. The outpost came under heavy attack. Something like 300 enemy fighters swarmed in. I needed to move ammo, so I did.”
“Yeah, I read you did a hell of a lot more than that.” She had read more than I’d ever said out loud, other than in the post fog of the actual events.
“You supplied your whole company, one huge chunk at a time, under fire. You rendered first aid to wounded soldiers and you carried them on you back to safety,” she outlined the events and they replayed in my mind.
“Yeah, well, twenty-five men died.” That’s what I remembered. Failure and death, yet I got a medal for it.
“But over one hundred made it out, because of you.” She pointed this out. Sawyer had too when I got the medal, but it was the ones who didn’t that haunted me still. If I let myself think of it. Which I tried not to. Except now, with her, I felt something different. Through her eyes, the failures of my past weren’t as harsh. She saw things in me that I wanted to be true.
“I try not to think about it. It’s hard to remember the good, only the ones I couldn’t save. I remember them every day.” It was what tortured me when I first got out. And what Sawyer and the club help me move through. The club, Sawyer; they were another thing I needed to push out of my mind right now. I looked at Danielle and it was easy to remember why I was doing this.
“I get that. I just want you to know, that I know, and I bet the families of the soldiers you saved know too.” I pulled her in to hug her and kissed her head. She was more innocent than anything else, trusting, and pure. I hated Lynch for that. He’d seen her innocence and had taken advantage of it.
I still hated myself for the terrible thing I said to her during our fight and vowed to be a better man to live up to the way she saw me.
I made sure we mostly kept to ourselves. That we stayed hidden in the wooded safety of the cottage. We went to town when we had to, but we didn’t stay. We didn’t make friends.
We just finished our shopping and got the hell out of there.
“I look totally different. I’m sure we can get breakfast every once in a while.”
“No, we’re not risking it.”
“I think you’re being paranoid,” she said but didn’t push me, until Fourth of July.
“We’re going to see the parade.”
“What?”
“We’re going to the parade, and then watching the Fireworks, and you’re going to like it.”
“I will not like it and we’re not going.” I had said no to every suggestion for excursions that she’d made all summer.
We’d fought over who paid for what in the beginning but once that was sorted out, after our fight, we’d settled into a fifty-fifty food deal. I knew she worried about money. I had enough for now. I told her that, but she still worried. What I didn’t compromise is being seen in town. I was a controlling asshole about that and I wasn’t sorry.
“We can sit on the water. It’s going to be sunny. We can kayak or paddleboard, or fish.” I tried to offer options. Though we’d done every one of those things at least half-a-dozen times already.
“We ARE going.” And I had zero choice in the matter apparently. She was dressed and, in the truck, in the driver’s seat, honking the horn.
“What?”
“I’m going with or without you.” And she looked at me through determined eyes.
“Fuck it.” I put on a t-shirt and climbed in next to her.
“You’re stubborn as hell,” I told her and decided a squeeze of her hip was a good idea. She squealed and then peeled out of the driveway. She was getting a little stir crazy. I understood that. I tried to calm my nerves about
spending more time than necessary outside of the protective bubble I’d built.
It was fine. It had to be fine.
I let her lead me around with her hand, holding mine, dragging me to craft booths.
“You know, I could totally sell my crocheted creations at a booth at one of these things.” She mused about the idea, and she could. She created blankets, scarves, a sweater, and each thing looked amazing to me. I figured ladies at these things would eat them up. But we weren’t there yet. Maybe someday, way in the future, she could do something like that.
We continued on and she’d procured small little American flag. We waved them when the tiny parade came by. After the parade, she found a spot at the edge of the park to sit and watch the fireworks.
I noticed every person who noticed her. I wondered if it would always be that way. No matter where we went, people would be drawn to her. It wasn’t just her pretty face or dynamite figure. It was her light. There was something that came from inside Daniella Moore that made her glow. I wanted to hold on to it, keep it for myself. Keep her for myself. I supposed I should have known that day, that I was in the bubble and it was about to break.
We drove back to the cottage. I was tired, keeping my eye out for danger was fucking exhausting. So was shopping, but I did it with her, whatever she wanted, on the Fourth of July.
I’d driven the truck back, and she’d let her head rest on my shoulder as we went. It was about as close as I could get to heaven, having her safe, tucked here next to me. I pulled the truck up to the garage, but we sat for a moment more.
“I’m so ready to crawl into bed. I’m beat.”
“Yeah? See, hazards of heading into town.”
“Ham?” she said and didn’t make any move to leave my side even though the truck was parked and the ignition off.
“Yeah, baby.”
“Thank you. Today was perfect. I know you didn’t want to go, but I needed it.” She leaned up. I kissed her sweet lips and thought about crawling into bed after her.
“I’ll lock up the truck in the garage and see you in a minute.”
“Okay.” I watched her walk into the cottage. I got out of the truck and I opened the garage door. That was the last thing I remembered.
I woke up with my face on the ground. I had a pounding headache. I reached to my head and felt blood. Son of a bitch! Someone had hit me. Fucking A.
Daniella, where was Daniella? I ran toward the cottage, the door was unlocked. I swayed when I got to the door frame. Some motherfucker had given smashed something on the back of my head.
“Daniella!” I yelled her name. No one answered. She wasn’t here. Where the fuck was she? I ran back outside.
“Daniella!” I stopped, stood still, listened. I heard something. An engine, a Harley. Okay, okay fine. Someone had grabbed her and put her on their bike. They weren’t that far ahead of me. I ran around to the side of the cottage. I’d be faster on my Harley. I heard a crashing noise. What the fuck was going on?
“HAMMER!” She was screaming for me.
I revved the engine and drove down the drive. Dirt kicked up behind me. I had to have only been out a short time. I’d heard her scream. I’d been there to see which way they went. If I’d heard the engine and her scream, then the motherfucker wasn’t that far ahead of me.
Dirt’s bike was on its side. She’d somehow got him to dump it. He was pissed, headed for her neck with claw-like fingers, and she was fighting him like a wild animal.
I snapped into fight mode too. I jumped off my bike and hauled fucking Dirt off her. She crawled away. I pounded his face. I kept pounding. We were on the side of the road. It was dark, but still, anyone could have seen us. But I didn’t fucking care. I wasn’t using logic. Rage was fueling me as I kept punching his ugly face.
“Hammer!” I heard her say my name, but I punched the motherfucker again, and again.
“He’s DEAD!” Daniella grabbed my arm and she lurched forward as my fist went towards Dirt again.
“He’s gone, dead, stop,” she said again.
I tried to wipe the bloody haze from my view. I tried to think something other than “kill him.”
“Okay, okay!” she said, and I looked down. He was dead. Dirt was lifeless, bloody, and he wouldn’t hurt my girl again. Or anyone. I was happy, satisfied, victorious, and didn’t feel one bit of remorse. He got what he deserved, and I was the one who’d doled it out.
I looked at Daniella in the moonlight, through the fog of fury that had overtaken my body. She was bleeding too. There was a gap on her cheek where the flesh hung open.
“What did he do to you?”
“It’s okay. I’m okay now.” But the cut on her face, that wasn’t the only thing. Everything was wrong with her. The pretty sundress she’d worn to town was torn. There was also blood in her platinum hair.
I pulled my shit together. My rage subsided, and I reverted to my battlefield training for injuries.
“I’ll take care of this. You walk back to the house. Wait for me.”
“No,” she said and defiantly straightened her spine.
“I fucking killed this asshole. I’m not sorry, but I’m also not going to goddamn prison for it. I have some work to do.”
“And I’m helping.”
“Goddammit, Daniella. Do what I say! Go back to the house.”
“We are in this now, forever, together.” She walked over to his legs, her own face still bleeding profusely. She picked up his legs by the ankles and started to tug Dirt’s body.
“Fine, help me get him on my bike.”
It was a grim task.
I took some rocks from the shore. With Daniella’s help, we paddled in the canoe so far out onto the lake it was nearly dawn by the time we got back to the cottage. We were lucky that the lake was smooth, like glass, and that the wind or waves were non-existent this night so we could get far from shore.
Dirt’s body sank to the bottom of the lake.
We didn’t talk as I paddled us out, or on the way back. But once I saw her by the light of the cabin, I realized we needed to deal with the cut on her face.
“I have to stitch it,” I told her, and she didn’t question me. I worried that it had been too long. Hours had passed, with this exposed wound on her cheek. It was a couple inches long, and it was deep. By the looks of it, Dirt’s ring had sliced open her cheek, deeply, through layers of her soft flesh. I was again glad I’d given him the same, times one hundred.
I had no way to numb her skin. I gave her some whiskey. She took two long pulls from the bottle. I watched in awe of her fierce courage, her stoic accepting of what I’d done, and her help in making sure it was cleaned up.
I did my best to pull her skin together. I put six stitches in her cheek, just under her eye. I knew she’d have a scar there, fucking Dirt.
She didn’t flinch as I tugged as gently as I could. I had got extensive first aid training in my Marine days, but still – her perfect soft skin, her doll-like face. It made me sick that I was going to ruin it. But there was no choice.
“We have to get his bike, right?” she asked after I was done.
“Yep, we do.”
We walked up to the front of the drive. Dirt’s bike was on its side.
“How did you get him to dump?” I hadn’t asked her in the frenzy of the last few hours.
“I bit his ear, hard as I could.”
“That was the blood on your mouth?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d thought you were cut there too.”
“No.”
We walked Dirt’s bike back. I would take it apart, piece by piece.
We had to run again. I knew that, but we were both too beat up to do it today. The sun was coming up. The day was starting.
But the clock was ticking.
Twenty
DANIELLA
I didn’t tell Hammer everything. He’d been so unhinged about what he did see, one little cut, and he’d killed Dirt. If he’d known where Dirt had touched me, he�
��d go back out to the lake and pull up his body and kill him again. When Dirt dragged me out of the house, passed an unconscious Hammer, I had known I had to save myself.
Dirt didn’t rape me, but he pawed me like I was his. He told me he was taking me back to Lynch, but before that, he’d get a “taste.”
I fought back, knowing Hammer was out cold, or worse, and Dirt punched me in the face to stop me from scrambling away.
I didn’t think twice about killing Dirt. He deserved it. I was glad Hammer let me help handle the repercussions of that death. I was glad he was gone.
But I was worried. I was afraid that Hammer was going to figure out how Dirt had found me.
My face swelled the next day. The skin wanted to pull apart from the stitches Hammer had put in to close it.
I knew I’d have to tell him about what I’d done. I hated that this was my fault, again.
Dirt told me exactly how he’d found me when he was trying to kidnap me. He gloated at his own accomplishment.
“You idiot, the stupid home gave us your cell phone number.”
I had called my Granddad when Hammer wasn’t looking. I thought I was smart this time. I didn’t tell him where I was. I just checked in. But the home needed contact information, or they would kick him out. There had to be some family member on record. So I caved in. I told them my number, and where to call in an emergency.
Somehow Dirt had figured it out, got the number, got my location. I had no idea how it worked, but I knew it was my fault that he’d found me again.
I was lying to Hammer now.
Well, I wasn’t telling him about the call, about the number, about how Dirt told me he found me. I couldn’t face admitting to Hammer that I was the reason all this had come crashing down. I was the reason he’d had to kill again and hide the body.
The guilt made me sick to my stomach. But I hid it. I let Hammer think it was trauma from what we’d done to Dirt, but it wasn’t. It was guilt that I’d fucked up, as big as you could fuck up.
Hammer spent the day taking apart Dirt’s bike. We didn’t talk about anything. He was a man on a mission and I was determined to not screw anything else up.
