by Eve R. Hart
It was at that moment, my face so close to his that our noses almost touched, that I was able to see the heaviness of his soul in his eyes. The burden of carrying too many secrets for one person and having to keep them hidden. The lock-box in his brain that was to the point of overflowing.
The moment became still and strangled. I cleared my throat, blinked my eyes back into focus, and began to shift so that I could get him out of the bed. With a hard grunt, he shoved himself to his feet.
“I got it,” he said as he took his weight off of me. He wasn’t mean, in fact, his tone was almost kind like he didn’t want to hurt me in his attempt to make it to the bathroom. “Just…don’t go far, please.”
It took a good twenty minutes, but he made it there all by himself. And once he was in the shower—completely naked, mind you—I turned on the water. I did my best not to look. It wasn’t that I wanted to take advantage of the moment, it was that I felt the need to watch him to make sure he didn’t get weak and pass out.
I had no choice but to leave the curtain cracked as I stood right there keeping an eye on him. With a heavy sigh, his shoulders sagged and for a moment I wasn’t sure what I should do.
“This is extremely embarrassing, but I need help. And before you think that this is some pathetic attempt to get you into the shower with me, I assure you it isn’t.”
There he was, the real man behind all the jokes and charm. How could I deny him this when it was clear it was so hard for him to ask? And I couldn’t ignore the zap of some kind of thrill that shot through my veins even though I knew it was completely wrong.
“Sure,” I said pushing the curtain back a little more.
That was the moment his knees gave out and though I tried my best to catch him, he was just too much for me to hold up. He went down, his knees hitting hard on the bottom of the tub. He let out a grunt as his eyes screwed shut.
“Are you okay?” he asked and I felt like I should have been the one to be asking him that.
“I’m fine. Are you?” The words rushed out of me with a slightly panicked tone.
“Yeah, you know, just a little embarrassed but no big deal.” He did his best to smile at me as he lowered his butt down so that he was sitting on the bottom of the tub.
With a few tiny grunts, he moved his legs to stretch out in front of him. Good thing I had one of those nice, big garden tubs. It was really one of the reasons that I’d picked this condo. But that wasn’t the important thing right now.
“If it will make you feel any better, I can just pretend that I didn’t see anything,” I said and flashed him a smile of my own.
He let out a short laugh that was followed by a harsh cough. As he wrapped his arm around his ribs.
“Sorry,” I said sympathetically. “I won’t make you laugh anymore.”
“No, please. I need the laughter right now. Otherwise…”
He didn’t finish that statement but I didn’t need him to in order to catch his meaning.
So I was a little bit curious to know what had happened to him, but I wasn’t about to ask. Honestly, I was smart enough to know that I probably wouldn’t really want that information anyway. Seeing his injuries was enough to tell me that it wasn’t a simple accident. And it also told me that this wasn’t anything good. Whatever Bocca had stumbled into was not only bad, but very, very dangerous. Something I didn’t need to know anything about let alone have any involvement in.
Even as I thought that, I realized that I already was. Because I had this stranger here, in my home, and I was currently taking care of him. And maybe even hiding him. That part I didn’t know for sure though.
“Just get as comfortable as you can,” I said reaching for the bar of soft, white soap and a washcloth.
He sat there, his knees spread slightly, his shoulder slumped in almost a defeated way. Half of his hair had fallen out of the tie that held it back and was hanging in his face.
I started with his back, knowing it would cause him the least amount of pain. I worked quickly because he didn’t need to sit under the spray for an extended period of time. Then as I thought about it, I stood and pulled the detachable shower head down after I shut off the water. I let it dangle, figuring that it would be easier to rinse him off that way.
My hand moved over the tattoo on his shoulder blade. I didn’t even realize that I had leaned forward to get a good look at it. The name of the motorcycle club didn’t ring any bells with me. Then again, I’d only been in the area a little over a year. And I wasn’t a very social person, so I didn’t know the good and bad things about the city.
Sure, I knew where to go and where to never step foot in. I knew the parts of the city to avoid. I’d seen quite a few gang members come in with gunshot wounds and I knew those pretty well only because of that reason. But that was about it. As far as other major underground players went, I was clueless.
And yes, I realized that I was judging him right away. I wasn’t saying that all motorcycle clubs were bad. Truth was, I didn’t have any experience with them and I imagined that they couldn’t have been as bad as the TV shows had portrayed how they might be. Who knew, they could have been a club of men that rode motorcycles and played golf on the weekend. That could have been a thing…right?
“You got quiet on me,” he said and it snapped me out of my thoughts.
“I could say the same about you,” I quipped back.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said like he somehow maybe knew that I was thinking about his tattoo and what it could have meant.
“I believe you,” I said with full honesty.
“We aren’t bad guys. A little gruff and rowdy sometimes, but we don’t go around picking fights and shooting up places just for the hell of it.”
Okay, was I mistaken or was there something that was not said in that statement. Like maybe he wasn’t exactly denying some sort of unlawful activity.
Or maybe my mind was just trying too hard to read into it.
With a shrug, I moved to clean his shoulders. We were silent as I carefully washed around his cuts as best as possible.
“Um, here, you can clean all that, if you want.” I handed him the soaped up washcloth as I tried to not check out his goods. I mean, they were right there and weren’t exactly unnoticeable.
He snickered as he took the cloth and began to scrub himself as best as he could manage in his weakened state. When he was done, he set it to the side.
“Can you please wash my hair,” he said softly and there was no way I could deny him even if I wanted to.
It wasn’t because he sounded pathetic or broken. It wasn’t even that he seemed so helpless. I honestly couldn’t explain what it was, but I wanted to help him in any way that I could. I wanted this stranger to feel whole again for some reason and I would have done anything to help him get there.
With shaky fingers, I pulled his hair free of the hair tie as gently as I could manage. It was a dirty, tangled mess, but I was able to not rip too much of his hair out. Then I got my smoothing shampoo and began to massage it in at his scalp. My fingers worked slowly but efficiently, making sure that I’d scrubbed it really well.
“Ready?” I asked once I was done as I reached for the shower head. He nodded almost blindly like he was either lost in his head or in some kind of dazed trance. I couldn’t tell which.
I made sure the water was warm enough before I started the spray. Trying to make sure all the shampoo was out of his hair with one hand was quite difficult and took way longer than it should have.
I had to admit, now that it was clean, he had amazing hair. Medium blond and very soft. He obviously took care of it under normal circumstances.
“Okay, all done. Can you get up or do you need some help?” I asked as I shut off the water and reached for a clean towel. Then I thought better of it and grabbed a second one for his hair as well.
“Yeah, just give me a few minutes if that is alright.”
“Sure,” I said with a little nod of my head. “I’m going to go ch
ange the sheets. If you need me just call out. I won’t be far.”
With that, I left him sitting there and went off to change the bed.
He shuffled out of the bathroom just as I was finishing up, his hair half dry and the towel wrapped around his waist. I hadn’t thought this far yet, but I had nothing for him to wear. And the clothes I found him in…well, they were best just tossed in the trash. As he swayed on his feet, I figured it didn’t much matter right at the moment because he wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon.
I helped get him back in the bed. The moment his head hit the pillow his eyes closed. His body was pretty banged up and I knew that rest would be the best thing for him right now.
“Thank you,” he whispered as he caught my hand after I released the sheet to cover him. His eyes didn’t open but he gave me a light squeeze that made my heart flutter a little.
Which was strange. Because I had not ever really experienced anything like that and I had no idea what the hell it meant. I shrugged it off thinking that I wasn’t shown a lot of gratitude in my line of work and that it must have just been really nice to hear.
Pushing it out of my mind with a quick shake of my head, I checked over and redressed his wounds. Then I walked out of the room and left him to get some sleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Diesel
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I growled as I pushed The fucking Killer up against the wall, my forearm automatically going to his neck. The club pictures hanging there rattled and a couple crashed to the ground. I didn’t let up on the pressure even though I had technically asked a question.
“Diesel!” Loch barked.
Then there was a hand on my shoulder. Slender, tan fingers dug in until my body decided to twitch away from the pain. Fucking Nadya.
“Step down, D,” Loch said in a calmer tone.
I was fuming and really wanted to punch this fuck for coming back here without Bocca. He had the damn nerve to saunter up in here like everything was alright.
I took a step back, but only because of Loch. Nadya still crowded my space, ready to take me down in the blink of an eye.
Or try to.
Fine, she might have actually been able to best me. I hadn’t ever gone up against her and honestly, had no desire to.
Silas stayed against the wall, though his stance was cool as ever. His eyes pinned me with a coldness that didn’t fit his stature at the moment.
He’d come around the club a few times since Nadya got together with Tank. I hadn’t made a point to know the guy and didn’t really care to.
“Well, I came here to fill you in since I knew Hunt wouldn’t do it,” Silas stated in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Go on, then,” Cal said as he walked up with Axe and Tank right behind.
We didn’t bother going to the office because there was no one else around. And though Nadya was there, it was something we all were willing to overlook. Truth was, we all thought of her as half-in, anyway. After she helped us out with the Savage shit, she kind of made her way in. And it wasn’t like we could stop her from inserting herself in at times. And I knew this was one of those times.
I didn’t lose my cool very often, but right now I was hanging on by a thread. I could only picture the worst happening when I thought about where Bocca was. I wasn’t dumb, I knew what kind of danger he was going into. I knew how those guys worked and if he got caught, I knew there was a limited window before they put a bullet between his eyes. The longer the minutes ticked on, the more I prepared myself that we’d be getting a body back. I couldn’t let that happen and the fact that I wasn’t out there looking for him only made it worse.
“We tracked them to a house,” Silas started, looking at Cal as he talked. So Bocca hadn’t been in the fire, thank fuck! I knew we all were secretly worried about that and in a way, none of us even entertained the idea that he had been. “He was gone. It looked like he’d managed to escape. I don’t think we missed him by much because they weren’t even aware that he’d escaped. We took out everyone in the house, but Keften wasn’t there.”
“Keften?” Axe asked.
“Keften Jugovac. Croatian. Runs one of the smaller sex trafficking rings in the lower east coast. This thing was his. The last year he’s been pushing hard to grow and he’s been gaining a lot of new ground and contacts. Best we figured, he slipped out of the house the moment he heard shit going down. I had no doubt that he was there, because he is very hands on.”
“We have a name now,” Loch said in almost a mumble.
Didn’t help us one bit right now.
I only felt like I could breathe a half sigh of relief. Bocca had got himself out. But where the fuck was he? And why hadn’t he made contact? I glanced around and I could tell that we all were asking the same questions silently. There was no point in voicing them because it wasn’t like the answers would come out of thin air.
“Hunt is still looking for him,” Silas carried on. “That’s all I know. I wasn’t needed anymore and he let me know that I was also unwanted.”
I gave him a nod. It was almost an apology, but I couldn’t quite let myself back down just yet.
“Where was this?” Cal asked.
“Charlotte. They didn’t take him far. Is there anyone there that he might know. Might feel like he could go to? I have to warn you, he’s probably in bad shape.”
Silas didn’t go into details but he didn’t need to. We knew what could be done to the human body. We knew what tactics to use to get someone to talk. My eyes dropped to the ground. I had done many of those things, and as the images of what I’d done replayed themselves in my memory, Bocca’s face suddenly replaced the ones of those that I’d done that to.
“Fuck,” I breathed out.
“Sara Ann,” Loch said and it was like a light went off in all of our heads. “I’ll call.”
“There’s one more thing,” Silas said as Loch went to step away to call Sara Ann, but paused to hear what Silas had to say. “There was a body when we got there. My only guess was that Bocca had no choice. And I have to be honest, the devil has nothing on the things that she’s done.”
My eyes almost popped out of my head. Bocca killing, that wasn’t all that surprising. But a female, that was.
“They called her The Butcher. If that gives you any indication as to how bad she actually was.”
That statement alone made me understand one hundred percent. After all, there was a time that I wanted to kill a woman, and almost had. I would have, hadn’t my woman gotten to her first. Sometimes, you just couldn’t excuse crazy.
But that didn’t mean that Bocca wasn’t going to take it hard. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to feel regret and shame over it. Or that he was going to be able to brush it off like all the other ones.
However, that was something to deal with another day. You know, after we found him and all.
Without a word, Loch nodded and stepped away as he raised the phone to his ear.
Done talking, Silas bent over and scooped up the pictures that fell to the ground when I had assaulted him. I did feel a bit bad about it, attacking him, that was.
“Thanks,” I said as he stood back up and reached my hand out to him as a way of saying sorry about everything.
“I get it,” he replied and shook my hand.
Then his eyes snapped to the frames he held in his opposite hand. For a long moment, we all stood frozen in place as he got lost in whatever he was looking at. Feeling awkward, I leaned over and glanced at the picture.
“That’s from her going away party,” I said, my head flashing back to the moment we all said goodbye to a woman that wasn’t just a clubwhore to us all. She was more and I hoped she knew that.
Silas had gone ghost white and if I wasn’t mistaken, the steady-handed man was actually trembling.
“Is that…?” Nadya’s question trailed off as Silas snapped his gaze up to her.
“Who is this?” he asked looking around at each one of us.
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“Jessica,” Axe answered pinning Silas with a hard stare.
Though he didn’t love the woman like maybe they both wanted him to, he still cared very deeply for her and was protective over her even if she was no longer here.
“Jessica what?” he asked.
I had to scratch my head. It was kind of shitty, but I didn’t have the first fucking clue what her last name was. Damn. I wondered if any of us did. Bocca. I knew for sure he did, but only because he knew fucking everything about everyone.
And that had me thinking about how much we relied on him. How much we expected of him and maybe never really said thanks. It also made me see exactly how important he really was to this club. You better bet that once we got him back I was never going to take him for granted again.
“Sara Ann said she hasn’t seen him,” Loch said breaking in on whatever the hell was going on and not even realizing it. But this was more important than…whatever the hell it was. “She’s been at work, on the last leg of a twenty-four-hour shift. He hasn’t come to the ER or tried to contact her.”
Fuck! I really thought we would have had something there.
“Let’s ride,” Cal said. “Search around the hospital. Maybe he’s hiding out there waiting for her to get off. Check her house too.”
“I think she has a condo not far from the hospital,” Loch said as his old ass attempted to type out a text. Took him way too fucking long to do that shit. “Yeah, got the address.”
“Diesel, you’re with Loch. Axe with me. Tank…well, stay here, I know you have to get Grass in a bit.”
“It’s okay,” Nadya cut in, giving Tank a quick jerk of her chin. “I’ll get him.”
She had oddly stepped into the mother role without hesitation from the moment Grass was brought home. There was some kind of beautifully strange relationship between her and the little boy. I say that because Nadya was not the warm and fuzzy type. In fact, she was downright cold and terrifying most of the time. But there were those moments, the ones that were only for Tank and Grass when she softened a little.
