The Rise of Ferryn

by Gadziala, Jessica

  "Am I in a real hospital?"

  "As opposed to an imaginary one?"

  "I know there are doctors that can be bought. Facilities that can be used." For the right price.

  "Don't have connections like that."

  Glancing around the room, I made sure we were alone. "What about the blood?"

  "Couldn't save your modesty kid. Had to get you clean. Then get you here. Was it just Thomas?" he asked, voice rough, closest to emotional I had ever heard.

  "No. I got them all."

  "Not what I meant, kid. You know what I mean."

  "I don't," I countered, shaking my head a little, finding my vision a bit swimmy with too much motion.

  "Your pants," he growled, unable to even look at me.

  My pants.

  The girl had my pants.

  But Holden, Holden had found me without them. And thought the worst.

  "No," I objected, voice forceful. "No. I mean it could have happened. I missed so many signs. But no. I gave my pants to one of the girls. I thought... I thought I was done. I told her to take my clothes, give me hers. It would all fall on me."

  "Thank fuck," he grumbled, shaking his head.

  "How did you know?"

  "Didn't," he said, shaking his head.

  "You just didn't trust that I was ready." I couldn't help it, my temper flared a bit at that.

  "You weren't," he agreed, shrugging. "I followed just in case. When you didn't come out after the girls ran off, I came in. Found you on the floor half naked and coughing up blood."

  "What about the evidence?"

  "I work fast," he said, shrugging. "Took that shirt off of you, mopped up most of your blood with it. Put you in something fresh. Wiped you down with paper towels and fucking Windex in the car on the way to the hospital. Said saw you getting mugged. Scared the guys off. Grabbed you. Brought you in. You had no documents on you, of course. They took pity on me and let me visit with you. They're going to kick me out eventually though."

  "What am I supposed to do from here?" I asked, suddenly afraid to be alone, something I hadn't experienced in ages.

  "You go with the cover story. You have all the documents." The fake documents. Everything from driver's license to social security number. I had an identity to fall back on for situations such as this. "You're gonna be here for five to seven days. I can visit during the right hours. Make sure you're keeping it all straight. From there, you get discharged, take your shit, and meet me out front. You're going to be down for two months. Then we can start training again."

  Somehow, that was reassuring. That things hadn't changed. That this didn't take away Holden's faith in me.

  In the end, he'd been right.

  I stayed there six days.

  I went home on my twentieth birthday.

  I celebrated by sprawling out on my mattress, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember that all of this was worth it

  That it wasn't about me.

  That my life wasn't about me.

  That my pain didn't matter.

  That my fear didn't either.

  Because those girls out there were in pain and scared.

  My life was about them.

  I knew that.

  I believed in that.

  But I just really, really wanted a fucking ice cream cake.

  Nine

  Ferryn - Present Day

  I couldn't breathe.

  It was laughable, really.

  I'd been in the most dangerous situations anyone could imagine. I had legitimately faced death time and time and time again.

  And I had done that with a sense of calm coursing through me.

  But the thought of walking into the compound to see my parents was making it feel like someone had a hand around my throat.

  "Hey, Ace," Vance called, voice sounding far away even though he was just a foot or so away from me. "Hey," he tried again, hand reaching out, tipping my chin up, a move that sent a little shiver through my insides.

  I remembered once seeing him do that to a girl at a show. And then went ahead and spent eighteen months fantasizing about him maybe doing it to me someday.

  Now he had done it twice.

  And it was proving just as effective as I imagined it would be.

  We'd found a relative truce over the remaining few days.

  He showed up in the late mornings. He brought various foods. We talked. Mostly about the club, about Navesink Bank, about the new club members and their women, about all the dramas I had missed. It was all enough to fill up a dozen books, I swear.

  But there was a sort of comfort in the chaos. My childhood had been full of it. My mom shaking us awake in the middle of the night, telling us to grab our favorite toys—or as we got older, electronics and books—then shuffling us into Dad's bullet-resistant SUV, and driving us up to Hailstorm.

  As kids, we thought it was some sort of planned adventure

  Oh, how naive we had been.

  As we got older, though, we knew what was really going on. There was some kind of drama in Navesink Bank. And as a precautionary measure, the women and kids were shipped off to the safest spot in the area.

  Eventually, I started to be able to piece together the drama, figure out the new bad guys in town, what they wanted, how my family or their connections dealt with it.

  It had been a while since I learned about it. And it felt good to be in the know again. Even if it was so after the fact.

  Vance carefully side-stepped information about my parents or siblings, wanting me to hear all that from them, and I gave as little as possible about my past.

  Though I had maybe told him one or two small things.

  Like I'd told him I had punctured a lung once. But I hadn't given the details of how.

  I'd told him that I had made a sort-of friend along the way. But didn't give names.

  The fewer people who knew about what I was up to in my private time, the better.

  I knew that.

  But, somehow, there was no denying that it felt incredibly wrong not to tell him.

  I wondered if I would feel the same with my family.

  Or if there was simply something special here. Something leftover from how things had been in the past, full of possibilities we'd never had a chance to explore.

  "I can't breathe," I admitted.

  It was amazing how much emotional turmoil could have the exact same sensation of a collapsed freaking lung.

  My chest was tight, my head fuzzy.

  "They love you. And they have been waiting for this day for almost nine years."

  "That's not a lot of pressure or anything," I grumbled, turning away, pacing the kitchen.

  "No pressure."

  "Easy for you to say. They aren't going to be disappointed in how you turned out," I reminded him as I placed my hands on the counter, head ducking down.

  A snort sounded from behind me. Close. Very close. So close that I could feel the air on the back of my neck.

  "You forget who my parents are? How disappointed they are in me?" he asked, and I could feel his body behind me.

  "We're both just a couple of fuck-ups, aren't we?" I asked, turning, feeling my shoulder brush his arm.

  "Guess you can say that," he agreed, arms moving forward, grabbing the counter on either side of my body, trapping me. Making that breathing thing I had been struggling with a moment ago a complete and utter impossibility.

  In the past, attraction had always been centrally located in one region of my anatomy. It was a tingle and an ache.

  It never went beyond that.

  I didn't get breathless. My nerves didn't jumble. I damn sure never got butterflies.

  Yet there I was, heart pounding, belly fluttering, chest tight, shivers coursing over my skin.

  Just because of proximity.

  His brilliant gaze held mine.

  And all ideas of this being a big mistake, my possible undoing, disappeared.

  My arms rose, a hand going behind his neck, pulling do
wn, the other resting on his cheek, then sealing my lips over his.

  There was a short moment of stunned non-reaction before his lips came alive under mine, before his arms curled around my lower back, crushing, pulling me off my feet as his lips got harder, hungrier, stripping away any ideas of not going down this route with him.

  And, what's more, stripping away the shields I had worked so damn hard to build, to keep in front of me.

  And what's most—I didn't even care. I welcomed the decimation.

  Because that wreckage allowed warmth to flood my system, something starting at the base of my spine and spreading outward until it overtook me completely, until it chased away all the cold, until I was sure I would never be able to exist without it again.

  Vance's hands slid down, sinking into my ass, yanking me up and off my feet, dropping me down on the counter. Then he was moving between my welcoming legs, everything in me honed in on his closeness, the need emanating from him as strongly as it was assaulting my system.

  My legs angled up, slid over the sides of his hips, curled around his lower back, pulling him closer, eliminating any space between us, making his hardness press up against my need, something that made a shiver course through my body, making my hips do a shimmy, creating the friction I was dying for.

  Vance's hands went to either side of my face, keeping me captive.

  The very idea, just a few days before, would have sent panic coursing through me, would have made me fight to get away, to take back control.

  In the moment, though, I wanted to be guided, I wanted him to own my body and soul. I wanted fulfillment to a wish I made something like twelve years before.

  To touch him.

  To be touched by him.

  It was everything I had imagined.

  More.

  Better.

  Maybe made especially so by the distance, by the changes life had thrown our way.

  His body curved over mine, arching me back, letting me angle my hips just right to grind against his cock, to feel the pressure build, an acute, nearly painful sensation that promised completion like I had maybe never known before.

  His hips shifted, pressed, pushed against me. More pressure. More need.

  One arm released me, sliding down my side, teasing over the side of my breast, the slope of my waist, the subtle flare of my hip, down the side of my thigh, then around the knee, curving inward. Moving up.

  Up.

  My lips broke from his as his fingers pressed in at the juncture of my thigh, a surprised whimper escaping me, making his gaze find mine, eyes heavy-lidded, hungry.

  The sexiest thing I had ever seen.

  His hand shifted, his thumb finding the right spot, pressing.

  "Vance..." My voice sounded airy, choked even to my own ears, making his breath sigh out of him.

  His thumb went to do another swipe as my fingers clawed at his upper arms.

  Then, ringing.

  "Ignore it," he demanded when my body started to tense. As if to punctuate his point, his finger did another press as the ringing stopped. But just as I began to get back into it, it started up again. "Fuck," he growled, wrenching away from me, stalking over toward the living room to snatch his phone off the couch. "What?" It was a vicious, angry growl, something that managed to send another shock of desire through me as I tried desperately to bring some control back into my body, some focus back to my mind. Vance's gaze found mine, regret plain in his eyes. A sigh. His hand raking across the back of his neck. "Shit. Yeah. Okay. On our way."

  Just like that, it was all over.

  We had to go.

  My Uncle Cash and Aunt Lo were picking my parents up at the airport. They said they would text my brothers when they were close. From there, West would let us know so we could get there first while he distracted my brothers.

  We would wait out back until things calmed a little then we would go in.

  Nerves twisted in my belly, snaked around my chest and throat.

  "Everything is going to be fine," Vance told me as he shrugged his cut back on. "The sooner we get there, though, the better."

  "Right," I agreed, hopping off the counter, looking down at myself.

  I hadn't considered things like outfits and my overall appearance in a long time. Everything had sort of come down to utility, what was easiest to fight and train in. It didn't matter what I looked like. In fact, the less approachable I looked, the better.

  This was the first time I could remember fretting about my slim wardrobe choices in ages.

  I had on a simple pair of bluejeans and a white tee. I had my combat boots and my leather jacket. But that was it. Nothing soft. Nothing warm. No jewelry or makeup to speak of.

  I would be a far cry from the daughter they remembered, the one who spent hours in front of the mirror, who had enough clothing to clothe an entire village somewhere.

  "Ace," Vance called, making me shake the thoughts away. Even an unkempt daughter was better than no daughter at all, I imagined.

  "Yeah?" I asked, shrugging into my leather jacket, taking a steadying breath.

  "We got some shit to talk about now too," he told me, gaze full of meaning.

  We'd finally crossed that line.

  And I didn't think either of us wanted to go back.

  Which, well, was problematic, wasn't it?

  In more ways than one.

  If we kept it up, he was right, there would need to be some talking.

  But I had to take one uncomfortable interaction at a time.

  "Let's get going," I said, brushing past him, moving outside, not bothering to wait for him to follow. I knew he would. We'd planned this in painstaking detail. The guards at the gate had even been told ahead that we were coming, to let us in.

  There was a sense of urgency in me as we hid out behind the building, as I heard the SUV pull into the yard, the doors opening and closing, the sounds of my family reuniting in the clubhouse. I wasn't sure if that urgency stemmed from how much I really did want to see them, or the bone-deep need to get the initial interaction over with—or both—. But there was no denying it was coursing through my system as we finally heard things calm down, as West loudly declared it was nice to have everyone back—a not-so-subtle cue for us to finally make our move.

  Vance went first, as we decided, moving in, saying hi, holding the door open.

  And then it was my turn.

  My heart skipped into overdrive as I forced my feet forward, as I moved into the doorway, then back into the clubhouse.

  My mother saw me first.

  She'd been giving Vance one of her warm, familiar smiles. Then saw a figure move in beside him.

  The smile stayed there for a second as she searched my features, as she made them make sense.

  And then the smile fell entirely, her whole face becoming a mask of shock."Ferryn?" the sound shrieked out of her. And she was running even before it was finished coming out of her lips.

  Just before we collided, I saw the face of my father, my brothers, my Uncle Cash, my Aunt Lo.

  But then my mother's arms were around me, and mine instinctively went around her.

  And she was all there was for a long moment. My mother and her familiar scent, the warmth of her embrace, her hot tears soaking through my tee.

  A moment later, my father's arms were around the both of us, strong and reassuring as I always remembered them, holding his family back together again.

  My brothers, understandably, were standoffish.

  It was a different relationship, a different bond. And I had left them during the—arguably—most important years for siblings, the years that made or broke the deep friendship that was possible to be found there.

  My gaze lifted, finding them watching the scene.

  I didn't know what to expect. They'd still been gawky, awkward things when I had left, all arms and legs and pimply faces, still too young to take on any hints of manhood.

  But now, well, they were both men, weren't they? Tall and wide as our
father, judging by the way their bodies looked under their shirts, they'd been hitting the gym, they'd been working on themselves.

  Fallon was the spitting image of Dad. The same sharp angles, the same sort of cocky, almost indifferent glare. The kind that said he had seen it all.

  Seen it all.

  God, what had he seen?

  What stories did he have to tell that I wasn't a part of? More than he could ever tell me himself, surely.

  Finn, though, was more a mix of Mom and Dad. His face shape was more our mom's but with a stronger jaw, with a broader forehead. He was a little thinner than Fallon, a little less bulky in the muscle.

  Both of them seemed almost wary of me.

  Wary.

  "Baby, we're so happy you're home," my mother cried into my neck, squeezing me tighter.

  "I'm sorry it took so long," I whispered back, feeling a sting at the backs of my eyes, closing them tight to fend off the tears.

  I wasn't sure how long we stood there like that, just embracing, just listening to my mother say over and over how much she missed me, how happy she was, how much she loved me.

  "I love you too," I assured her, feeling like the absolute scum of the earth while I did so, not nearly worthy enough of the love she had for me.

  With that, they pulled away, my mother swatting at her cheeks, my father throwing an arm around her, leaning over to kiss her forehead.

  My uncle was the next to hug me, squeezing me so tight I could barely breathe before releasing me.

  He'd changed his hair.

  I remembered thinking before I was taken that I needed to find a way to tell him he was getting a little old for his haircut. I wondered who finally got the guts to inform him. He'd grown the shaved side out, having a head full of long hair instead, hair he had pulled back at the moment.

  "You look good, kid," he told me, eyes a little glassy.

  My Aunt Lo was next, moving toward me with purpose. I prepared myself for another rib-crushing hug.

  I really should have known better.

  She didn't hug me.

  She slapped me across the face.

  The sting was immediate. But more than the physical pain, the emotional pain was like a stabbing inside.

  Outside of training, no one had ever laid a hand on me. They didn't believe in it. So the fact that my aunt got angry enough to slap me, well, that said a lot, didn't it?