by Rye Hart
Ben holds out his hand and Sydney takes it, giving him a firm shake. Then she surprises us both by pulling him into a hug. Once the shock wears off, he looks genuinely thankful for the gesture. Again, I find myself awed at her instincts and actions. She seems to know just what we need and gladly gives it.
“Why don’t I go get us all something to drink and let you two talk for a minute?” she says. Adding, “But only if you promise not to fight. You have a lot to work out but here is not the time or the place, we need to be focused on Luke right now. Got it?”
I can’t help but smile at her toughness and nod my head. “Yes ma’am,” I say and Ben echoes.
Once alone in the room, Ben shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. I almost laugh at how absurd it looks for such a big dude to be so cagey. I sigh and take a seat.
“Little brother, I think it’s past time we had a good long talk.”
Chapter Thirteen: Sydney
I leave the two Parker boys alone, hoping that I won’t come back to body parts and security guards. Seeing Cole so torn up has me feeling powerless. I wish there was something I could do for him. I know sex takes his mind off of his troubles, but it’s not like we can just fuck in the waiting room. Not to mention, I wouldn’t mind finding other ways to connect with him.
Don’t get me wrong, I will ride that cock as often as I can, but our entire relationship can’t be based on it. Too bad.
I begin to realize that the thought of going back to Chicago isn’t as appealing as I would have thought. Yes, I am successful there. Yes, I have friends there. Yes, I make really good money there. But there is one thing that Chicago cannot offer me: Cole Parker. I know there is no way he would leave his ranch, even if he does love me. I also realize that I would never ask him to. Montana is where he belongs. The fields are in his blood. What the fuck am I going to do?
First things first, I need to get coffee. After that, we see what happens with Luke and deal with Ben’s lawsuit. Hmmm. We. It’s been a while since I’ve thought of myself as part of a ‘we.’ I like it. I just hope Cole feels the same.
As I come back to the room with a tray full of horrible hospital coffee, the doctor enters behind me. Both Cole and Ben shoot to their feet, holding their collective breath.
“Luke is out of surgery. He has some severe bruising on his lungs and his liver but no artery damage to either organ. We had to put pins in his left forearm and a rod in his left tibia. We have stabilized the spinal fracture and will have to monitor the swelling around his spinal cord before we can know what, if any, effects the fracture will have. For now, he is still in critical but stable condition. If he does ok for the next twenty-four hours, his chances of survival and recovery will more than double.”
Both Cole and Ben exhale and begin peppering the doctor with questions. Once they are satisfied with his answers, they thank him and he leaves. The two men look at one another with relief plain on their faces and embrace once more.
I prepare for the long haul, knowing that neither of them is going to leave this hospital for at least the next twenty-four hours. Cole gathers me in his arms and I can feel the cautious optimism in his touch. I hold him close and tell him that Luke is going to be ok.
“From your lips to God’s ear babe,” he says, kissing me lightly on the lips.
We settle in and I curl up in one of the big leather chairs with my head on Cole’s shoulder. I close my eyes and drift off to sleep for a few minutes here and there. In between my short naps, I listen to the two brothers talk for just about the first time in almost fifteen years.
“So how long have you two been together?” I hear Ben ask.
Cole chuckles. “Going on a whole five days now,” he says.
“Really? Wow, you two really look like the real deal man. The way you are with each other, I would have thought you’d been together for years,” Ben remarks.
“Well if I have any say in it, we will be,” Cole says softly.
I feel my pulse quicken but I keep my eyes shut. I don’t want him to know I’m awake and stop talking.
“Actually, Aunt Nora sent her here,” Cole says. “She’s a friend of hers.”
A long silence follows. “How is Aunt Nora?” Ben finally asks.
“She’s good. And she’d love to hear from you,” Cole says, his tone softly chiding.
“I know. I just don’t think she’d be very proud of how I’ve turned out,” Ben says, sadness plain in his voice.
“Yeah, about that,” Cole clears his throat. “What’s this bullshit about you suing us for a third of the ranch? You haven’t given a shit about the place in damn near twenty years.”
Ben sighs deeply. “Look Cole, it’s not that I don’t give a shit. It’s just that it was hard for me to be around there after mom and dad died.”
“You don’t think it was hard for Luke and me too?” Cole asks. “Shit Ben, Luke was only fourteen when you left and he was so damn lost. But we stayed and we worked our asses off, and we turned the place into something mom and dad would be really proud of.”
“I know,” Ben says softly. “It’s just that, well, I made a really bad investment and-”
“For fuck’s sake Ben, is that was this is about? You need money? Why didn’t you just come to us and ask for help?” Cole asks.
“I’ve been gone for fifteen years Cole, I didn’t exactly think you’d be chomping at the bit to help me out.”
“No, you thought trying to take what Luke and I have worked for those fifteen years was a better idea? Jesus.”
I finally open my eyes and sit upright, clearing my throat. I don’t want them to know how much I’ve heard so I play it up with a fake yawn and stretch.
“What’s going on?” I ask innocently.
“What’s going on is that my brother is an idiot,” Cole says.
Ben is again looking down at his boots with his hands stuffed in his pockets. It is clear how much his big brother’s opinion of him still matters after all of this time and distance.
“We all make mistakes Cole,” I say softly, touching his arm.
“Yeah well this was a pretty colossal fucking mistake,” he says and Ben nods his agreement.
Just then, a nurse comes in to inform us that Luke is awake and asking to see Cole. Cole looks to me and I nod. He rushes out of the room after the nurse, leaving Ben and I alone.
“So, Cole says that you are a friend of our Aunt Nora’s?” he asks.
I nod my head. “Yes. She thought I needed some time away from my job back in Chicago and suggested I come out here for a bit. I have to say I think she was spot on.”
“What do you do in Chicago?” he asked.
I clear my throat and shift my weight from one foot to the other. “Um, well. I’m a lawyer,” I say, watching the color nearly drain from Ben’s face.
“Ah,” he says.
“Look Ben, you don’t have to go through with the lawsuit. It seems to me that Cole would be more than willing to help you out if you need it. But you can’t take the ranch.”
Ben sat down heavily in a chair and put his head in his hands. “I know,” he said quietly. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’ll come home and we’ll figure it out together,” came Cole’s voice from the doorway.
“Home?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, home. Where you belong. Where we all belong. Luke’s asking for you. He said not to worry, his good arm is in a cast,” Cole said, slapping Ben’s back on his way out the door.
I stood and went to Cole, wrapping my arms around him and laying my head on his chest. “How’s Luke” I ask.
“He’s pretty banged up but I think he’s gonna be ok,” Cole said, relieved.
“Good, I’m so glad,” I said, looking up at Cole.
“You know I meant what I said,” he says.
“About?”
“Home being where we all belong,” he says.
I look deep into his eyes and find my absolute truth there. “Then let’s all go home
.”
THE END
Tough as Nails
Chapter One
Have you ever met someone so royally screwed up that they could lie and cheat without feeling any morsel of regret? Well, if you haven’t - allow me to introduce myself. My name is Brittney Dale and I try hard not to blame others for the way I turned out, but then again, I can’t really take all of the credit myself either.
My mother was, for lack of a better word, a whore for Chaos Theory, the local motorcycle club. She used to tell me stories from before her dark days - stories of my father. She claimed he was a fine, upstanding man with plenty of money and a big house. When I was younger I liked to live in that fantasy, but as I got older I began to realize it was all a lie.
I eventually found out who my father was. His name was Billy and he was one of my mom’s Johns. When she came to him for help after discovering her pregnancy, he drove her to a women’s shelter and that’s where she lived for the nine months she carried me. She always boasted that she stayed clean during her pregnancy, though I didn’t believe that for a second. It was a miracle I had both ears and two working arms.
After I was born, mom got kicked out of the shelter for using drugs and she started wandering from hotel to hotel, turning tricks to try and keep us off the street. For years that’s how it was. We wandered from city to city, scrounging through dumpsters and sleeping on park benches. Sometimes she managed to pool enough money to get us a hotel room for the week. I remember how much I loved that. I would sit in the hot bath water until my skin turned an angry red. It was the only time I felt clean in those days.
I never went to school because we never stayed in one place long enough for the government to catch up with mom. Whenever the local cops came knocking, we took off to another city. We spent my entire childhood bouncing around wandering through the Deep South until we eventually made it to Tennessee.
When we started living in Nashville, I was only about nine. According to my mother I was old enough to take care of myself. She would go away for days and leave me without food or money, so I did the only thing I could. I would go to the local grocery store and take what I needed. No one really suspected that a young girl was coming to their store to steal, so it was always rather easy to just walk in and grab whatever I wanted.
The day I was caught, was the day my life changed forever. One of the stores I’d been frequenting finally caught onto me and the store owner snatched my arm and called the cops. When I explained the situation to the police, they started snooping around. While they never found mom, they did discover my living situation and took me into protective custody.
I was put into the foster system immediately and that began the worst eight years of my life. And considering how the first nine years were, that’s really saying something. They never found my mother and so she never went to jail. I was left trying to navigate a system I didn’t understand with tools that weren't considered acceptable.
My mother, when she was around, never got angry when I lied or stole. There were no repercussions. Now I was suddenly living in a world with incredibly strict rules that I struggled to conform to.
All of a sudden there was dinner time, bath time, and bedtime. I couldn’t take three showers a day like I'd been used to doing, and I had to eat what the foster home made, when they made it. If I wasn't hungry at dinnertime, I didn't eat until breakfast.
Looking back on it, I understand that everyone did their best. They were trying to provide structure and discipline, but that wasn't how I understood it. You couldn't take a kid who'd spent their entire life trying to survive on their own and expect them to just assimilate. That's just wasn’t how it worked.
School was even harder. I started going to classes that I didn’t really understand. I was nine, so they put me with the rest of the nine year olds, but I hadn’t had any schooling up until that point. I read at a very basic level and math completely escaped me. Overall, I was far behind my peers and no one seemed to understand that it was because I’d never sat in a classroom before. My teachers all thought I was stupid or just a flat out bad kid. I tried for a long time, but eventually gave up.
Instead of paying attention in class, I just started slipping away and skipping school. I got in trouble for it many times, but I didn’t really care. I would go hang out with the older kids who seemed to like me well enough, though it was only because I was willing to steal candies and snacks for them.
The foster home eventually got tired of my delinquency and I started bouncing around from home to home until my mother managed to find me. I hadn’t seen her in eight years, but I couldn’t resist her offer. She would take me away from the school and away from the foster homes. It was an offer that sounded too good to be true. I was so tired of all the fighting and yelling. I was tired of feeling unwanted and stupid. So despite all of the things she’d done when I was young, I happily went with her and joined the biker gang.
It would become both the best and worst choice I’d ever make. Welcome to my life.
Chapter Two
The sun was rising and peeking through the window, warming my tanned skin. My mother was full blooded Native American and I was lucky enough to retain most of her genetics. My hair was long and black as raven’s feathers. I rarely brushed it and just left it wavy or pulled back into a pony tail. Men loved my hair. They always wanted to touch it (or pull it, depending on the situation), and they had a tendency to get lost in my eyes. They were as green as spring grass and with a flutter of my eyelashes I almost always got what I wanted.
I wasn’t alone in the bed. I never was. Just like my mother, I’d turned to selling myself for the basic necessities in life. By the time I joined the biker gang I was seventeen and considered an adult by most of the men, and as an adult I was expected to earn my keep. The convinced me that the only thing of value that I possessed was my body. I was scared at first. The first few times I cried, but soon enough I became numb to the physical and emotional pain and I just sucked it up.
The leader of the gang, Fang, took a particular interest in me. Since he was the highest man on the totem pole, he got his pick of women. Mom and I weren’t the only women they kept around for pleasure. There were a good ten to fifteen women who regularly came around to look for cheap or free drugs. Well, the drugs were never free, but for most of them sex was a small price to pay for crank.
I was the only one who wasn’t after drugs. I think it was one of the reasons I was in “high demand” as Fang put it. My skin wasn’t ruined and my teeth weren’t falling out of my head. That was more than most of the other women could claim. I didn’t blame them, though. Many of them had been born into situations like this. Many of them survived in utter poverty for so long that the drug induced haze they lived in was more of a defense mechanism than anything else.
I didn’t think of myself as better than them, but the men did. I was strong and “feisty”. I hated when they called me that. It made me sound like some sort of animal they were just poking with a stick. It made my skin crawl.
My eyes finally fluttered open and I sat up, running my hand through my hair. I turned and put my feet flat on the ground, looking around. Fang was naked in the bed beside me, his hairy chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm. Maybe it was wrong of me, but sometimes I just wished he would stop breathing. This man made me feel trapped and I hated it. I wanted to run but I had nowhere to go. At least here I had a roof over my head and food in my stomach. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than being homeless.
I walked over to the bathroom and hopped in the shower, wanting to wash Fang’s smell off me. I hated the way he smelled. It was an awful mixture of sweat and desperation. Despite the fact that we lived in a trailer with a shower Fang still didn’t shower nearly as often as he should.
The bathroom had always been my sanctuary and even now I found the warm water cascading along my shoulders comforting. It was like a warm embrace that I’d never been granted as a child. My mother never wrapped her arms around me
or kissed my forehead. Somewhere along the line, water had replaced my mother’s affections.
I took far too long, allowing the hot water to run out; it wasn’t like Fang was going to care. Just as I reached to turn the shower off there was a banging at the door.
“Hurry it up. I have to take a shit!” Fang snapped.
I rolled my eyes and made a disgusted face at his vulgarity, but ignored him, deciding to let the water run a little longer just because I could. He wasn’t asking me to get out because he had a shred of decency and didn’t want to use the bathroom while I was in the shower. The only reason he didn’t barge in was because I’d learned to lock the door.
When I couldn’t stand the cold water anymore, I finally got out of the shower and pushed the door open, wrapped in nothing but a towel. I could feel Fang’s eyes on me as he reached out and grabbed my wrist.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to run to the store.” It was a lie, but it didn’t really matter. I always lied to him about where I was going.
“Who told you to run to the store?”
I rolled my eyes and yanked my arm out of his hand. “Don’t act like you can tell me what I can and can’t do.”
I saw his eyes narrow and before I could escape his hand snapped out and he gripped my jaw between his finger and thumb, staring down at me with a serious look on his face.
“Are you challenging me, girl?”
I took a step back and frowned. “I just don’t like when you’re constantly over my shoulder. I’m just going to go to the store to get stuff to make dinner.”
He pushed me forward, forcing me to back up until the back of my knees hit the bed and I sat, staring up at him, trying not to let the fear show on my face. I didn’t want him to know he was getting to me. He leaned over me and forced me into the mattress, pressing his hand against my mouth so hard I was suddenly struggling to breathe.
“You’re going to shut up and listen really close, girly,” he hissed. “This isn’t a fucking game. You better realize that really quick. You think you don’t belong to me, but you do. All I’d have to do is give the order and no one in this camp would give you food or water. You’d sleep outside until I was tired of playing with you and then I’d have a bullet put in the back of your head.”