Brutally Beautiful

by Christine Zolendz

  “I’m gonna repeat the question one more time. Where the fuck is Samantha Matthews?” The voice wasn’t familiar, the son-of-a-bitch must have paid someone to hunt me down. I dialed the lock to the safe. Right 12. Left 27… as Kade’s tense muscles hovered over my body mumbling low, just above a breath, in one of those horror movie singsong whispers… “2 exits. 5 windows. 4 customers. 1 waitress. 1 brother. 1 Lainey. 1 shooter. How many guns…” His hands gripped the flesh on my arms protectively as my heart was pounding through my chest. Oh, God, he was losing it.

  The safe’s door bounced open and I grabbed for Dylan’s gun. I knew it was there, and I knew it was usually loaded. All I had to do was click the magazine into place and pray the gunman didn’t hear. Slipping the safety off, I tried to get out from under Kade’s arms.

  “Don’t know anybody by the name of Samantha Matthews,” Dylan’s voice said. Oh, God, Dylan shut the hell up. I could see him at the other end of the bar, both hands raised, face probably looking into the end of the barrel of a gun, his fingers trembling.

  “I’ll just get her to come out then,” the voice laughed dryly, as two more flashes of light and sound exploded from his gun.

  Behind the bar, a mere ten feet from me, Dylan dropped instantly.

  Jumping up, gun raised, I braced myself for impact. “Drop the gun,” I said. From the corner of my eye, I saw George, one of the regulars standing next to Bobby, with his gun already raised right at the shooter’s head.

  I adjusted the aim of my gun a few inches to the right until it lined up flawlessly to the shooters forehead, knowing perfectly well George was about to pull his trigger. Another shot ripped through the bar and the shooter collapsed. Shit, it was Deputy George and Deputy Bobby, as a matter of fact, all four regulars were cops. The four men moved in sync, two surrounding the shooter’s body, the other two going out to see who else was around.

  Bree screamed Dylan’s name, then mine. It was crushing to hear the primal sound of her heart breaking as she crawled to get to him. I recognized how scared and freaked she truly was. It was the same way when they told her about Michael. She looked at me then as she looked at me the day they found his body. Please help me. I didn’t realize it until then that she’d fallen in love with Dylan. I nodded to her with watery eyes.

  Kade reached Dylan first and slumped down mumbling next to him. Bree slid next to us hiccupping and sobbing. “He’s still breathing. Please help him. I can’t do this again. I can’t. I can’t live through another Michael, Sam.” Her tears spilled, cascading waterfalls of sorrow. Desperation.

  “Bree, get the car and bring me my bag. Olaes is there. Get Olaes. Bring it all,” I said.

  Kade was breathing heavily next to me, whispering, “Who the fuck is Elias? Is he a doctor?”

  Dylan’s eyes looked into mine; fear and surprise. “What? What’s going…what the fu…” His eyes scanned his body, registering the blood. “Oh, God…oh, God…I don’t want to die.” His eyes shifted to Kade. “Kade, I…I don’t want to die.” Sweat started falling from his brow.

  Tearing his shirt off, I scanned the wounds. Hunger and anger bubbled in my chest. Two bullets split through his skin. Slipping my hands beneath his back, I searched, no exit wound on his back, one ‘through and through’ on his right arm. I was not worried about his arm, because it wasn’t a life-threatening hit, but the one in his torso could be. It could be. The scent of fear and metal stung at my nose and the guttural sob that ripped from Kade’s throat was like a steel vise that wrenched around my chest, squeezing so hard I gasped for breath. I had to stop them, to calm them before their panic spread like frost against glass, freezing and paralyzing them both. I had to stop them from making everything worse. My hand shot out to Kade. I laid my bloodied fingers against his cheek and his eyes snapped to mine. I’ve done this before. “It feels like you can’t breathe, but you can. It feels like you’ll never get through this, but you will.” My own breathing regulated and I offered him an encouraging smile. “Kade,” I said evenly. I slammed my hands down hard on both of Dylan’s wounds, applying as mush pressure as I could. “Dylan is doing great. Let’s keep him talking and thinking about other things and we’re going to get him some help. Trust me.”

  I could hear the men in the background of the bar. They had a cruiser and ambulance on the way. However, the hospital was at least a twenty-minute drive from there.

  Dylan wasn’t going to make that. My throat thickened as visions of granite headstones stood like soldiers in a field of dead pressed up against the sky. I pressed the weight of my body against his punctures, smiling…calmly…always show them calmness…always be the comforting voice in the middle of madness.

  Bree was next to me in a flash of panting sobs and cold winds, holding my aid bag. She had the zipper open and a torn Olaes pack in her hand before I could even ask her.

  “What…What…What is that?” Dylan was asking.

  “This is a tourniquet that’s going to save your life, sweetheart. This is called an Olaes Modular Bandage.” Calm him. Talk to him. “It’s named after a very brave soldier.”

  “I…I…don’t want to…to die,” Dylan pleaded. His words sank in my belly, chilling my bones.

  “Not on my watch you won’t,” I answered, wrapping and pressing, sealing and praying. It wasn’t even a battlefield. This was not his fault. We should have never stayed here. These people were innocent. Innocent and bleeding, spilling and splattering crimson sunsets across the floor.

  Because of me.

  Chapter 10

  Someone shot the jukebox.

  With a gun.

  A gun.

  Oh fuck. Oh fuck. I squeezed my eyes shut tight. This isn’t happening again. This can’t be happening AGAIN! Violent anger crashed in waves over me so powerfully that I couldn’t see straight. I grabbed for Lainey blindly. I needed her behind me, away from the danger. I wasn’t letting anyone hurt what was mine.

  Mine?

  That’s what I thought, wasn’t it? It was what I told her, wasn’t it? When we got out of the closet, I grabbed her and called her mine like a Neanderthal.

  I’d have to revisit this moment after the shitstorm passes. I needed to hide Lainey under me and protect her from being hit. But, she was crawling away. Fuck, she was CRAWLING AWAY FROM ME! Crawling towards the gunman’s voice, towards Dylan standing with his hands raised at the far end of the bar, just crawling, slinking right into the danger on hands and knees. Panic gurgled, boiled frantically in the back of my throat. Then she stopped at the safe as I yanked on her leg, trying to place her body under mine. Shield her.

  The gunman was talking again and my gag reflex started playing with me…2 exits. 5 windows. 4 customers. 1 waitress. 1 brother. 1 Lainey. 1 shooter. How many guns…Deputies at tables…The walls were closing in around me. I have to get Lainey and Dylan out of here alive.

  Two more gunshots rang out, slicing through the coiled fear of the room, and then my brother fell. Dylan just dropped to the ground, collapsing as if he’d fainted.

  What the…?

  Confusion muddled my brain. Did he faint? He fainted, right? Please, God, just let him have fainted, let him just be a pussy and have fainted. I crawled on my hands and knees for my brother. I tried to drag Lainey with me, yanked on her pant leg hard, but she fucking stood up. I felt the sob in my throat before it escaped my lips. I did not want to watch her die. I needed to get that gun away from her and kill whoever it was on the other side of the bar, before they shot Lainey, but she moved so quickly, she was out of my reach in a second.

  With a noticed familiarity, Lainey clicked the magazine holding all the bullets into the gun, securing the fact it was fully loaded. How the hell did she know how to do THAT? Calmly, taking off the safety as she stood, she aimed it at the shooter. “Put. The. Gun. Down,” the calmness in her voice had a razor-sharp edge. Oh, God no. Don’t shoot Lainey.

  One gunshot rang out in front of her and she didn’t even flinch. Shoving the gun in the back of her pants,
I could hear Bobby and George’s voices calling out for backup and securing the building. Backing away, I crawled over to my brother, but I couldn’t see him. All I saw was blood.

  People ran around us, yelling and screaming, yet all I saw was the dark red blood that spread and seeped across the thin material of his shirt. Dylan was shot, and he was dying.

  With a calmness that stopped my jittering heart, Lainey kneeled down and talked to Dylan. Her voice was steady and authoritative, yet I barely heard the words. I had no understanding of anything but my little brother had been shot, bleeding and in pain. She was suddenly wrapping him in some sort of bandage that suctioned down over the bullet holes while she spoke to him in even, gentle whispers.

  “Kade,” she said to me in that same methodic voice, laying her hand on my face. “Go get one of those men and have them help me put Dylan in my car.”

  I stood and stumbled. “But the ambulance…”

  She grabbed my face in both her hands, the rusty smell of blood choked my airways. “Do it now. He doesn’t have twenty extra minutes to wait.” She spoke the words with a quiet calm brutality.

  I grabbed George, the biggest and youngest one, and dragged him over as Lainey had Bobby calling the hospital straight and telling them that we’d be there in less than twenty minutes and then had a brief conversation that included a bunch of medical terms that no fucking waitress should know.

  Carefully, George and I carried Dylan out and stopped in front of a freaking Porsche; engine running. Lainey was in front of us opening doors and jumped right into the driver’s seat, banging the hood of the car for me to get Dylan in.

  We gently laid him in the backseat. Bree climbed in after him, and I was shoved in by George and yanked by Lainey at the same time. I wasn’t even right side up in the front passenger seat and she was already shifting the car into drive and slamming on the gas pedal.

  She pulled out of the lot as if she knew what the fuck she was doing. She didn’t stop accelerating as her eyes glanced over to mine. “Kade, seatbelt. And keep your eyes to the right for traffic. I’m not stopping unless I have to and I need directions once we hit town.”

  Her eyes snapped to the rearview mirror and with a soft voice continued to speak with Dylan, “I’m going to get you to the hospital fast. How are you feeling, buddy?”

  “Fucking hurts,” he coughed. His voice crept into my chest like cold dead hands on my heart, squeezing it tight.

  Lainey pressed her foot down on the gas harder and asked, “Bree, how was that cough?”

  “Clear,” Bree answered back through a garbled sob.

  Flipping the dome lights on, she asked, “Skin color.”

  “Perfect,” Bree sighed.

  “Awesome. You’re doing great, Dylan. I’m going to drive with the lights on so Bree can watch you for any signs of stress, because she’s a big scaredy-cat when it comes to hospitals and such, and I think she’s a little in love with you so, I just want to make her feel better.”

  “Yeah, mate,” he said. She was just keeping him talking. She was keeping him breathing. She was saving his life. She was saving my brother’s life.

  The dial on the speedometer hit 150 miles per hour, and kept going while my hands gripped the seat. How fucking fast does this little car go? The surge of adrenaline pumping through my veins helped me focus on Lainey’s voice during the whole drive, grounding me.

  “You know, Dylan, there’s an ancient Chinese saying that goes, ‘You can live with a man for forty years. You could share his house, his meals, and talk with him every day about his every secret. Then tie him up, and hold him over a volcano's edge, one that’s about to erupt. And on that day, you will finally meet the man.’ You’re one hell of a strong man, Dylan Grayson.” She glanced over to me quickly, “And so is your brother.”

  “Feels like I’m…feels like I’m in the volcano. Burns.”

  “We’re almost there, Dylan, and as soon as we get there, you’ll get something for the pain okay?”

  The first glimpse of light from the old gas station’s neon sign took my breath away. It couldn’t have taken Lainey more than eight minutes to get to the town’s border. “Slow down up near that diner that we ate at. You’re going to make a left and the hospital is about a mile up that road,” I said, trying to match the calm tone of Lainey’s voice. “Dylan, do you remember when Old Lady Bitlermeyer drove straight through the old gas station’s sign and she wouldn’t let me help her out?”

  “Yeah, mate. She….said you were….the angel of death, coming to take her soul,” Dylan wheezed. Not even listening to his answers, I just kept him talking, just as Lainey did, until the bright lights of the hospital came into view. I couldn’t believe she’d gotten him there alive. The surge of hope in my chest burned a thick knot of fire so hot I had trouble breathing.

  As soon as Lainey stepped foot out of the car, she grabbed the first guy in a white coat, told them who we were, and started sprouting off words that I would be definitely questioning later. An entire trauma team rushed through the pressure plate doors rolling a gurney and slammed it up against the hood of the Porsche with a loud crunch. When they pulled my brother out of the car, his face was pale and he was soaked with sweat. Lainey ran to him. “Two gunshot wounds…Possible right subclavian artery, loss of blood stunted by pressure and trauma tourniquet. Possible lung damage…Shortness of breath and wheezing, not coughing up blood yet and still able to speak. There are two trauma tourniquets around both wounds.”

  Strapped down to the gurney, Dylan was whisked away, with Lainey and Bree on both sides of the nurses, running through the sliding doors of the ER. Slowly following behind, the bright white florescent lights made my eye sockets ache and my temples throb. I watched as they wheeled Dylan into a hallway and out of my sight.

  The sliding doors closed behind me and the room seemed to blur and wobble. Black spots crowded the corners of my sight and the floor slipped up to meet me. Iciness seeped under my skin, spreading like an infectious virus throughout my body. Please God, don’t let him die. Please don’t take him away from me.

  Lainey’s beautiful face was the next thing I saw. Her hands were cool on my skin, bringing my eyes back into focus and her soft smooth lips against mine brought my thoughts back from the chaos of my hell. Pulling me into a seat, she put her trembling hands into mine and then she did something that nobody in this world had ever fucking done to me. She laid her silky head against my chest, as if I were some sort of comfort to her.

  Her fucking head was on my chest and she was taking comfort in me.

  Laying her head right over my heart.

  All I could do was to stare down at her in wonder. Then I wrapped my arms around her so tightly that I feared I might suffocate her. We stayed there like that for hours. I could barely breathe the whole time, because I was overwhelmed with the flood of a thousand emotions that I had hidden myself from for over a decade. They all came rushing in, thickening in my throat, burning in my chest and quietly streaming from my eyes. I didn’t care who or what Lainey was, I just wanted her completely. Never in my sick life did I ever give a bit of hope about finding a person who was compatible, who could find comfort in someone as fucking twisted as me.

  Silence ate away at the hours as hope devoured my fears.

  Together, with Lainey holding me up, we waited for word on Dylan.

  Bree sat across from us, lost to some unnamed place, eyes saturated with tears.

  We sat frozen, like empty glass jars, on the cracked leather benches of the hospital waiting room, ready to fall and shatter into sharp shards across the floor. The voices of the deputies drifted past my ears as they asked questions that I swore Lainey was not giving straight answers to. Somehow, filled Styrofoam cups of coffee appeared like magic in my hands. Bree began pacing after two hours and Lainey was the only person who could speak the scientific language those asinine doctors spoke each time they came out with updates.

  I sat, unmoving; way past the hour when my coffee turned cold
until a smooth outstretched hand touched my chin and lifted my head to meet with pale green eyes. “Dylan is doing well. He’s in recovery right now. He’s going to be fine.” Her fingers squeezed my chin, almost painfully, “Do you hear me, Kade? He’s fine.” Her eyes filled with thick fat tears that fell from long lashes, and her lips smiled wide.

  She saved my brother’s life. Dylan is not dead.

  I crushed her body against mine and sighed in relief, breathing her in. She trembled slightly in my arms and repeated her words softly, “He’s fine.”

  We stayed throughout the early morning hours and the next day, until Dylan was able to have visitors and despite all of the tubes and machines, he made horrible jokes about seeing the light and getting kicked out of heaven before he could even step in. Seeing him laugh so soon after being shot was euphoric, like a kid at Christmas. The surgeons kept explaining to us how lucky he had been that the bullet in his chest hadn’t pierced a lung and that the bandages Lainey used on his arm saved it from being amputated. They couldn’t stop saying how Lainey saved his life, and she just nodded and smiled softly like it wasn’t a big deal and sat in the corner of the room quietly.

  I watched her battle her eyelids to stay open; the war was a fierce one that she almost lost a number of times. Exhaustion settled over her features, and I offered to drive her car back to the trailer so she could wash up and change. She had been sitting in the emergency room covered in my brother’s blood. She had to get my brother’s blood off her. I couldn’t stand seeing her with so much blood all over her; I wanted to wash it off her myself, find her beautiful smooth skin beneath.

  She didn’t fight me on it, just stood up, kissed a sleeping Dylan on the forehead, spread a blanket over Bree who was fast asleep next to his hospital bed, and trudged out of the room. As soon as her ass was in the passenger seat, she passed out cold; I even had to buckle her in.