by Colt, Shyla
I want to spend more time trying to snap her out of it, but I don’t know the roads here and I don’t want to draw any unnecessary attention. My body is aching and my neck smarts. I’m sure at the least, we have a mild case of whiplash. As I crack my neck and wince, I recall her hitting her head.
Damn, she might have a concussion.
I pull into the gas station, park on the side of the building furthest from the street, grab our things, and focus my attention on her. I cup her chin carefully. “Vita, can you hear me?” I ask gently. Her skin is petal soft and she smells delicious. I curse myself for choosing now to notice. “I know we’ve just been through hell and back, but I need you to fight, or they’re going to win.”
She gives a slow blink and I see the light come back inside her. She manages to focus. “Prophet,” she mouths.
“That’s right, babe, I’m going to get you out of here, okay? I have all our things.” I can’t help but treat her the same way I would one of my sisters if they were hurt.
She’s weak, confused, and frightened. “Okay,” she mouths.
Her unfailing trust in me goes a long way toward melting the ice that encircles my heart. This is the woman I saw that day with Ira. She’s been hiding behind family names, clothes, and dread. I can smell it on her, oozing out of every pore and filling her hazel eyes. The roar of bikes sets me back into motion. I scramble out of the car with our things over my arm and come around to help her out. She clings to my arm and I marvel at the one sixty she’s done. She sways on her feet. Snaking my arm around her waist, I pull her to my side to keep her upright. The bikes surround us and I rejoice at the sight of the Wesson Rebels patch.
Marbles dismounts and walks over to me. “Got the prospects to take the car off your hands. She all right?”
“I think she might have a concussion,” I say.
“All right, we’ll call our doc and have ’em meet you.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s a matter, sweetness, cat got your tongue?” Marbles asks her.
“She can’t talk, man. Altercation a while back ended up with her throat.” I make the universal symbol of a knife across my throat.
“Shit. Any broad tough enough to take that and keep ticking must be good people. Especially, one that looks this fine.” His eyes rove over her.
I narrow my eyes. “She’s preoccupied, and Houdini’s little sister.”
“Shit. The ghost has family?” Marbles laughs. A silver SUV pulls up and he nods. “That’s your ride. They’ll take you to a place out of the way. It’s off the grid, fully stocked and ready to be defended if trouble somehow finds you. We’ll send someone your way in a few days with some clothes and whatnot, once everything dies down a bit.”
“I can’t thank you enough, brother.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“Damn straight.” I lead her to the car, worried about her submissive demeanor.
How hard did she hit her head?
I open the door.
She climbs in, scoots over, and places her hands on her lap. She wrinkles her nose.
I buckle her in. “You okay?” I ask, feeling concern.
“Sick to my stomach.”
“You definitely have a concussion.”
“Of course.”
They pull out of the parking lot and I lay my head on the seat, grateful to be among people I can trust. As the tires roll over the road, I feel the crushing pressure lift from my shoulders, little by little. We head away from the city and onto dark country roads. My head bobs with fatigue and I realize— she can’t go sleep! I turn to her. “Vita, Vita, you with me?” I cup her face gently.
She nuzzles my palm.
I freeze. Clearly, she’s not all there if she’s responding this way to me. “I need you to stay up for me. You can’t sleep right now, not until we have the doc look at you.”
She hums. The sound is jangly, like a cat with a broken purr.
It endears her to me. “Open those eyes and glare at me. All this niceness is giving me a rash.”
She grunts.
“That’s better.” I dig into my pocket, find my cell phone, and fiddle with the buttons until I find the flashlight app. I hold it up and she grits her teeth. “Rise and shine, bright eyes.”
She tries to shove my hand away.
“That’s more like it.” I shake the light back and forth.
Her eyelids peel back to reveal weary pools of greenish brown.
I can see it’s taking a toll to swim to the surface. “You have to stay awake, unless you have a desire to be sleeping beauty for real.”
She sneers at me.
“No? You could’ve fooled me with your shopping binge earlier. I was dizzy just watching you.”
She rolls her eyes and lifts her hand.
Mentally, I cheer.
“Not my style?”
“You sure about that? You seemed pretty comfortable.”
“Needed…to.” Her signing becomes sluggish.
“Or maybe you missed it. All the glitz, glamour, and privilege. Did the farm house in the middle of nowhere get too boring for you?”
She blinks. Her eyes blaze. “No.”
I know I have her. “I don’t know that I buy it. I mean, what could you possibly have done out there all day, every day by yourself? It must’ve been pretty lonely.”
“I kept busy.”
“Milking cows?”
She pursed her lips. “Sewing, reading, cooking.”
“Reading, huh? Laying on the bed, pouring over Poe and lamenting over his tragedies.”
“What did you ever do besides get drunk and fuck?”
The words sound ugly coming from her lips. I pause. She’s not wrong. “I enjoyed myself.”
“No. You hid, same as I did. I don’t know from what, but I know a runner when I see one.”
“I call it surviving and allowing myself to have some fun while I’m at it. Maybe you should try it sometime.”
She blinks her eyes. “I doubt my fun would be the same as yours.” Her face is so expressive. Maybe because it has to be, in order for her to convey the tone she wants. Her delicate lip is upturned and her nose is wrinkled just so.
I’d laugh at her, if she wasn’t feeling so poorly. “You might be surprised.”
“Doubt it.”
“Oh, that’s sweet. You want to know more about me? All you had to do was ask.”
Her mouth drops open.
“I like to ride, stay up too late, drink, and as you so delicately put it…fuck until I’m satiated, and she’s hoarse from screaming out my name.”
Her mouth opens and closes.
I chuckle.
Her cheeks turn pink and she looks away.
“Unh-uh… I need you to keep those eyes on me. No sleeping until we know you’re out of the woods.”
“Who could sleep after that crude comment?”
“Someone who was interested in learning more about it.”
She crosses her arms under her chest.
Good, be angry as long as you stay awake for me.
We continue the banter as we wind our way over hills and around curvy roads. My phone is beeping when we come to a stop beside a small cabin. We’re here. It’s almost cozy in the moonlight. The cedar wood building, with its massive porch complete with rocking chairs and a wind chime, is completely out of character for an M.C.
There’s a story behind this.
“End of the line.” The prospect who’s been driving turns around in his seat. “Keys under the mat on the front porch. Fridge and cabinets are stocked with a few weeks’ worth of food, and there should be a few things to change in. We have a washer and dryer up here, along with running water, so pretty much, you’re good to go. We run everything off a generator. Just behind the cabin, you’ll find a shed with everything you need and a backup generator if you get a good thunderstorm in and anything gets knocked offline. You think you can take it from here?”
“Yeah. Thanks for the
ride. Do we have an ETA on the doc?”
“He shouldn’t be too far behind us. We got basic first aid things in the bathroom.”
“All right, thanks fellas.” I help her out of the vehicle, watching as she stumbles. I don’t think she’s getting worse, but I don’t see much improvement. I keep my arm around her waist as we walk the short distance to the front door. “Here.” I prop her body against the side of the building.
She arches her back and grunts. There’s something sensual in the movement.
My eyes take in her lithe form.
She’s undone and touchable now. Tendrils of hair frame her face. Her lips are slightly parted and her jacket is back at the car, leaving her arms bare and the ample curves revealed by her neckline are on display.
Averting my eyes I focus on getting us inside.
She presses her body into mine, leaning on me heavily for support as we move inside.
Her hard nipples brush against me and I bite the inside of my cheek.
It’s going to be a long ass night.
We move to the couch and settle in to wait.
Her head begins to perform the sleep bob.
“No, you don’t. Open those eyes. You need to stay awake, at least until the doc gets here.”
“So tired.”
“I know, it’s the concussion. Talk to me,” I sign, desperate not to lose her on my watch and prove I could do something other than bring about another person’s destruction/demise.
“’Bout what?”
“Anything. Hell, let’s play twenty-questions.”
“Too…tired.” She’s stumbling over her words.
“Okay, so…ask then, don’t tell me, ask and listen. Can you do that?”
She sits up a little straighter.
Now, I know I’ve gained her interest.
“How do you know sign language?”
“I was the only hearing child in my family. My parents and my three sisters were deaf. We have a genetic disposition to deafness. So it was a shock to everyone when I could hear. Well, along with the shock of my birth. I was a surprise.”
Her lips flicker up into the ghost of a smile.
My body is protesting the crash, so I know she has to feel twice as bad.
“Was it strange growing up that way?”
“I always felt odd man out because of it, but that was nothing they did. Just a matter of numbers. Kids know when they’re alone in something. For me, going to school was a culture shock. No one signed and the noise was stifling. All the voices talking.” I shuddered. “It was an adjustment, to say the very least.”
“What’s your family like?” she asks.
“Not as interesting as yours, I assure you.”
She rolls her eyes.
I snicker and continue, “Eleanor was the oldest and she never let me or Emily forget it for a second. Bossy, know-it-all and ended up becoming an English teacher.” I shake my head. “It didn’t shock me. It gave her a room full of children to order around, and they were forced to listen to her ramble on. She taught high school AP English. Emily was…different,” I continue to sign to her, “an artistic free spirit who lived in a different world, much to my parents’ dismay. They never really knew what to do with her, but they loved her. It was impossible not to. She was ethereal, like a fairy floating in moonbeams.” I can still see my sister with her long light brown hair, elfin angular face, and wide gray eyes. She always had paint-splattered shirts and smelled like the media she’d worked with. It’d made me associate her with the soil just after the rain.
“Sounds like you have a bit of writer’s prose in you.”
“Nah.” I meet her eyes.
She actually cares about what I’m saying. Her body is leaned into mine and she’s struggling to stay awake to listen to me.
Which was the goal. I can’t get too caught up in this. It’s a onetime thing.
Her questions don’t bother me the way I thought they would. After all this time, it’s good to talk about them. It helps me remember the good times.
“And your parents?”
“They were good people, taught us right from wrong and instilled good values. We never wanted for anything. I respected and loved them.” I clear my throat.
“Were?”
“They died, a long time ago,” I whisper.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She frowns. “How do you go from there to Wesson Rebels?”
“I needed a new family and a new life. There’s no better way to leave the past behind, than to move forward in a different direction.”
“What does your family think about that?”
My throat constricts. “They don’t. They’re dead.”
She gasps.
Suddenly a knock sounds on the door and I move from the couch.
Saved by the bell.
I open the door.
Standing there is a man dressed in a black polo shirt and black slacks. His salt and pepper hair is cropped close to his head and he has a black duffle bag. “I got a call for a doc?”
“Yes, sir, we were both in a car accident. I’m pretty sure Vita has a concussion. She’s been dizzy, has a hard time focusing. I’ve been doing everything I can to keep her awake.”
“You did the right thing, umm…?”
“Prophet.”
“You did the right thing, Prophet.”
I guide him over to the couch and sit on the chair beside them. “She damaged her vocal chords years ago, So, I’ll be translating for her.”
He arches an eyebrow, but nods. “Hi Vita, You can call me Doc. I’ll be looking you over.”
His voice is pleasant to listen to. I’m shocked he has a decent bedside manner, given who he deals with on a regular basis.
He pulls out a pin light. “Can I get you to follow this? Oh yeah, I can see you took a good knock to the noggin’.” He moves forward, then begins to poke and prod her.
She hisses and turns away.
My shoulders tense and my hackles rise.
Cupping her head in his hand, he rotates it from one side to the other. “I’d guess you both have a mild case of whiplash. I’ll leave pills to manage the pain. Unfortunately, Vita can’t have any of that for at least the next twenty-four hours. You’re young and responsive to my preliminary tests, so I’d say you dodged a bullet and this concussion is mild. Does your head hurt now?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
“Tolerable,” I answer for her.
“Okay, if it gets worse, you start vomiting, or becoming incredibly dizzy, I want you to call me. For now, we’ll go with twenty-four hours of supervision and from there, I feel safe saying you can slow and easy your way back into regular activities. But if anything strange pops back up...” He turns to look at me. “Wake her every hour, check her lucidity and pupils.”
“I got it. We’ll call you if anything else changes,” I say.
“Does anything else hurt, Vita?”
“Just normal aches and pains I’d associate with an accident.”
“Hmmm.” He coasts his hands over her once more. “Okay, you don’t seem overly tender. But with accidents, some things take a few days to show up. Don’t hesitate to call.” He moves away from her.
I suddenly find it easier to breathe. She’s my responsibility. I can’t let anything happen to her.
He turns to me. “You’re up next.”
I knew this was going to be a long night.
Chapter Six
Vita/Elisa
I never knew how much I loved sleep, until I wasn’t allowed to get any for a period of twenty-four hours. It seemed as soon as I closed my eyes, Prophet was back with a flashlight, asking me questions.
I misjudged him.
His care and concern didn’t fit the image I’d built up of him in my mind.
The past day felt like a dream because I would drift in and out of consciousness. Now I’m well rested, but sore as hell. I sit up in bed, grunting as my muscles protest. Slowly I stretch my arms over my h
ead and yawn.
Sunlight is pouring into the window to my right, but the house sounds silent. I toss back my covers and scoot out of bed. The best thing I can do is start moving around, and go in search of those meds the good doctor left. I glance down and freeze. I’m wearing a soft T-shirt that hovers at mid-thigh. I can’t even remember putting it on. I wrap my arms around my waist, feeling bashful.
Did Prophet do this?
I want to be mad, but I can’t hold onto the anger. Not when I’m wounded and adrift in a sea of enemies that wear the face of family. I pad out of the room to look to the left and the right. The layout returns to me. I take a left and walk into the living room. Prophet is nowhere to be seen. A slight panic begins.
Did he leave me?
Right now, he’s the one thing I have in this world— my one certainty. I rush back down the hall and discover that his room is empty. The bed has been made or never slept in. The bathroom door is wide open. My stomach gurgles with nerves and hunger. I spin and walk to the door, flinging it open.
He’s lounging in a rocker with a beer in his hand. He looks up and gives me a slightly loopy smile. “Well, look who’s up.”
“Look who’s intoxicated.”
“Nah, just buzzing from meds with beer.”
I snicker and shake my head, insanely relieved.
“You feeling okay?” He furrows his brow. “I thought about waking you, but the doc said let you get as much rest as possible.”
“Sore, but okay. No more dizziness.” I inhale and look out over the railing. It’s a beautiful view of trees, green thick grass, and flowers, I’m sure must grow on their own. No way were the boys coming out and up keeping them. The bright pops of yellow and white are charming. I could almost pretend I’m on vacation.
“Good. And nausea?”
“Gone. Have you heard anything?” I’m thrust back into my living hell when he shakes his head. I want to believe I’d feel it in my heart if my brother was dead, but perhaps that’s denial.
“Hey. No news is good news, right?” he asks.
I fake a smile. We both know that’s not the case. It’s disappointment and devastation waiting to happen.
“Why don’t you go get dressed and we’ll have lunch. There were some clean clothes in the dresser in your room.
