by Anne Jolin
Fun Bobby bounced his head along to some rap music that came from the stereo, and he never even looked at her.
It was just me.
It was just me who felt like the air had gotten thicker in the cab even though the windows were down.
My pulse throbbed in my temple. So loud that I couldn’t make out any of the words from the song. The muscles in the left side of my body contracted and released like they were readying themselves for outright chaos.
Her light so close to me ravaged the dark, and my demons screamed as they fled.
It was painful, a physical agony by way on the soul.
I prayed to every God I could imagine that she wouldn’t speak. If she spoke, being this close to me, it might cause a dam in me to break.
The time it took to reach where we were going felt like an eternity. Before the truck had fully rolled to stop, I threw myself out the passenger door and fed on fresh air like a starved man.
Her proximity made it hard to breath, and without breath, I was robbed of sanity.
I wasn’t sure I knew what defined normal in the broad scope of the word, but this couldn’t be normal.
My reaction to her was a kaleidoscope of feeling. I could barely see fit enough to put one foot in front of the other.
Fun Bobby took the invoice into the store, and Aurora watched me carefully as she climbed down from the truck.
It wasn’t the way people watched a circus freak out of morbid curiosity and fascination. She watched me the way a child watched fireworks for the first time, with excitement and adoration and not the slightest bit of fear.
“Are you okay?” She circled me.
I nodded and as we faced each other, she began walking backward as though not to break eye contact.
“I know you can talk.” She tilted her head to the side, and her eyes dropped to where my hands were fisted at my sides.
I scoffed.
“That’s better.” She laughed, and the sound was so rich it stung my senses. “Now would you care to—” Her sentence was cut short when the door behind us was kicked open and the force threw her body forward onto the ground.
A drunk stumbled out, knocking back the last of a beer and cursed when he saw her.
“Ah, shit,” he grunted, and the cut of his leather told me he likely belonged to the bike parked next to us. “Sorry, babe.”
Her palms stretched out on the ground and her head lifted to look at me.
My reality snapped.
The moonlight caught the shine from her auburn hair as her head rolled to face me.
The sinister hollow in my gut roared to life.
“Stop.” She held out a hand as she struggled to her knees.
The white of her dress was stained in dirt and caked blood that suggested they’d had her for hours.
“Rhys, don’t,” she pleaded.
Her blood on my hands screamed in my soul.
The blood trickling from the cut above Aurora’s eye triggered the gutless monster in my heart.
I was irate.
“Bobby!” Aurora screamed for help.
My knuckles purred and my muscles ached for war. I had a blood feud to settle.
I lunged for the biker and she threw her body between us.
“Rhys!” Her voice trembled with my name on her lips.
I dove right and she did, too, the clown behind her still unaware of the debt I’d settle to his face with my fist.
“Look at me!” she begged. “Look at me, please.”
My eyes slipped down from the man, over the top of her perfect blonde hair, and down to her blue eyes rimmed with tears.
“I’m okay, see?” She turned her chin from side to side. “Do you see that I’m okay?”
I growled, and my sight honed in on that thin trail of blood.
“Don’t do this, please.” She shook her head. “You can’t fight or you’ll go back.”
My nostrils flared, and my fingernails dug into the palms of my hands.
“This little boy wants to fight me?” The biker laughed from behind her, and my eyes snapped up to his face.
“Rhys.” Her voice wrapped around my name took a stab at my heart.
The biker’s hand curled around her shoulder. “The bitch is fine, kid.”
I throttled forward, my fist just inches from his jaw when something heavy anchored around my middle and hauled me backward.
My body didn’t thrash against his. My anger was a calm fury that settled in my chest.
“Walk it off,” Fun Bobby ordered, throwing my body in the direction of the sidewalk.
I stopped, assessing her face from a distance, and my stomach rolled.
“Now!” Fun Bobby yelled.
My boots hit the pavement and started walking.
I walked until that white Ford pulled up alongside me on the road twenty minutes later.
“You good?” he asked from the still-moving vehicle.
I nodded, looking at the ground.
“Get in.” He hit the brakes and waited for me to round the hood.
The shame in me wouldn’t even allow myself to look at her as I folded into the passenger seat.
“Rhys,” she whispered a small plea.
It hurt to look at her. The red around her blue eyes told me she’d been crying.
My hand curled around the base of her jaw, and I tilted her chin toward me. “Are you okay?”
The hand she had in her lap moved and wrapped around my wrist. “No.”
My heart threw itself against my ribs.
She leaned into the weight of my hand on her face and closed her eyes. “Please don’t do that again.”
My soul ran full throttle toward the sun and her light eclipsed me.
Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to her forehead and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
THEY SAY YOU CAN NEVER really judge a person without first walking a mile in their shoes.
Well, I wasn’t sure I’d last a mile in Rhys’s motorcycle boots. They were heavy both physically and also weighed down by a heavy juncture of emotional baggage, the dark kind. The kind that keeps you awake at night.
From what I’d seen, it was paralyzing being in his shoes.
I’d never seen anything like that before, uninhibited rage. It ripped him apart at the seams and yet, he couldn’t control it. It was like darkness opened up and swallowed him whole.
I hated that feeling of helplessness on his behalf, what a torture it must’ve been.
Just as I’d asked, I saw Grant’s white truck pull into view up the street. He parked next to where I was leaning against the hood of my pickup.
“How’s your day going?” Grant asked, rolling down his window as Rhys folded out of the passenger seat.
My smile felt a little guilty. “It’s been good,” I responded.
“Atta girl.” Grant waved. “Keep an eye on him.”
Keeping my eye on him was exactly what I had planned to do.
I waved back as he put the truck in reverse. “You bet.”
The guys were supposed to be supervised at all times by either Grant or a volunteer, and that volunteer was usually me. Save for, of course, yesterday when Fun Bobby had let Rhys walk off his outburst on his own, but none of us mentioned that to Grant.
It didn’t seem fair to count that against him. After all, nothing had really happened, and if it had, I felt like somehow it would have been just a little bit my fault.
Yesterday, when we’d arrived home, I’d asked Grant if Rhys could help me run errands in town for the better part of the afternoon today. He obliged, as he often did, and said he’d drop Rhys in town just before one o’clock when they finished mending the fences.
This was all a lie, of course. Not that I was particularly fond of or good at lying but what was a girl supposed to do? Something had shifted in the cab of that truck yesterday. I knew it the moment he touched me because Rhys never voluntarily touched me.
I’d run all the errands that needed doing earlier this morning.
The invitations for the fundraiser were in my pickup, and I dropped off the saddle we had needed repaired, as well as picked up a new bridle at the tack store for one of the horses.
All I really needed now was, well, Rhys.
I wanted him alone, where hopefully he’d talk to me and hopefully where he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, run away. At this point, I’d have settled for either one or the other.
He waited for Grant to back out of the parking space and then walked across to where the truck had been toward me.
“Hey.” I smiled.
He didn’t smile back, simply lifted his chin in my direction and shoved his hands in the front pockets of his ripped jeans.
I crossed my arms over my chest and made a clucking sound with my tongue. “Looks like you’re all mine this afternoon.”
Shoot.
Somehow that had sounded different in my head than it did out loud, and my cheeks flushed what I imagined was a bright pink. Of course I’d tricked him into spending the day with me, but it wasn’t something I planned on outright telling him just now.
The corners of his mouth twitched, like maybe he’d considered the idea of smiling but again, he did not speak.
“Right, okay then,” I said, filling the silence.
Pushing off the truck with my butt, I walked in the direction of the two double doors ahead of us. Lucky for me, he seemed more focused on what I was doing than he was at reading the sign on the door we were currently passing through.
“Table for two,” I told the hostess when we stepped inside.
“Let me check if we have any booths available.” She smiled at us and left to do a walk through of the restaurant.
Rhys started to back up toward the door, and a hint of panic bubbled up in my throat at the thought that maybe he really would run away from me, again.
“If you leave now you’ll embarrass me,” I blurted.
It was low, almost the equivalent of threatening to cry, but it worked.
He quit retreating, but his eyes fell away from me and he just stared at the floor. The black Equine for Hearts tee that he’d cut the sleeves off of seemed to somehow make his arms look longer inside the small entryway.
I guessed for the first time that he was probably somewhere around six foot three.
The hostess returned and grabbed two menus before promptly leading us to a booth in the back of the restaurant.
No sooner had my butt grazed the vinyl did the questions erupt from his otherwise silent demeanour.
“What is this?” His voice tumbled across the table like a freight train.
Not angry, just demanding.
“It’s a date,” I deadpanned, flipping my menu opened.
His face paled, and I tried really hard not to be offended. “A date?”
Coy had never been my strong suit.
“Yes,” I confirmed as a young man filled the water glasses on the table. “I want to talk to you.”
“Aren’t you scared of me?” He searched my eyes for fear but he wouldn’t find any.
I brought the water glass to my lips. “No.”
“You know what I’ve done?” The question was like a physical blow to his exterior.
“Yes,” I whispered, and he winced.
What I don’t know is why…
I didn’t know how to ask a person that type of question, though. How to rationalize asking them to relive a horror that clearly still haunted them even in the hours they were awake. Yet somehow, I knew I’d ask anyway, and I found it hard to find regret for that in my heart.
I did want to know him and letting someone in was never easy.
“I’ve read your file,” I told him honestly. “Cover to cover, nearly a hundred times.”
The ever-present mirrored aviators were yanked off his face and tossed onto the table.
He didn’t respond to me.
“What I don’t know, and I guess what leaves me curious, is why did you do what you did?” The question came out much easier than I’d anticipated. “Your file said you had no previous arrests or charges.”
Maybe after so many years volunteering with troubled youth, it seemed better to get straight to the point rather than beat around the bush repeatedly.
The muscles in his jaw clenched and a small tick formed there, as he remained silent, hands folded into fists on top of the table.
“Please,” I whispered.
He looked down at the tablecloth, seeming to memorize each fold and crease. “I was seventeen… but you probably read that in my file.”
“Yes,” I encouraged carefully, as not to interrupt what he was struggling with in his mind.
Words with Rhys were always hard to come by, and I was asking for so many in this moment.
“Are you sure you want to know, Aurora?” He rolled his shoulders back, and his body was overrun by the slightest tremor.
I sat up straight in my seat. “Yes, I’m sure.”
He cleared his throat, once and then again. It was clear that of all the things someone could ask of Rhys, this would be the hardest for him to answer.
I prayed for whatever God he believed in to give him strength in this moment.
After what seemed like an eternity of silence, his lips began to move.
“I grew up in foster care, not the worst kind but not the best kind, either.” He shrugged like this was something of old news to him. “When I was thirteen, I got placed with a woman named Clara Hicks, who already had one foster child, a girl. She was a year older than me.”
Suddenly the image of the girl in the driveway played back in my head. “The girl who brought you your bike a few weeks ago?”
He nodded. “Madison Parry.”
Something heavy sat on his heart when he said her name. It was nothing like the happiness I’d seen in him the day she’d shown up.
“Maddy was my whole world.” His voice tripped over memories his heart was remembering. “She was a sister, a mother, a father, and a friend. I lived to see her smile.”
I reached across the table, suddenly feeling guilty for doing this in such a public place, and interlocked my fingers with his.
They flexed and squeezed mine tightly like he was fighting a battle on whether to hold on or let go.
He held on.
“When I was sixteen, I fell in with a motorcycle club. The bad kind.” He grimaced. “I was a prospect for just over a year until the night I watched the president, and the man who mentored me, rape a girl I went to school with.”
My stomach turned.
“She cried and I begged them to stop.” The features on his face were at war with his words. “When I tried to pull Hyde off her, he hit me in the back of the head with a baseball bat.”
It took all I had not to rush to him as he spoke.
“When I came to, I left my cut on the floor and walked out.” His voice had dropped so low that I strained to hear him. “You don’t walk out on the Hounds of Hell.”
His body visibly started to shake.
“A week later, I was watching TV. Clara was out on a bender, and I heard screeching tires.” The last word struggled to leave his lips. “It was Maddy.”
My social decencies fled to the door, and I crawled into the booth beside him.
His large, lean frame was wrecked with a cool shiver.
“She was barely nineteen.” A tear slid down his left cheek. “They beat her unconscious.”
My own tears pricked the back of my eyes.
“There was so much blood.” The muscles in his forearm contracted on the table. “Her blood, everywhere.”
I slid an arm under his and laced my fingers back with his again.
His breathing had become shallow and disconnected. Like he was trying to get air but it wasn’t quite reaching his lungs.
“I thought she was going to die,” he choked out, and his voice cracked.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, wishing I had more to say than that. But what was there to say?
He wiped away his tears w
ith the back of his hand and swallowed hard. “I waited until the paramedics arrived before I went looking for him.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“I found him in a shit hole bar just outside of the city,” Rhys growled, and the vibrations reached my chest. “I broke a bottle over his head.”
The first assault charge, I thought.
“I beat him with a crow bar until he stopped moving.”
I expected my body to react, to wince or to revolt, but it didn’t. It stayed steady against his side.
“When the cops arrested me, I thought I’d killed him.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t until the attempted murder charge was added that I knew he’d lived.”
“Why didn’t you push to be tried as a minor?” I asked a question that had been nagging at me since I saw the information in his file. His public defender had wanted to have him tried as a minor, but Rhys declined.
He was tried as an adult and pled guilty to all charges.
“I made the choices I made as a grown man, and I’d bear the consequences of them without shame.” His voice had regained some of its strength.
“You pled guilty…what about standing up for your… doesn’t that count for…” My voice trailed off.
For the first time since he started talking, he turned his head to look in my eyes. There was so much heartbreak in them that it hurt to look at him.
“I was guilty, Aurora.” He moved a loose stand of hair behind my ear. “I’d do it again.”
A tear finally spilled onto my cheeks.
“For Maddy, Aurora. I’d do it again.” He never wavered.
In less than an hour, the decisions he made cost him eight years of his life, and he never wavered.
“Yesterday?” I asked. “The blood…”
“A memory trigger.” He nodded, his thumb finding the healing wound above my eye. “Between the biker’s leather and your blood, I couldn’t tell where the memory ended and reality began. I lost it.”
It all seemed to make more sense now, the dutiful fury behind yesterday.
I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he promised.
It felt like a promise, anyway.
Resting my head against his shoulder, I tried to stop the tears from falling. “Why are you sorry?”
“I’m sorry that I’m a man with blood on his hands,” he whispered. “Someone with a light as bright as yours shouldn’t spend her days in the dark.”
