He turned the shower off, wrapped himself in one of the club’s threadbare towels and decided that he was going to get as drunk as possible, maybe then he could think of something other than how nice it had been to feel Big Dog’s guts slide across the palm of his hand.
He walked straight to the bar, there was no one there to be bothered by him dripping water all over the floor, he’d driven them all away. And he knew they’d left because of him, to find comfort with people who weren’t savage psychopaths that sliced people up just for fun.
Beer wasn’t going to cut it, so he pulled out a cheap bottle of tequila and drank straight from the bottle, sitting it down on the bar long enough to take a deep breath before he put it back to his lips.
The door opened and a small brown haired girl popped her head inside. It was the one Sidney had brought with her to the funeral.
The girl looked at him, her eyes going wide. She seemed to like what she saw. He took another drag off the tequila bottle, unconcerned. He didn’t care if she looked, she was the only one who wanted to look at him at the moment anyway, he didn’t even want to face himself.
“I, uh, I was looking for Sidney?”
“And why would you think she’d be here?” his words were slightly slurred, he could already hear the alcohol in his voice.
“Uh, I don’t know. She took off and I don’t have a car so I asked the cab driver to take me where the bikers hang out, and he brought me here. I figured she’d be with that Demon guy.”
He nodded, it served him right if Sidney was with Demon, “She probably is, but they’re not here.”
“Oh, well the cab driver guy was a total dick, he wouldn’t wait on me to come in and see if she was here.”
“By all means, come in and make yourself at home, there’s more than enough room since we’re the only two here.” Red proceeded to ignore her as he nursed his bottle, intent on drowning out the fact that he was apparently a horrible person.
“Can I just use the phone? I’ll call the cab guy back and ask him to pick me up.” The girl hadn’t even come all the way in the door, she was obviously leery of a half naked man well on his way to being drunk. Smart girl.
He motioned toward the phone on the wall beside an old scarred dartboard that had seen better days and she tentatively made her way across the room. She made short business of calling the cab company back and letting him know she needed the driver to return.
“I’ll just wait outside,” she said heading back towards the door.
“Or you can come have a drink,” he held the bottle up to show her that there were a few remaining swallows left that he was willing to share, he was starting to feel really pleasantly buzzed, another drink or two and he’d be really nice and fucked up. “We’ve got some beer if you don’t want this.”
She hesitated and gave him another once over with her eyes before she came to stand on the other side of the bar, “Sure, why not. This has been a fucked up day.”
“Yeah, I can agree with that,” he said, swaying slightly where he stood. “I’m Red, by the way.”
“Jessica,” she opened the beer he handed her on the edge of the bar like a pro and he re-evaluated her, there might be more to her than met the eye. Though what did meet the eye wasn’t bad at all to look at.
“Here, have a shot since you’re not driving,” he pulled out a shot glass from under the counter and found a fuller bottle to start on. “Besides, like you said, it’s been a fucked up day.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Jessica said before taking her shot glass and turning it up.
***
“It’s getting pretty late, I guess I better head home,” Sidney took one last swallow of beer before getting up, shakily. “Thank you for staying and talking to me.”
“Hey, you sure you can drive home?” Demon asked, he put a hand out to steady her.
She felt a little tipsy, she’d had a little more than she usually drank, but no where near enough to get drunk. She started to tell him she was fine but stopped herself. They’d had a good time together, or as good as could be expected, considering. He’d been kind and made her laugh, which is something her life had sorely been missing. She was torn, on one hand she didn’t want to go home and face Jessica, who was inevitably waiting up for her to ask her questions, and on the other hand she felt like staying with him any longer might be dangerous. Not for her person, but for her heart. And she wasn’t ready to have feelings for anyone else just yet, especially not Red’s brother, not when the pain from having her heart ripped out and handed back to her hadn’t even had time to subside.
He sat there waiting for her to answer him, that messy black hair making her want to brush it out of his face, those green eyes questioning.
“I may have had one too many,” she said, hoping he didn’t see through the lie.
“Well, come on, I’ll take you home.”
“Haven’t you had a few too many too?”
“Me? No, it takes a lot more than what I’ve had tonight to even make a dent. I’m an expensive drunk.” He tossed back the rest of what was in his glass and gave her a wicked grin, smiles like that should be illegal, and he started for the door.
“Demon?” she said before they got to his bike.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to go home, Jessica is going to still be there and she’s still going to want answers. And I just want to… be.”
“I know how that feels,” Demon looked up at the sky, seeing what position the moon was in, “It is really late, everyone has probably left the clubhouse or gone to bed, we can go there. I’ll sleep on the couch and you can have my room.”
Sidney’s stomach flipped, “You don’t think Red will be there?”
“Nah, he hasn’t stayed a night there since he got that little apartment over in suburbia, with the white picket fence and the swing set in the back yard.”
She wasn’t sure, the last thing she wanted was a confrontation with Red, not after the day they’d both had, but she agreed anyway and got onto the back of his motorcycle tucking her skirt in self-consciously.
The wind felt good in her hair and the thrumming between her and Demon was comforting, it made her feel connected to someone, like she wasn’t alone in the world.
The ride to the clubhouse was a short one and she found herself wishing it had taken longer. Something about being exposed in the night air had made her feel lighter, more alive than she had in days. It also helped that it was the first time in recent memory she hadn’t been in a situation where she, or someone she was close to, hadn’t had their life on the line. Maybe she was just coming down off of an adrenaline high and that was what was making her feel so much calmer.
They walked through the parking lot together and Demon held the door open for her. She was about to make a quick joke about him being chivalrous when her eyes landed on the bar.
There in front of her was Red’s naked back, his body pumping rhythmically into some woman draped across the bar. Sidney froze and Demon bumped into her from behind. The sound obviously distracting Red from his carnal pleasures because he looked back over his shoulder and stopped.
“Jesus Red,” Demon said from behind her, “What the fuck man?”
The woman, because of either Red stopping his endeavors or because of Demon’s voice, looked over her shoulder and her eyes locked with Sidney’s.
Jessica.
A strangled sound escaped her throat, she was lost, trying to make sense of the scene in front of her, trying to pull the piercing sword of betrayal out of her chest. Demon put his hand on her shoulder and she felt his strength flowing into her. She straightened, and took a deep breath. This did not define her.
“Sidney,” Jessica gasped, “I came here looking for you and…”
“Yes I see what happened, no need to explain,” she said coldly as Jessica scrambled to find her clothes. “I would have expected as much from you. But Red,” she turned her eyes to him. “Even though you made it abundantly clear that we were
over, I wouldn’t have expected you to turn right around and fuck my sister.”
“What?” Red looked between Sidney and Jessica. Jessica’s face drained of color, her mouth forming a horrified gasp.
“Sidney, I didn’t know. I promise you, I didn’t know you were with him. I thought you were with that guy,” she pointed a shoe at Demon while trying to keep the rest of her clothes pressed against her chest.
Demon gently turned her back towards the door, “Come on Sids, let’s go.”
She shrugged his hand off her and walked with steel in her steps over to where Red stood.
She didn’t know what she wanted to say, but she needed to say something to him, needed for him to know how much she despised him in that moment. “You wanted me out of your life? Consider your wish granted. When we saved you, you said you wish we had let you die. Well now so do I.”
She turned and walked back out the door, not sparing a glance for Jessica who stood there naked and sobbing out apologies as she left.
She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid. So gullible as to believe that a man like Red could ever be just hers. She should have known from the beginning that he wouldn’t have stayed faithful. Hell, David hadn’t been able to stay true to her and he’d been a boring old veterinarian. How could she expect a hard living, motorcycle riding, gang member, werewolf to be able to keep his dick in his pants. It was downright unreasonable on her part.
Twice. Twice she’d walked in on the men she’d loved with other women. Twice. Once was a mistake, twice was the start of a habit.
But she wasn’t going to sit around and blame herself anymore. She might be a bad judge of character but they were the ones with the character flaws.
She started to ask Demon where they were going, but then she decided she didn’t care. She didn’t care if they never stopped riding again. She didn’t want her feet on solid ground. She wanted to fly away and never look back. Fly away from everything she’d ever done wrong, from this new world she hadn’t wanted to discover, from everything. That’s what she’d thought she’d done when she’d come to Three Rivers, but it looked like her history was repeating.
It didn’t matter where she went, until she got herself together she was going to keep making the same mistakes. The same errors in judgment, like trusting Red. Or Jessica.
Sidney laughed at herself. She had really thought that this could be a new beginning for her and Jessica. That they could form the kind of bond that they hadn’t been able to when they’d been growing up. But Jessica was Jessica and she always ended up showing her true colors. Though, Sidney had to admit, it was entirely possible that she hadn’t known Sidney and Red had been together. It wasn’t like Sidney had felt like dredging up the whole screwed up history and talking it over with Jessica with so much else going on. But was it too much to ask that she not start screwing people the first few minutes after she’d gotten into town?
Demon slowed the bike and pulled them to a stop. They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night. Dark trees lined each side of the rural road, with no lights for miles and the only sounds were the ones the forest makes.
“What are we doing here?”
“Come with me, you’ll see,” he said.
Sidney followed him down an almost invisible trail that took them a little ways into the woods before breaking into a clearing.
“Over here,” he grabbed her hand and pulled her along as they got closer to the edge of a hill.
It wasn’t a hill, it was a cliff with a steep drop, and laid out before her in twinkling lights was Three Rivers made miniature by distance.
It was beautiful and any other day she would have appreciated the view so much more. But tonight no beauty was going to be able to penetrate the anger and resentment that was welling up inside her.
“Growing up, this is where I came when I wanted to be alone and think,” Demon said, looking out over the town. “I came here a lot.”
“Thank you for bringing me here, but I don’t want to think. I’ve done enough of that to last a lifetime.”
“Sidney,” he ran his hand through his hair, “Jesus, I can’t believe I’m going to say this.” He paused, like he didn’t know if he really wanted to say anything or not. “Look, Red isn’t normally like this. I don’t know how long you two were together but you’ve got to know that this isn’t him. I mean, yeah he’s an asshole to me, but most of the time he’s a decent person. It’s just this thing with Big Dog, it’s like it took over his life. He became obsessed over it and nothing else mattered, not even you.”
“You’re saying that if all the stuff hadn’t happened with Big Dog, he wouldn’t care that I’m a witch?”
Demon turned away from her.
“That’s what I thought,” she said.
“He would still have cared, but he might have handled it differently.”
“Demon, like you said earlier, you don’t know much about me. I came here, ran away from home truth be told, to get away from my ex fiancé. And do you want to know why? Because I walked in on him fucking our receptionist.”
Demon stared at her, “Fuck,” he said and then sat down on a patch of grass and Sidney sat beside him.
“Fuck indeed,” she sat down beside him.
The silence grew between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, there just wasn’t anything that could be said about the situation.
After a while he grinned over at her and bumped his shoulder to hers, “Tonight’s the first night I’ve heard you say anything worse than ‘oh darn’. That’s two ‘fucks’ tonight.”
“I just walked in on my boyfriend – “
“Ex,” he interrupted.
“Fine, I just walked in on my EX boyfriend pounding my sister from behind. I think I’ve earned a good fuck or two.” She realized what she’d said as soon as it came out of her mouth.
Demon looked at her and held his hands up, “I’m not touching that.”
She burst out laughing. How was he able to make her laugh even when she felt like crap?
“Where is your ghost anyway, have you gotten good at ignoring her or did you figure out how to get rid of her?”
He shrugged, “After we rescued Red she had a hissy fit because we didn’t go after Frederick and I haven’t seen her since. Maybe she found the light and got sucked into it.”
“One can hope,” Sidney said.
“One can hope,” he echoed.
The silence stretched between them again after that, but it was a good silence. She sat looking out over the place she’d decided to make her new life and thought about all of the mistakes she’d made so far, all of the new things she’d learned, all of the things that had happened in such a short time. It really was hard to believe that when she’d gotten there she’d just been Sidney Sanderson, vet at large, a girl trying to outrun her past. And now she was… she was… what? She was a witch. Yeah maybe, but a sucky one. A werewolf biker’s ex-girlfriend, most definitely ex. She was tired. That’s what she was most of all. Tired.
“Thank you Demon,” she said quietly.
“For what?”
“For just being here, just for being with me now.” She reached over and took his hands, the energy that jumped between them was no longer a shock, but expected. “You know when I first met you I thought you were an asshole.”
“I am an asshole,” he nonchalantly threw a rock he’d been toying with over the edge of the cliff.
“You haven’t been an asshole to me. In fact, you’ve been just about the best friend I’ve ever had,” she looked over at him and their eyes met, their connection alive and electric between them.
His lips were sculpted and perfect and she wanted to feel them on hers again, if nothing more for the comfort of it. She knew that for a lie as soon as she thought it, she wanted to kiss him again because when their lips had touched it had been like nothing she’d ever felt before. Her breathing became shallow in anticipation and she leaned over. Very lightly her slightly opened lips t
ouched his and it was just like she remembered, everything inside her body came alive. She moved closer to deepen their kiss and her tongue darted out, tasting him, wanting more.
His hand came between them and he placed it gently on her shoulder and pushed her away.
“Not tonight Sidney, not like this,” he said softly, his face inches from hers.
“Why not? I want you Demon,” she was still breathless and wanting and she tried to close the distance between them but he pulled back.
“No, tonight you want Red. You want to get back at him and I’m the closest weapon. But one day Sidney, you will want me, I can promise you that.”
***
“You’re dating my sister?” Jessica said very loudly and shrilly as she tugged relentlessly at the waist of her blue jeans, trying to drag them over her hips and back into place.
”I didn’t know she was your sister!” Red said, sitting on a barstool head in his hands. He hadn’t even bothered to wrap the towel back around himself. He just sat there naked and gorgeous and being an asshole.
“Well what did you think dumbass? I was at the funeral with her today.”
“I’ve been a little preoccupied, bitch. I wasn’t taking notes of who was and wasn’t at the goddamned funeral.”
Jessica went stock still, her eyes narrowed, “Did you just call me a bitch? Did you just really call me a bitch?”
“My head is pounding, can you keep it down? Your screeching is the most god awful thing I’ve ever heard.”
“She’s never going to forgive me. Ever. You would know it. After all the years of me being shitty to her, we’re finally going to get back on track, and you fucked it up. You did this.” She shimmied into her top as she talked and then pointed her lacquered red nail at him.
“I’m not the one who jumped in your lap and started dry humping like a teenager in the backseat of a POS,” Red didn’t even look up at her.
“How was I supposed to know? She’s barely had time to talk to me since I got here and that Demon guy is the one who dropped her off at the house and then met her at the funeral. And shit, he’s more my type anyway, but I said to myself, ‘No, Jessica, that’s Sidney’s man and you’re not going to even look at him sideways’ and I still ended up fucking up. What the hell am I going to do? I haven’t got anyplace else left to go and Sidney is for sure going to hate me now.”
Dogs of War MC Episode 6 Page 4
