He let me digest that for a long moment and then explained, For a lot of people who weren’t in your position, they think it’s about not dying. But when you really think about it, you found out today that you get to keep on living instead. And that’s a whole other ball game.
I thought about that. For the past weeks, it had been about not dying, and that simple reversal, the concept of getting to keep on living, was amazing and liberating. And a justification as to why I felt renewed.
But would those feelings stay past this moment? Already, Mathias had started to root around for his clothes, which meant that Defiance would start stirring soon enough. The sounds of the storm had abated—I could only tell because he’d put on slower music.
Before he could pull his shirt on, I caught his arm and ignored the ugly scars on my own wrist, the way I always did. I traced the tattoo on his forearm and realized there were scars under the ink that you couldn’t see. But under my fingers, I felt the ridge and I looked up at him with what must’ve been a question on my face.
On purpose, he mouthed, but he signed too, which must be an ingrained habit. I was personally fascinated by it. And by his mouth too, which meant lip-reading certainly wasn’t a chore.
“Why?”
It’s a custom where I’m from. A good-luck charm.
“You did that?”
My friend did this one.
“But you tattoo.”
He nodded and I pointed to myself. He raised a brow and I said, “I’m sure.”
He nodded in agreement but really, he was simply humoring me. Neither of us knew how long I’d be there. And I was sure he’d get in some kind of trouble for getting close to me.
You look sad, he mouthed. Why?
“The storm’s my saving grace right now.”
Most people don’t think that way about a storm that lasts nearly twenty-four hours.
“When it’s over, then things will change. This—” I pointed between us, “—will change. And I might have to go back home and I never want to go back there, to the way things were.” I paused to take a breath. “I bet you can’t understand that.”
Don’t bet against me.
“I’m sure your friends here will have all kinds of questions for me.”
He didn’t deny that, simply said, I’ve got one for you too.
“Okay. That’s fair.”
He studied me for a few seconds, then mouthed, Who are you, Jessa?
In the past, it would’ve been so simple to answer that. I was the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the world. But I’d been fighting everything my whole life because that’s not only who I was. That’s who—what—I was supposed to be, and nothing more. Marrying Charlie to make our empire stronger during this time of political uncertainty was something that should’ve strengthened me. Instead, I was painfully aware of how much of a mistake I’d made.
“I don’t know,” I told him, my voice strangled with tears. “I really don’t know.”
Nothing wrong with that, as long as you’re willing to find out.
Was I? Did I have a choice?
Everyone has a choice.
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud. “You really believe that?”
He nodded, then his hand was combing through my hair, pushing it off my shoulder, then rubbing my bare skin. My breasts were exposed—I’d never been this exposed and comforted at the same time.
If Mathias believed I had a choice, maybe it was time for me to start believing it too. This was the first day on a new path.
Tonight is our last stand
Mathias
Jessa was looking at my tattoo again and she was rubbing one of her wrists as she did so. Whether it was consciously or not, it didn’t matter. We both had scars, but the reasons for hers had to be different.
“Mine had nothing to do with a charm,” she said to me now. “Then again, I don’t believe in charms anyway. If I believed in charms, I’d have to believe in curses too.”
What do you believe in?
“I think you have to create your own destiny. Sometimes it’s hard, because you can’t always control what’s happening in your life.”
So you’re logical.
“The look on your face tells me you think that’s a dirty word.”
You need to live a little.
“Live a little?” She motioned around her and I nodded, because if you couldn’t free yourself now, you never had a shot. When I told her that, she rubbed her scars again and nodded, like she was considering it.
When I was younger, my mama used to tell me these stories—they were true stories, and they were always about fate and faith and finding your path.
“Did you?”
I’m still looking for my line in the sand. And even if I find it, who knows if there’s a time I’d need to cross it.
“I grew up with logic. That was what my parents expected of me.”
So you don’t believe in fate either?
“I don’t think so.”
I think you’re lying to yourself.
She blinked at me and said, “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Killing me softly
Jessa
There were dozens of tapes in several containers in the back. There were a lot of cassette tapes of groups, but also a lot of handmade tapes.
Mixed tapes, he called them. They were a big thing back in the ’80s, before CDs and shit. You liked someone, you made them a tape. You broke up with someone, you made a tape with sad songs.
“I did that on my iPod.” I marveled at how much work must’ve gone into the tapes. With iTunes, it was really easy to create playlists but with this, someone had obviously selected each tape, sat there while it played and listened.
This is better.
“I agree.” I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed my music until right then, how centered whatever he’d played had made me. When Mathias first put the music on in the van, it had calmed me. For weeks, my life had been silent, void of comfort, and there had been just rough conversation and fear. “I had some of these songs on my iPod.”
Bullshit.
“What? A girl can’t like Mötley Crüe?”
Not a girl like you.
“I’m hoping that’s some kind of compliment.”
It is.
“But honestly, I love their stuff. Especially their first album.” I used to search through iTunes to find songs I liked, lyrics that spoke to me.
Mathias put on “Home Sweet Home” and the opening piano notes gave me goose bumps. Because my home had never been that, but here, in this cold warehouse in the middle of a storm, I felt more at home than I ever had in my life. And because I didn’t know what that meant, I tried to bury any feeling.
My dad made these for my mom, he explained. He used to say that he’d courted her hard, and that she played hard to get, but in the end, she couldn’t resist.
“He chased her? She must’ve loved that. Every girl wants that.”
They do?
I stared into his dark eyes and almost lost myself again. “Yeah, they do,” I said softly and the corner of his lip quirked up a little as he typed, I’ll keep that in mind.
“So what finally made her give in?” I asked.
She was pretty reluctant. A good girl who was being chased by a wild bayou guy. In the end, she gave up a lot for him. She was a really talented artist—oils and some sculpture—and she was being courted by a lot of people in the art scene. They wanted her to study in Europe, and to live there, actually.
“Did she stop painting?”
Never. She sold a lot of art, but she didn’t do the art scene. A gallery show here and there, which added to her mystery because she didn’t show up in person. But Dad was alway
s confident she’d be happiest in the bayou.
“So he made her these.”
Yeah. I was only able to save some of them. He made her a lot of tapes when they were dating and that’s the music Bish and I grew up on. Then he put them all together for her on her phone. But I liked the idea of a tape. I liked that you could hand someone something. It took time to make them.
I traced the plastic cassette cover, noting that the handwriting had faded a bit. “I can see that this took time.”
Every song has to mean something. Some you like, some she likes...
“It’s so different than a playlist. I know my parents didn’t make this.” I held out the tape to him. “Can we play this?”
He popped it in. He said it was the first one his father had ever made for his mom and as I sat and listened to the words, I pictured a courtship I’d never see. But I understood a lot more about Mathias, and his sentimentality. And I knew I could love him for it.
I also knew that, before this, I’d been fooling myself thinking I knew anything about love.
The music surrounded me, warm and comfortable in some ways, out of control in so many more. With Charlie, I’d been looking for escape. I’d thought Charlie understood me when really, he’d just been playing me.
Any other favorites in here?
I looked through the boxes, pointing out some of our other shared favorites. Who would’ve thought that a biker boy from the bayou and a Washington princess would have the same taste in anything.
Not only in music, but in each other, I reminded myself, thinking how I wore his scent on me like a warm sweater. He was lying there, staring up at the ceiling of the van, which had those fluorescent stars stuck to it, mimicking the nighttime sky I hadn’t seen a trace of since the Chaos. He looked deep in thought and I liked that he felt comfortable enough around me to do so.
There wasn’t any pretense with Mathias. That also made me feel less like I was on slippery ground. I’d gotten a foothold into this world—a small one, but one nonetheless.
I glanced around and spotted a guitar propped up next to me. I’d had a similar one when I’d been in boarding school and without thinking, I picked it up and my hands fit around it like they were meant to be there. I began to strum idly. It had been years since I’d done this, but as soon as my palm wound around the neck of the guitar, years of notes and chords came back to me. The warehouse echoed with the music and the storm mixed together, comforting me.
I was lost in the sounds, and when I finally looked up, Mathias was watching me with an odd look in his eyes and a half smile tugging his lips.
“Sorry. I should’ve asked,” I said sheepishly. He motioned that it was fine. And then he pointed to the guitar and motioned for me to play more. “Any special requests?”
He signed with one hand as he approached the van and dug into a box behind me. He pulled out a CD and showed me the cover and then pointed to the song. “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak.”
“I’ve never heard it before. Can you play it for me?”
He rolled his eyes, like he couldn’t believe I’d never heard a Def Leppard song, but he popped in a tape and let it blast through the speakers. As it did, I visualized the chords in my mind, pictured my fingers playing along the strings.
When the song finished, I began to strum along, and he nodded, typed, You have an ear for music.
I did. But in my family, music wasn’t done. It was fine to play the piano at formal dinners, on request, but beyond that...
Mathias took my chin in his hand and focused me. Then he signed and I said, “I’ll bet you’re telling me to stop thinking so much, right?”
He nodded, leaned in and brushed his lips against mine. I shivered, murmured, “That’s one way.”
He huffed a silent laugh, then moved along my neck, kissing and sucking until he was sitting behind me. He slid an arm behind mine, winding one hand around the guitar neck, the other on my waist. I wound my hand around his, my fingers on top. His cock pressed against me; his breath was warm on the back of my neck and suddenly, being cold wasn’t an issue. It didn’t help that I knew what his body looked like.
Communication was definitely not an issue. Not when I strummed and my fingers danced on his and we were playing. And he was playing me. I was his instrument and he was learning what made me sing.
Leave this one alone
Mathias
Nearly twenty-six hours after we’d first pulled in, the storm began to abate in earnest. Only then did Bish come up from underground. As Jessa remained in the van, listening to music. I met him closer to the room where Charlie was locked away. I’d checked on him fifteen minutes ago. He’s still out. I left him some water.
Bish nodded. “Caspar knows.”
And?
Bish shrugged, which meant Caspar hadn’t elaborated on anything. At least one storm had passed—it’d been wicked enough this time.
My imagination or are the storms getting worse?
“Not your imagination.” Bish glanced over at the windows, habit still after all these years. We’d look out, expecting to see light of some kind and were always met with blackness. Even when Defiance shone the artificial lights, you couldn’t see shit.
But hell, at least we had artificial lights, right? When I said that to Bish, he countered with, “Most people would say that isn’t enough.”
Most people will bitch about anything. Dad used to say it was out of fear and they bitch when something stays the same and when something’s different. I don’t think people know what they want at all, but the Chaos changed a lot of people’s perspectives. Because hell, how can you know what’s going on in the rest of the world when you can’t even make it to the next town.
So really, the Chaos kept everyone in their own little bubble. Hell, air travel was rare as hell and equally as dangerous, so even the Air Force had their hands tied as to what the fuck the rest of the world was dealing with when the storms first happened. It’s not like you could pull up fucking Google Earth.
Bish theorized that the PTB wanted it that way. It was a great way to keep people separate and scared, still thinking that the man held all the power.
You did not just call the president “the man.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
You gonna give me the peace sign and ask for flower power next?
“No, but I might join a commune and sleep with as many people as possible.”
And that’s different from your pre-Chaos life how?
Bish grunted a reply that was a cross between a curse and a laugh and I wondered how long before Bish was asking Jessa or Charlie whether or not his theories were correct.
All I knew was what Mississippi and Louisiana and a few places in between looked like now. And you couldn’t really give a shit about anything happening more than ten miles from you when you couldn’t know. It was all about survival, and that meant dealing with what was right in front of you.
I did a lot of things post-Chaos—it’s not that I was particularly proud of them. They just are. And if the lights ever come back on and all of this becomes a part of history, I can only imagine what people will think. Hell, I know what some people think now, those who can’t understand how Bish and I could do what we do. We’d talk about that sometimes, how we’d explain to our kids what we did if and when the world unfucked itself. Hell, it happened to us and we still couldn’t believe it. I’d never have imagined sitting back and opening the front door of my house and finding absolutely fucking nothing. Zero to sixty in the opposite direction. So to tell someone who hadn’t lived through it to imagine it, to realize your phone doesn’t work, you can’t get on the internet and the roads are gone... And even if you could find a road, you still wouldn’t know where you to get gas or food.
I’d tell them, Imagine that and tell me what you’d do.
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Because I’d already answered it for myself, and for everyone else: you’d either survive, or you’d die. It’s that simple. There’s no more in between.
In the beginning, things sucked for most people. Bish and I were in mourning for our family but hell, we knew how to survive. It was amazing to watch how many people lost their fucking minds when they couldn’t get on the internet or watch TV.
The Chaos hadn’t so much changed me as it brought out my natural instincts at a much earlier age. Or at least let me run with them and not get arrested.
I’d been using a rifle since I was old enough to hold and handle one properly. Where I grew up, that started early. The military took my already-honed skills and used them to their advantage. It was three squares and a rack before but post-Chaos it was more like a rifle and good fucking luck. We were tasked with keeping order, keeping gangs like Defiance and the mafias from encroaching on U.S. laws.
Led families to some hastily set-up refugee camps. Tried to get more able-bodied guys to join the military instead of running wild.
“And then we became those guys who wanted to run wild,” Bish added. “And look at us now.”
With that, Bish went out of the warehouse to assess how bad it was outside and I told Jessa, Caspar’s going to want to meet you. He’s the president of the MC.
“What’s he like?”
I’ll be here with you.
“That bad, huh?” She said it with a smile, but she was nervous. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to pretend this wouldn’t happen. “Is it okay if I wash up?”
I motioned for her to follow, led her back into the warehouse bathroom, because I couldn’t let her wander the warehouse alone. I wasn’t supposed to let her out of my sight, for security reasons, but after bedding her, I’d be damned if I’d ever want to let her out of my sight.
She splashed water on her face, then patted it dry. I handed her a cup of coffee Bish had brought up and she drank it quickly. And then she went over to the big sink with other cups lined up next to it. She washed it out and dried it, placed the dish towel on the side of the sink.
Or she’d tried to, but it slid off the counter and onto the floor in a ball.
Redemption: A Defiance Novel Page 6
