I tense, lean back. That ain’t fair.
“If I had a man who loved me like you do Crista Holt, I’d do anything for him. Be anything for him.”
“You didn’t even let Charge get the kind of dog he wanted.” Charge bitched about that a whole visit up in Wayne. He wanted a Great Dane. He got a Corgi. “How is George?”
She drains her wine. “He’s good. And Charge didn’t love me for shit. He wouldn’t have moved on so fast if he did.”
“Weren’t you fuckin’ Des Wade before you and Charge split?”
“Semantics.” She waves her hand.
“That ain’t what that means.”
Harper holds up her finger. Her gaze is unfocused, and she’s tilting a little in her seat. Yeah, the woman’s feelin’ it. “I got my reasons, Scrap. As do we all. Now you gonna pass me that pussy beer you’re drinkin’, or are you gonna get me another glass of wine?”
“You always been bossy as shit, Harper.” I smile, and she rests her hand on my forearm. I pass her the beer.
“You always been too good for this world, little brother. Too good for me, for sure.”
It’s then I notice Crista Holt in her mint green hoodie, standing twenty feet away. The lightness from all the ridin’ disappears, and I’m hit again, like I am every time, with the weight of her. Her skin’s sallow, and her hands are tucked up in her sleeves, and every fiber in me wants to go to her, throw her over my shoulder, take her upstairs and kiss every inch of her until I’m certain she’s real cause there’s no way she can be.
There’s no way that a man can walk around with his heart twenty feet across the room. It ain’t possible.
I will her to come to me. Just a step. A wave, even, but all she does is stand there, her face frozen, her eyes shuttered.
And I can’t take it. I scoot my chair back, and I stand, and when she doesn’t make a move, I turn and walk toward the stairs up to the bunks.
And every step I pray she follows, but I know she won’t.
That’s my heart, standing across the room, stuck in place, and somehow, at the same time, my heart is breaking too, inside my chest.
CHAPTER 14
CRISTA
When he’s gone, it’s like my feet come unglued from the floor. I can hardly breathe. He walked away. He finally walked away.
Like I’m on autopilot, I wander over to where Harper’s finishing off the beer he left. When I get close, she sprawls back in her chair, and from how much she flounces when she does it, I know that she’s not sober, and she’s spoilin’ for a fight.
She’s been drinking a lot more since she ditched Charge for Des Wade. I guess with more money comes more problems.
“Well, well. Crista Holt. Shouldn’t you be in a pretty white dress, tied to a railroad track somewhere?”
Her eyes are shiny, and there’s a drop of Merlot on her satiny white blouse. For Harper Ruth, she’s a hot mess.
“What the hell are you doing with Scrap?”
“Oh. Now you want to make some kind of claim? I just saw him walk off same as you. I don’t think it matters much what him and I are up to.”
“Leave him the fuck alone.”
“Or what? What are you gonna do? Hide behind the bar? Under a shelf in the storage closet? I know. Above your daddy’s garage?”
I grit, ball my fists. This isn’t what I need to be doing. I need to go after Scrap. Talk to him. Make all this wrong right somehow. “Fuck off, Harper. Stay away from him.”
“Why? What exactly are you gonna do with him, Crista Holt, besides the same thing you bitches always do? Let a man fight your battles? I’m sick of all you weak, little—” Harper plunks her glass on the table. “You know what?”
There’s a huge knot in my stomach, and her words twist it tighter.
“In an hour or so, in that room—” She jerks her thumb at the room with the big table, where the brothers hold church. “My brother is gonna decide to kill a man. He’s gonna put his life on the line—again—and Scrap’s and Charge’s and Forty’s and all of them because some dumb bitch was stupid and put herself in danger. Again.”
My mouth goes dry. What?
“Yeah. They found the Rebel Raider who attacked Fay-Lee. Some creepy fuck with a cloudy, white eye. Dude’s like a Bond villain. Tattoo of a snake on his neck. The eye from the old man from ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’”
My blood floods to the floor, and I sway against the table. Oh, God. It can’t be. Acid scores my throat. It cannot be.
“Oh, don’t get upset.” Harper curls her lip. “The men will clean up this mess, too. And if it costs them a few years of their life? Won’t be the first time, right?”
“Oh, God.” I cover my mouth with my hand.
Harper stands, shaky until she braces herself on the table, too. “Go home, Crista. There’s nothing for you to do here. The prospects have the bar covered. And what else can you do, anyway?”
She spins away, and that’s fine, because I’m already staggering for the bathroom. I take out my phone. Trace the letter F. Pull up the pic. His face pops up, and my stomach heaves.
There he is. Donny Mulvaney. His face is in profile so you can’t see the eye with the cataract. The picture is five years old, before he got the color filled in on the snake tattoo. In this pic, it’s only an outline.
When I was sixteen, and he took his turn after Inch Johnson on the floor of an abandoned gas station on Route 12, he didn’t have any tattoos at all. Just that cloudy eye. Like a white marble.
I slam to my knees, and my phone clatters to the tile floor. The screen cracks. I wretch into the toilet, but nothing comes up.
Oh, God. This is on me.
I thought if I kept my mouth shut, we’d all be safe.
I thought he wasn’t in the life anymore. He had a job, he worked the 7 to 3, and he was never late. I never once saw him in a cut or with a bike. I figured he’d gone straight. He’d been out-of-his mind high that day. He never even smoked now. Didn’t even chew.
When Mom and I ran into him that day, I’d been a foot away from him, and he’d looked right at me, but with my hair cut and the extra pounds, he had no idea who I was. I didn’t have to do anything. I could tuck his existence away in a corner of my mind, tell myself it’s the past. I’m safe, and if I keep my mouth shut, no one else would get hurt.
I told myself that, and I didn’t look to closely at Donny Mulvaney. Never followed him home. Never looked him up online.
’Cause I knew.
If I told Dad, he’d kill him. If I told Heavy or Grinder or any of the brothers, they’d kill him. And maybe they’d get away with it like with Dutchy. Or maybe it’d all be fine until the Rebel Raiders ran into another girl walking home along Gracy Avenue. Like maybe one of Annie’s little girls.
So I watched him. Checked him like the locks and the windows and the empty rooms of my house. And I lied to myself. Told myself that it was over. I could live with what he did to me. What they did to me. I could bear it forever if no one else got hurt.
But it’s not over. It’ll never be over.
Harper’s right. I can’t hide anymore.
I haul myself off the bathroom floor, wipe my face with brown paper towels, and go back to the bar.
Scrap gave up ten years for me. So I could do what? Hide behind a bar. Above my father’s garage?
Harper’s sitting where I left her, leaning precariously over the side of her chair.
“I need to borrow your car.”
“The Audi? Hell, no.” Harper peers closer at my face. “Are you crying, Crista Holt? Damn. Wipe your face.”
I touch my face. It’s wet. The paper towels just smeared the tears around. Whatever. “Give me the keys, Harper.”
“Fuck that. You’re gonna have one of those attacks and drive my car off the road.”
“I need it.” I step toward her, fists clenching.
“Go find Mommy and ask for her keys. Shit. Scrap just went upstairs. Ask him.”
“I need to borrow yours.�
��
“Well, unfortunately for you, unlike the entire Holt family and Scrap Allenbach, I don’t get off on rescuing your pathetic, fat ass from your own fucking helplessness.”
She smiles triumphantly, even raises her glass, and it’s like a cork pops. All the anger that’s been bubbling up since Scrap came home, all the pent up rage from years of everyone treating me like I’m gonna break when the shit I carry has made me hard as steel, all of it comes flying out, and my fist is driving into her face before she can put her glass back down.
She screams. Her chair falls backwards with her still in it. Her glass goes flying, shattering on the floor, and I’m on her, whaling away, and she’s bucking and flailing, trying to dislodge me, but I’m bigger, and I’m fucking done with her mouth.
Vaguely, I register hooting and cheering, and then she gets a chunk of my cheek with her nails, and I double down, lift her up by the hair, and I’m about to slam her head into the floor when a massive arm lifts me off of her.
She scrambles right up, screaming, “You goddamn ingrate. You have no idea what we’ve done for you!”
“What the fuck have you ever done for me?” I’m straining against the arms holding me back. It has to be Wall. No one else is this big.
“I— I—” I can tell there’s something she wants to say. It’s written all over her face. But her eyes dart from me to Wall to all the brothers gathered around to watch the show. Her face shutters, and damn, but I recognize that look. Harper Ruth has secrets of her own.
She sighs, touches her fingers gingerly to her quickly bruising cheek. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. The keys are in my purse.”
“Thanks.” I rummage in her purse while she calls the brothers a bunch of nosy fucks and tells them to fuck off, the show’s over.
When I find the keys, I give her a nod, and I bail, jogging to the car, half afraid someone will stop me, half afraid no one will. My knuckles throb, and my mind is racing. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I can’t do nothing. Not anymore.
It takes ten minutes to drive to Finnegan’s Ice Cream. There are a few customers, but they’re parked close to the building. My usual space is open. Traffic is light on Gracy Avenue at this time of day between lunch and quitting time. Across the street, the garage is open; the bay doors are up.
And there he is. My stomach heaves.
Donny Mulvaney is working the full-service pump, like always. He’s wearing a stained white T-shirt and black jeans. His long, greasy hair is tucked behind his ears. He’s smiling at the customers, joking with a woman pumping her own gas.
I sit there a long time, watching, working at the holes in the cuff of my hoodie and gnawing at the inside of my cheek, while Donny Mulvaney smiles at customer after customer.
Back when I was sixteen, when he took his turn on the gas station floor, he’d smiled at Inch Johnson the whole time. That same desperate, please like me grin.
My entire body shakes harder the longer I stare, my teeth clacking until I grind my jaw shut to put an end to it. If I wait any longer, I’ll be frozen in place. I could lose my shit. Any second, I could fly off into the past, my own brain could squeeze the breath from my lungs. I need to move. Do something.
I dig in my purse, fumble with the gun, disengage the safety. I slip it into my hoodie pocket.
I’m just going to walk over there. If I’m there, nothing can happen. Nothing worse. It’s like in all the horror movies. You look into the monster’s eyes, and you take away its power. You force yourself to be brave, and the God in the machine sorts the rest.
I know it’s bullshit, and I know that’s not how the world works, but still, I force myself to swing open the car door and take a step toward the man who grinned while I pleaded for my life.
I’m whimpering, so I shove my busted up fist in my mouth.
Oh, God. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this.
Ever since I curled into a ball and begged Inch Johnson not to kill me, told him I’d do anything he wanted, ever since then I’ve known what I am. A coward. But still, I force one foot in front of the other.
I pull my hood up, and I fight for a deep breath as I walk across the road.
CHAPTER 15
SCRAP
I wait a long time in that twin bed where Crista and I fucked. Was that only a week or so ago? I wait and hope, and as the minutes pass, and it gets clearer and clearer that she ain’t gonna choose me, I wait and wish that shit was different.
When the knock finally comes on the door, it ain’t her. It’s Forty.
I sigh and try to shake it off. “It time for church already?”
“Not quite yet. Can I sit?” Forty ducks through the door. I shrug, gesture to a stool.
“We found the guy, eh?” I guess.
Forty lowers himself, back straight as board. Just lookin’ at the fucker has always made me uncomfortable. He had a military mien before he ever signed up.
“Yeah. Found out the guy’s road name is Rattler. Real name is Danny or Donny. Get this. He works at the gas station on Gracy Avenue.”
“No shit.”
“Dude is there as we speak, pumpin’ gas. We got eyes on him.”
“Rebel Raiders weren’t never ones for brains, were they?”
“That they weren’t. You ask me, though, this guy’s only the first in line.” Forty’s face hardens into a scowl.
“Who’s next?” I start to see that this isn’t a social call. Forty’s politicking before church. He’s got a move he wants to make, and he wants to see if I’ll back it.
“After this is handled, we need to go after Knocker Johnson hard. He’s the reason these pissants are gettin’ bold. Before he came back, the Raiders were blowin’ themselves up in trailers out in the woods. Now they’re tryin’ to fuck with our business? Our women?”
“It’s the blown job, man. Blowin’ up in our faces again,” I say. You look back far enough, all the shit that goes down in Petty’s Mill can be traced to that one botched job.
“Past ain’t the past,” Forty agrees. “Not for a man who lost twenty years of his life.” He looks to me. I nod.
This is the truth. When I heard that Knocker Johnson was spending his freedom fucking with Steel Bones, I asked Heavy why he didn’t take him out. Whatever Knocker once was, he’s an enemy now.
Heavy, that mystical motherfucker, just said, Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent—the Lord detests them both.
It don’t make sense to me, but I ain’t a club officer, and I never had a desire to be.
“If I call chaos on Knocker at church, can I count on your aye?” I do like how Forty cuts to the chase. I’m about to agree when there’s another light knock on my door frame.
A woman’s knock.
My heart thuds against my ribs, and I feel instantly lighter. Then Harper Ruth stumbles in. She’s in her stockings now, no shoes, and she’s swinging a bottle of red by the neck. And somehow in the last few minutes, she earned herself a black eye.
“Can I help you?”
Harper sighs, and she sways on her feet. “You know how I am when I get drunk? How I can be a real cunt?”
Forty snorts.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve known you all my life.”
“So. Maybe I said something. Triggered your girlfriend. I’m sure it’s no big deal. She probably ran off home.”
“What the fuck, Harper?” I climb to my feet, already reachin’ for my keys.
“She wanted to borrow my Audi,” she slurs.
“Did you let her?”
“Come on, Scrappy. I told her no. We had words. Yadda, yadda, yadda. She’s got my Audi.”
“Where’d she go?”
“I’m sure she’s heading home. It’s just—” There’s a long pause, and I’m about to lose my shit. “Wall called Grinder. He’s at her place. He says Crista’s not there.”
“Where would she go?” Anger and alarm war inside me. It’s only ten years of hiding all my shit from prying eyes that ke
eps my voice level.
“That’s the thing. She wouldn’t go anywhere else. It’s been long enough. She should be at Pig Iron’s or her place if that’s where she was going. I’d go looking myself, but…I’m more than a little drunk. And like, we’re not each other’s favorite people right now.”
“You’re a fucking bitch, Harper, you know that.”
“I do, Scrappy.” She heaves a sigh. “I got a bad feeling about this.”
And that’s it. I’m already out the door. A pair of boots fall into step behind me. Forty and I are on the road, racing toward Gracy Avenue, and I’m searching for a silver Audi or a girl in a light green hoodie as I fight the pictures in my head, the blood and piss on concrete, the whimpering moans, the wet heat on my chest, and the smell of copper and gasoline.
CHAPTER 16
CRISTA
I’m ten feet from Donny Mulvaney, his back to me as he pumps gas in an old Buick, my hand on the gun in my pocket, when two bikes come roaring down Gracy Avenue. Mulvaney startles, his gaze flying to the street, and then he bolts like a rabbit around the gas station.
I run after him without thinking, pumping my arms, around the back to where the employees park in a busted up, weed-choked lot surrounded by an old privacy fence. Mulvaney’s scrambling at his car door with his keys when I catch up, gasping for air.
I skid to a halt a dozen feet away, and I pull out the Beretta. I cock it. You can hardly hear the click over my wheezing, but Mulvaney must see me from the corner of his eye. He freezes. His keys drop to the ground.
He raises his hands, slow, like he’s done this before, but he doesn’t even turn around to face me. His skinny back is heaving. Up close, he’s shorter than I thought. Thinner. There are scabs on his elbows.
My clench my hands tighter on the gun to stop the shaking.
And then Scrap and Forty roar into the lot. They leap off their bikes, come running. Forty’s on his phone.
Scrap: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 16
