FORCE: A Bad Boy Sports Romance

by Vivian Lux

  I stared at the picture, tracing my thumb along the ridge of his jaw line. Of course I had known. I just couldn't see past the exterior. But what the hell was he doing calling himself Crash? Why the hell was he looking like some biker hell raiser?

  Why was he here?

  Chapter Ten

  Crash

  I walked out into the winter sunshine and turned left. The slushy streets were tricky with my leg, but the bright blue sky and the fact that I had just gotten really lucky was more than enough to make me happy.

  Maybe I should ask her for her number or some cheesy shit?

  Right. A chick like that, a gorgeous, sexy enthusiastic fucker, was going to stick around once she found out what she was dealing with. A guy like me, a cripple with a bad brain, homeless and unable to remember the most mundane shit. That was really what she was looking for.

  Right.

  Best for the both of us that I just walk away. She could go find some guy who would marry her and give her a big house and a minivan and shit. I could walk away with the memory of those tits to warm me on the inevitable lonely night.

  Fuck though. This was the hardest time I've ever had walking away from a naked woman.

  My bike was still there in the parking lot of the bar. I guess the owners didn't give too much of a shit about who parked there overnight. Probably had a lot of drunks taking cabs home and coming back in the morning.

  It was still cold as hell out, but the ride would be short. I slung my bad leg over the seat and sat there for a moment. My bike. Riding it was like giving the finger to death in a way that I really enjoyed. J. was always trying to get me to wear a helmet. "You almost died, you stupid fuck. Why're you tempting fate like this?"

  "The devil had his chance to take me," I would smile. "Figure I'm in the clear now."

  The only thing I had to do when I rode was stay alive. No thought or effort but the energy I expended to stay upright. I rode because my bike had almost killed me, but I was back to show it that it hadn't succeeded.

  The Morgan County Elder Care Facility was about a mile outside the town. It squatted near the highway overlooking a drainage pond choked with algae and pissed off looking ducks. I pulled my bike into a parking space and killed the engine, looking up at the faux gabled mask they'd erected to hide the desperation inside.

  Lenape was everything and nothing at the same time, a small town in a sea of small towns splintered and splattered by strip malls and interweaving highways.

  It was the type of place that was always changing; no history, no character, so I didn't feel quite so bad that I couldn't remember a single thing about the area. I just knew that this was where I was supposed to be from. I could recall hazy scenes like they were videos playing back in my brain. Two old people who lived with me, giving me all of the material things I required but none of the love or support. They called themselves my grandparents and seemed pissed that I had no feelings for them. Eventually we all agreed to stop trying to force love where there was none.

  I think they were relieved.

  The old man had died about a year or so after I woke up. I went to the funeral, but the whole time I felt the pain of not feeling. The people there expected me to be grief-stricken over losing the man who had raised me, who had apparently taken me in after my parents were killed in a car crash. But as I sat there in my leathers in the back of the church, I could conjure up no recollection from the priest's words.

  So I got the fuck out of Lenape.

  But now I was back.

  The receptionist seemed startled when she saw me, but then again most people did. "I'm here to see Marion Hunt," I told the squirrely looking little lady.

  "Is she expecting you?" she squeaked.

  "Does she really expect anything?" I countered. The Alzheimer's took hold right after my grandfather died, like Marion just decided it was easier to check out of the world. She had the right idea as far as I was concerned.

  The receptionist blinked. "Fair enough. And you are?"

  I swallowed. It always took me a moment to remember the name I was born with. "My name is Ben Nelson. I'm her grandson."

  The receptionist didn't seem to notice the effort that cost me. Her eyes went soft and sappy. "Oh, she'll be so thrilled to see you. Marion doesn't get many visitors."

  "Yeah, I expect not," I nodded. If that was supposed to make me feel guilty, it wasn't working.

  "I'm going to need you to sign the visitor's log," she chirped, sliding a three ring binder over the counter.

  Fuck, I hated writing. I closed the pen in my fist, feeling like an awkward child. Everything had come back in physical therapy except my ability to write like a grown ass man. I gripped the pen hard and laboriously spelled out my name.

  Then I saw the line for my address and paused. I wasn't going back to Philly. I was done with that cesspool. On a whim, I scratched the address where I last laid my head. Gabi's.

  Not that it made a difference.

  The receptionist took the binder and smiled. "She's in room 503, Mr. Nelson. Up the elevators on the right."

  "Thanks," I nodded, rapping my knuckles on the countertop and making her jump.

  This place smells bad. If I had hair it would be standing on end. Smells like piss and bad food and the reek of unwashed bodies. Lovely. I heard a cry, couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, and it was the sound of loneliness. I recognized it intimately.

  Marion's room was right next to the elevator bank. I hoped she was too deaf to hear the ding of it all day. A million people coming and going but none of them coming to see her.

  Shit, maybe I was starting to feel a bit guilty.

  Feeling guilty pisses me off, so when I walked into Marion's room, I was already looking for something to hate. "It stinks to high hell in here," I muttered, fixing on that as the problem.

  There were two beds in this room and the TV was turned so loudly that I could barely hear myself think. The bed closest to the door was empty and for a minute I thought I must have missed her. Maybe she was off playing bingo or some shit. Maybe a sewing circle or whatever the fuck old ladies do with their time. Perm their hair and make casseroles, or some shit.

  But then I saw her. She was slumped in a wheelchair near the window, half draped over the clanking radiator. Her eyes were focused right outside the dirty pane and I figured she must be watching the ducks down there in that drainage pond.

  I reached up and turned down the fucking TV. Then I sat down in the straight backed, uncomfortable chair, wedging my bulky body into the narrow space.

  "Marion," I said, loudly.

  She looked like a bird, or maybe even a newborn baby. Her skin looked fragile, hanging off of her bones like she had melted. Like a candle. What little was left of her hair was like a flyaway puff, no more substantial than the down of a late summer's dandelion. She was wrapped in a blanket that looked like she might have made herself, in better days.

  I stared at the blanket, thinking it might have looked familiar, but then decided that I didn't give a fuck. "Marion!" I repeated, "do you hear me?"

  She turned her head like it cost her some effort, her watery eyes landing upon me with no recognition whatsoever.

  Perfect. She didn't remember me. I didn't remember her. Why the fuck was I here?

  She opened her mouth slightly, parting her lips like a baby reaching for a spoonful of mushy food. I thought she might have said something, but I couldn't hear it over the clacking noise of the radiator.

  "What?" I asked. I was starting to feel belligerent. I wanted to fight someone, something. There was a real problem with me being in her room. It made me feel like shit, and I didn't need any more reasons to feel like that.

  She opened her mouth in that baby bird posture again, and then I finally heard it, floating over my ears like a whisper. If I hadn't seen her lips open I wouldn't have even known to listen for it.

  "You're Ben."

  It wasn't a question, it was a statement.

  "I am." It was all I c
ould say to her. There was no memory, nothing I could conjure of her, especially not like this. If I had any memories of her caring for me as a child, it wouldn't be this fragile baby bird who did it. There was a formidable woman in my brain, someone with iron gray hair, someone who doled out far more criticism than affection. I knew that she must be Marion and that I was remembering my grandmother, but there was no connection there.

  The two women floated side-by-side in my head, and never converged into one.

  "I don't like your hair," she croaked at me.

  I raised my hand and brushed it over my bald head. "What hair?" I felt myself smile.

  "I don't like it," she repeated, "you don't look like you."

  "What do I look like?" I asked. There was a strange excitement burning in my chest when she said that. I knew that every time I looked in the mirror I saw a stranger. Maybe she could tell me how I was supposed to be.

  But the recognition her eyes glazed over, like a lightbulb had been shut off behind them. She turned away, the vacant look returning, and her gaze fell back on the ducks far below us.

  "Well, this was a waste of my time," I said out loud. It made me feel better to say that, and it made me feel better to be slightly cruel. I stood up from the chair, and shoved my hands into the pocket of my dirty jeans. And that's when I felt it.

  My wallet was gone.

  Chapter Eleven

  Declan

  "This is a bit of a shit show if you ask me," J. muttered.

  You could tell it was one of those things we weren't supposed to hear, a subtle little passive aggressive dig that we were supposed to ignore.

  So I did just that. Lord knows I had already said my piece.

  But Case, well, that big blond motherfucker had a different idea of how things were gonna go. "If you're telling me that we should just let that traitorous asshole waltz right back in here on his gimpy leg, then you and I have a really big problem." Case stood up from the metal folding chair with a resounding screech, pulling himself to his full six-foot four height.

  But all of us knew him too well to fall for that shit. "Sit the fuck down," J. said dismissively. "You know as well as I do that I'm not going to fight you over this."

  I watched Case sit back down again, shimmering rage over his face, his huge fists clenched at his sides. The big blond dude was ready to murder someone or something. If Crash walked into the door right now, even I probably couldn't save him.

  And that kind of pissed me off.

  "You know what I think?" I opened my mouth. I've been doing that a lot over the past twenty-four hours. Ever since Crash walked out. The boy wasn't around to defend himself, and so it fell to me to speak for him.

  And speak I had been doing, to the point where I was almost hoarse with the effort. Goddamn did I need a drink.

  The rest of the Sons were watching me with varying levels of attention. J. picked at his nails with a pocketknife, his face a studied mask of nonchalance. I knew he was trying to keep his cool, but give him a reason to fly off the handle and he would. I also knew that he would have Case's back, since the two of them were like a matched set, real ebony and ivory shit.

  Case was doing enough flying off the handle for both of them. It was his girl, and his sneaking around, that had caused this mess and he was doing his best to deflect all over the place.

  Mac said nothing, but I knew he'd side with Case, because he always did.

  Thorn was only a prospect and not allowed to sit at this secret meeting, but he was Case's boy too.

  That left me to defend the real wronged party here. Teach nodded at me, letting me know I had the floor. The prez was pissed, but he was always one to move with slow deliberation. He wouldn't make a move until he'd heard us out.

  I cleared my throat. "I think we all need to stop acting like a bunch of pussies over this," I began. "Sure, the guy acted like an ass, but it's Crash, we know him. Acting like an ass is par for the course." Case bristled but I held up my hand. "Stop. I know. He also disrespected the club, I get that shit," I narrowed my eyes at Case. "But who among us can say that he had absolutely no justification whatsoever for what he did?"

  "He tried to steal my girl!" Case snarled, burying a fist in his hand.

  I fixed him with my glare. "The way I see it, you went ahead and stole his girl."

  Case at least had the decency to look abashed.

  "Look," I continued. I could see that Teach was getting ready to speak, so I rushed in to say my piece before the prez cut me off, “he ain't right in the head. That's what it comes down to. The kid has these storms go off in his brain. But it ain't his fault, and y'all know that. I think it's real shitty of you to hold it against him. Crash is our brother."

  "That remains to be seen," Teach said quietly.

  I pressed my lips together. Teach was a good prez, fair, hard when he needed to be, thoughtful more often than that. But I was still pissed.

  "You all know where I stand," I growled, crossing my fingers over my gut. "The rest of you assholes can talk shit about him from now until kingdom come for all I care. He made a mistake, but he's still my boy."

  "We all know he's your boy," Teach said slowly. "And I'm afraid that's blinding you to what's actually at stake here, Doc." He shook his head's slowly, his chest length dreads smacking lightly against his black T-shirt. "Crash was intimately involved in our… affairs. He knows secrets, he knows our… activities." The prez closed his eyes and I felt a hollow sensation in my chest as his words rang true. "We got ourselves a situation with the cartel, and Crash is a wildcard." He opened his eyes and they were dark and serious. "I don't like wildcards."

  "How about we sleep on it?" Mac stretched his leg out in front of him, and the four of us snapped our heads to look in his direction. On the rare occasion the old dude actually talked, it was usually worth listening to what he had to say. "It's a shitty thing we gotta come up with a plan about our brother. Not one I plan on taking lightly."

  The other three of them nodded, but I felt something explode in my belly. "You cannot possibly be serious!" I barked at them, futility making me rage. "This is Crash, our brother! Fuck, I don't know, go track him down, give him a black eye, and break a couple of his ribs, God knows the kid knows how to heal. Fuck him up good and proper. You just can't… You can't be thinking…."

  The words caught in my chest, as a searing bolt of pain ripped through my stomach. "Doc, you okay?" J. asked worriedly.

  I dug a fist into my chest, pressing hard. The heartburn subsided, and I burped softly. "My agida," I told them sheepishly. "Stress and shit."

  The other four of them chuckled, and for a moment it almost felt normal. Like we were still united front against the world, and not divided over whether or not we had to take out one of our own. I leaned forward on my knees and ran my hands through my beard and up to my hair. "Listen…" I started to say.

  But I didn't get to finish. Not before the blasting heat ripped through the garage in a wave. In the smoke, and cries and curses, I heard the sound of tires squealing as a car sped away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Crash

  My fucking wallet. God dammit.

  Here I was, driving without a license, and in the shit town of Lenape where the cops don't really have much else to worry about. I figured I left it at Gabriela's house. I was going to have to go back to her, after I rolled out of bed without saying goodbye this morning.

  Fuck.

  So I'm here for the moment, and I have no money and no license. Why shouldn't I go back to Gabi's? Maybe she wouldn't be too pissed about me running off like that this morning. She seemed like a reasonable girl, maybe I could make up some bullshit about needing to hurry over here for visiting hours. Chicks love sad stories about old people. I bet I could even squeeze out a tear or two, and maybe she'd comfort me by letting me fall asleep on her tits.

  Yeah, those tits were definitely worth swallowing some pride for.

  I straddled my bike and pulled out of the parking lot into the brig
ht winter sunshine. I had a huge pickup truck still parked on the street in North Philly. I wondered how long I could leave it there before the PPA towed it. Fuck, they probably already did, the money-grubbing bastards. Well fuck it, free parking. I'll deal with that later.

  Besides, I felt better on my bike.

  I pulled out on to the divided highway, feeling the smooth rumble of my engine. Right on cue, my mind went to its familiar, pleasant blank. Riding had a way of shutting everything off except the essentials. It kept the bad shit at bay for as long as I was on top of the machine. I could control my bike much better than I could control anything else, so I rode as much as I could, even in the winter sunshine.

  Luckily my asshole brain somehow remembered how to get to Gabi's from here. I rolled through town, slowing at the crosswalks, looking to see if I saw any familiar faces. But I was just as anonymous here, in my purported hometown, as I was in the huge, unfeeling city of Philadelphia. I wasn't sure how that made me feel, so I decided to ignore it.

  This was just another place. I was just another guy, heading over to the apartment of just another girl.

  There was no sign of the silver hatchback on the street. I cursed under my breath. What the fuck was I going to do, wait around here all day? Who knew when she was going to come back?

  I looked up and down the street. Everyone was at work, all the self-respecting citizens of Lenape, New Jersey had abandoned their people-holders and headed somewhere else for work. The whole town seemed empty.

  I swung my leg over my bike, absently rubbing the stiffness from my bad leg. There were no eyes on me. I yanked the black watchcap from my head, mindful of how suspicious it made me look in broad daylight. Then I casually sauntered up the icy walkway and tried the door.

  It was locked. Well, fuck. But at least Gabi wasn't a total idiot.