Bear

by Zahra Girard

  He’s a coward.

  But he’s not going to win.

  The truck roars and I unleash every horse housed in it’s engine as I barrel down the highway.

  Did you do it? I text to Maria.

  Of course. It’s done. Her reply.

  The Iron Devils are going to hit the King’s clubhouse tonight. Are the cops ready?

  My phone stays silent for too long for my comfort before it buzzes.

  Would I ever let you down?

  I love you, I reply.

  Damn right.

  I breathe a little easier, but don’t slow down a bit as I speed down the highway towards Stony Shores.

  I turn on the radio to keep myself alert. That handful of pain meds is raising billowy fog in my brain and weighing my eyelids down. I take one hand off the wheel to slap myself back to my senses.

  The song on the radio ends and some DJ comes on the air, affecting that possibly-drunk schmoozing tone to remind me that KHOT is the number one station for the hottest pop songs today and that anyone in the area of Stony Shores should be careful and stay indoors because there’s reports of heavy gunshots coming from a known biker bar.

  “Nash,” I whisper, and I slam my foot to the gas.

  The DJ continues: There’ll be regular updates on the firefight, but, as long as I stay tuned, I’ll get the hottest pop songs with the fewest commercial interruptions.

  Good to know.

  Justin Bieber comes on and starts singing about how sorry he is as I scree around a corner in my two ton steel carriage, struts and suspension groan, and I struggle with the wheel — my dislocated shoulder screaming — but I will not slow down.

  Flashing lights come into view.

  The distinctive pop-pop-pop of gunfire.

  I speed up, pulled forward by the visions of violence those sounds set off inside my head.

  Nash is in there.

  A fleet of black SUV’s, ambulances, a lone local PD car, encircle the parking lot, trapping inside some sheriffs cars and at least a dozen motorcycles. Men — some in cuts, some in uniforms — kneel with their hands behind their heads, flashlights and guns trained on them, as men in navy blue FBI vests cuff them.

  I park and hop out.

  Some man in uniform tries to tell me I shouldn’t be here.

  “Go to hell,” I tell him. “I’m the one who tipped you guys off.”

  He starts to say something else, but I push past him. Gurney after gurney is being wheeled from the clubhouse and they’re all I can see.

  I need to find him.

  I hunt for him. Frantic.

  “Nash,” I start to yell, pushing past others, ignoring the glares. “Nash.”

  One head pops up from the gurney, a familiar voice calls out: “Roxanna?”

  Ozzy. I sprint to him.

  “Are you ok?”

  It gives me pause a second — blood covers his shirt, there’s a bullet hole in a frightful spot on his cut, but his first concern is if I’m ok.

  “I’m fine.” I don’t even feel my dislocated shoulder, though whether that’s from the painkillers or adrenaline, I can’t say. “Where’s Nash?”

  “Bugger if I know. He’s in hospital, probably. He took a nasty shot and went down. He and Gunney were the first ones taken out of here once the FBI burst in to arrest everyone. Pretty bloody messy scenario all around.”

  The paramedics order me to get back and the Ambulance doors slam shut. It peels away, sirens blaring.

  This whole scene’s a fucking mess. A huge bust, rooting out a blight in the sheriffs department and taking down a criminal gang, but all I can think about is him.

  “Roxy,” Maria says, placing her hand on my shoulder.

  I whirl on her, my emotions on a hair-trigger, and I pull her into a hug.

  “Do you know if he’s ok?”

  “It’s good to see you, too.”

  “Right. Sorry. Thanks,” I say, swallowing the ball of panic rising in my throat. “Do you know where he is?”

  “I don’t. Everything’s a fucking mess. But what do you expect for a last-minute disaster like this?”

  I look around, trying to take it all in. I know I should be proud, in a way, of what I’ve accomplished. This was the right thing to do, but it doesn’t register with me. I push past Maria and grab one of the agents who looks like he might know what the hell is going on.

  “Where are they taking the wounded?”

  He shrugs. “Do I look like a medic? Stay out of the way and let us do our jobs.”

  Maria’s back at my side, and takes the agent by the collar of his shirt. “Pull that stick out of your ass and show some compassion for my friend. She knows someone that was hurt in this mess — which hospital are they fucking taking them to?”

  “Tacoma General, probably, that’s the nearest one with any sort of ICU.”

  Maria lets him go, giving him a small shove as she does so.

  “You better hope he’s there, or I am coming back here, Agent Klein,” she says, peering at his badge. “And I will ruin your day. Come on, Roxy.”

  I’m already racing to my truck, my heart driving me forward.

  I need to see him. I need to be there for the man who means so much to me.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Nash

  The world is a dream. The needles, tubes, stitches, I wake up feeling none of them. Painkillers are fucking brilliant.

  My body and mind float through a blissed-out fog.

  I look around; bland hospital room, industrial-grey view out my window, a set of handcuffs keeping me on this bed, a nurse who barges into my room with an attitude like she’s seen more shit than even a patient like me can imagine.

  Yeah, I’m in Tacoma.

  Fuck.

  At least I’m alive.

  That thought alone makes me start.

  How the fuck am I still alive?

  Last thing I remember is Gunney taking a sheriffs bullet, and a bunch of those brown-uniformed pieces of shit and some Iron Devils storming our clubhouse, doing their damnedest to kill each and every one of us. I remember taking at least one bullet — maybe more — and I remember killing more than a couple of those sons of bitches before I went down.

  That last bit makes me smile.

  The nurse looks at my smiling mug like I’m crazy. “Are you ok, sir? Just lie still while I check you over and change your dressings,” she says. “You move too much, your sutures will come out, and you really can’t afford to lose anymore blood.”

  “What, a guy like me isn’t worth a transfusion?” I say. I don’t mean to mess with her, but I want to draw her out, find out what the hell happened.

  “You came in with three bullet wounds and the medics that brought you in said you’d killed at least one person—”

  “— three,” I interrupt. “I remember getting three.”

  “Is that supposed to impress me?”

  “I just want the record to be accurate. I killed two bikers and a sheriff.”

  “Oh, a sheriff?” she says, sarcastically, and she roughly rips off one of my bandages. “So, you’re proud of killing a member of the sheriff’s department?”

  It stings through the painkiller haze.

  “When they’re a corrupt son of a bitch, yeah. The sheriffs were working with the bikers. Pushing and trafficking drugs.”

  She looks at some of the instruments attached to me. “I’ll see about having your dosage dropped. I think the painkillers must be giving you hallucinations.”

  “Don’t even think of touching my drugs. I need those.”

  She rolls her eyes and places a fresh bandage over the mess that’s my right abdomen. I take a peek before she manages to affix the new bandage; I’m going to have a helluva scar when that heals up. Nice.

  I’m feeling pretty chuffed, as Ozzy’d say.

  “There’re some people waiting out in the lobby for you. They’ve been there for a long time. Do you feel up for visitors?”

  “Who?”

&
nbsp; “A couple women, and five or six men in leather. They your gang? Because the police station is across the street, and if you get out of line, we will call them.”

  “No, they’re my bandmates. We’re a Village People cover group.”

  She glares at me. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Let them in here. I’ll prove it to you. We can do any song of theirs, anything from their first album, the self-titled Village People, to their last album, Sex Over the Phone.”

  “Wait — what? Are you serious? I thought they only did that ‘Y.M.C.A.’ song and the ‘Macho Man’ song. I didn’t know they had others.”

  “That’s because you don’t know good music.”

  “So, you’re really in a band?”

  “I’ll sing for you, if you don’t believe me.”

  I start in on a few bars of ‘Ups and Downs’ from the Village People’s third album, ‘Cruisin’. It’s an overlooked song, especially compared to the other hits on the album, like ‘Y.M.C.A.’ and ‘Hot Cop’.

  She doesn’t say another word. But I think I see a smile on her face, and she does give a gentle tap to the button that dispenses some extra painkiller into my system. It feels spectacular.

  The nurse is gone only for a minute before Roxanna steps back into my life. She’s a vision — more beautiful than I can believe and better than a man like me deserves. I know she’s saved my life. And she’s got a spring in her step that shows she knows that she’s pulled off something special. It might’ve been crazy and risky, but it’s impressive as hell.

  This woman sure is something else.

  And as conflicted as our last meeting was, it still feels incredible seeing her again.

  “You’re awake,” she says, and then her mouth opens wide as she yawns.

  “Seems like it. Though every time I see you, I feel like I’m dreaming,” I say, smiling as she rolls her eyes. “How long have I been out?”

  “I’ll attribute that terrible line to the drugs they’ve got you on. You’ve been out a day and a half, give or take. They put you under for surgery, and it took a long while to get you all patched up,” she says, bending over to kiss me. She’s wearing an old, way-too-large zip-up hoodie that’s draped over her like a cape and jeans. They’re rumpled, like they’ve been slept in. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  “Same here,” I say. The mood in the room feels different, and the warmth I felt from her earlier has already faded. That tension from a few days ago, when I sent her away, settles right in between us.

  She clears her throat and scuffs her foot against the floor. I can tell she wants to pretend like she doesn’t feel it, too. “What did you say to that nurse? She gave me a look when I came in.”

  I shrug. “We talked about music, a bit. I told her about some of the lesser-known Village People songs. Sang one for her.”

  “Seriously? How – and why – do you know this shit?”

  “When you’re deployed overseas, and you’re on day thirty-seven of guarding some empty trail in the mountains, you pick up some shit to pass the time. Sometimes it sticks with you, because it’s great and worth knowing,” I say, shrugging.

  “Yeah, but the Village People?”

  “They defined an era. And, I’m confident enough in my manhood to admit that.”

  She yawns again, and slumps into the chair by my hospital bed. “You surprise me, sometimes. A lot of times.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  With a shrug, she tries to appear nonchalant. “A while. It doesn’t matter.”

  “And when’s the last time you slept?”

  “A while.”

  I know it’s been longer than that. But I’m not going to push her, I know I owe her my life.

  “Thank you,” I say. Then, I say what I really mean: “you were right.”

  A wan smile lifts her lips and lights up her tired eyes. “Excuse me? I didn’t quite hear that.”

  “You damn well did,” I say, and pause only because she leans in again to kiss me. “But I’ll say it again, just in case you somehow have gone deaf in the last ten seconds: you were right. There were other options. Maybe even better ones. I should’ve had the guts to try.”

  She tries to hide it, but I can tell she’s pleased. “It worked out in the end. But too many people have died. Too many people — you, my father, everyone — just ready to default to violence.”

  I sit up, though it hurts like all hell. There’s something in her voice that chases away the fog in my head. “Did he hurt you?”

  She unzips her hoodie with her right hand. Her left arm’s in a sling. I get tunnel vision — it’s all I can see. Before I can say anything, she presses be back into bed and shushes me.

  “He just put me in handcuffs. And tied my feet and gagged me and threw me in a closet. I had to dislocate my shoulder to work my cuffs around in front of me. Then I picked them with a bobby pin. It wasn’t how I wanted to leave things with him. They arrested him while he and my mom were at dinner. I heard it got ugly.”

  I whistle. Well, I try to. I’m so doped up, it mostly comes out as me just blowing air. And I drool on myself a little. Fucking classy, man.

  “Damn, Houdini,” I say, appreciatively.

  “I told you, I hate that nickname.”

  “It’s appropriate. And thinking about your skills is turning me on.”

  “Really? Do you not see my dislocated shoulder?”

  I shrug. She’s beautiful, even wearing wrinkled, old clothes and with her arm in a sling. Knowing that she put everything on the line for me and my club, that she cares that fucking much, makes my heart swell in my chest. “You’re a woman of many talents. Why don’t you climb up here and I show my appreciation for saving my life?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’d have to be dead not to be,” I reach out, though just doing that hurts like a bitch. “There’s room on this bed for two.”

  She looks at me, disbelieving, amused, but doesn’t say ‘no’.

  “You just took several bullets and had major surgery. You’re in the ICU, you shouldn’t even be moving for another few days.”

  Still not a ‘no’.

  “And yet, my dick still works,” I say. “Get over here.”

  I reach for her, and she allows me a moment of touching her before she pushes my hands away. Despite my loss of blood, I’ve still got more than enough to get my cock rock hard. Even if it makes me feel woozy enough that I might pass out or that I might die if with the exertion of fucking her. But I can’t imagine a better way to go.

  “You need to get your rest. There’s big stuff you’re going to need to be ready for. And besides, I honestly — no matter how much I want to — do not have the time. I have to get back to Stony Shores and see if Samantha has any nice clothes I can borrow. There’s a big appointment later.”

  I focus through the haze, on the weighty note in her voice. It hits me. “The hearing?” I look at the tubes hooked to my body, the machines and the instruments I’m attached to, and disbelief takes hold of me. The beeping from the heartrate monitor steadily accelerates. “That’s still on? Even though your father was arrested? After all this? What the fuck? I’m not going to let any son of a bitch keep my daughter from me.”

  I want to climb out of bed. Hurt someone. Whatever the hell I have to do.

  I try to stand.

  I stumble.

  She reaches out and steadies me. Small, but strong. Gentle, restraining, reassuring.

  This woman is too good for me.

  “Trust me.”

  I look at her. “What are you planning?”

  “Just trust me. I told you I wanted to see you and your daughter back together. You deserve that, at least” she says, kissing me again. “It’s the least I can do for you before I leave.”

  I blink. “Leave?”

  “I care about you, Nash. I want you to have the chance to be with your daughter. But, with everything that’s gone on, it’s only made it more clear to me that
what you said at the clubhouse is true: I’m not cut out for this. I need to go back to Chicago, to my life there.”

  It kills me to think that I’m so close to having the chance for a life with two women that I care about more than I thought possible — Roxanna and Abigail — only to have it torn away.

  It kills me that I hardly have the strength to stand, though my heart and soul is crying out for me to get up and fight for her, even if I have to restrain her — though she’d probably just escape.

  “Don’t go,” I say. It’s half a command, half a heartfelt request.

  She brushes my cheek with her hand. “I need to. I’m going to get you your daughter back — I promised you that much — but I can’t live this life.”

  The pain of being shot is nothing compared to what’s wracking my heart. There’s a note of finality in her voice that rings like a death knell.

  “You don’t have to leave.”

  I feel true happiness slipping through my fingers. I’ve found a woman I’d be proud to have stand by my side, only to see her chased away by the life I live.

  “Once this hearing is over, once I’ve got my mom settled down to life without my dad, it’s over. I’m gone.”

  She stands as she talks, moving slowly away from the bed, beyond my reach. At the doorway, she stops, looking at me with a sad half-smile.

  “This is goodbye.”

  The door shuts behind her and I slump back into bed.

  Whatever it takes, with every ounce of strength in this broken body of mine, I’ll fight for Roxanna. I can’t lose her.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Roxanna

  There’s a line of men and women outside the courtroom. People bustle around us, some of the well-dressed professionals, court clerks, bailiffs, and lawyers giving us side-eye. There’s ten of us in all: bikers and prospects, old ladies and old-ladies-in-waiting. All of us friends and family.

  Ozzy, Rog, Grease, Preacher, Jynx, Samantha, Shiner, Gunney, Maria, and me. Every former soldier among them has put away his cut and is wearing his dress uniform from the service. Even Gunney’s wearing his old uniform, though he’s in a wheelchair and looks so pale and beat-down that he could almost pass for a casualty of war.