I laugh, despite how uncomfortable this subject makes me. Truth is, in the month I’ve worked here, Kimba’s never been particularly good with boundaries. I didn’t think I’d be okay sharing a space again with someone who hugged me, or casually touched my shoulder when they walked past, but surprisingly I am. Kimba makes me feel better; less lonely somehow. And already she feels like more than just a boss—she’s a friend, which is something I don’t really ever remember having before. Not like this.
Of course, she knows next to nothing about me, aside from what the media had broadcast all over the airways when I showed up on my parents’ doorstep after a month of being missing, looking as if I’d just escaped a horror movie, covered in blood, with first-degree burns on my feet and left leg, and a severe case of “psychogenic amnesia”.
I spent a month recovering at home, seeing every shrink my parents could throw at me, applying every cream, balm and whatever other product my mother wanted to ply my scars with, as if she could erase them. As if they could be as easily removed as lifting a stain from a shirt.
I couldn’t stand the silence in that house. I couldn’t stand to look at the crucifix over the mantel in our lounge room. I couldn’t see that wooden cross with its painted sorrowful little Jesus without seeing that room, or the church on fire, or the pain on Biker’s face before I walked away. After the month was out, I went and found myself a studio apartment in the city and I moved out the very next day. I haven’t really seen them since. Their daughter returned to them safe and sound, but she wasn’t the same, and neither one of them concerned themselves enough with trying to help me get better. They were just keeping up appearances.
“Wow,” I say, realising Kimba is still waiting for my reply. “I’m kinda sad I missed that.”
“I knew you would be,” she says, and heads back to the register to serve another of our regulars when he steps up to the counter. I glance at the line of customers and head to my usual place behind the coffee machine to start making orders. Several hours later Kimba pops out to run some errands, and while we’re slow, I head to the tables out front to wipe them down. I’m just getting done with the second table when I feel as if I’m being watched. I straighten and glance at the customer behind me.
He’s sitting at the small table that was unoccupied just seconds ago. He lights up a cigarette and I inhale sharply, missing the scent of him, the sight of him, drinking in every detail I can from his black jeans and leather jacket to his boots and hair, and the stubble that’s regrown on his face.
“You can’t smoke here,” I say quietly.
“I’m out-fuckin’-side,” he says.
I nod. “I know. Still can’t smoke here.”
He shakes his head and stubs the cigarette out on the sole of his boot. The biker I knew would have done it anyway, proving to me that I’m not the only one who’s changed.
“What are you doing here, Daniel?”
“I been askin’ myself the same thing all mornin’.” Reading my confusion, he tilts his chin to the park across the street. “Been psyching myself up all fuckin’ day.” He shakes his head and gives a bitter laugh. “All fuckin’ week, actually.”
I sit down heavily on the stool beside him.
“You doin’ alright?” he asks, and he seems as though he’s taking every opportunity to drink me in the way I was with him.
I nod, but then my face crumples, and I bite my lip to stop the tears from spilling out. I shake my head. “You?”
“Yeah, I’m alright.”
Of course he’s alright. Why wouldn’t he be?
He keeps smoothing his thumb over the knuckle of his middle finger. There’s an indentation there, and a tan line from what must be a very thick ring, though I don’t remember him wearing a ring before. Panic seizes my chest for a second, but then I realise that while it might be the right hand, it’s the wrong finger on which to wear a ring of any significance.
“I would have called, but I didn’t know where to find you.” I lie. I don’t know why I said that, and it only seems to have made him angry.
“Then you weren’t openin’ your fuckin’ eyes, babe. I’ve been following you around like a lost fuckin’ puppy for months.”
“Why?” I whisper.
“Now isn’t that the million-dollar fuckin’ question.”
“I don’t know what you want from me, Kick.”
“Then you’re stupid.” He shakes his head and stands to leave. “I want you, Kayla. That’s all; just you.” And then he turns and walks away. I watch his back until tears blur my vision, and I can’t see anything anymore.
“Oh honey, what happened?” Kimba asks, squatting down in front of me. She grasps the tops of my arms and I flinch, and suck in a sharp breath. “Sorry, I forgot you don’t like to be touched. I’m a hugger by default, so I’m going to have to work on that.”
Kick and Kimba have been the only ones I’ve felt comfortable enough with to let touch me since I was taken. But right now I’m too raw. I’m too full of feeling, too full of hurt. It’s ironic that I just let the only man who I’ll probably ever feel comfortable with walk away.
“Did that guy say something to you?” Kimba asks, giving me a little space and staring at the retreating figure of my biker as he walks away.
“No,” I say, wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands. I stand and straighten my apron. “No, I’m just having a bad life.”
Kimba laughs, and then she snaps her mouth closed when she realises I’m not kidding. I have a pretty good feeling she knows that I haven’t forgotten what happened to me; she’s pretty intuitive that way. “Come on, it’s nothing that a sugar coma won’t fix,” she says and steps inside the café.
I glance once more up the street, hoping to catch a final glimpse of biker, but he’s gone. I follow Kimba inside, breathing in the warm, rich scent of her special mocha. In a way this café feels more like home than my own apartment does.
A part of me would love to just head home and curl up under the covers right now, but another part knows that the minute I do, I’ll fall apart. Only this time, there will be no Biker to put the pieces back together. And I miss him so much. With everything I am, I miss him. I just don’t know if it really matters anymore. He’s a criminal; he made me into a killer and it excited him. Either way, God or no God, religion or no religion, I’m going to suffer for the things I’ve done, if not in the afterlife, then in this one.
I sit in the lounge, downing my fifth beer for the night and listening to Crazy flick another fuckin’ Zippo while we watch some shitty fuckin’ National Lampoon movie that they’ve played a hundred fuckin’ times this month. Ordinarily, there’d be a party on a night like tonight. There’d be more blow and bitches than you knew what to do with, but I guess even club whores need a day off. Prez’s old lady usually hosts a barbeque at the house on special holidays—not that the bitch has ever cooked a meal in her life—still, it might’ve been nice to have somewhere to go other than this stinkin’ fuckin’ clubhouse.
It’s been a pretty fuckin’ miserable Christmas, but it’s not as if I were expecting Santa to stuff my stocking with a hot brunette. No. The only hot brunette I want doesn’t want me back. Ivy may not be around anymore, but there are plenty of other whores I could take to bed, and it’s not without trying, believe me. But I’m so fuckin’ pussy-whipped I can’t even sustain a hard-on with another bitch. I think even my fuckin’ cock misses Indie.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Kick.”
Kick. Not Daniel. And not Biker—a nickname I’d grown kinda fond of—but Kick. The name that everyone else calls me.
I watch Raine fill Crazy’s beer. She’s bent double and her tits are in my fuckin’ face again, but I don’t even feel the hint of a stirring in my dick. She leans across the table to grab my glass, but I shake my head and sit up.
“Fuck this shit. I’m going to bed.”
“You okay, hon?”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “Darlin’, I’m so far from o
kay that I’m in my own fuckin’ postcode.”
Flick. Flick. Flick.
Crazy is killing me with that fuckin’ shit. One day I’m gonna ram a Zippo up his arse and with any fuckin’ luck, he’ll light up like a fire cracker and piss the fuck off.
“Oh, the girl I kidnapped up and left me,” he says. “Wah, wah, wah. Tell him he’s a whinging fuckin’ little bitch, Raine.”
She shoots him a reproving glare. I lean over and punch him in the side of the head.
“Ow.” Crazy stands and shakes away the pain, his jacked-up hair falling in his face and swallowing up the red cheek I just gave him. Maybe this Christmas didn’t suck after all. “That hurt, you dumb fuck.” He stares at me as if he’s waiting for a goddamned apology, and then he flicks that fuckin’ lighter again three times. Exactly the same amount of times I’m going to punch him in the head if he doesn’t quit that shit. With a recalcitrant look on his stupid-arsed face he presses his thumb to the wheel.
I glare at him. “Do it again and this time, it goes up your arse.”
He scowls and stalks off towards the door, pulling it back like the pissy little bitch he is. Jesus, he’s worse than a girl. Raine and I both follow his spack attack and then she shakes her head and turns to me.
“You could be nicer to him. I don’t think Crazy is firing on all cylinders.”
“I don’t think he owns all cylinders, babe.” I down the rest of my beer and stand up, towering over the top of her. “You gonna be alright out here on your own?”
“Yeah, I’ll be okay.”
“You know Prez is working’ in his office. I’m sure he’d appreciate a little wench in his stocking … or in stockings.”
She slaps me on the chest, and I must be getting kinda soft ’cause it fucking hurts. “Never gonna happen, Kick. At least not while that ring is on his finger.”
“So it might happen if we off the wife? I’ll get the shovel.”
Raine gives me a sad smile. “You’re a good man, Daniel.”
“No, I’m really fucking not, but I appreciate you tryin’, babe.” I toy with the ring on my left hand. Indie’s tooth winks up at me from the hammered white gold casing. I had it made just after she left. Held a jeweller at gunpoint until he finished, ’cause I didn’t wanna let the fuckin’ thing outta my sight.
“She’ll come around, you know,” she says with certainty, reaching up to kiss my cheek. She slaps it gently and then leans over to pick up our dirty glasses. Her dress rides up, exposing the backs of her thighs, and still I got nothin’. Can’t even muster a fuckin’ semi.
“No, she won’t. And I don’t blame her.” I shake my head. I can’t stand anymore of this sentimental bullshit. I head over to the bar and snag up the entire bottle of JD.
“Merry Christmas, Kick,” Raine says, as I head for the hall.
I lift the bottle in the air and salute her with it. “Merry fuckin’ Christmas, darlin’.”
Once inside my room I shut the door and go in search of a glass. The place is a fuckin’ mess. There’s shit from one side of it to the other: empty takeaway containers, wet towels, clothes that need washing, and dishes covering every damn surface of the kitchen and coffee tables. Fuck me. I’m gonna need a damn Hazmat team to clean this shit up. I can’t find a clean glass, and I can’t remember buying any washing-up detergent for months. It’s probably a good sign that I should throw all my shit in the bin and start again.
I stand by the couch for a beat and think about turning on the TV, but what’s the fuckin’ point? It’d just be the same shit that’s on out in the club lounge. I carry my bottle to the bed and plan on getting well and truly shitfaced. I wanna drink until I forget. I wanna grab her by the fucking hair and drag her back to my bed. I wanna shove inside her like I did that night at Prez’s house. I close my eyes, remembering exactly the way she tasted, the way she felt in my hands.
I don’t know how much later it is, but I’m woken by a quiet tapping on my door. I jump up thinking it must be Raine, because no other fucker in this clubhouse ever knocked so timidly on my door in the middle of the night. I answer it, shirt off, jeans unbuttoned, hair a fuckin’ mess probably, and sleep crusting the corners of my eyes.
Indie stands in my doorway. It’s a sight I never thought I’d see again, but I can’t get my hopes up that she’s here for me. She probably just needs help killing some other motherfucker that did wrong by her.
She pushes past me into the room and glances around. “Jesus, you’re a slob. You know there’s this new thing that all the cool kids are doing nowadays. It’s called cleaning.”
“Woman, don’t fuckin’ come in here tellin’ me what shit is what. You got no business getting all up in my face about the way I keep house,” I say, scrubbing my hand over my beard. I’ve let it get too long again, and I probably look like a fuckin’ hobo. I don’t think that’s why she’s giving me that timid look she’s got plastered all over that sweet face. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“It’s nice to see you too, Kick.”
“You need me to kill someone else for you? Is that it? You got some other bad guy stashed away needing a bullet to his brain that you can’t deliver?”
“I couldn’t stay with you, Daniel.”
“Get the fuck out. I don’t have time for this bullshit.”
“Let me finish.” She gives me those fuckin’ doe eyes that I can’t say no to, and like a douche canoe I just stand there, staring at her goddamned face which has all healed now, save for a tiny scar over her eyebrow. I kinda like it, though; it makes her look bad-arse. “I couldn’t stay because it wouldn’t be fair. I wasn’t whole; I wasn’t who I was supposed to be. They took the life from me, Biker. You put it back, but it was all off, you know? I wasn’t me, and I wasn’t strong enough on my own.”
“And what, you run off for a couple months, see some fucking shrink and now you’re Superwoman?”
“Hardly. I can’t make it through the night without waking up screaming.”
“Join the fuckin’ club.”
“The nightmares were better when you were there. They never stopped entirely, but they were easier to deal with.” She sighs and sits down on the edge of my unmade bed. “I felt you, you know. Before yesterday. I don’t know how, but I felt you near me. Even when I couldn’t see you.”
“What the fuck do you want, Kayla?”
“Actually, it’s Indie now. My shrink advised me to change it. Kayla has too much pain attached to it. I’m not that girl anymore. I tried to be. But I’ve changed; you changed me.”
“What do you want, a fuckin’ medal?”
“Actually, I was hoping for a biker. One about yay high …” She holds her hand about a foot above her head. “Blond hair, dark blue sinful eyes, bad attitude, with a fondness for Subway cookies and killing mice the humane way.”
That pulls a reluctant smile from me. I run my hand through my hair, which I’ve also let grow way too long.
“I want you, Biker. I had to leave you to be sure.”
“And now you’re back? So what? You’re sure now, but you weren’t when I came to see you a month ago?”
“Honestly? No.” She sighs. “I didn’t know if there was an us outside of my revenge. I didn’t know if I could love that side of you when I wasn’t dependant on it.”
“And now it’s all rainbows and fuckin’ kittens? I can’t change who I am, babe. I’m not leaving’ the club and I can’t promise I’m not always gonna come home with a guilty conscience and blood on my hands, because that’s who I fuckin’ am. That’s what life in the MC gets ya.”
“I know.” She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “I know I’m not always going to like everything you do, and I’m sure there will be days I want to punch you in the nut-sack—god knows there’s been enough of those already—but I can’t be without you.”
I close my eyes. My chest hurts as if I just took a bullet to it. My stoic expression crumples into a scowl that I attempt to cover with my hands as I tilt
my head up to the ceiling, but then she’s there, in my space, crowding me, tugging on my arms, wedging her way into my bruised and broken heart. I don’t wanna let her in. I’ve been feeling so fucking miserable for months, and I’ve grown used to wallowing in the emptiness inside of me. It’s more than that, though. If I let this happen, if I let her in, if I allow her to fall in love with me, I’ll only end up hurtin’ the both of us because I’m shit, I’m the fuckin’ king of betrayal, and no matter who’s on the back of my bike and in my bed, no matter how much I might want her and love her, I’m eventually going to fuck it up. I’ll eventually betray her, one way or another, because it’s what I do. What I’ve always done.
“You turned it into a ring?” she says, tugging on the white-gold band around my finger.
I pull my hand out of her grasp and stare down at her accusingly. “It’s the only thing you left behind.”
She gives me a sad smile. “Not the only thing, Biker.”
I scratch at my beard. “I can’t stand the thought of losing you again, Little Spitfire, and if we do this, I’m probably gonna mess shit up so bad that you threaten to leave me at least once a week.”
“Probably. I do have one hard limit, and if I find out that you ever crossed this line, there will be no second chances. You’re mine, Biker. No one else’s. Just mine.”
“Baby, I haven’t wanted up in anyone’s pussy but yours. Can’t even hold a goddamned hard-on without you being in the room.”
“Does that mean you’re hard for me now?”
“Not fuckin’ yet, but keep talking.”
She laughs, and it’s fuckin’ music to my tired-arse ears. I walk over to the bed, reaching out a hand to cup her face, and forcing her to look up at me. “I’ve never been good at this shit. I’m probably not gonna bring you flowers, and take you out on dates, and pick out fuckin’ drapes. But if you’re on the back of my bike, if you’re in my bed, then that’s it for me. I don’t need no one else, just you, Spitfire.”
Kick Page 24
