Marlin's Faith: The Virtues Book II

by A. J. Downey

  “How you holding up?” he asked softly.

  “Okay,” I murmured back, which surprisingly, was true. Despite feeling so nauseous, despite the cramping and the twitching and the aching and the generally wanting to die, overlaying that was a peace I hadn’t known for a very long time… I felt safe and cared for. The gentle, rhythmic pull of the comb through my damp hair was soothing, and a gentle, pleasurable, tingle suffused my scalp, washing over my neck and shoulders. The simple pleasure of having something done for me, of being cared for.

  I hugged my knees and huddled in his oversized tee shirt and closed my eyes, concentrating on the feel of his hands moving my hair, the light scrape of the comb through my locks. The glow from the bedside lamp suffusing the room with golden warmth.

  “Is the air conditioning on?” I asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “It’s hot.”

  I wiped a bit of sweat from my upper lip and he sighed, the sound of it carrying the weight of the world. I gasped at a particularly sharp spasm in my leg.

  “It’s only just starting,” he said quietly.

  “It gets worse?” I swallowed, and with how dry my throat was is very nearly gave an audible click.

  “Yeah, Faith. It gets much worse, but it’ll be okay, I promise. I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.” He drew the comb steadily through my hair, as if he were determined to see the long process through before the even longer one got started. I was afraid. I wanted to believe him, I really did… I gripped the leather cuff around my wrist with the opposite hand and sighed as another shiver wracked through me.

  The boy who’d given it to me had been sweet. The boy who had given it to me had shone a light in my eyes that not everyone was out to get me. The boy who’d given it to me had reaffirmed my faith that there were still a few good people left out there. The man behind me, who carefully tended to me, reaffirmed what the boy had shown me with his simple gift, and I wanted so badly to believe…

  But it wasn’t long until the pure fire of an ultimate living hell overtook me and burned every sweet and kind sentiment away. Regardless, I clung to that simple gift, and the solemn vow of the gentle man of the here and now…

  It’ll be okay, I promise. I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.

  Chapter 3

  Marlin

  I could almost feel her slip away, the lucid moments just before the withdrawals really set in were always so fleeting, but she’d hung on. As if the gentle tug of the comb through her hair were an anchor or a lifeline. She shivered hard and harder and I knew it hurt. I knew it was bad, and I also knew it was just beginning. I’d promised her I would be here for the whole thing and I’d make good on that promise. Faith had every reason to never trust another man again, to never trust anyone again. I wanted to prove there were still a few of us left that could be relied upon.

  I finished her hair just as she doubled over and the sobbing began. Soon it would be screaming and that screaming would morph into crying uncontrollably as her body rebelled. Bucking wildly with muscle spasms. She would throw up and worse. Possibly wet herself. It would be the absolute worst thing she would ever go through in her life and then some… and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do for her.

  Faith doubled over and let out with this high pitched keening wail and that was it. It’d started. She was past the point of no return and it was going to be days of this. The worst part of it was, that for whatever reason, with withdrawals came insomnia. She wouldn’t even be able to sleep through any of this. Let alone the worst of it. I folded the towel around the ruin of stray hair, bug parts, and eggs and threw the whole damn thing away in the trash bag I had at the ready in the bathroom.

  I came back out to Faith curled on her side, crying. Her eyes squeezed shut, her teeth gritted tight against the pain. I got back up onto the bed and, fuck, I gave in to my own moment of weakness. I couldn’t not touch her. I knew after what she’d been through that touching her too much might not be the best thing, but I was fucking human. Being fucking human meant that when someone as fragile looking as her was in pain, you gathered up the broken pieces and tried to make them whole again. Which is what I did. I gathered her up against me and made soothing noises as the despair and agony took hold.

  So what if she puked on me? So what if she pissed herself or worse? I wasn’t going to stain. I could suck it up and wash it off. I held her while she bawled and struggled to get away from what was hurting her, but it was her own body wreaking havoc and throwing a tantrum like a two year old denied a piece of candy. Her body wanted the drug so fucking bad and she didn’t. She’d never wanted it.

  “Shh, I got you, Faith. You scream, you cry, you do whatever you need to do, Baby Girl.”

  It was that fact that made this whole thing worse, as she bucked against my hold and thrashed. When it’d been Danny, I was so pissed at him for getting involved in the shit in the first place I’d been downright fucking cruel during his time kicking the habit. I was so mad, I’d told him he could suck it up. That he didn’t have the option to be a pussy about it. My anger had been my shield against feeling any kind of sympathy or empathy and I didn’t have that shield here. I needed to find another and I needed to find it fast, or this was liable to destroy a part of me I would never get back.

  I wrapped my legs around Faith’s and held her as still as I could so she wouldn’t hurt herself. Danny had scratched himself bloody and raw and he didn’t really have fingernails to speak of. Faith did, and her peaches and cream skin didn’t need any more permanent reminders of her captivity.

  The first few nights would be the worst. If she were anything like Danny, the turning point wouldn’t be until around something like day fucking four. A few hours into this initial struggle the doctor from up north appeared in the door.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Not keeping anything down, sweating, she’s getting weak. I know she ain’t gonna die of the withdrawals…”

  The doctor nodded and put on his glasses, coming forward, “Dehydration is still dangerous, so is a high fever.” He peeled back Faith’s eyelids and shone a light into them and she started thrashing and screaming.

  “I’m going to start an IV, some anti-nausea meds, too. They don’t always work, but I wanna see if I can’t get her hydrated; maybe get a sedative on board for good measure,” he sighed, “Wish I could help rapid detox her, but they look at the kinds of drugs we prescribe and the shit I would need? They’d flag that so quick… Damn it to hell, can you hold her arm? Just like this.”

  The doctor got an IV started and fluids going, but Faith kept ripping out the tubes. She was wearing out. Exhausting herself, so the fourth one finally stuck. The sun was climbing in the sky and the doc and I looked up at the open and shut of the door downstairs. My MC brother, Nothing came up, and mercifully, Faith was out for the time being.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” I grunted back.

  “Take a minute, we’ve got this.”

  I nodded and carefully detangled myself from Faith. I needed a fucking cigarette, bad. Grabbing up the pack on the bedside table, I trekked downstairs. I went out the back slider and took a deep breath of the clean, sea air.

  “How’s she doin’?” Cutter asked, coming around the side of the house.

  “Rough. She’s hurting, jonesing hard for a fix that I ain’t got shit to give her,” I bowed my head and palmed the back of my neck. “It’s worse, somehow, you know?” I asked him bleakly. Shit, this was only day one… I lit up and sucked in a lungful of my own vice. I didn’t smoke ‘em unless I was stressed. I blew out.

  “Yeah, man. I know,” my Pres supplied.

  “Thanks,” I nodded and sighed, took two more drags and put out my cig.

  “You need to talk, you can reach out.” Cutter called as I slid the back slider open.

  I nodded and went back inside. I was jumpy being this far from Faith. Didn’t want or need her waking up in her fucked up state and me not be there.
Hell, I couldn’t be sure if she was with it enough to know that I’d gone.

  I went back into the room to a flurry of activity. Nothing was moving things around, tossing pillows and peeling back blankets. The doc was capping her IV.

  “Shit, she sick?”

  “Yeah,” Nothing affirmed, “Get her cleaned up, we got this.” I nodded and it was back to the bathroom. I drew a tub full of water this time. Shower just wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t hold herself up. She felt so small and so delicate in my arms. She was way too thin and needed at the very least ten to fifteen pounds put on her just to make her look healthy again. I think it would take even more than that for her to actually be healthy though. I would ask the doc before he took off back up north to be sure.

  She roused a bit when I put her in the bath and she reached for me, scrabbling at me to keep her out of the water.

  “Faith, Faith! Easy, Darlin’, I got you. Just take it easy,” she focused on me for a moment and whatever it was, this thin and tenuous bond we had going on, it was there and she settled, whimpering, into the warm bathwater.

  “You good, Brother?” Nothing called from out in the bedroom.

  “Yeah! I got this.” I held Faith against me, so she wouldn’t slip under and I took care of her.

  Chapter 4

  Faith

  I felt like I was dying. If there was ever any mystery surrounding what dying felt like, it was certainly dispelled… this had to be what death felt like. I was suddenly afraid that maybe I was already dead. That maybe I had already passed through the gates of Hell and I was burning. Maybe this would never end. Maybe this was what it was going to be for all of eternity. This fiery burning ache. This feeling like fire ants had gotten beneath my skin and were eating me alive, one nerve ending at a time.

  I whimpered and hot tears leaked across my skin at the corners of my eyes and even that hurt. I opened my eyes and he was there. I blinked and tried to focus and when I did, he was still there. He was good. So very good to me. He took care of me, and was so careful with me; like the boy had been my last working night. My last night as one of their whores. I felt for the wrist band and cried out. It was gone.

  “Oh hey, hey, it’s okay!”

  Leather and metal were pressed into my fingertips, beneath the wristband his hand felt warm and alive. I grasped it and blinked and tried to focus on him again. Summer skies smiled out from his blue eyes and his other hand wrapped around my one. He cradled my hand and the wristband between the both of his own, as he squatted down beside the bed.

  “Am… am I dying?” I asked, and fresh hot tears slipped free.

  “No. No, Darlin’, it just feels that way…”

  “Promise.”

  “Promise you what, Baby Girl?”

  “Promise me I’m not dying, I don’t want to die.” I sobbed. It was true. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to see my sisters again. I wanted to live and do so many things, something; anything, with the rest of my life. I wanted so badly to know this man who selflessly took care of me and made me feel safe again.

  “Shh, you’re not dying. You’re not gonna die. You’re okay, Baby Girl. This is normal for day three.”

  I closed my eyes… what had happened to days one and two?

  Chapter 5

  Marlin

  “What’s your name?” she asked softly and I reached back and pushed her hair off her face so I could see her better.

  “My name?” I asked, surprised, “Didn’t I ever tell you?” I immediately internally chastised myself for the casual touching. It was tough to remember not to do it when all I wanted to do was comfort her.

  “If you did, I don’t remember…” She looked up at me, huddled small and in on herself. She’d tucked herself into the corner of the large, triangular bath, next to the wall closest to the outside edge. I was sitting on the outside, back against the side of the step and short tiled wall leading up into the large bath that was big enough for three. I twisted so I could see her. My fatigued body didn’t like the position so I adjusted so I was sitting alongside the tub, leaning against it. I propped my chin in my hand and kept my eyes on her face.

  “Boys call me Marlin,” I said finally when she kept staring, waiting for an answer. She frowned slightly.

  “Like the fish?” she asked and I smiled. She was finally lucid again. Looked like Faith had pulled through and was one with the rest of the world, for the most part.

  “Yeah, exactly like the fish. It’s what I do. I run a sport fishing operation with my other brother, caught one of the biggest Marlin’s on record about six years back. When I patched into the club, it stuck, been Marlin ever since.”

  “Club?” she asked hollowly.

  “Yeah, the motorcycle club. Your sister, Hope, she’s with our president, Cutter. We all came to get you.”

  “I know, Hope was there…” she scrubbed her face with her hands, “And another man, I remember him yelling and then there was you. You picked me up and then I was back in the van they took me in, and everything was awful and confusing…”

  Her terror back in the van when we’d got her out of there made some sense now. Being all fucked up on the opiates, she’d probably had a flashback. Past and present melding into one awful big tangle of line that was so snarled there wasn’t nothing for it but to cut it and start fresh. I sighed inwardly. Nothing could be done except explaining things some so they made sense for her now. Couldn’t take the fear or the pain away, the unpleasant memories, but maybe giving her the tools to properly process the truth of things now, would help the raw fear of a week ago and more scab over and heal quicker.

  “Think that was the drugs messin’ with your mind, Baby Girl. Can I tell you what happened? Maybe it’ll help some?” She stared me in the eye and finally nodded slowly, so I told her. About how her sister had gotten the call and how we’d gone looking. I skipped some of the gory details, leaving it at we’d found out about the house. Not how or why or what’d been done to get that information… She stared into the mound of bubbles around her, providing her the illusion of modesty as I spoke. She didn’t interrupt but I could just see her wheels turning. She was soaking up the story like a sponge.

  “Captain called me from out front, I came in and your sister had a hold of you. I’m the only one of our crew that’s had to deal with addiction, even second hand like I did with Danny, so I picked you up and took you out of there.”

  “The van…”

  “Set you off like a firework,” I nodded in agreement. “But that’s okay. You had a good reason for it, and that’s gonna happen. You been through a lot, Faith. We’re going to get you some help. One step at a time.”

  “I still don’t understand, you don’t know me… why are you helping me?”

  It was a valid question, but none of the answers I had were real satisfying… because I liked her sister, because my Captain had asked me to, because I was a nice guy, but mostly and most truthfully it was likely to fix past mistakes that could never be fixed. Because I’d fuckin’ failed and my brother was dead… Then the reality set in, the hard truth: because every time she looked at me with those beautiful eyes, the color of the waters around here that I loved so damn much, I was like a drowning man that didn’t want to come up for air. None of these explanations sounded real good. None of them sounded anything less than what they were, sort of creepy. So I simply pursed my lips and patted the top of the edge of the tub. Resisting the urge I had to give her knee a reassuring squeeze.

  She didn’t need me touching her. No matter how much I wanted to gather her up, hold her close and keep the horrors away from her, I couldn’t do that. I had to fight every instinct I had to do just that. It was basic human instinct. You saw someone hurting, you put your arms around them. You held them and soothed them, except what do you do in a case like this? When every touch she’d endured over the last couple of years was for someone else’s gratification?

  Her clear, bright eyes roved my face and something flashed in their depths.
She closed them and turned away from me, laying her head on top of her knees. It killed me that there wasn’t anything I could do.

  She’d been sleeping more, after the initial hell of detox had passed, she’d finally fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep. Over two days she’d been up in one form or another. The doc had left this morning with his crew to go back up north now that she was out of the woods. Not like I’d let him do much. Nothing either, for that matter. He’d been forced to put antibiotics through her IV a time or two when it was clear she couldn’t keep any of the pills he’d brought with him down. The anti-nausea medicine, for whatever reason, didn’t work for shit on her. The pediatric popsicles Doc had me give her to help keep her hydrated only stayed down some of the time. Of course, the red ones were her favorite, and of course, they stained like a motherfucker. Didn’t it figure? As soon as she could keep some broth and crackers in her, maybe some pudding, she’d have to start the antibiotic pills again.

  I sat with her while she soaked in her sorely needed bath, and counted the knobs of her spine and every rib, where they stood out prominently against her back. She was so thin… It’d killed me when the doc had said she was lucky, that the sexually transmitted infections she had were all fixable with a course of a couple of weeks’ worth of pills. She had three, apparently… Gonorrhea, Chlamydia and some shit I ain’t never heard of called Trichomoniasis.

  She would need regular bloodwork for a while to keep checking for HIV or any of the Hepatitis’, but he said the initial tests had come back clear, which was a real good sign. All I could keep thinking was there weren’t no good here. None at all.

  “You cool for a minute?” I asked her softly and she nodded without looking. I pulled myself up, pushing off the edge of the tub to get to my feet and felt like I was getting too old for sitting on the floor like that, which was a bitch seeing as I was only thirty-six. I went out into the main bedroom and stretched for a second before I changed the bedding. It needed it. She’d been sweating hard. That done I went back in to check on her and found her crying quietly. It broke my fucking heart that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do except for what I’d been doing all this time. I sat back down on the floor and just hung around near her. Just there, for whatever she might need.