Tattered & Torn

by A. J. Downey

  “It’s not your fault,” I whispered, the revelation leaving me barely able to draw breath let alone speak.

  “It’s not yours either, Honey,” he said and swallowed hard. I stared at my plate and clutched my shaking hands beneath the table. We sat for a few more moments and finally began to eat before our food grew too cool to be palatable. Neither one of us could think of anything to say. I know I couldn’t. So much of what Ghost said hurt to hear. I hurt for him, I hurt for me and it was just… all of it so incredibly tragic and at the same time just so stupid. If only we’d talked to one another.

  We finished our meal in silence. He held my coat for me and I shrugged into it.

  “We have a bit of a drive ahead of us,” he said quietly when he opened my door to his pewter gray pickup for me.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  He smiled and it was tinged with a deep melancholy, “You’ll see.”

  I got into the truck. Truthfully, I was tired and emotional and I just wanted to go home and to bed but Ghost looked like he needed this and so I sat and watched the scenery pass as he drove us out on the highways and finally wound us along back roads up into the hills. We must have driven for over an hour before we finally turned off the paved road and went deeper into the trees. I swallowed hard, my anxiety rising, before finally the trees broke and he pulled off to the side into a clearing beside this great big canvas covered thing. We sat high on a bluff overlooking darkness, lights twinkled far below and far off into the distance.

  “Wait here,” he got out of the truck and went into the dark and pulled the canvas up at the back. He knelt and did something or other and then came to the truck and opened my door. I got down.

  “What is it?” I asked. He went to the thing and folded the canvas off it revealing an old fashioned brass bed, made with thick blankets and an army of pillows like something out of a magazine, in the middle of the woods on a cliff under a star shot sky.

  “Ghost…” my voice was hollow with fear. I wasn’t ready for anything intimate.

  “Shhhh, it’s okay Shelly, it’s not what you think. Tonight is the Zephyr meteor shower. I was just going to bring you up here with a blanket but decided that wasn’t good enough.” There was a sound like fans running and I looked to him.

  “What’s that noise?” I asked, stalling for time, trying to think… Ghost had brought a bed, out onto a cliff in the middle of the woods just so I could watch a meteor shower!?

  “Rigged up some car batteries to run some electric blankets to keep us warm.” He held out a hand to me and waved me forward. I took a halting step and he drew back the blankets.

  “You did this all for me?” my voice was hollow with disbelief.

  “Come on, sit,” I sat on the edge of the bed which was plush and comfortable. He had really hauled an entire bed, mattress, box spring, frame and all up a mountainside. Ghost knelt and unzipped first one boot then the other, sliding each from my feet.

  “You want to keep your coat?” it was cold up here but the coat would be too bulky. I gave it up. He got into the bed on the other side after taking off his boots and covered us up. Our breath fogged the icy air and I turned my eyes to the heavens.

  “Shelly?” he asked after a moment.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I hold you? Please?” I nodded after a brief moment of contemplation and sat up, scooting closer. His arm went around me and I laid my head on his shoulder. It was warm under the blankets. Heat radiating from the bottom as well as down from the top. I gasped as the first glimmer of white streaked across the sky.

  “Make a wish Princess,” he murmured.

  I didn’t have it in me to smart off, to tell him I wished he would stop calling me ‘Princess’, so I settled for the truth.

  “I don’t know what to wish for.”

  “You can wish for anything.”

  “I wished for you for a long time,” I admitted.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I had it in my head for a real long time that you were a smart girl, that you would figure it out and ditch those other guys and just want me and only me. But that wasn’t fair. You weren’t and aren’t a mind reader.” I laughed a bit brokenly. No. I wasn’t. But neither was Ghost.

  “I stopped… you know? I kept hoping that you would see it, I didn’t exactly make it easy on you, I wanted you to see the real me but I didn’t exactly go out of my way to show you.” I gasped as three more glittering arcs made their way across the sky.

  “Now you wish,” I said.

  “I wish I’d paid better attention,” he murmured.

  “Are you now?”

  “I think so.” His arm tightened around me and I rolled my head back against his shoulder to look at him in the dark. I caught a slight glimmer out of the corner of my eye and smiled a little.

  “Stars are up there, Beautiful,” he said gently and I turned my attention back to the sky. A moment later his voice came again, softly inquisitive, “Tell me something about yourself? Something no one else knows…”

  “What like a secret?”

  “Yeah something like that.”

  I chewed my bottom lip thoughtfully for a moment or two, then sighed… I didn’t know what to say. I was almost afraid to open up like that, I’d kept myself closed off for so long so I wouldn’t get hurt that opening up was almost unheard of. Like the door was rusted shut on me and I really had to work at it.

  Ghost shook me a little and as if he’d read my mind said to me, “Come on Princess. I showed you mine now you show me just a little something of yours. Be brave, I swear to you on my honor, I won’t tell a soul.” I could hear the sly grin in his voice and it was so like something I would have said to him in the time before that I laughed a little. I pursed my lips, took a deep breath and took the leap of faith deciding that I had to at least try to do something different… Didn’t I?

  Chapter 10

  Ghost…

  “No one really knows what happened that night,” she said softly and I tried not to freeze up. She was right, I mean no one really did. We knew she’d been attacked. Knew she’d been… hurt… but she’d remained silent on the details. She hadn’t even been the one to tell us who. That had been one of the Suicide’s girls. I lay patiently beneath her, eyes fixed on the star spattered sky, and watched a couple streak across the midnight blue while she gathered her thoughts.

  “I left you and Rev by the fire and went to a different one. I was standing with the woods behind me, just a little apart from everyone when he grabbed me. Sparks, I mean. He dragged me back into the woods and I bit him…” her story spilled from her lips in a rush of agony, her voice raw with fear and pain. I held her warm and close and listened and tried to let the rising tide of anger go. She needed me here, to listen to her, to hold her and be here for her. Not to fix this. There was no fixing this, but by hearing her out maybe she would start to heal some.

  Her story took a while, and the more she spoke, the more my heart sank with the weight of her sadness. She spoke in sensations and emotions and used words no one should ever have to apply to themselves or to describe anything that had happened to them. She fell silent for a moment or two and I realized that she wept, only when she raised a hand to wipe the tears away.

  “The worst part was knowing…” she took a halting, hitching breath and pressed on, the words spilling from her in a rush as if she were terrified to speak them, that once spoken aloud that everything would change violently and irrevocably.

  “Knowing that if you didn’t want me before, that there was no way you were going to want me after… after what he did to me.” She shuddered in my grasp and I stared hard at the glimmering lights above us and I felt so incredibly small and it had absolutely nothing to do with the vastness of the universe pressing down on us. No, it had everything to do with the fact that I had presented myself in such a way to her that she would or could ever think such a thing of me.

  “Oh Honey, oh Baby no,” I reached across her with the arm that wasn’t pinned
beneath her and grazed a thumb along the soft skin of her cheek. She looked up at me startled, her sapphire eyes luminous and filled with the reflected stars above us. She was so lovely, so beautiful in that moment I couldn’t not…

  I wasn’t sure it was the best thing to do right then, or if it was the right thing to do but it felt right, so I tentatively brought my lips to hers. The touch was so soft it was barely there and I couldn’t help but feel a slight surge of triumph. I’d been right. Absolutely one hundred percent right. Shelly’s lips were softer than rose petals beneath my own. When she didn’t flinch, when she didn’t jerk away I allowed my eyes to slip shut so that I could revel in the sensation of her soft mouth against my own.

  I kissed her upper lip and then her lower, chaste little presses, my tongue kept firmly out of the mix. Shelly let me kiss her, relaxing into my hold like she’d finally come home and I couldn’t exactly deny that it was how I felt too. I drew back from the gentle kiss slowly and searched her face which was filled with surprise and wonder.

  “Princess, I’ve wanted you from the moment I first saw you. I just let my own hang ups get in the way. I am so sorry for that, for what happened to you,” she closed her eyes and looked pained for a fraction of a moment before she opened them, her gaze pleading for me to go on. To finish what I had to say in hopes that it would somehow make things better. I hoped it did, but words weren’t going to be enough alone for this, this would take time and care and commitment to be healed and I was startled to realize that I could do all of those things, that I wanted to.

  “I’m here now. I’m not sure how things are gonna work, or when or how things are gonna happen but I wanna try. Are you okay with that?” Shelly took her eyes from mine and lifted them towards the Heavens. She quirked her beautiful smart assed half smile that I hadn’t seen in months and dropped her eyes back to mine.

  “I guess wishes do come true,” she smarted and I laughed. The air lightened between us, some of the tension was gone and it felt as if a fragile truce had been declared that was strengthening by the moment. We watched the stars cascade across the skies for hours, comfortable in my grand gesture of truce and I was very glad for the random stroke of genius that’d made me think of it.

  I held her under that canopy of stars as we watched them glitter and streak across the sky. Sometimes there were long spates of time between star falls and we murmured softly to one another, telling stories and truths about ourselves. Learning about one another.

  “What is it that made you decide to be an accountant?” I’d asked her at one point. She was quiet for a little bit and finally asked me:

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t Honey,” I’d smiled as I said it and she heard it, because she chuckled.

  “When I was introduced to numbers and logic it was a revolution to me. I remember thinking to myself, you mean if I do this and that that it will always equal that!? It was unbelievably exciting to have something there that I could always count on. Numbers don’t lie. They’re a constant thing that tells a story in a very precise and chronological order. I love that. So simple, so useful and I don’t know… It just appealed to me so strongly,” she rolled her head back to look at me and met my lips with her forehead. I pressed a lingering kiss there.

  “What was that for?” she asked softly, and I could hear the confusion in her tone.

  “Let me ask you something,” I said, changing the subject.

  “Okay,” she smiled and it made her beautiful.

  “If you could be anything, do anything at all, what would you want?” she turned her attention skyward and thought about it. I mean really thought about it, which I appreciated about her.

  “Honestly I’m sort of doing it. I mean, I love this club and all of the people in it. I love my cousin and having a big family. I always wanted a big family. Growing up it was just me and my mom and Reaver and sometimes Aunt Candy, that’s Reaver’s mom,” she gasped at a streak of starlight that was exceptionally bright and even I oohed with her when it seemed to come so close that you could actually hear it fizzle through the atmosphere.

  We were quiet for a time, simply watching the stars fall across the sky. She cuddled closer into my side and it made me smile to myself. I once read somewhere that it took a man 8.75 seconds to fall in love but it took a woman 15 days. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed in all of that, but here, right now with the vulnerable and open version of Shelly Jordan in my arms. It seemed plausible. At least a little.

  “What was I saying?” she asked, voice still distant and tinged with wonder.

  “Big family,” I prompted.

  “That’s what the MC is for me. You wanted a secret?” she swallowed hard.

  “Only if you want to tell me,” I said gently.

  “I stopped but I couldn’t exactly stop you know? Everyone earns their keep in the club, if you’re not someone’s Ol’ Lady then you’re fair game. I can’t hold out forever Ghost and losing the MC… I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to lose my family. It may put the ‘fun’ back in dysfunctional but it’s the only true family I’ve ever known and…”

  “Shhhh, I know that now. I guess I’d never really thought about what it was to be a woman in the MC. We’re a bunch of cavemen.” She laughed abruptly.

  “Yeah, a bunch of really hot cavemen. It’s not bad with the Sacred Hearts though. It was something to do, you know? It was better than being alone and I know it’s stupid but I kept hoping,” she stopped and huffed out a nervous laugh. I closed my eyes and sighed out.

  “You kept hoping one of them would see you and want you enough to make it just about you,” I finished which was exactly what I’d wanted from her. I silently cursed myself in every language I knew how to swear in for being just so damned blind and stupid. If only I’d hung up my hang ups and communicated like a fucking grown up… I mean shit! Shelly was barely into her twenties, she was young, I didn’t have a fucking excuse.

  “Yeah,” she admitted softly and the fans clicked off. The batteries powering the blankets had run dry. I shifted slightly.

  “It’s still warm!” she protested and I stilled, “Can we stay just a little while longer?” I smiled to myself and nodded.

  “Yeah Shelly, we can stay just tell me if you start to get cold. I want to make sure you’re good, that you’re taken care of.”

  She sat up and leaned on my chest and searched my face. I couldn’t see hers as dark as it was and with the backdrop of stars behind her. I wondered how much she could see mine but she must have been able to pick out my features well enough because she kissed me, a timid thing at first which grew into a beautiful meeting of the souls.

  Her mouth was soft and sweet against my own. Asking for permission in tentative touches for more. I gave her everything she wanted, slowly, patiently following her cues. I cradled her face in the palms of my hands and opened to her at the first flick of her tongue against my lower lip. She tasted sweet and pure and like everything I’d imagined. Sweeter than honey, decadent and rich. I let her set the pace and Lord knows, that was really hard for me. I wanted so badly to press her back into the mattress, to control the kiss to mark her and make her mine but I couldn’t. I’d spook her and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted her to be comfortable. I wanted her to be all right and to trust me and things were so fragile, so new as it was… She whimpered softly into my mouth and I drew back.

  “You okay Babe?” I asked, breathlessly.

  “Yes,” but her voice was strained.

  “Talk to me Honey,” I stroked my thumbs across the so soft skin of her cheeks and she laughed a bit bitterly, a wounded, broken sound that hurt to hear.

  “I want so badly to be normal again. To be the girl I was before and to… I can’t,” she sounded strained.

  “Okay, okay, shhhh it’s okay. Baby I’m way passed any of that right now. I will take what you give me and be grateful for it. You go at your pace Baby Girl, not mine, not anyone else�
�s. Okay?” she laughed and it was a lighter but derisive sound.

  “This is so backwards and confusing,” she said, tone much sobered.

  “Yeah I guess it is,” I agreed wryly.

  “How did we go from one extreme to another?” she asked.

  “We both know the answer to that,” I said and pulled her back down into a light embrace. She felt so good in my arms.

  “Yeah. I guess we do,” and the sadness was back again. I sighed softly and kissed her forehead and we both turned our eyes to the sky until it became too cold to stay any longer.

  Chapter 11

  Shelly…

  “Awww! It sounds so romantic!” Chandra gently teased me. I bowed my head and continued arranging these roll things Ashton called pop-overs on a tray and nodded.

  “I guess it kind of was,” I admitted. Ashton smiled at me from over at the oven.

  “I didn’t know Derek had it in him,” she murmured and Chandra laughed.

  It was Thursday and Thanksgiving and the women folk were all in the club house kitchen while the men sat around the lined up tables drinking, the football game projected on a sheet duct taped to the wall behind the stage. Some setup Data had pulled off. I smiled a little wryly to myself. No one knew it but Data was a gentle lover with a soft touch behind closed doors. It had surprised the hell out of me. I figured he would be as impersonal about fucking as he was when it came to everything else he did. I sighed at the memory and was startled by Reaver who swept into the kitchen and hugged me from behind.