by KJ Dahlen
“You can’t run from people like him,” Wiley insisted. “If you do, you’ll be running for the rest of your life.”
She looked over at him and smiled sadly. “I’ve been running from something all my life. I never knew what I was running from or to, but I think I do now and that’s what hurts the worst.”
“What are you talking about?” Wiley frowned as the pain inside his head began to throb.
“I don’t know why or how but you are the only person I haven’t minded being close to. When I was in your arms while we slept, I didn’t mind it so much. I know you don’t have a clue what that means but to me it means a hell of a lot. Big guys like you have always terrified me but I didn’t feel that way with you.” She leaned closer to him and brushed her lips on his. “Thank you for showing me the world might not be as big and scary as I thought it was.”
Wiley tried to sit up but his head was pounding too much. He flopped back down on his pallet bed. Pain seared through his skull and the nausea came back full force. “Oh fuuuccck...” he moaned.
Nix leaned over him and placed her fingers over his mouth. “You rest now. I hope you feel better when you wake up again.” She watched as he relaxed and when she knew he was sleeping again, she whispered, “I’ll never forget you Wiley, Parker James.”
She leaned toward him and kissed him again, then reached into his pocket for his phone. Using his thumb, she opened it and looked in his message files. She saw the name Deke and swiped it open. Then she took a snapshot and sent it to him along with a message that read, “Please help him, he’s hurt.” Next, she pinned the map app, so his friends would know where to come and find him.
Then she got up and went over to Gus’s truck. She couldn’t risk staying here any longer. She didn’t really want to take Gus’s truck though. She turned around and looked at Wiley. Then she made up her mind and unloaded his ride from the back of the truck. She’d ridden a bike before and she would do it again. Wiley’s bike was bigger than anything she’d ridden before but she couldn’t help that. She didn’t stop to ask herself why she was taking his cycle. Maybe because she wanted something of him? She shook her head. No, it was because she could speed out of town faster and have less chance of being caught. She couldn’t be caught or she would be dead.
His ride was an Indian Chieftain and she smiled as she admired it. God, the bike was like the man. Magnificent. It was big and shiny and she bet it rode like a dream. Well, she was about to find out for herself.
She walked the bike out of the warehouse and looked at the setting sun. She knew the night would hide her from eyes she didn’t want to see. If she couldn’t see them, then they couldn’t see her either. Right?
Which worked well for her. She could disappear into the night and find her own way. When she started the engine, it roared and she realized she had missed the sound of a bike engine.
When she looked up and saw what was coming, Nix panicked and took off. Several Bikers were headed her way. How had they gotten here so fast? Dammit, she couldn’t let them waylay her she needed to get out of town and NOW,
The bike was harder to handle than she thought and she almost laid it out the before she got it under control. The other bikers were almost on top of her before she took off, but she did take off.
She couldn’t look behind her, she knew that, instead she gunned the engine and drove away from the warehouse. Taking the back roads, she drove to the woods surrounding the city. Turning in the forest, she almost wiped out on the rough ground. Slowing the bike, she crawled along the trail. She thought about stopping and hiding but then she thought she needed more distance between Turnkey and herself and from those big ass bikers who were after her now.
Pushing through the woods, she even felt surprised to make it to the other side. There, she stopped short of running into the several bikers she didn’t know were there. She almost laid the bike out g again when she saw them. She quickly searched the biker’s faces and was glad to see she didn’t know any of them.
“Evening. What can I do for you gentlemen?” she tried to bluff her way out of her predicament.
A larger biker growled as he got to his feet. He was still on the cycle but now he was balancing it between his thighs. “You want to tell us why you’re on Wiley’s ride?” He growled.
“Hmmm... huh, I didn’t realize I grabbed the wrong bike.” She shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to return it then huh?” She revved the engine and tried to turn around hoping to make her escape through the woods. She didn’t get far as one of the biker’s pulled her off Wiley’s cycle.
Fear she lived with every day slammed into her and she fought back. Kicking and screaming she tried to strike out at him but she didn’t get very far. She grabbed at his cut and saw the name there....Bones.
“Hell’s bells girl, slow it down.” Bones growled. “I ain’t gonna hurt you, not yet. But you have some questions to answer before we let you go.”
Chapter Three
The girl calmed down and stayed very still as the rest of them came up to her. They’re were four of them altogether and she was definitely sweating bullets when they surrounded her. “What do you want?” she whispered.
“You sent us a photo of one of ours, down for the count. We came looking for him and find you riding away on his bike. What did you expect us to do? Let you ride away with no word?” Sam- Bones replied tersely.
Sabbath let her go and stepped back.
Deacon and Gator filled in the rest of the guys around her.
“Suppose, we all go back to the warehouse and you answer some questions for us?” Gator remarked.
She shrugged. “I’d rather not if you don’t mind. You got your man back and he needs your help now.”
“I insist.” Sam growled.
“But I really have to leave town now, while I can,” she argued.
“This is a choice you don’t have a say in little girl. Now let’s go,” Sam insisted.
She looked at their faces and nodded. She turned the engine back on and driving slowly she made her way back to the warehouse. When she got there, three men came out and watched her park the bike she’d borrowed. She stared as one of them wearing a cut that claimed him as the President of the Sin’s Bastards MC, looked over at Sam and asked, “What the fuck is going on here dad? Who the hell is she?”
“I don’t know, Deke but she tried to duck and run and that means she knows something about how Wiley got hurt,” Sam told him. “Thought you might want to talk to her, just in case Wiley can’t tell us what’s going on here.”
Deke nodded. “Raine is looking him over now. He opened his eyes as soon as we got here but he ain’t making much sense right now. It looks like he took something to the back of his head. What we don’t know yet.” He looked over at Nix and stared at her for a moment. “Are you the Nix he keeps asking about? What the hell happened to our brother?”
At the threat in his voice, the small woman began shutting down. Fear of him had her squeezing the air from her lungs and freezing her in her tracks. She looked like a scared rabbit that’d been caught out in the open and fear had paralyzed her. Like she knew, she had to run but she couldn’t get her feet to move. Then she felt someone coming up behind her and that was enough to spur her into action. She swung around and struck out.
Deacon fell to the ground as her fist hit him on the chin. He’d fallen more out of surprise than being hurt but as he rolled away from her, he saw her running from them all.
Deke growled loudly and began to chase after her. As he was twice her height and in better shape, it didn’t take him long to catch her. Grabbing her around both upper arms, he held her close to him and waited for her struggles to stop. When she slowed down, he growled in her ear, “Stop it. No one here is going to hurt you, not yet anyway.”
“But you don’t understand I have to leave! I can’t let him find me here. I have to escape,” she ranted.
“You aren’t going anywhere until we figure out what’s going on here.” Deke dropped he
r to the ground and grabbing her upper arm he led her back to the warehouse.
Raine was assisting Wiley to the doorway when he saw Deke hauling Nix back. “Let her go Deke,” Wiley grumbled. “She didn’t hurt me.”
Deke let her go and Nix just stood there staring at Wiley. When he opened his arms to her she sobbed and ran to him. Slamming into his chest, she heard Wiley groan in pain but she couldn’t let him go.
“Easy sweetheart, easy,” he whispered in her ear.
Nix couldn’t help it. She couldn’t let him go. Her arms wrapped around him and she couldn’t break her hold. He really did offer her safety of a sort.
“Come on man, we got to get him back to the clubhouse and get him cleaned up,” Raine informed the entire group. “I don’t think he needs an infection on top of a caved in head.
Just then, a pickup truck pulled up and another biker stepped out.
Iceman came around the front of the truck and looked from one group to the other.
Deke and Sam didn’t say anything, they just got busy loading Wiley’s bike in the back of the truck.
Raine assisted Wiley over to the truck. When he had him settled, Wiley called out to Nix.
She ran over to the truck and practically climbed on his lap. She wrapped her arms around his waist and placed her head on his chest.
When they were ready to go, Iceman drove them carefully back to the clubhouse. They were escorted by the rest of the group and when they got there, Deke and Sam were there to open the door and escort him into the club. Iceman and Raine came around the back of the truck as they flanked her and began walking toward the front door of the clubhouse.
Neither man touched her, so she seemed ok with that. When she entered the clubhouse, they escorted her to a chair at a table.
Raine followed Wiley and Deke down the hall to one of the bedrooms then shut the door behind them.
Nix looked around the mostly empty club and wondered where everyone was. When she’d been with her mom and the Reckless Hellions there was someone in the clubhouse all the time. Brothers and club whores at least.
She didn’t say anything but instead began looking for an escape route. She had learned a long time ago to have all her options open. Her eyes widened at the sight of the wild cats on the wall. They looked as if they were coming out of the wall, ready to do you harm. Whoever had painted them was a true artist. The white lion sparked something deep inside her and Nix could almost feel herself settling down. He calmed something in her broken soul. She had been alone for most, if not all her life and when she looked at the big cat, somehow she didn’t feel so alone anymore.
A large man finally sat down at the table and looked at her. He’d seen her looking at the paintings on the wall. “My name is Iceman, just so we are introduced.”
She nodded. “Nix.”
He motioned his head at the Murals. “The tiger’s name is Rufus and the lion’s name is Diablo.”
Nix like that he introduced himself and then she smiled at the Cat’s names. “They almost look real don’t they?” she whispered, still staring at the lion he’d called Diablo.
“They are protectors of the club brought to us by our President’s woman.”
“Is there a story behind them?” she asked after a long pause.
“Seems when she was alone in the world, they protected her somehow. Like in her dreams or something. But she’s got talent with a brush for sure. There is always a story behind everything,” Iceman told her.
She shrugged. “Not everyone or everything has a story. Sometimes it just is.”
Iceman just looked at her and nodded. “Every single one of us has a past, its part of who we are. Our past has helped to shape who we are today and who we hope to become in the future. Some of the choices we make when we’re young come back to bite us in the ass but they were the choices we made at the time. We can’t change them now but we have to learn to live with the results. We can’t run from our past anymore than we can go back and change it. Sometimes we have to stand and fight for what we believe in.”
Nix turned her head and stared at the man. It was almost as if he knew something about her and he wanted her to confront the past not run away from it. She began to tremble as she felt the walls closing in on her.
She grew up with the Reckless Hellions MC, they were all she knew the first thirteen years of her life. That sort of life was all she’d known. Some if not most of what the MC had done, she figured out wasn’t right but that’s all she knew.
She never thought she’d be sitting here in another clubhouse waiting to tell the story of what happened last night. If they were like the Reckless Hellions, they might punish her for letting one of their own get hurt. She hadn’t done that but would that really matter in the long run?
It was a short time later when two of the men who’d walked into Wiley’s room came back, she read the patches on their cuts. One was the President and the older guy, the one Deke had called his dad, his patch said Bones. She didn’t know either of them and shifted nervously in her seat.
They stopped opposite of where she sat. They just stood there for a moment before the one called Deke asked, “What the hell happened to our brother?”
Nix shrugged after looking at them for a moment. “He got whapped in the head with a baseball bat. He only took one hit but it was enough to lay him out.”
“Who whapped him?” Deke demanded angerly as his hands curled into fists. When Nix wouldn’t answer his question, Deke crossed his arms over his chest and demanded, “Who?”
Just then, Wiley’s door opened and he stumbled down the hall. He saw Nix being questioned and he frowned at the look on her face. Her face had the look of sheer terror on it.
Nix lifted her head and looked over at him and saw he was clean again. He had changed his clothes and showered. His hair was wet but his eyes were clear. She wanted to run to him but she didn’t think the men around her would allow that. “Are you ok?” she whispered as her eyes continued to devour him.
“I’ll be fine sweetheart.” He opened his arms and mumbled, “Come here.”
Nix was off her chair and running toward him. Slamming into him, she heard him groan again. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whispered over and over again.
Wiley wrapped his arms around her and just held her tight. “It is ok. Let’s go sit down before I fall down.”
She moved with him when he moved over to the table and sat down. She tried to sit on her own chair but Wiley wasn’t having that. He hauled her on his lap and that was fine with Nix. Wiley closed his eyes for a moment drawing in her scent, then he opened them and looked over at his President. “I really don’t know what happened last night. I went to Gus’s because I heard a rumor of another MC visiting town. I wanted to know what they were doing here without checking in with us. I saw three men sitting at a table and they didn’t really look all that friendly. Gus told me they didn’t mean no harm and that they were on their way out of town.” Wiley shrugged. “Then they disappeared on me and I thought that was that. I walked out of Gus’s and their bikes were gone, then I heard something in the back and went to check it out. That’s when everything gets a little hazy. Someone hit me upside the head and then I don’t know what happened. Just before I hit the pavement, I thought I heard a scream and then something scrapping across the parking lot but I can’t be sure of that.”
Nix laid her head on Wiley’s chest and didn’t say anything at all. She knew somehow that he was her safety net.
Wiley looked down at the top of her head and nodded. “She told me his name was Turnkey and that he was part of the Hell’s Wrath MC. I wasn’t his target. I was just someone in the wrong place wrong time. She tells me she’s the one this Turnkey bastard is looking for.”
“Why is he looking for you?” Deke asked Nix. When she wouldn’t answer his question, he turned to Wiley. “Why is he looking for her?”
Wiley nodded at her. “I wasn’t the only man he’s taken down with his fucking bat. She was witn
ess to the same stunt four years ago but he didn’t stop at one blow. He beat the man to death.”
“Fuckin hell.” Deke swore as he looked around the room.
Sam nodded as did Deacon, Raine and Iceman. They had heard of the Hell’s Wrath MC and this didn’t sound like something they would do.
Sam looked over at Deke and asked, “You really think Bam Bam would do something like this?”
Deke shook his head and glared at Nix. “Bam Bam is the President of the Hell’s Wrath MC. He’s a good man and I can’t see him ordering this sort of thing.”
Nix didn’t want to look at Deke but she made herself turn her head. Her body trembled as she studied the man. “I don’t think this Bam Bam knew what Turnkey was up too. He beat that man to death for no reason.”
“What do you mean no reason?” Deke asked as he turned to his men then back to her.
Nix shook her head. “He had no reason the hurt that man. He didn’t even know his name.”
“And how the hell do you know that?” Sam asked.
“I was working in the back of this bar when Turnkey and his friends came inside. The man was just drinking his beer when Turnkey bumped into him. The guy spilled his beer and Turnkey turned on him. The guy backed off right away but an hour later when he’d had enough he was leaving when Turnkey called him out. The guy tried to ignore him but Turnkey and his friend followed his outside. That’s when things went to shit in hurry. Turnkey started beating the shit out of him while JoJo went over to his bike. He brought back Turnkey’s bat and the guy never stood a chance. He’d been keeping up punch for punch but Turnkey likes to cheat. He beat that man to death and walked away like it didn’t matter.”
“How the hell did he leave you behind?” Iceman asked. “I don’t think the man would have wanted to leave a potential witness to his crime.”
