Stand (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 7)

by Susan Fanetti

  “It’s not a problem. It’s called candyflipping, and it’s awesome, really. Everything feels…perfect.” There wasn’t much humor in her, but she laughed anyway. “It’s pretty much the only time I don’t want to kill…somebody.”

  His arm tightened around her, and he kissed the top of her head. “Ah, honey.”

  “Anyway. That’s what I remember, until I woke up here, and Caleb was babysitting me. He told me what happened—which, apparently, he told you, too.”

  “He did. He called this morning. He’s worried about you. So am I, and I’m not leaving here until we figure out what to do.”

  Leaning on his chest, under the shield of his arm, hearing his voice rumble against her ear, Cecily felt that strange, searing overlay again, like she was with her father, but not. Memory and reality fusing unevenly. She thought she might cry again, but she bit down on her tongue and shoved the tears away.

  “I want my dad.”

  “I know. I wish I was a better substitute. I’m going to find the bastard that did this. I’m going to cut his dick off and choke him with it.”

  “Please stop.”

  “What?” He lifted her head and stared down at her.

  “Everybody keeps saying I was raped. I wasn’t.”

  “You called for help, Cissy. You wanted to get away, and Apollo and Caleb found you getting fucked while you were unconscious. What do you call it?”

  Not that. Anything but that. “It can’t be rape. It can’t be.” The tears she’d staved off came back, and she tried to push away from Maverick before she lost control of them, but he wouldn’t let her go. When she tried to fight for her freedom, he overpowered her at once, closing her up in a bear hug and dragging her onto his lap.

  “You’re only a victim if you run from it. If you face it, you’re a survivor. If you go for justice, you’re a fighter. It’s not like you to run, Cecily. You’re a fighter. You face your shit. So face it right now. You were raped.”

  “NO!” She bucked, but he was strong, and she barely moved.

  “Yes, honey. You were.”

  “Stop! I wasn’t! I wanted it!”

  “Then why are you so upset?”

  “Because…because…” Because if she’d let herself get raped, just lain there while some stranger stuck a needle in her arm and shot her full of junk, while more than one stranger—how many?—stuck their dicks in her, then what the hell was she? What had she become? She’d wanted to be a poet, for fuck’s sake. She’d wanted to go to grad school and maybe teach college. Who was she now?

  Nothing but a black hole.

  She’d had drunken encounters and woken in beds she was ashamed to have woken in, but never had something like this happened. She’d always been in control, she’d always chosen. She’d always remembered wanting it at the time, even if she’d regretted it the next morning. She’d known what she was doing.

  The fight ran out of her and she let the tears have their way. “I need my dad. I need my dad.”

  Maverick held on, rocking her subtly. When the crying jag was over and she lay spent in his arms, he said, “I want you to pack a bag or two. You’re staying with us.”

  “I can’t. I have to housesit.”

  He laughed. “I think this house will be in better shape if it stands empty and we run by a couple times a week and water the plants, don’t you?”

  It was true. She was a shit housesitter, like everything else. “I suck so bad.”

  “Cecily, enough. Stop beating yourself up and start figuring out how to fix shit.”

  Like that was so simple.

  ~oOo~

  “You looked a little washed out, cookie. Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.” Cecily kissed her mother’s cheek and gave her a perfunctory hug. “You look good, though. You’re back at the Sunspot?”

  Her mother was a fair redhead, like she was, but she liked to have a little color, so she went to a tanning salon for an airbrushed bronzing. She hadn’t been in years, though.

  After her dad died, her mother had rolled up like a hedgehog and quit the world. She’d had just enough energy left to keep her business going, barely, but she’d left everything else to rot and her daughters to fend for themselves. Maybe she’d thought they were okay, both away at college, but she’d been wrong.

  Cecily thought about half of it was theatrics, anyway—walking through the world like a zombie, not even bothering to put makeup on or color her roots. Her mom hadn’t loved her dad nearly as much as she acted like she had. Or if she had, it wasn’t until he was dead that she’d really shown it, and that was just a little too late.

  But they’d fought those fights already and had finally decided to just be whatever with each other. Make nice. Cecily only had one parent left, so she smiled and had lunch and made small talk.

  Brushing her fingertips over her glowing cheek, her mom smiled. “New place, just down the street. I like their product better than Sunspot. Not so orangey.”

  “It looks good. You look good.” Cecily sat at the linen-draped table and spread her linen napkin over her lap.

  Capri, a fussy little place near Utica Square, was her mother’s favorite restaurant. Near her boutique in the square, the place had become a regular haunt, and the staff treated her like a special guest. She even had a regular table. The menu read like a Ladies Who Lunch Gazette—fourteen different salads, twelve different desserts, and three entrees. And a four-page wine and cocktail menu.

  It wasn’t really Cecily’s kind of place, but whatever. It was a free meal.

  “Thanks, cookie. I’m feeling pretty good lately. I miss Maddie, though.”

  “Yeah.” Maddie was with Ox in Mexico, living out the end of his life. They’d left in February, and she would come back after he was gone. Cecily didn’t think she was alone in hoping Maddie stayed away for a very long time. “Have you heard from Clara?”

  “Just a quick email. She’s not coming home again this summer.” Her mom sighed and sipped at her wine. “She’s only been home two weeks in almost two years. Has she talked to you at all lately?”

  Yeah, she had. They exchanged emails about once a week. Clara had no intention of coming home ever again, not to stay, and not even for a long visit. Certainly not for the summer. Maverick said that Cecily was running away from her problems, but that was bullshit. She was right here, in the middle of them all, and they were grinding her into sand. It was her baby sister who’d run. Clara acted like she didn’t even have people in Tulsa anymore.

  Of course, Cecily wouldn’t have come home, either, if she hadn’t tanked her senior year of college and blown her chance to go to grad school. If her father hadn’t died. Clara had had a rough year, too, but it had been her sophomore year, and she’d been able to take an extra year and undo the damage.

  But Cecily and Clara kept each other’s secrets and had each other’s back, especially against their nosy mother. “Next year is her senior year, Mom, and she’s got that internship. She can’t come home. You know that.”

  “I know. I just miss her. I was thinking maybe I’d go up to see her for a weekend again.”

  “Because that went so well last time.”

  Her mom’s blue eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t be a bitch, Cissy. It’s getting old.”

  The smart thing, the right thing, to do would be to apologize and get on with lunch. But Cecily was tired. She’d had people in her face for days now, and she wanted them all to leave her alone. Maverick was expecting her to go to his house after work, and stay there so he could monitor her or something, but fuck that. She wanted to be alone.

  “Clara doesn’t want you up there, Mom. She wants to be alone. Leave her alone.” She picked up her wine glass and finished it.

  Her mom stared at her own glass for a long time without saying anything. Then she set the glass down and lifted her handbag from the corner of the chair. “I’m not that hungry today. Let’s skip lunch this time.” She pulled a fifty from her wallet and set it on the table.
“Call me if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll see you next month.”

  Just enough guilt stung Cecily that she said, “Mom, wait,” as her mother stood.

  “No, cookie. I’m feeling pretty okay these days, and it’s been hard to climb up here. I’m not going to let you drag me down into your crap. But I’m here when you need me.” She bent and kissed her cheek. “I love you.”

  Her mother walked away. Cecily sat there at this foufy restaurant, alone. The server came up with the food they’d ordered, his brow furrowing when he saw his regular customer sashaying away.

  “Yeah,” Cecily sighed. “We’re not going to need that.”

  ~oOo~

  She’d wanted to get her MFA and be a creative writing professor. Instead, she worked at the Tulsa Adult Education and Enrichment Center—the Tulsa Ed Center for short—teaching classes in basic literacy, basic writing, business writing, and GED preparation. She was lucky to get the job, too. For a few months, it had looked like she’d spend her life as a mobile mannequin at La Luciole, her mother’s boutique, modeling the merchandise while she sold it. Blech.

  Her gig at La Luciole had kept her flush through high school and during college summers, and she still filled in when her mom needed extra bodies, but Cecily had never enjoyed that work. She was not wired for retail.

  Teaching suited her better. So this wasn’t her dream job, and wouldn’t make her rich, but it would do. It was the only part of her life that currently made sense.

  Few of the staff had a Monday through Friday, nine to five schedule, so it wasn’t until after lunch, right before the staff meeting, that Cecily saw Clark and Ginger and could ask them what they knew.

  And what an awkward thing to ask. Hey, do you know who took me from the club and dropped me at a crack house to get filled full of junk and raped?

  Raped. She’d been raped. The air started to echo again, like it did every time the words rose in her mind, but she shook it away before it got overwhelming. She’d been raped, and too many people knew about it to pretend otherwise. It seemed the whole fucking planet was sure of it.

  She and Clark shared an office. Since she’d skipped lunch, she was at her desk, pretending to work, when he came in. Offering him the perkiest smile she could find, she said, “Hey!”

  His answering smile was casual and normal. “Hey. You get home okay Saturday? I should have called, but Becca was so hung over I had to take her to the ER.”

  “Oh shit. I’m sorry. Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. But no more candyflipping, I think. Or at least not with Jell-O shots and those cinnamon things at the end. That was the last straw, I think.”

  “I don’t remember the cinnamon things. I don’t remember anything after doing the blue shots, and Becca and I shooting them into each other’s mouth.”

  He laughed, and looked a little misty at the recollection of his wife and officemate kissing with gelatinous booze in their mouths.

  LSD and Molly made the world very strange.

  Then he sat up. “Wait. You don’t remember anything after that? You don’t remember…shit, you don’t remember…what was his name?”

  Cecily found herself literally on the edge of her seat, waiting for Clark to fill in a new piece of her humiliating puzzle.

  “Shit, I don’t remember. It started with a K, I think. Kyle, or Kale, or—”

  “Cole?” It wasn’t really a memory, but that name was suddenly loud in her head.

  “Cole, yeah. He was all over you. You were into it. But you don’t remember?”

  “No. Nothing. Do you know how I left the club?”

  “Yeah. With him. Ginger tried to stop you, but…you know how you get.”

  Yeah, she knew how she got. Belligerent. Sometimes mean, even to friends. She was a total loss as a human being, once you started to lay out the pros and cons. All cons.

  Clark wasn’t done, though. “Actually, you were…I don’t know. Different. Really fucked up. More than the rest of us. And you don’t remember anything at all?”

  “No. What did he look like?”

  He laughed. “I’m sorry, Cecily. I was rolling hard. I barely knew what Becca looked like that night. He was blond, maybe? My height?…I remember he came up after your little Jell-O snowball thing you did, and it wasn’t long after that that you were…”

  Cecily barely noticed that Clark had stopped talking. Dots were connecting in her head, not memories but evidence, crashing together like bumper cars, and she was nauseated and lost in a swirl of echoing, overwhelming whine.

  Her friend’s dots connected not long after hers did, and through the loud fog, she heard him say, “Jesus, Cecily. He dosed you, didn’t he? Fuck!”

  If a stranger at a downtown dance club had dosed her, why had Apollo and Caleb rescued her from an 11th Street drug den? Why had she had more than one stranger’s pubes on her? Why had somebody shot her full of heroin? Had he dosed her to take her there and leave her? Why? Had he given her to those people? Why would he?

  Oh god. Had he fucking sold her?

  Cecily barely made it to her wastebasket before she puked.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Caleb was coming up on his first anniversary of being a patched member of the Brazen Bulls, but he still got butterflies when he came into the chapel and sat at the table. Half of him half expected one of the older patches, those who’d ridden him so hard during his prospect years, who’d laid fist-driven ‘discipline’ on him, might yank him out of that seat and demand to know who the fuck he thought he was, sitting at the table like he belonged there.

  He’d been patched in with Fitz and Gargoyle, but as far as he could tell, he was the only one who felt like an imposter at the table.

  A lot of his time in church was spent psyching himself up to speak, losing his chance, finding another moment, psyching himself up, losing that chance, finally getting a word out and nearly choking on the need to sound like he knew what he was talking about.

  Never did he feel dumber than at this table.

  So as he listened to Maverick speak now, when he was so much a part of the topic, Caleb crossed his arms over his chest so his brothers wouldn’t see how clenched he was. Hopefully, he looked strong instead.

  “I’ve got her at our place for now,” Maverick was saying. “She’s pretty freaked out.”

  “She’s been psycho since Dane died,” Eight Ball interjected.

  Maverick swung his head around to glare at Eight, who shrugged.

  “Just saying it like it is, bro.”

  At the head of the table, Delaney set his elbows on the gouged oak and rubbed his hands over his face. “Let me see if I can put this shit together. Cecily called you, Caleb, Saturday night.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hearing a couple chortles from his brothers, he revised. “Yeah, Prez. She was looking for Maverick.”

  “And you called Apollo. Not Mav, who she was looking for. And not me, the president of this fucking club. And I’m just hearing about this shit now, four days later.”

  Caleb tried to swallow, but his mouth was so dry his tongue almost got stuck on the roof of his mouth. He managed to keep his voice solid, though. “She didn’t want anybody to know, and it wasn’t club business. She was in trouble, and she hung up and didn’t answer when I called back. You and Mav weren’t in town yet. I needed to find her fast. Apollo was the one who’d be able to find her. And he did.”

  Shifting his attention to Apollo, Delaney continued his interrogation. “And you found what?”

  Apollo looked a little nervous himself. “I got a ping for her phone at a location just off 11th Street. We found her there. It was a rundown piece of shit place, full of people whacked out on whatever. A crack house.”

  “And how was she when you found her?” Maverick asked, his voice not steady at all. It was low and soft and heavy with rage—and that was Maverick at his scariest.

  When Apollo hesitated, Caleb screwed up his courage and faced Maverick. “She was out. She’d been shot up, and there was some
scarecrow tweaker going at her.”

  Thunder filled the room, and the table shook. Delaney was slamming his fists on the table, over and over.

  Eventually, he stopped, and he sat at the head of the table, his head down, shaking. Nobody at the table moved or spoke for long, arduous seconds. Maybe minutes.

  Finally, his voice even quieter, like the warning growl of a stalking animal, Maverick said, “Here’s what she told me last night. The clinic doctor said there was more than one guy. And she’s pretty torn up, I guess. She remembers nothing, but her friend who was at the club with her gave her some more details. It looks like she was dosed at the club and then dumped off of 11th Street and left there. Somebody there shot her up and served her up.”