Trey glanced at the teenager and then straightened before pulling Dallas to his side. "Because the Hellions are a family, kid. For a lot of my brothers and even the Honeys, the Hellions are their only family. Or the only family they value. We take care of own which means we worry about them. About their safety, about whether or not they're keeping their shi…ah, stuff together and taking care of business the way they should be. You thinking we're too much up a person's ass…I mean, butt?"
Derek nodded as Julie and Dallas smiled at Trey's corrected speech.
"Maybe we are." Trey glanced down at the woman he held and Mel saw his eyes soften. "But then, don't most families put their noses in where you don't want them to?"
Mel glanced at Der and saw he was already looking at his big brother. "Yeah, they do."
"Well, there you go!" Trey smiled wide, his dimples in full view which Mel thought lessened his pres's bad-ass look. "We still have to do a recap of Twin Falls, Hardwood, but thinking we can do it after we check on Lucille tomorrow morning. For now, getcha family home and settled in for the night."
"We made some food and Carly put it in your fridge," Dallas added with a smile. "You just have to nuke it."
Mel hadn't even thought about dinner and was grateful that the Honeys had seen to it. In fact he was grateful to the club full stop for all that had been done that day.
"Stay's in the Hum-Vee right outside in order to get Derek and Julie home," Trey advised over his shoulder as he and Dallas stepped away from the trio. "Later."
*.*.*.*.*
As suspected, the doctor found I had a broken jaw and a severely wrenched neck. Their solution was to wire my jaw shut and wrap my neck in one of those braces to keep it immobilized. And to keep me overnight in the hospital in order to monitor me.
Something I found excessive. But they could've made that determination because I couldn't stop crying. It didn't matter what they were doing or what test they ordered, I boo-hooed my way through each and every procedure. And it only got worse when I was finally, finally, settled into my semi-private room that I had all to myself.
That was part of the problem. I was alone and absolutely, positively didn't want to be. Being alone meant there were no distractions, nothing to prevent the memories of the last two days from bubbling to the surface bringing back my terror and feelings of helplessness. Of having to pretend to be strong for Julie.
I wiped my eyes on the sheet as I felt another wave of tears start.
"Still in pain, Miss Palmer?" the nurse called from the doorway.
Yes but not of the physical kind. All my pain was in my head and my heart over what had happened and at the fact that my father had caused it all.
"Not really." I sniffed as even more tears leaked out. I knew I needed to get a grip but I just didn't know how. "Guess it's just a delayed reaction or something."
The pretty nurse smiled and came in checking on my IV and straightening the bedcovers. "I think that's pretty normal for what you've been through."
"I guess," I sighed with a hitch and a sniff. "Has anyone asked to see me? The doctor said I could have visitors after I was in my room."
"Sorry. Visiting hours are over, hon. But, my friend who works in ER said it was filled to capacity with people waiting to hear about you."
"Really?"
"Seems you're part of the Hellion family and while I don't think it was the entire club that downstairs, Trisha said there were a lot of them. Also, one of the bikers got in touch with your sister who said she'd be here tomorrow morning," the nurse assured me with a smile. "So you need to get some sleep. That's the best thing for you right now. I can get you a pill if you want."
I didn't need any more drugs. I was already half out of it as it was. "No, thanks. But can I get another ice pack for my face?"
"Sure thing. I'll be right back," she said as she turned and left my room.
I thought about what the nurse had said and felt the tears start again only they were ones of gratitude instead of self-pity. The club had waited for me? For news of me and my condition?
I couldn't help but wonder if Mel had waited, too. Or had he taken Julie straight home? His first responsibility was to his sister just as it should be. But even knowing that, I still wanted my time with him as well. To bury my face in his neck and feel the safety of his arms would've been heaven. I fell asleep hoping he'd visit me the next day and then remembered the nurse had said Shelly was expected then too.
She's your only family now, I thought sleepily. Outside of the Hellions.
Chapter Thirty
Jay-sus but it had been a long night for Mel and his family.
Poor Julie had woken up again and again with nightmares, screaming for Lulu. It had gotten so bad that Mel ended up stretched out in his sister's twin bed, his feet hanging over the edge but with her like a second skin against his side. And Der had obviously heard because he dragged his own covers into Jules's room to sleep on the floor next to them.
Mel knew he was going to have to see about getting professional help for her and vowed to talk with one of the council to determine the best way to find the right head doctor for Julie. Shit, with all the Hellions had done for their family Mel wouldn't have been surprised if one of the brothers wasn't a trained child psychiatrist for god's sake! But at the least he knew they'd have connections to get little Jules the best possible person for the job.
As he waited for his youngest sibling to settle and sleep, he let his mind go back to Lulu, his precious girl. She'd been a mess when he'd seen her in that cellar with her left cheek swollen to twice its size and how hard she'd been crying. With his arms full of Julie though he hadn't been able to touch her to determine what injuries she'd had. He'd heard her scream when Trey had lifted her from her prone position on the cheap air mattress and wondered if her tears were because of how horribly she was hurt. Trey, though, had made comforting noises as he'd carried her up and out of the cellar which seemed to help his Lu to calm.
Stay and Donny had taken over as soon as the girls were near the Hum-Vee since both were military trained medics. But with no open wounds, their skills hadn't been needed except to get the former hostages to the hospital as fast as fucking possible. Without even considering where he was supposed to have ridden in the ranks of Hellions, Mel had followed the car closely. Lulu had been immediately taken inside on a gurney while he'd been able to carry Julie in.
But it was the lack of knowledge, the lack of damn contact with the woman he knew he was falling in love with that had opened the hole in his chest as he watched the staff wheel her away.
For the hundredth time that day, he wondered what kind of family his wonderful girl had grown up around. A father that would have his own daughter kidnapped by a group like the Ghosts was something Mel couldn't begin to fathom. And it happened after Lulu's asshat ex-fiancé had been given a severe beat-down for trying the same stupid shit. They may've had money but in his mind, his girl's family was dumber than a box of rocks.
He could only hope Lulu's sister had her head on straight.
His Lu hadn't been affected by that upbringing, though. Not if what Julie had relayed was true. Lulu hadn't thought of herself when they'd been stuck in the cellar with the Ghosts. According to his sister, his special girl had put Julie's needs first and had even tried to distract his little sister as they waited to be rescued.
One of the first things Julie had done when they got home was show him and Derek the skirt his girls had completed before the Ghosts had nabbed them. "A-and we were w-working on the p-petticoats," his sister had wailed, burying her head in a pile of pink and lavender material still sitting next to the sewing machine on the dining room table. "Y-you think sh-she'll help me finish it?"
Der had stepped up with that one, much to Mel's surprise. "Of course she will, Jules. Our Lulu is good people." The kid had even rubbed Julie's back as she'd cried, something Mel had never seen him do.
"Think Lulu's okay?" Derek's voice was a deep whisper in the room the three of
them had crowded into. "I mean, I'd hate to be alone after something like that."
"I hope so," Mel answered, keeping his voice equally as soft. "I'll make sure tomorrow though."
"Good." Mel heard Der clear his throat before his next words came. "After what happened, I don't know that I want to leave. Is that wrong, Mel?"
Mel was quiet as he thought about how to reply. "No. I can understand it. What happened was a big fucking deal and gave us both a taste of what it might be like if we lost our sister. But you won't be lost, Der. You'll be in a place where you can find yourself and get back on track, bro'."
"But if we get the call from the school…"
He cut his younger brother off. "When we get the call then you pack your bag and we put you on a plane. You call a couple of times a week and tell me all the nerd shit you're up to and let Julie tell you about her nail polish or her girl singers and life goes on, dude. Life will just fucking go on."
Der let out a big sigh before Mel heard the sound of him moving around. "Night, Mel."
"Night, Der."
And finally both the Davis brothers were able to sleep.
*.*.*.*.*
"Okay. I'm not gonna lie. You look like shit and there's no concealer in the freaking world that's going to help," my sister announced looking me over.
She'd arrived a couple of hours earlier and been snuck into my room by one of the nurses who was aware I was waiting anxiously for her.
"Don't make me laugh," I mumbled which I'd been told was going to be my speech for the next month or so until the doctor removed the wires holding my jaw in place.
"I'm not trying to make you laugh, Lu. I'm giving it to you honestly and believe me if you had a mirror you wouldn't find anything humorous about the way you look," Shelly said seriously. "So it was some bikers that worked you over?"
I given her the full story but for some reason she didn't understand it but then all I had told her was out of her realm of experience. Neither one of us had been exposed to motorcycle clubs in Albuquerque and without a frame of reference she was confused as I'd tried to explain.
"I still can't believe Daddy would engineer something like this," she mumbled, shifting her heavy purse underneath her visitor's chair. "And you said that your friends beat up Jon? What a wuss. Didn't I always tell you he was a weakling?"
Yeah, she really didn't get it. Even if Jon had been strong, I knew there wasn't any way he could have avoided getting a taste of Hellion justice. If it hadn't been Mel it would've been one of the other men who would've worked him over. It had been both a lesson and a message about staying away from me. One that Jon obviously hadn't delivered if my dad had initiated the Ghost's involvement in trying to bring me back.
"What was doing with dad when you left?"
"Doing? What kind of word is that? Don't you mean 'what was happening'? Geesh, Lu, is that how they talk here?"
I sighed deep and long. Only two hours and Shelly was already on my nerves.
She rolled her eyes at my noise before relating that she hadn't seen daddy but had left him a voicemail that she was going out of town. "But I didn't tell him where and I didn't let him know when I'd be back."
Oh, no! She wasn't planning on staying was she? I didn't know that I could take more than a couple of days of being around her. Shelly was high maintenance and Missoula wasn't the kind of town that could support her in that way.
"Knock, knock," a deep voice called from the doorway and I looked up to see Mel, Julie and Derek waiting for permission to come into my room. Immediately my eyes began to tear and the heart monitor announced the increase of my pulse. Afraid to speak, fearful of what the younger ones might hear in my voice, I just held my right arm out to welcome them in.
Julie rushed to me, crawling up onto the bed to press her face against my chest as Derek came to the bedside and held my hand. But Mel stayed back and away. I glanced at him in bewilderment and saw his frowning eyes were on Shelly. Who was clutching her purse to her chest as she tried to press herself into a corner.
What the heck?
"Shelly…?"
"He's a. Oh god. He's a biker, Lu and just waltzed right in here. I'll get one of the nurses. No! I'll get one of the security guards to throw him out. You'll never have to see another biker again, sister. I promise. I'll take care of it," she announced with a quivering chin lift, her eyes big and round as she stared at Mel.
Derek started laughing and even Mel's mouth tilted up at my sister's avowal of protection.
"No, Shells. He's one of the good guys." At my words, Mel's eyes came back to me. "Mel, this is my sister Shelly. Shelly, this is my Mel, my Julie and my nemesis, Derek."
"Your Mel? You mean the guy you slept…," her eyes dropped to the little girl who was practically laying on top of me. "…er, were dating?"
"Yes. That's the one. And this is Julie who protected me when we were in the cellar," I explained, trying to get my overly talkative sister on a different track. I hadn't had a chance to tell her that Mel and I had kind of, sort of made up.
"You're very pretty, Shelly," Julie affirmed from her place on my chest. "But why don't you have pink in your hair like Lulu?"
Shelly just blinked at Julie's question before looking at me and shrugging. "Because I have taste."
Derek let out a sharp bark of laughter at my sister's retort. The little creep.
"How about y'all go to the cafeteria for a few minutes," Mel suggested as he pulled some cash out of his wallet. "I need to talk with my girl alone for a while ."
The monitor, connected by a clamp on my finger, again begin to broadcast my accelerated heartbeat at his words. I watched the three of them walk out the door but only after Derek had done a careful perusal of both sides of the handle. Which only became clear at his, "just to let you know. There's no lock.". Leave it to Derek to scope out the situation and then remind me and his brother of what we could and couldn't get up to behind a closed door.
And it hadn't even fully closed when Mel was perched on the side of my bed, his lips against mine. Oh, he smelled so good and felt so wonderful even if I could only touch him with one arm.
"Darlin' girl," he breathed against my hair, his lips dropping small kisses on my forehead. "How you feelin'? Are you in pain?"
"Nope. Doped to the gills," I said, admitting the truth against the bristles of his neck, the place which held the concentrated aroma of him. Of just him. "Listen. I'm so sorry I couldn't find a way to get Julie out…"
"Stop, Lu." His voice though soft in the quiet between us was firm. "Julie already told me about your time together. You did good, precious. Really good."
I felt something within me start to crumble at what he was saying. At his praise.
"H-how's she doing, though?" I was determined not to start crying, not when I knew every second we had alone together was limited and valuable.
"I'm gonna have to get her help. She had a hard time last night."
"Oh, Mel. I'm so sorry. If my father hadn't…"
But again he cut me off. "That's enough of that, Lu. You can't control your dad anymore than you can control the moon or the stars. It happened and now it's over. So we all just get back to our regular lives, yeah?"
I stared up at him, into the green eyes I couldn't imagine not looking into and that grounded me in some fashion. "All except for Jules."
"Well. For a time, anyway," he grudgingly admitted. "So where are you gonna stay while you recuperate?"
I honestly hadn't gotten that far in my thinking. "Probably at my apartment. Shelly made it sound like she's here for a while but I don't know how long she'll last in Missoula."
Mel smiled at my words before he tilted his head and searched my face. "What about my place? We're expecting a call any day from the boarding school Der applied to and we'll have an extra bedroom. That is, if you think we'll need it."
"Are you asking me to move…"
"Yep. I am, precious. I know it's only been a little bit but I know what I want. And I want you, Lul
u. I want to take care of you and have you near me all the time." His face was serious, so very serious and totally backed up his words. "Maybe just until you're better or maybe forever, but I'd like to explore this thing we've got going if it's okay with you."
I'd wanted to have 'the conversation' with him to define what kind of relationship we had but I never, ever, expected him to say he wanted me to move in. That he wanted me around all the time. "Mel. We don't know each other very well and I'm not even sure how you feel about me, baby."
He had the grace to look embarrassed, his cheeks taking on a pinkish hue as he stared deeply into my eyes. "'Cause I can't say those kind of words yet, Lulu. They're there, deep inside me. But I just can't say them yet. Not until I'm sure they're real and true."
Reinventing Mel: A Hellion MC Novel Page 28
