DADDY AT THE ALTAR

by Claire St. Rose

  I pulled out my phone and dialed her number, waiting for her to answer. It rang six times and then rolled over to voicemail.

  “Where are you?” I asked, leaving a message. “We need to talk. Call me.”

  I hung up and got back on my bike. I had to get home and change before I headed out. Taylor and I were meeting up, and I needed to spend some quality time with my little brother. With everything happening I hadn’t even had time to talk to him properly since he’d ended up in hospital and I still had questions.

  At home, I changed my jeans to another pair that looked exactly the same except they were clean. I put a sleeveless shirt on under the leather vest so that I wouldn’t get kicked out and looked in the mirror. I ran my hand over my chin. A few days stubble…it would have to do. I wasn’t in the mood to shave, and I liked what it did to roughen up my look.

  I met Taylor outside a place called Carnage. It was a metal pub that also had a seating section with tables for the few that wanted to get something in their stomachs before getting drunk. The vibe was messy and with a lot of screaming music. It was just the right place to talk about things that I didn’t want out on the streets in a string of gossip. It wasn’t like a biker like me could really get a waiter’s attention in a normal restaurant; they tended to ignore people like me.

  Instead of getting angry about it, it was easy just to relocate.

  Taylor was already waiting for me outside. He looked better than I did, but that was always the case. He’d been through law school, and he had a sense of fashion and society that I’d never had the patience for. He wore a neat pair of jeans, a black, collared shirt, and heavyweight boots that would make him barely fit into the scene.

  We skipped a queue of upset-looking patrons and walked inside where we were taken to our usual little table in the back.

  “Two Coronas,” I ordered, and the waitress, kitted out in a leather skirt and a bullring nose piercing, skulked away to get us what we’d asked for.

  “How have you been?” I asked Taylor. “You look a lot better.”

  The screaming music blared in the background, wafting from the other room where the stage and all the attention was situated.

  “I’m better now,” Taylor said. “It’s been uphill though. I wasn’t in the hospital for long, but man, that shit kicked my ass.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  Taylor shrugged. “Beats me.”

  I slammed my fist down on the table. I was angry. I didn’t know that it had been lingering under the surface, but now that we were talking about it, it all boiled over.

  “Dammit, Taylor,” I said in a raised voice. “This isn’t a game. You nearly died.”

  “Jesus, Daniel. Calm down. It wasn’t my fault, okay? I swore to you I wouldn’t use and I never had.”

  “You’re willing to swear that on your life? On mine?”

  Taylor looked me dead in the eye and nodded. He had the same kind of eyes as me, only lighter. He looked so sincere I had to believe him.

  I took a deep breath and let it go with a shudder. The waitress brought our beers, and I sucked mine down, relishing the cool alcohol that felt like it was going to drown out my anger.

  “I just don’t know what I would do if something happened to you,” I said. “I don’t want to see you walking that road, Taylor.”

  “I know,” Taylor said and he had that same face he used to wear as a teenager when I busted him for sneaking in late at night, drunk and weaving. “I’m not going to get mixed up in this shit. I didn’t do it. Someone out there wanted to get me. I was jumped from behind and next thing I knew there was a needle in my neck and hot breath in my ear. Then I woke up in the hospital with all those nurses hovering over me.”

  He shuddered as if the memory was a bad one.

  “Is anyone out to get you?” I asked. “Anyone you know about at all?”

  Taylor shook his head and took another sip. “Believe me, I’ve been through the list of people so many times that when I think about it, my head spins. I can’t imagine any of the people I know wanting to kill me.”

  Just the idea of someone wanting to kill Taylor made me see red. I took deep breaths, drank some more beer, and tried to contain myself.

  “We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” I swore.

  Taylor nodded. “I know. You might just want to consider that this might be to get back at you, not me.”

  I thought about it for a while and then nodded. Taylor was right. If I lost him, it would tank me. Someone could very well be using him to get to me.

  “Noted,” I said.

  The waitress returned, and we each ordered their standard burger and fries. It wasn’t the best food around, but it would do, and I needed to get my mind off what was going on and get grease in my system before the alcohol knocked me out. We made small talk for a while before the food came, and when the plates were in front of us and the waitress out of earshot, Taylor cleared his throat.

  “Emily seems nice,” he said carefully. I looked at him, and he looked like he was trying not to cringe away from me. I let my badass attitude go and nodded.

  “She is.”

  Nice didn’t even cut it. She was spectacular. Beautiful. Funny. Spontaneous. And a fucking ER doctor that saved lives. Nice was a hell of an understatement.

  “She seems like a solid person. It’s rare to find a woman like that these days.”

  I nodded. It was very rare. I’d been around the block a couple of times, so I knew that Taylor was right.

  “Are you going to hold onto her?”

  I shrugged. That was a hard one. God knew I wanted to, but there were so many questions.

  “You might not want to screw it up with this one. She seems like she’s accepting of a lot of things.”

  “Have you been sussing her out, or are you just talking out of your ass?” I asked.

  Taylor held his hands up in defense. “I’m just saying.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to cool it. I was wired tonight; I was so on edge I felt like any moment I could snap. Taylor didn’t deserve it.

  “I’m not going to lie,” I said. “I like her. I really do. I just don’t know if being with her is fair. You know, to her. She has her life in order, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

  “Not like Ruby,” Taylor pointed out, knowing exactly what I was thinking.

  “Not like Ruby at all,” I agreed. “I just feel that Ruby might be a better choice for me. Not because I think she’s all that—not anymore—but because she knows how to handle herself in my life. She knows the dangers, and if it really came down to it, she could look after herself. Emily… I’m scared I’ll have to protect her. I’m scared I’ll have to be the one thing I need to protect her against. That’s not really fair.”

  Taylor was quite for a moment, chewing as he thought. When he swallowed, he nodded, looking down. He knew where I was coming from; the one thing I knew was that Taylor understood where I was coming from. He knew what life was like for me, what I’d been through, and he knew my reasoning. If anyone understood me, it was him.

  “I get where you’re coming from,” he said. “But it seems like such a shame to let a ten go for a five just because you don’t think you score high enough yourself.”

  Well, wasn’t that the truth? Letting a ten go for a five. The problem was that it was exactly what I was thinking. Why did I deserve someone like Emily? I’d thought about it again and again, and every single time I came up blank.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Emily

  Days off from the ER were a blessing and a curse. I needed to recuperate. I needed time away from all the stress and drama and blood and risks to take a breather. No one could be on twenty-four seven, no matter how much they wanted to be, and I knew—as well as my boss did—that I would burn out if I didn’t take at least two thirds of my off days during the week.

  It was a curse because my mind kept wandering on those days that I wasn’t busy saving lives, and I always felt like every l
ife that came into the ER without me being there, was a life slipping through my fingers. I had to be there to know that I’d done my very best to save someone, or I felt like it just wasn’t good enough.

  We had plenty of good doctors at St. Joseph. They all gave it everything they had when it came down to other people’s lives. Yet, I still felt like if I didn’t do it, there was something they would miss.

  Stress induced paranoia could have been an answer to that. But it went much, much deeper.

  I slept the morning away. I kept waking up and then forcing myself to go back to bed. I only had one “off” day for every four days “on” and I had to make sure that I was using it right to catch up on my sleep and de-stress. Doing it was harder than it looked, but I tried.

  When I finally got out of bed, I found Sarah in the kitchen, making eggs and toast.

  “I got you a date,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For your opening.”

  I leaned on the counter island with my elbows and watched Sarah move around the kitchen.

  “Who with?”

  “Daniel’s brother, Taylor.”

  Sarah stopped what she was doing and looked at me. Her face was a mask of surprise at first, but then she smiled.

  “Nice touch,” she said.

  “I thought so.” I smiled, too. I was pretty proud of myself. “I saw him a few nights ago, so I asked. He’s keen to see the bar.”

  “I’m sure it was a great selling point,” Sarah said. I shrugged. There was nothing like the right motivation to keep a guy interested, and being invited to a bar opening as the owner’s date was the perfect motivation.

  “Just play nice,” I said. “He’s my…” What was Daniel? “Daniel’s brother. If you toy with him, I’m going to have to take it out of your skin.”

  Sarah made a serious face and held up two fingers in a scout’s honor pose. Then she smiled, and I shook my head. I didn’t know what she was going to do, but I figured Taylor was a big boy and he could handle her.

  At least, I hoped so.

  “What are your plans for the day?” Sarah asked.

  I shrugged. “Get out a bit, I think. I need to see more than just this apartment and the inside of the ER.”

  Sarah nodded. “Good idea. I’ve got some errands to run, and tonight I’m doing the final preparations. You want to come with me?”

  I shook my head. The other thing I needed when I was away from the ER was to be alone. I was never alone when I worked, and most of the time I was dealing with other people’s grief and trauma. The only thing that was worse than losing a patient that came in was having to tell their families what had happened.

  That possibly ate at me more than anything else did.

  With so many overdoses of that drug coming in, though, very few of them had had family come and claim them. It made me think that they were either grabbed when they didn’t expect it, or they didn’t have much family to speak of.

  When I thought about Taylor and Daniel and their circumstances, really anything was possible.

  After Sarah left, I got dressed. I put on jeans that were uncomfortable, just to give my comfortable hospital clothes a break, and a shirt that buttoned up the front and usually irritated me under a doctor’s coat. I left my hair loose because I hardly ever got to do it and put on kitten heels.

  I didn’t know what I was dressing up for, but the fact that I could was a nice change. Everything about the ER made me want to be as comfortable as possible so that I didn’t even once have to think about myself. Even a scratchy shirt was one distraction too many.

  I made my way downtown. I did an hour of window-shopping and found nothing I was interested in. I grabbed an early lunch that wasn’t satisfying and checked the movie theater. No movies. Finally, I took out my phone and dialed Daniel.

  I hadn’t heard from him since the night I’d left after he’d been talking about Ruby in his sleep, and I felt that maybe he was steering clear of me for my own sake.

  He answered the phone on the fourth ring and sounded distracted.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “Emily?” he asked, and he sounded like all his attention was on me now.

  “I was just wondering if you wanted to meet up. I have the day off, and I’ve been going out of my mind with nothing to do.”

  He hesitated. That was always a bad sign.

  “We don’t have to do anything,” I said quickly. The last thing I wanted was to put him in a predicament where he felt forced to say yes.

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “I’m just at the club. There are a couple of things I still need to take care of, but if you want to swing by here and wait until I’m done we can do something after?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Send me an address?”

  He said he would and hung up. A moment later my phone beeped with a text with the address.

  When I parked my car in front of the place, I winced. It was badly neglected, the kind of place that I imagined should have a foreclosed sign hanging on the door. It was already in a rough neighborhood, but this was the roughest building of them all as far as I could see.

  I got out of the car and walked toward the door. It was closed, the glass was dusty, and when I cupped my hand around my face and peered in, the bar area looked like it hadn’t been used—or cleaned—in ages.

  I knocked on the door. What else was I going to do? After a couple of seconds a tall biker with a leather cap and vest appeared and pushed open the door. He had glasses on his nose that looked completely out of place.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Daniel,” I said. He looked me up and down as if he was sizing me up, or trying to guess what kind of weapons I could be hiding under my clothes.

  “It’s okay, Ben.” I heard Daniel’s familiar voice behind the guy. “She’s with me.”

  The guy named Ben nodded and stepped aside. I walked into the club, and the dim light swallowed me. Dusk ruled on the inside.

  It didn’t look a lot better than through the glass now that I was on the inside. Everything looked like its glory days had been some fifty years before.

  “Welcome to my office,” Daniel said and smiled like he felt silly.

  “Is this your father’s place?” I asked. Daniel nodded. I could feel the nostalgia hanging in the corners, and I knew why it must be hard for him to let go of this place. Ben shuffled from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable. Daniel glanced at him.

  “You can run out and get yourself lunch,” Daniel said to him. “Take your time.”

  It was a very polite dismissal if I’d ever heard one. When Ben nodded and left the club, I smiled at Daniel.

  “Well, that was tactful.”

  He shrugged. “Never hurts to be the boss.”

  I nodded and looked around. There was a stack of papers on the bar, and it looked like he’d been drinking coffee there, if the three empty cups were anything to go by.

  “Is this where you work, then?”

  He nodded. “Ben took the office. He’s more organized than I am, and I pay him for it. The office is too small, anyway. I like being out here where there’s space, you know?”

  I understood. The whole place was stifling, but I imagined the office to be smaller and darker and that seemed like too much.

  “I just need to make one or two phone calls,” Daniel said. “And then I’m all yours.”

  I liked the sound of that. I sat down on the bar stool next to the one he’d obviously been sitting in. Daniel took his place and picked up his phone, leafing through the papers. He dialed two numbers that got no answer and then finally reached someone who—by the sound of it—couldn’t tell him what he needed to know.

  When he was done, he put the phone down harder than was necessary and scowled.

  “Do you need me to go?” I asked. I didn’t want him to feel like I was seeing something private, or that he couldn’t lose his cool because I was around. It was strange being here. I already f
elt like I was invading something sacred by being in the club that his dad had owned with him.

  “No, don’t leave,” he said. The scowl faded, and when he looked at me, he just looked tired. “I like your company.”

  I nodded and kept quiet. He could do what he needed to do. If he wanted me to stay, I was going to stay.

  He looked down at his paperwork. I let my attention drift to the room around me. I imagined what this place could have been like in the glory days. There was a lot of dark wood and red everywhere, and the polish made me think that someone really made an effort to keep this place up once upon a time.