by Naomi West
“You think you’re so funny, you fucking bitch!”
It was Spike, and Chopper knew he was screaming at Kelsey. Who else could inspire that kind of emotion in him? Who else could humiliate him so intensely? Forgetting his footsteps, Chopper broke into a run. Spike Lawler was a man of legendary rages. In the midst of one, and alone with a woman, he could not be trusted.
The next door that Chopper encountered buckled beneath the force of his shoulder. On the inside of the near wall was a massive bank of switches. Over his rapid breathing, Chopper could now hear someone approaching him from the other direction, the heavy boots reverberating throughout the whole building. Seizing an immediate instinct, he grabbed for the switch plate, pressing it down with two smooth motions of his palms. The room he was in went dark. A humming sound ceased in the background.
At the other end of the chamber, Spike Lawler said, “What the fuck?” He had just come through from the room where Chopper assumed Kelsey was being held. That door was much heavier, judging by the way it had sounded when he swung it shut. It would block sound—or at least, Chopper hoped it would. He did not intend to let Spike go without experiencing his share of pain.
A thin beam of piercing white light shot through the musty darkness, illuminating a constant fall of dust particles in the air. It skittered across the room before finally coming to rest on Chopper, zipping up his body as Spike realized what had happened. Chopper had to squint to keep the flashlight from hurting his eyes. Spike chuckled.
“Thought you could catch me off guard, eh Slater?” he asked. “Well, I admit you did that somewhat, but only ‘cause your little pet’s a real goddamn piece of work.” He gestured with his head. “I don’t think she’s got too much more to say, though.”
“You better keep your hands off her,” Chopper growled. Their conversation on the phone had been civil enough, but now that they stood face to face, Chopper found he had no patience for Spike’s fake diplomacy. “If you don’t, I’ll cut ‘em off.”
“Relax,” Spike said, in a voice that made Chopper want to hit him. “All I did was remind her of her place. You know how bitches are. Sometimes they forget.” He curled the bony fingers of his right hand into a tight, cruel fist.
Chopper ground his teeth together. “You want to make a fuckin’ deal or not, Spike?” What he wanted was to beat Lawler into the ground, but he couldn’t afford to lose his temper. He had no idea what shape Kelsey was in. One wrong move could make things worse for her.
“Right.” Spike strolled toward him nonchalantly. “The deal. I got some terms I’d like to propose.”
Chopper grunted. “I’m listening.”
“Good.” Spike uncurled his fingers, laced them together, and cracked his knuckles. “One: You give me back my place.”
Chopper was about to ask what the hell Spike was talking about when he remembered that Dean and the rest were on a salvage mission. He folded his arms, wishing privately that he had thought to check for news from them before he rushed into his meeting with Spike. He didn’t like the fact that Spike could have more information that him.
“Okay,” he said sullenly. “What else?”
“Two: You get your doll.” Spike shrugged and spread his hands as if he was being particularly magnanimous with this offer. “Look, Slater. I don’t care about the money you stole. I don’t even care about the men you killed, I can make more money. I can hire new recruits. I just want all of this to be water under the bridge so that we can go on as we were.”
Chopper knew the smart thing to do was to accept the terms of Spike’s deal, get Kelsey, and figure out the rest when she was safe. But old habits die hard, and before he could stop himself, he heard his smart mouth running.
“That’s a pretty tall order, Lawler. You killed some of my best men today.”
“So what?” Spike sneered. “Maybe the boss made a bad fucking call. Ain’t my responsibility.” He shrugged again. “You want money for ‘em? You already took it. My trade routes are fucked, Slater. I don’t have anything else to give you.”
It sounded like the truth, and from his knowledge of the state of affairs before the war had begun, Chopper guessed that it probably was. But part of him couldn’t stand the thought of giving up that which Red and Hoss died for.
“What happens if I say no?” he asked, knowing full well that he wouldn’t.
“If you say no, I kill her,” Spike said. He pulled out his firearm, as if to prove that he was serious. “And then I kill you, and the whole goddamned city belongs to me.”
Chopper nodded. “Fine. It’s a deal.” The mention of killing Kelsey had twisted his guts into a knot even though he knew it was coming, and he refused to give Spike any more time to entertain that notion. “She’s in there?” he asked, pointing toward the closed door.
“Yep.” Spike backtracked to it, disengaged the lock, and turned the handle. The door swung inward with a heavy creak, and Chopper could see part of a chair and a pair of bare legs in front of it. At first, he felt relief, but it was quickly followed by confusion. Kelsey had been wearing jeans in the video.
He stepped closer, and the rest of her body came into full view. She was leaning back, her eyes closed, hair trailing almost down to the dirty concrete floor. One strap of her bra had slipped off her shoulder. Chopper’s sight went red with rage. “I told you not to touch her!” he roared. The sound of his voice roused Kelsey. Her head snapped up, and he saw the vicious bruise Spike had left on her face.
“Chopper?” she mouthed.
In that instant, Chopper’s fury boiled over. He put his head down and rushed hard at Spike, bellowing like an injured bull. The top of his shoulder made sound contact with Spike’s stomach, driving him back into the wall. He thought he felt something break in Spike’s torso. Without removing himself, Chopper shoved his shoulder deeper into the Mongol leader’s body. Spike groaned and squirmed, but he couldn’t free himself. “Deal’s off,” he croaked.
“I don’t give a fuck about your fucking deal!” Chopper shouted. He straightened, letting Spike crumple in a heap to the floor, and put the sole of his boot up against Spike’s throat. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t just kill you right now.”
The Mongol tried to laugh, as was his custom, but the pain of whatever had snapped inside him was too great. He took a few laboring breaths, and then his thin face fell to the side. Chopper knelt and felt for a pulse. Not dead, but also not a threat. He decided that was good enough.
And as soon as he turned away from Lawler, all thoughts of him left Chopper’s mind. He went straight to where Kelsey sat in the metal folding chair and again dropped to his knees. His hands caressed her face tenderly. “Are you all right?” he whispered. The sight of that ugly mark still made him seethe, but he pushed the emotion down. She was more important than his feelings right now. She would always be more important.
“I’m fine,” she said stoically. “Except for these ropes. Can you give me a hand?” Her bravado made him want to smile, but he sensed something fragile underneath it. Carefully, he cut her free. She massaged her bare wrists, laced red with chafing.
“Thanks.” Then Chopper pulled her into his arms, and she began to shake. “I lost the baby, Jesse,” she said softly. “I’m —”
“Don’t apologize,” he answered. “Please don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” He had never heard his real name on her lips before. On another occasion, he might have loved it. At the moment, he just felt guilt and sorrow. He could hear Hoss’ voice echoing in his head, a phantom of only a day or so before. Didn’t even know I wanted to be a dad ‘til I couldn’t be one anymore.
She was crying, and he wanted to let her, but they had to get out of the warehouse. “I don’t know where my clothes are,” Kelsey said, lifting her head from his shoulder. “They might be around here somewhere. I bet he just threw them wherever.” She frowned. “Pig.”
Chopper felt a swell of pride for her strength. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You stay here and kee
p an eye on that son of a bitch. If he moves, just kick him in the rib I broke.” A little smile flitted across her face, which gave him the strength to get up and search the area for her clothes. He found them balled up in the corner and brought them to her. She shook them out and put them on. “Come on,” he said, once she was dressed.
They started to walk past Spike, who still lay out cold on the floor against the wall, and Kelsey paused. “What are you going to do about him?” she asked, her tone anxious.
Chopper looked at her. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
She held his hand tightly. “This is stupid,” she said, sighing, “but please don’t kill him. I just … I hate him, but I don’t want that on me. Even if he deserves it.”
“Done,” Chopper said. “We’ll get out of here, and if he doesn’t die on his own right there, I’ll figure out a way to deal with him later.”
“You think he’ll be back?” She sounded tired, exactly the way Chopper felt.
“A guy like him always comes back,” Chopper said. “Now come on. I got a sweet ride with your name on it.”
Kelsey was very quiet as she followed him out to the lot. Chopper sat her down on the back of the bike and let her lay her head against his back for a few minutes. He listened to her breathing in the near-silent night. The engine would drown that out, and he didn’t want to just yet. Instead, he checked his phone. There was a text from an unknown number: Dean.
“We took it, boss. It was empty. Don’t know where they went. Be careful.”
Chopper looked up from his phone and glanced around, his eyes roaming over every visible window on the warehouse. There was no sign of movement, and he was sure that if Spike had had backup, he would have received it during the struggle. “Hey, Kels,” he said softly, not wanting to disturb her.
“Hmm?” She already seemed half asleep.
“Did you see anyone else here with Spike?”
“Mm-mm.” He felt her shake her head. “The guys who grabbed me brought me in, but then I think they left after. I heard the car drive away.”
So, he had been truly alone with her. Even after the ordeal was over, Chopper shuddered at the thought of his princess at Spike’s mercy. “Okay, baby,” he told her. “Let’s go find a hotel. I’m ready to sleep for a damn decade.” But before he started up the bike, he sent Dean a text.
“Lawler’s down, not out. Take care of yourselves. I’m off the grid for now.”
Chapter Twenty
Kelsey
The first thing they replaced in Chopper’s house was the bed. Kelsey slept alone in the new one on the night she moved out of the Outlaw compound, a week after the encounter on the docks. She lay quietly in the dark, staring up at the shadowed ceiling, and tried to sort out the mess in her heart. Her body was healing quickly; she had always been healthy, but she had nightmares now, and the color seemed to be gone from her days. She told herself that it was because of Red and Hoss, because the Outlaws had lost so much in Spike’s pursuit of her. She knew that was part of it. But there was more to the truth. The baby was gone.
How had it been only days since she lay in the hospital, consenting to surgery? It felt like a lifetime, as much as it felt like no time at all. Kelsey was in a constant state of fluid emotions — at once relieved and full of sorrow. The child she would have borne did not need to live a life at the center of such a vicious world. She was sure there would have been pain and fear that now, her baby didn’t have to feel. But there would also have been so much love.
She fought it for days. But on the first night that Kelsey spent in her new home, she admitted it to herself. She wanted the baby. The thought made her cry. It made her feel foolish. All around her, Chopper’s house was in ruins. The Mongols had smashed windows, torn up furniture, broken everything they could break. The outside was covered in ugly graffiti that would need to be power-washed away. It was so bad that at first, Chopper balked at the notion of allowing Kelsey to stay there. He didn’t want her living in the middle of such a harsh reminder of her ordeal. But she insisted, because she felt that it was what she needed. She needed to never forget. She needed to be the one to pick up the pieces of her little world and try to put them back together.
In the end, Chopper gave that to her. He helped her move her things into the house, then he kissed her and left her there to sit in the living room and cry. He wanted to do more, but she told him there was nothing more to do. So, he retreated to the part of his life where he felt safest — sitting at the head of the Savage Outlaws. For the first time in the months she’d been with him, they slept apart. Kelsey tried not to look at the gulf that was slowly opening between them, but it was there. If she wanted to stay where she was, with Chopper, with the father of the baby she never had, she’d have to figure out what she wanted. And that wasn’t going to be easy.
The days that followed were a haze, a blurry routine of tears, sparse meals, and half-hearted housework. Kelsey moved around a lot just to keep herself busy, but she quickly realized that she wasn’t actually doing anything that mattered. Things got picked up and put down, garbage was taken out, floors were swept and vacuumed. By the weekend, the house looked normal on the inside. Some guys from Bike Out of Hell came by with a power washer and sprayed the graffiti off the walls. They tried to check on her, but Kelsey hid in her room until they left. She couldn’t handle being with anyone but herself. If she engaged with visitors, eventually they would leave, and she’d be forced to realize how empty the house really was.
Around the time that she finished cleaning up the inside, Chopper started coming home regularly. He always kept in touch with her during the day, but they hadn’t shared a bed since before Kelsey moved in, and the distance between them felt like a wall. He tiptoed around her as if she were a bomb. Kelsey supposed that in some sense, she was. There was pressure building up inside of her, pushing hard on her heart. She knew one day she would explode. But she didn’t know when, and Chopper didn’t either. The only time they ever got within arm’s reach of each other was when they went to bed, and then, the one night that he reached for her, Kelsey gently but firmly refused.
“I’m not ready,” was what she said. I’ll never be ready again, was what she felt.
Chopper looked at her for a long moment. She wondered if he would challenge her, and what she would do if he did. But he just let out his breath and said, “Okay.” Then he rolled over, and they didn’t speak again.
The tension continued for another two days before it finally broke. Kelsey sat by herself next to the window in the bedroom, looking out onto the little backyard and imagining what her life would look like if she was still going to give birth. She put her hand on her flattened stomach and blinked back a fresh onslaught of tears. When was she going to stop crying at nothing? When was it going to hurt less? There were no answers. She was beginning to think that there wouldn’t be for a long time. And maybe she could learn to live with that, because she had no choice. But Chopper did. She was afraid he was going to choose something other than a woman who was very clearly broken.
He came into the bedroom quietly, as was becoming the routine. This time, instead of letting the silence rule the room, Chopper coughed slightly and said her name.
“Kelsey?” She didn’t answer. She had no words for him. Her suffering seemed to be something that was beyond his reality. “Kelsey,” he repeated, his voice firm. Her heart began to beat a little faster, but she still couldn’t bring herself to do anything but shift slightly in his direction. This was the final straw — she understood. The camel’s back was breaking.
Even though she’d always experienced Chopper’s love far more intensely than his hate, Kelsey still found herself expecting violence from him. She had seen what he was capable of doing to other human beings, hadn’t she? And now, as far as she could tell, she was on the wrong side of his knife. No pretty little home life, no child. She had nothing to give to him anymore. Before the unexpected sorrow of her loss eclipsed all other feeling, Kelsey had be
en very afraid of this scenario, and in that way, the pain was a blessing. She couldn’t fear him when she was too badly hurt to care. His shadow passed over her as he came to the window. She barely moved.
“Kelsey,” he said for the third time. His voice was soft now, almost gentle. He sat down on the side of the bed closest to her and reached out for her hand, closing his fingers around her palm. “Tell me what’s happening. I’m not going to lose you.”
Kelsey swallowed hard. Her mind raced to come up with a coherent string of words. She wanted to tell him the truth immediately, to unburden herself of the new emotional weight she’d gained over the past week, but faced with the stress of an impending confrontation, the only thing she could bring herself to do was try to put a happy face on it.
“What do you mean?” she asked. The sound of her own voice was the most unconvincing thing she’d ever heard. She hoped he understood what she was really saying: that she needed him to help her through this.
