Cracked & Crushed

by A. J. Downey

  “Sure,” I said. We didn’t have to meet Cutter until four and it was barely noon. Marcy smiled and Tom smiled back indulgently.

  “You mind if we do lunch in town?” Hayden asked, “I really want out of long pants in this heat and humidity.” She gave the three of us a hopeful look and Tom and Marcy agreed whole heartedly.

  “Sure! Sure! We’d like to drop off our gift shop buys at our room anyways,” Marcy said and smiled brightly.

  Hayden smiled and with plans set we went back to the B&B. Hayden ran upstairs and I followed. We kept buying shit so I figured it was best to put the saddlebags back on the bike. I did that while Hayden slipped into some short white shorts that made her legs seem long. We left our clothes for the next day in a neat pile in the room’s wing back chair and packed everything else carefully into the saddle bags.

  I swapped out of my jeans and into my old ass army fatigue cutoffs I’d picked up at some surplus store or another when I’d been out with Trig. I put the bags back on the bike and Hayden came back out in her running shoes, she’d stashed her white flip flops on top so when we stopped she could ditch the hot sneakers in the saddlebag, swap out to the cooler sandals. I’d done the same. I switched into my white Adidas with the shorts, I wasn’t about to ride in flip flops. I didn’t have ‘complete moron’ stamped on my forehead, just ‘idiot’ for bein’ on the back of a bike in shorts in the first place.

  Tom suggested this little seafood shack on the beach. It didn’t take much to figure out that it was close to the marina Cutter had texted me the night before. Of course the town wasn’t that big. I followed Tom and Marcy this time and Hayden and I switched out to the more fashion and temperature conscious footwear when we reached the little open air faux grass roofed establishment.

  We were pretty quickly seated across from the couple and Marcy was eying me with unabashed curiosity.

  “I’m pretty sure Reaver doesn’t bite Babe. You should ask your questions,” Tom said, perusing the menu. I raised an eyebrow at Marcy.

  “What questions?” she looked a bit embarrassed and nervous.

  “Marcy is an anthropologist. She studies human behavior,” Tom explained.

  “Oh that’s interesting!” Hayden cried and leaned forward to listen.

  “Uh huh,” I said catching on. I was her new favorite science experiment. The badass biker. Marcy blushed and looked like she was afraid I was offended. I gave her one of my panty dropping grins.

  “Ask your questions,” I said and she glowed with excitement. Out came a journal and a pen from her purse and I blinked. Damn, didn’t think shit was that serious! Okay. I steeled myself.

  “How did you get the name Reaver?” she asked. I grinned.

  “My brothers gave it to me,” I said. That was easy. She frowned.

  “Your brothers growing up?” she asked and Hayden laughed lightly.

  “I’m an only child,” I remarked.

  “He means the other men in the MC,” Hayden said.

  “MC, motorcycle club?” Marcy asked. I nodded.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “My name?” I asked. She nodded enthusiastically. I gave Hayden a sidelong look and she smiled at me and shrugged.

  “YOLO.” She said and I laughed. Marcy frowned. I looked at Tom and gave a one shouldered shrug and before either of them could blink I slipped one of my knives out of my cut and flicked the handle, the blade springing free. Marcy jumped and Tom frowned.

  “I like knives,” I said and to make the point stick home I slipped three more stilettos, two throwing and a butterfly knife out of their hiding places showing them and slipping them back into place in the blink of an eye each. I had more, way more but the waitress came by to take our food order stopping my little sleight of hand blade show.

  Tom looked unsettled but his wife Marcy was fearless she leaned forward and asked, “So are all road names based on the kind of weapon you like?” I laughed a little.

  “Well there’s me, and Trigger… he’s a Marine Corps sniper, then there’s our P. Dragon. Not sure how his came about but I have a few guesses. Then there’s our VP Dray, which is what he’s always been, that’s short for his given name, Draven. Uhhh…” I thought about it.

  “There’s Doc, he’s an ER doc by profession, then there’s Data our resident tech nerd. We got three prospects, Loyal who is as his name implies but we’re on the verge of patching him in and when that happens it’s bound to change…” Marcy held up her hand.

  “Patching in, what does that mean?” she asked.

  I explained what it meant, that Loyal would get the large center patch of our MC’s colors and the square MC patch on the back of his leather vest. Right now it was just a top and bottom rocker, no colors. No name patches on the front.

  Marcy was writing all of this down though truth be told she could find it all on Google for the most part.

  Hayden placed her hand in mine under the table I glanced in her direction and Marcy’s next question brought with it the sound of screeching tires and breaking glass.

  “What do the knife patches on the front of your vest mean?” she asked.

  I turned my killer on her, the cold filling my eyes, my face shutting down, becoming expressionless. Tom’s back went up but Marcy simply looked at me with mild curiosity.

  “I’m not going to answer that,” I said flatly.

  “Why not? You’ve been very forthcoming about everything else I don’t see the big deal…” Tom put his hand on hers where it clutched her pen and she looked at him sharply.

  “Leave it alone Babe,” he told her and she startled and looked at me again, I mean really looked. If she had any sense she’d feel the cold radiating off of me. Hayden did. She shivered by my side and held very still. Like prey when a predator goes by. Marcy blinked.

  “I’m sorry I asked,” she said finally and I nodded once, my mask of charming personality snapping back into place. She was lucky she was getting anything out of me. If it hadn’t been for that damned picture she’d given me at the light house she wouldn’t be getting shit but she had no clue just how damned much that image meant to me.

  We resumed talking but we avoided any more talk about the club, Tom carefully steering the conversation away from it. Marcy let him. Turned out she was an Anthropologist and he was a Historian and they’d met in some kind of educational capacity or other. She asked us how we met and I was content to let Hayden tell the story.

  I laid an arm across the back of her chair and leaned back in my own, listening to the story from her point of view, rapt, trying to glean anything and everything I could from the telling. She thought I’d been sweet and charming, she blushed as she told Marcy and Tom things that I knew and some that I didn’t and I filed it all away.

  She glossed over hiding Ashton and I went back to the conversation that had precipitated her agreeing to hide Ashton and I blinked, realizing that I had some questions about it. Usually when it came to the dirty shit, the deeds better left buried, the ones better locked away in some internal vault never to see the light of day ever again, I could just walk away. Something nagged at me about this one though.

  I ate mechanically and replayed the phone conversation with Hayden all those many long months ago in my head…

  “Ashton hi!”

  “Not Ashton, Baby.”

  “Oh… Who’s this?”

  “Reaver, you remember me?”

  “Of course I remember you! You’re hard to forget…”

  “Good to know.”

  “Why are you calling me from Ashton’s phone, is she all right?”

  “No Babe, she’s not. She’s hurt pretty bad.”

  “Oh my God! Where is she? What can I do!?”

  “Hayden. Ashton’s going to be okay but there’s something I need you to do, can you do it?”

  “What do you need?”

  “Hayden, do you trust me?”

  “…”

  “Hayden?”


  “…”

  I sighed.

  “Yes.” Her voice soft, barely there. I let out a slow breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “Okay, this is what I need you to do…”

  “Reaver are you all right!?” I blinked at Hayden’s panicked tone. Tom and Marcy were both staring at me a little wide eyed.

  “What? Yeah! Yeah I’m fine. Just got a little lost inside my own head for a minute there Doll. What’d I miss?” I took a drink of my soda and gave her my full attention.

  “Where did you go?” she asked. I licked suddenly dry lips.

  “You remember the first time I called you?” I asked and gave her a meaningful look. Her brow furrowed and understanding dawned in her bright green eyes, the fine line between her brows easing.

  “Yes,” she said carefully. I nodded.

  “That’s where I went,” I said and carried on eating. She quietly changed the subject with the other couple.

  “I don’t understand how you aren’t together. You both obviously have a long history. You’ve known each other, by all appearances, for years…” Marcy was saying. Hayden and I blinked.

  “We’ve known each other one year, three months and two days,” I said. Tom laughed.

  “Can you give us hours and minutes!?” he joked. I blinked.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “One thirty-two.”

  “Two hours and eighteen minutes,” I said. Tom laughed and I leveled him with a stare, he stopped laughing when he realized how serious I was. Hayden was staring at me open mouthed.

  “That’s amazing,” Marcy remarked.

  “I remember the important things,” I said around a mouthful and swallowed.

  “What else you have timed down like that?” Tom asked.

  Every man I’d killed, the birth of my son and the minute that Aimee walked out the door… I’d started calculating these things the day I got sober. When you went sober, counting the days suddenly became important. Like my knives it had become an obsession. I looked at Hayden.

  “Rick, the others, the birth of my son and the moment Aimee waked out the door… and the moment you did too, right behind Ashton,” I said and her expression was soft with wonder.

  “Who’s Rick and the others?” Marcy asked.

  “That’s all I’m going to say. She knows what it means and that’s enough. I’m done talking about me. Pick another subject…” I tried to soften the hard attitude by adding a belated “Please.”

  Our table was silent for a long time before Tom cleared his throat and turned the topic of conversation back to the light house we’d just been to. Marcy’s journal and pen disappeared back into her purse and I smiled, warming back up again. We chatted amicably, the tension smoothing out over a few minute’s time.

  “Well I have to say you’re a very interesting person Reaver,” Marcy said after a lull in the conversation. “Thank you for being so candid,” she added and I took a swallow of my soda.

  “Uh, sure, no problem. Sorry if I was a dick,” I said. She and Hayden laughed.

  “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” Marcy said, shifting in her seat. Tom gave her a look of simple adoration and I nodded.

  “It’s good for me every once in a while,” I said and she smiled. I cut a glance over at Hayden and felt my eyes widen some in surprise. She had a look on her face that was just a hair off from Tom’s and she was looking at me with it. I searched her face and her expression changed to one of doubt.

  “What?” she asked.

  Marcy shot a knowing smile across the table and she and Tom stood.

  “Well thank you for a lovely first part of the day. See you at breakfast?” she asked.

  “Maybe, depends on where the rest of the day takes us,” I said. A beach party with an MC probably involved alcohol at the very least, a late night for sure. If we slept through breakfast we slept through it. Hayden had been around Sacred Hearts for enough weekly meet ups and late nights out to know the name of the game. She nodded along with what I was saying.

  Tom and Marcy went up to the front after more polite goodbyes and paid their half of the bill. Hayden was roaming me with her green eyed gaze.

  “What was that look for?” she asked me.

  “For the way you were looking at me!” I said and laughed.

  “Oh and how was that?” she asked and I let my own gaze roam her lovely features.

  “Don’t know how to explain it Doll,” I said and it was half the truth. I didn’t but I probably could have if I put enough brainpower into it. I just didn’t want to. Hayden sighed but she was smiling her smile that said she was going to let me get away with that half assed answer.

  “So what now?” she asked and I smiled faintly.

  “We’re gonna be early if we go to the marina now,” I said.

  “So what should we do?” she asked.

  “I’m game to sit and talk,” I said quietly. Hayden blinked at me.

  “You want to talk?” I grinned. I could see her confusion, after all, wasn’t that what we’d just been doing?

  “I like talking to you Doll,” I said stretching.

  “Why?” she asked. Again with the why! Always, always, always needing to know why. I chuckled under my breath.

  “I don’t know. You see me and don’t run screaming?” I said. She scoffed but I could see the understanding in her light green eyes.

  “Reaver, you’ve never done anything to hurt me, or Ashton, or anyone else that I’ve seen or heard of that didn’t deserve it,” she said quietly and it brought me back to the questions I had earlier.

  “Hayden,” I said quietly and she looked up at me, cocking her head to the side at the seriousness of my tone.

  “Yes?” she asked. So formal, so polite… so inquisitive.

  “Remember when I called you?” I asked. She was very quiet. I almost didn’t hear her above the din of the fish shack when she said,

  “The first time you ever called me?” I nodded, keeping her under my watchful gaze. I didn’t want to blink. I didn’t want to miss any subtle nuance that said my questions unnerved her or distressed her.

  “Yes. I already told you I remember. Why?” she asked brow furrowing. I quirked a smile.

  “Why’d you trust me?” I asked her quietly.

  She’d had no reason to. We’d barely crossed paths on anything more than an acquaintance level a handful of times. She let out an explosive breath, her gaze far away as she turned inside of herself, going back.

  “When you asked me if I trusted you, I hesitated… I mean I didn’t really know you but when you sighed, it sounded just so defeated and it was Ashton. I’d seen the bruises, you know… that first day in the locker room and I knew what that monster was doing. I had a friend in college whose boyfriend hit her. You sounded, I don’t know, desperate to help her and I wanted to help her too and I figured the least I could do was hear you out. So I did.” She looked down at her hands.

  “I didn’t know about your friend,” I said quietly.

  “She got away. She was okay, but when I saw Ashton… I had to help any way I could and you were just asking me to hide her. I think I knew what was going to happen to her husband,” she said voice low and careful, looking around to make sure no one was listening.

  “But you helped us anyways,” I said.

  “I couldn’t just sit by and not do anything,” she said and I found myself nodding. The woman had a warrior’s spirit hidden inside that slight body of hers.

  “What about the rest? After you knew what I’d done?” I asked her low and careful. Her luminous green eyes widened. It was the first time she’d ever heard anything even close to an admission of guilt out of me.

  “I didn’t know that you personally had done anything…” she said but I could see she’d always suspected. It was written in the lines of her posture.

  “Do you want to know?” I asked her solemnly. She blinked up at me.

  “You would tell me?” she asked incr
edulous.

  “If you wanted to know,” I admitted but secretly begged from the bottom of my soul that she wouldn’t ask. She closed her mouth.

  “I trust you Reaver,” she said finally. I blinked.

  “I know Babe,” I said confused.

  “It’s good that you trust me too but I… I don’t think I need to know. Safer for all of us,” she said and I nodded.

  Good. Because I did not want to tell her about how Dray and I had broken into Chadwick’s house. How we’d disabled and reset alarms, how we’d spent the entire spring day holed up in the man’s own panic room. How we’d waited until deepest night until he was asleep, safe and sound in his bed.

  I didn’t want to tell her how I’d scored heroin off my old dealer the night before. How Dray and I had crept into Chadwick’s room, how Dray had held the man down in his own bed while I’d shot him up. How I’d been jealous about the sweet oblivion I’d put him into.

  I didn’t want to tell her how Dray and I had drawn him a hot bath. How we’d stripped him buck naked and got his incapacitated ass into the tub. How I’d sat on the tiled edge and told the man why it was he was going to die that night. How killing Chadwick Granger had meant absolutely nothing to me.

  How I had felt cheated as I drew the razor down the insides of his arms from elbow to wrist. Not cheated because the task had fallen to me to take him out, but cheated because he was so doped out of his fucking head he’d smiled as I’d done it. Not a trace of fear in him or on him. It was probably the kindest murder I’d ever committed and that rankled me more than anything.

  I was a fucking monster. My psyche was cracked right down the middle to a point where not even therapy, or the love of Hayden Michaels would fuse me back together. It would be like putting a Band-Aid on a severed artery. Useless… but having her green eyes fill up with horror, having her turn from me and leave, that was a devastation I didn’t think I would be able to come back from. I needed Hayden to know about the monster in my head but I never wanted her to see it. Not if I could avoid it.

  “Reaver what’s wrong?” she asked me startled and I blinked.

  “Why?” I asked and let my puzzlement show. Her slender arms went around me and she hugged me tight, her voice when it came, was muffled against my shoulder.