A Brother At My Back

by A. J. Downey

  “Headed around back?” he asked.

  “Eh, yeah.”

  He looked at his watch and nodded. “About that time, I’ll see her out.”

  “Appreciate it, bro.”

  I left him tapping the shoulder of another bouncer who was talking in his cell. The guy nodded and Zeke disappeared inside, through the building.

  Nek minute, I was around back, leaning against the bike, expecting to be waiting a bit; most women almost always taking longer than they say. Not her, though. The back door opened, the big blond bouncer holding it open for her. She said her goodnight and he gave her a nod and, fists buried deep in her pockets against the cold, she stepped as lightly across the cracked blacktop of the back lot in her flat boots as she had across the mirrored stage in those killer heels of hers.

  “Hi,” she said, and while the choice lace mask she’d had on inside was gone, her hair covered and did the job of hiding her warrior’s mark, now.

  “Hey,” I greeted back, and held out a helmet to her.

  “So, where did you have in mind to eat?” she asked.

  “Know a diner, open twenty-four hours. American food; ain’t bad.”

  “Sounds good; I could use the calories,” she declared.

  “Too right, must be a workout in there every night, eh?”

  “It can be.”

  She got onto the bike behind me and settled. I started it up and when her arms were firm around my waist, I pulled out of the lot and onto the road.

  The ride was brisk, and if I was cold, I sure felt sorry for her. She didn’t have the same amount of muscle or mass that I did. I kept thinking about her dance back at the strip club and the more I thought about it, the more that blank look haunted me. It also bothered me that as much as it did, I still couldn’t help that my prick stirred every time I pictured her taking my money between her teeth and those rich red lips of hers.

  I pulled up to a stoplight a few blocks down from the diner and she called out over the engine, “It’s all right, you know!”

  “What?”

  “That it turned you on. I know I’m good at my job.”

  “Sounds to me like you maybe put in a little extra effort, eh?” I called back, flirting a bit, sure, but a bit uneasy she read me so well.

  “Maybe I did,” she agreed and I almost didn’t hear her over the chug of my old girl when she added, “Sorry.”

  The light turned green and I powered through the intersection and down the road, pulling smoothly into the car park of the diner. I cut the engine and didn’t say anything. She seemed content to not say anything either, which was alright with me.

  I opened the door for her and let her into the warmth of the place first. Hayley looked up from behind the counter.

  “Hey, you!” she said brightly.

  “Gidday, Cuz.”

  “Well, good night,” she said brightly and I smiled. “Two?”

  “Eh, yeah.” I tried not to blush. I was actually pretty shy around the club when it came to the ladies, and didn’t think that Hayley would be here so late. Blue’s shift must’ve changed again.

  “Hi, I’m Hayley,” she said leaning around me to see Tiff.

  “Uh, hi… I’m Tiffany…” she said back and her voice sounded sus, or rather like she found Hayley to be sus.

  “Blue, my husband, is one of Zeb’s club brother’s, are you and Zeb..?” she trailed off and left Tiffany to fill in the blank.

  “Ah, don’t put her on the spot, Girl!” I cried and Hayley laughed.

  “Sorry, curiosity gets the better of me anymore.”

  It was true, she and Blue were a matched pair and they tended to bring out the best in each other and now that Cell was gone? They thrived. Bugger all, he’d carked it hard. Left Blue and Hayley in a right state but I can’t say I was sad to see him go. He was a right bastard more often than not.

  Hayley led us to a booth and Tiff, still hiding behind that glossy fall of hair said, “It’s okay,” but left it to me to elaborate.

  “Tiff is a new friend,” I said for lack of anything else to come up with. It wasn’t no one’s business why we were really together, now was it?

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Tiff. I’ll be back to take your order in a second.”

  “Thanks,” Tiffany murmured and opened her menu.

  I let her hide behind it until some of the tension left the set of her shoulders and she looked like she’d made a decision.

  “You knew it was coming, I reckon,” I said and she sighed, setting the menu down and looking at me plaintively.

  “You want to know everything, I take it?”

  “Not everything, just what you want to tell me. I don’t need to pry.”

  Actually, I did want to know everything, but I didn’t want to scare her into clamming up. Easy does it, we had time. I didn’t know whether this bloke would bother after he got out, but judging by the state of her face, it wasn’t likely that he’d ease off and go away. It was personal what he’d done to her, and any man willing to go that far against his woman truly thought that way. That she was his woman, to do with what he pleased. Some blokes just didn’t get that wasn’t how things worked.

  “It was my best friend Delia’s birthday, and I wanted to go out but Silas didn’t…”

  She told me about what he did to her face, but she wouldn’t look at me while she did it. I felt angry for her, and it solidified my idea I’d had that morning, the one that’d resurfaced while watching her dance.

  “Real piece of work, that one,” I said and she nodded, but still wouldn’t look at me. Instead, she stared fixedly at some invisible point out in the diner.

  Hayley came by and took our order, but it was pretty clear by the brittle, mechanical way that Tiffany put hers in, she didn’t have much of an appetite left. I felt bad for that.

  “So what happens now?” she asked quietly.

  “How do y’ mean?”

  “Well, he gets out tomorrow, and you can’t be my shadow forever.”

  “Too right, I had a few ideas about that.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  Hayley drifted over and set down a cup and saucer of hot water and another saucer with a little metal teapot on it with more hot water. Tiffany selected a tea bag from the little box of them at the edge of the table and set about fixing her cup with honey and lemon.

  I nodded thanks when Hayley returned in short order to top up my coffee, and with a smile, she left us alone again.

  “First thing, we’re gonna teach you how to shoot. That’s the easiest, but what are you going to do if you can’t get to the gun we’ll get you?”

  “Die, probably. Horribly… painfully.” She looked grim, but not at all resigned. Anger painted her pretty face and I smiled.

  “Not if I can help it. What are your days off?”

  “Today and tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday.”

  “Sweet as, mine too.”

  She frowned. “What exactly do you do, anyway?”

  “Bouncer at a cowboy bar; took over for one of my bros who started a family. Didn’t have time for it anymore.”

  “Ah,” she raised her cup, “To bar workers and strippers, at least the schedules are making it fairly easy for us.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said with a grin and clicked my coffee mug against hers.

  “So, what exactly did you have in mind?” she asked.

  “Well, I’d like to get you trained up on how to use a gun, and I think you should be able to defend yourself close-quarters like, in case he comes around wanting a hiding.”

  “Want to what?” she looked at me wide-eyed and a little stricken.

  “Sorry, that means wanting to fight you. This way you can fight back.”

  “He’s a rodeo star, there is no fighting him. He’s twice my size, and plus, that is totally not what I thought you meant.”

  I frowned, “What’d ya think I meant?”

  She raised her eyebrows and gave me a flat look and I still wasn’t getting
it. I shook my head and she sighed.

  “Rape is such an ugly word, but it can and does happen even to women like me.”

  “Oh, no! That’s not what I meant at all, eh.”

  “It’s a possibility, though,” she said grimly. “There are worse things than dying; for me that’s one of them.”

  “Hey, ain’t gonna happen, we’ll get you right.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Nah, I know I am.”

  “Alright, here’s your plates and here’s your tab, you guys can settle up any time you’d like.” Hayley set down our food silencing any further conversation for the time being. She smiled brightly and whisked a ticket out of her apron pocket, setting it at the edge of the table before heading back into the kitchen. Tiff set a twenty on top of it. A twenty stained with red lipstick.

  “Eh, no I got this,” I said and she smiled at me and shook her head.

  “You said you were buying me dinner with it, remember?”

  “Ah, I did, that. Didn’t I?”

  I let Hayley take it after adding a bit more to it to cover the rest of the tab and a hefty tip.

  Tiffany smiled and it held an edge of sadness. We didn’t talk much for the rest of the meal. Hayley came by and took the pay with thanks and I honestly had to say that I felt a pang of something, watching that twenty with its bit of red color whisked away. Couldn’t stop thinking about it, actually.

  When we got out to the bike, I felt a bit bad that it was so cold but I said, “Forgot something, be right back, okay?”

  “Sure,” Tiff murmured and leaned her shapely butt against the seat of my bike. I ran back inside and fished out my wallet, going to Hayley at the counter.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “That twenty we paid you with, I’d like to buy it.”

  Hayley laughed a little, incredulous. “I put it in the register, how will I know which one it is?”

  “No worries,” I told her, “I’ll know.”

  She opened up the register and fanned them out and the third bill down I pointed it out and said, “That one.” She handed it across to me and I passed her a couple of tens out of my wallet.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure, no problem,” she said, mystified.

  I went back out to take Tiff home, her somber yet curious gaze following me from the front door, down the steps, and all the way down the car park to where she sat, patiently waiting.

  “All good, then,” I said cheerfully and she gave me a nod. She didn’t ask and I wasn’t volunteering. It was a quiet ride back to her place as far as the conversation went.

  7

  Tiffany…

  “Oh my god, you’re kidding me, right? This is going to be an everyday thing?” I looked up at Delia and frowned.

  “Why on earth would I joke about something like this?” I asked, handing her the pint of ice cream she’d picked out of the paper grocery sack sitting on my kitchen counter.

  “Tiffany Amber Dempsey!” she cried, mouth agape. “I know Dragon is nice to all of us but he’s looking to get laid coming around Sugars, of course, he’s going to be nice to us. He’s still the president of the Sacred Hearts MC, though. They have a reputation around here for a reason. I heard, they once skinned one of their enemies alive and nailed his bloody skin to his family’s front door. They are not nice people and they’re going to want something from you eventually. Something that you’re probably not going to want to give them, and then what?”

  “I know they’re not nice people, Lia. That’s totally why I went to them in the first place. In case you hadn’t noticed, Silas isn’t a nice person, either and when it comes right down to it, I happen to know for a fact that it is not ‘better the devil you know’ in this case.”

  “So, like, this guy with the scary face tattoos is what? Just going to follow you everywhere you go, and you seriously thought that none of them were going to expect anything out of you in return?”

  I shifted slightly and gave her a one-shouldered shrug as I tore the top off of my own ice cream pint. I hadn’t thought of that actually, but the more I thought about it, I had things to trade them. Sex, for starters, if I had to. I already traded sex for money. After going that low, sex for protection was a much better deal. I just hoped that whoever I had to fuck wasn’t into pain. I’d had enough of that for a lifetime, I’ll tell you what.

  “It looks like it, so far,” I said.

  “Yeah, so far, being the operative words. You didn’t deal with them in explicit terms from the get-go? Girl! Have you not listened to anything I’ve told you?”

  “Desperate times called for desperate measures, Lia. Silas is out now and he’s going to come after me. I’m pretty sure he’s already looking.”

  She handed me a spoon, her expression grim, the wheels turning behind her pretty green eyes.

  She sighed, “This town isn’t that big, but it isn’t exactly small either. I mean, sure, you run into a lot of the same faces, but it’s not like everybody knows everybody else’s name.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think he’s going to find you that easy. He’s probably not even looking! I mean, he’s clean now and he’s spent a few years in prison cooling his jets, right?”

  I rolled my eyes and took the spoon she held out, cramming it into the top of my ice cream and putting some into my mouth. Speaking around it, I said, “Do you have any idea how far you’re reaching with that shit?” I asked, swallowing the sweet, creamy goodness.

  “Yeah, no, you’re right. Silas was a douche. He’s still probably a douche. You know what they say about guys who go to prison.” She sighed and her shoulders dropped. She turned lightly and went into the main area of my studio and dropped onto the edge of my bed like a giant sack of potatoes.

  I went around the dividing island of my kitchen and dropped down next to her just as heavily.

  “Actually, I don’t,” I said honestly.

  She rolled her eyes at me and sucked on the spoonful of ice cream she put in her mouth. I waited for her to finish her mouthful and spill while I ate some more of my own deliciousness. I would need it to sit through the Hallmark channel movie Lia was about to make me suffer through.

  “They come out the exact same way they went in, at least personality-wise. It’s like prison is some kind of time warp that holds them in stasis. I knew a guy that went in at seventeen for armed robbery, tried as an adult. Do not pass go, no stint in juvie, he went directly to the big boy's prison.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Spent the entire five years of his sentence inside, came out at something like twenty-three and I swear to god, he didn’t mature at all in there. Like he looked older, and fantastic actually. Was ripped all to hell and had a set of abs to die for but he was still a seventeen-year-old kid. He learned nothing in there that he could use out here.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Rare success story. He started working for a junkyard pulling apart cars, became a mechanic and stayed out of trouble.”

  I gave her a look and she rolled her eyes at me again, “I didn’t say that was going to be Silas!” Her exasperation made me smile, which I hid behind my pint of ice cream as I took another bite.

  It totally wouldn’t be. It’d be nice, but he was hell-bent on killing me when he got put away and I seriously couldn’t picture him doing anything but seething over it for the last three years. I wished they’d kept him for his full sentence. If they had, I would have been long gone, someplace he never would have been able to find me. Probably with a different name, too, though not by marriage. I couldn’t picture anybody wanting a washed-up whore.

  “Hey, whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” Lia said gently and I looked over at her.

  “What?”

  “I hate it when you get that look,” she answered.

  “What look?”

  “Defeated. Like someone just kicked your favorite puppy to death in front of you and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”

&nbs
p; I took a deep breath and let it out harshly, looking at my friend pointedly. She frowned at me and it was her turn to ask, “What?”

  “I can do something about this,” I said evenly. “And I did.”

  She scowled at me and said, “And I still think it’s a big mistake. You didn’t grow up around here, Tiff. You don’t know what kind of men they are.”

  “Sometimes you just have to make a leap of faith,” I said with a shrug. “Trust your instincts.”

  “Like you did when you got involved with Silas in the first place?” she asked me flatly.

  Ouch. Low blow. Real low blow.

  “I don’t want to fight about this,” I said and she sighed. She knew she’d fucked up. It was written all over her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized immediately. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.” I picked up the remote and turned on my little TV, picked up the other and switched on the DVD player. “Just watch your movie,” I said and tried not to let my anger get the best of me.

  It was a tense showing of The Christmas Wish, and I couldn’t say the mood improved much after.

  “I’m really worried about you,” she said as her parting shot when she left that night.

  “Me, too,” was all I could say to the scarred wood of my apartment door as I threw all the bolts and chains along its edge behind her.

  We would be okay. Her heart was in the right place. I just needed to be mad for a while until I sorted out some more of the ugly inside my head.

  So far neither Dragon nor Zeb had asked anything from me, but that didn’t mean I didn’t owe them. I was just hoping that when it came time to pay my dues, it wouldn’t hurt as much, if not more, than whatever Silas would do to me.

  Rock, hi, I’m Tiff. Nice to meet you, too, Hard Place.

  8

  Zeb…

  I lay back in my bed, hands behind my head, and stared at the paper rectangle taped to the wall next to it. The light in here was bad, which was good, considering I slept most of the day, but sunrise hadn’t happened yet, and so I could barely make out the crimson stain across the paper’s surface. I touched it lightly and figured it wasn’t a good thing that I couldn’t stop picturing her with it between her lips. She was so beautifully broken. I couldn’t help it, though. There was something about her. Something about the way she moved, the look in her eyes, it captivated me.