Rome's Chance: A Reapers MC Novella

by Joanna Wylde

  At least one good thing had come from my crazy night out.

  Folding up the borrowed shirt and shorts, I found my phone and slinked out the door, feeling like a criminal. Thirty seconds later I was down the steps and headed toward Mom’s place.

  Hopefully my black eye would distract Lexi from the fact that I’d destroyed her push-up bra, I mused. That might be almost enough to make up for the whole flying cowboy attack.

  Then I pictured walking into my reunion covered in bruises. Nope, the bra wasn’t enough to balance it out. For better or worse, the night had been a total failure. It didn’t matter how sexy or fun Rome McGuire might be.

  He wasn’t the right guy for me.

  Mom and Kayden were still sleeping when I got home, but I found Lexi up already. She’d been sitting at the table, drinking coffee and playing with her phone.

  Then she saw my bruises and dropped the phone.

  Shit.

  I’d hoped that I’d be able to sneak in, maybe throw on some concealer before I had to face anyone. I raised a finger to my lips, reminding her to stay quiet. Kayden was sleeping on the couch because he’d given up his bunk bed for me.

  “What the hell?” she whispered, somehow managing to make it sound like she was yelling. “Did he hit you? Because if he did, I’m going to hunt him down and—”

  “No, it’s not like that,” I whispered back, grabbing her arm. I dragged her down the hall to her bedroom, shutting the door and leaning back against it. “There was a fight at the bar. Some guy crashed into me and I hit the ground. Rome had nothing to do with it.”

  “What? Where the hell did he take you?”

  “The Starkwood Saloon,” I admitted.

  “What part of ‘somewhere nice’ does he not get?” she asked, still furious. “What the fuck is wrong with him? And what the fuck’s wrong with you? Any man who takes you on a date that ends with facial injuries does not deserve sex. This is some Mom-level stupidity, Randi. I expected better from you.”

  “I don’t think someone with a history of shoplifting condoms should be lecturing me about stupidity,” I snapped back at her.

  “Really?” Lexi asked, raising a brow. “That’s the best you got?”

  We glared at each other for long seconds, neither of us blinking.

  “Rome remembered that I like to dance,” I said finally, breaking the standoff. “And there was a good band playing. He was trying to take me somewhere fun. The fight just happened randomly—it’s not like he planned it or something.”

  “Um, no. The Starkwood Saloon has lots of fights. Don’t bullshit yourself,” she countered bluntly. “But I guess it worked out okay for him—you may have gotten a black eye, but he still got laid. Very efficient.”

  “He didn’t get laid,” I insisted. Then I took a deep breath, forcing myself to stay calm. Sometimes it was so hard to remember that she was only sixteen. “We went back to his place last night because I looked like death on a stick. I didn’t want to freak you guys out in the middle of the night. And not to be a bitch, but you’re the one who filled my purse with condoms—slut shaming me seems a little hypocritical. I’m a legal adult, which means I’m allowed to have sex whenever I want.”

  “You still look like death on a stick,” she replied, ignoring the rest of what I’d said. “And Mom is definitely going to freak out. So will Kayden. This isn’t about sex. It’s about a man who should’ve been protecting you letting someone beat you up instead.”

  “I look a hell of a lot better than I did last night,” I told her grimly. “And don’t worry—it’s not like I’ll see him again. Even if I get that job and move back, I don’t see us dating. He’s not my type.”

  “Do you really think you’ll move back?” she asked, jumping on the comment. For an instant, I caught a hint of vulnerability. Then it was gone again and she sniffed. “Not that I care.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied slowly, not wanting to get up her hopes. “Depends on whether they make me an offer. I can’t afford to move without work lined up.”

  “Well, obviously,” she said, looking away. Silence fell for a few seconds. Then she added, “You know, makeup will never cover that bruise. Maybe we can fix your hair so it hangs down over it a little. How do you feel about bangs?”

  “I haven’t had bangs since I was five years old.”

  Lexi turned to her battered vanity and started digging through the top drawer. After a minute she spun back to me, brandishing a shiny pair of scissors. Good scissors. The kind they use in salons.

  “Come sit down,” she said. “I’ll fix this.”

  “There is no way on earth I’m letting you chop off my hair.”

  “Why not? I cut Mom and Kayden’s,” she replied. That caught my attention, because Mom actually had a pretty good cut. Kayden’s was decent, too.

  “Where did you learn to cut hair?” I asked.

  “My friend Kristin’s mom has a salon set up in their basement,” she said. “I like to hang out there sometimes. She showed me some techniques, and then I started practicing on one of those dummies they use at beauty schools. I’m good at it. My plan is, I’ll enroll in a cosmetology program and get my license. Then I’ll be able to support me and Kayden no matter what. I just haven’t figured out what to do with him while I’m at school.”

  Familiar guilt hit.

  Until three years ago, I’d been the one taking care of them. Then Mom went on disability and moved back to Hallies Falls. I’d decided to make my own life instead of following her.

  “Okay, you can cut my hair,” I said, accepting her peace offering. Hopefully I wasn’t making a huge mistake. Lexi gave a quick smile, and I could tell she was excited, even if she didn’t want to show it. At least she wasn’t pissed off about Rome any more. “Just don’t make me look worse for the reunion.”

  “Sis, don’t take this wrong, but there’s no way I could make you look worse.”

  I sighed and studied my reflection in the mirror. Lexi was right. My eye had turned a dark purple, shot through with blacks, browns, and just a hint of yellow in one corner. There was a bright red scrape on my forehead, too. One I hadn’t noticed.

  Lovely.

  “Maybe I’ll just skip the reunion,” I said slowly.

  “Let’s see what I can do first,” she insisted. “We’ll give you a long fringe to hang over it. You can do that goth thing, where you only show one eye. It’ll be… well, I was going to say cute, but I think tolerable is probably the best we’re gonna get.”

  I sat down on the little stool in front of the table, catching her gaze in the mirror. “You know, it’s always been my dream to be tolerable.”

  “At least you dream bigger than Mom.”

  I had to give Lexi credit—my hair turned out more than tolerable. It wasn’t my regular style and I couldn’t see keeping it long term, but most of the bruise was covered.

  Our mother slept in, giving us plenty of time to finish the haircut and explain the bruises to Kayden. He got an edited version, of course. Someone had run into me and I’d fallen down. Accidents happen.

  He’d taken it at face value with a sort of oblivious, blind faith that I never remembered having as a child.

  Mom was less impressed with my explanation. She wasn’t feeling so good when she woke up at ten, so she’d decided to stay in bed. I’d poured a cup of coffee as a peace offering before slipping into her bedroom. Lexi followed me. I wasn’t sure if this was for moral support, or because she didn’t want to miss the show when Mom exploded. Either way, I was happy for the company.

  “Men who get in fights are no good,” my mother declared when I’d finished my story. “You should’ve come home once you got back to town. We could’ve handled the black eye, but now everyone will think you’re a slut. Those bikers talk to each other. He’ll tell them you’re easy.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked, startled. “You used to sleep around all the time, Mom. You have five kids with four dads.”

  “That’s my point,”
she said. “I know what I’m talking about.”

  She lifted her Zippo to a little glass pipe and inhaled deeply, managing to hold the smoke for maybe fifteen seconds before the coughing started.

  “You gotta stop smoking that crap,” I told her, feeling pissy. “People with asthma can’t smoke pot. You know better.”

  “Need it for my back,” she insisted. “I have my inhalers and my nebulizer if I need them.”

  “Bullshit,” Lexi said, rolling her eyes. “If this was about the pain, you could use the edible stuff. Of course, if you keep smoking that shit you’ll die during an asthma attack—that’ll take care of the pain once and for all.”

  “It’s my life,” she said. Lexi’s mouth tightened. They’d always butted heads, even when she was a little girl. So had my brothers, actually. I’d always been the family buffer.

  But now my brothers and I had our own lives.

  You can’t take care of your mom and sister forever, I reminded myself. That’s not your job.

  “It’s not fair to me and Kayden, you smoking in here all the time,” Lexi continued, and I heard the anger and resentment in her voice. “You’re gonna give us cancer. He smells like pot sometimes. You do realize this, right?”

  This was news to me. “What do you mean, Kayden smells like pot?”

  “Sometimes he comes in here when he has bad dreams,” Lexi said, her voice harsh. “And then he stinks in the morning. I smell it when I’m getting him ready for school. She’s smoking it at night and it gets in his hair. She smokes it every night, not just when the pain is bad.”

  Mom turned away, another coughing fit racking her body, as I tried to process this new information. Suddenly my bruised face didn’t seem like such a big deal. I’d known things had gotten bad at home, but I hadn’t realized just how bad until this moment.

  I studied my mother with new eyes.

  She’d gained a lot of weight since she’d moved back to Hallies Falls. I’d always assumed it was because of her bad back, but she’d been using that nebulizer regularly this whole visit. And her inhaler. Not to mention that prednisone prescription I’d picked up earlier.

  Steroids put weight on a person fast, and Mom had to be over 200 pounds by now.

  “How often do you need your nebulizer?” I asked bluntly.

  “Randi, we should be talking about your—”

  “She uses it three or four times a day,” Lexi burst out. “And they’ve been giving her more and more prednisone. Last month I had to call 911 because she couldn’t breathe and her lips were blue. She went to the hospital. They put her on oxygen and everything. They said that if she doesn’t stop, she’s gonna die.”

  “Fucking doctors don’t know what they’re talking about,” my mother insisted. I saw a familiar flash of anger in her eyes, but for once I didn’t care. All I could think of was Kayden at school, wearing thrift store clothing and smelling like pot.

  “This has nothing to do with Randi’s situation,” Mom continued. “We need to talk about last night, and what a mistake she made going out with that biker. The Reapers are a criminal gang. I know all about bad men—remember your dad, Lexi? Think of the hell we went through because of him. He broke my arm, you know. That’s the kind of temper he had, and you’re just like him—”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. “Her dad has nothing to do with this.”

  “Randi—”

  “I told you to shut up!” I repeated, feeling my temper rise. “You don’t get to talk to Lexi like that, okay? You’re treating her like she’s an adult. But she’s not. She’s a kid and you’re supposed to be her mother. You’re supposed to be taking care of her and keeping her out of trouble, but instead she’s the one taking care of you and Kayden. You did the same fucking thing to me, and it’s not fair. Not to any of us. So shut the fuck up, already. I’m throwing this shit away.”

  With that, I snatched the glass pipe out of her hand, dropping it into a glass of water on the dresser next to the bed. She squawked, eyes bulging.

  “Where’s the rest?” I demanded, spinning toward Lexi. Her eyes had gone wide.

  “In her top drawer,” she told me, refusing to look at Mom. “And there’s some in the closet. She keeps all of it in here, except for a little bit she’s got hidden in the kitchen.”

  My mom gasped, but I ignored her because I’d lost interest in her excuses. Her disability was real, I knew that. And I also knew that pot helped with the back pain, but this was beyond fuckwitted. Here she was, risking her fucking life smoking it, when she could use oils, or suck on a fucking lollipop. Instead, my brother and sister were stuck dealing with the same kind of irresponsible, self-destructive bullshit that I’d had to deal with as a kid.

  Except I hadn’t had to call 911 because my mom couldn’t breathe.

  I pulled out the bedside drawer. It was full of baggies and pills and all kinds of shit. Jesus. How much did one woman need? Wrapping my hands around either side, I slid the drawer out of the little dresser and carefully handed the whole thing to Lexi.

  “Take that out to the kitchen,” I told. “We’ll go through it together. And send Kayden outside to play. I saw some kids out there.”

  “You have no right!” Mom said, but her voice wasn’t strong like usual. It was more of a weakened gasp—guess she didn’t like it when someone else was giving the orders. I targeted the closet, determined to find the rest of it. Behind me, I heard her struggling to get out of bed. More coughing. There it was—tucked away in a big Ziploc on the top shelf. Pulling it loose, I spun around to find Mom collapsed back on the bed fighting another coughing fit, lungs wheezing like a leaky bicycle pump. Her arm flailed, hitting the nebulizer, and I realized that she wasn’t just pissed at me. She couldn’t breathe.

  For real.

  I dropped the bag and ran to the bed, suddenly terrified. I’d seen her during asthma attacks before, but they hadn’t been this bad. A puff or two of her inhaler and she’d been fine.

  “Meds,” she gasped, pointing at the nebulizer, and I realized I didn’t even know how the damned thing worked.

  “Lexi!” I shouted. “Get in here—I need help!”

  She came running back, taking it all in with one glance.

  “I’m on it,” my sister said. “Out of the way.”

  Moving quickly and efficiently, she opened a tiny plastic vial of clear liquid. Then she twisted off the top and squirted it in the little cup thingie attached to the machine with clear tubing. In seconds she had the top back on, attached it to a mask, and then slipped the whole thing around Mom’s head with an elastic.

  The machine whirled to life and I watched as a cloud of vapor filled the mask. Mom kept coughing, but slowly the medicine did its work. The coughing stopped. Another couple minutes and the wheezing went away, too. Mom still looked like hell, but she was breathing just fine.

  As for me, my heart was pounding. The woman drove me crazy, but I loved her. Of course, it was easy to love someone so difficult when they lived nearly four hundred miles away. My sixteen-year-old sister had to deal with her on a daily basis.

  “How long has she been like this?” I asked Lexi.

  “Six months,” she replied, clearly exhausted. Not the kind of exhaustion that comes from lack of sleep—this was the kind that comes from endless stress and too much responsibility. “It’s been getting worse.”

  I glanced toward Mom. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I felt a twinge of guilt. Not that I regretted calling her out over the way she treated Lexi, and I still had every intention of throwing away her weed. But I could’ve handled it better.

  “Should we take her to the ER or something?” I asked, raising a hand to rub the back of my neck. The muscles were tense.

  “Not unless she gets worse,” Lexi replied. “The nebulizer usually takes care of it, and she responded pretty fast this time. It’s when the nebulizer doesn’t work that things get scary. Let’s talk in the kitchen.”

  “Is it safe to leave her?”

  “I can hear
you,” Mom said, her voice hoarse. “So don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

  Frowning, I sat down on the bed next to her, then caught one of her hands and held it in mine.

  “I love you,” I said, looking up at her face. She rolled her eyes, but she squeezed my hand. Lexi crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall, watching us. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

  “I know it’s stupid,” Mom admitted. “But it’s fast and it feels good. And sometimes that’s just what I want. I used to take oxy, you know. I’m off it now. The weed is way healthier.”

  “I understand why you want pot,” I replied. “It’s the smoking I can’t figure out—why don’t you just eat it?”

  “Takes too long.”

  Lexi snorted, and I shot her a look. She flipped us off, then walked out, shutting the door hard behind her.

  Sixteen going on forty.

  “Don’t throw my drugs away,” Mom said, squeezing my hand again. “I don’t have the money to buy more. You can bake it into brownies for me, how’s that? Before you go home? You don’t leave until tomorrow afternoon, right? There’s time.”

  I sighed, then nodded my head.

  “I’ll do it,” I told her. “But after this, you have to get edibles, okay? It’s not just about your asthma. Kayden shouldn’t have to go to school smelling like a dirty bong.”

  She pulled her hand away and we sat in silence for a minute. Then she sighed. “I haven’t been much of a mother.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She really hadn’t.

  “You need to make a plan,” I finally told her. “Some way to take care of yourself and the kids. Lexi can’t keep doing all this.”

  “I know. I will, baby. I promise. Things will be different.”

  They wouldn’t.

  I’d heard her say the same thing a thousand times, but this time it sounded like a prison door slamming shut. Lexi and Kayden needed me. They weren’t my responsibility, but someone had to take care of them.