by Meg Jackson
7
Damon drove her to the storage unit first. The day was dying quickly, but the delay was fine with him. He waited while she cursed her way through the boxes, finally emerging with a cardboard box overflowing with clothes, her sleeping bag on the bottom.
“It's only about a week and a half, two weeks, that we'll be gone,” he said. “We can get to Miami in five days, tops. We'll be there a few, and then four or five days back.”
“Yeah,” Tricia said, looking at him blankly. “I know. That's why we have to go to Ricky's still. The rest of my clothes are there.”
“The rest of them?” Damon said through his grin, eying the size of the box. She met his look with one of her own.
“Hey, it was your idea, Kerouac,” she quipped. “Just because you can wear one pair of socks a week doesn't mean we're all so blessed.”
“Alright, alright,” Damon said. “We'll stop at Ricky's.”
“We'd have to anyway,” Tricia mused, closing the trunk and moving around to the passenger side. “I need to leave a note.”
“You're not going to tell her – them – in person? Or at least call?” Damon asked.
“No,” Tricia said, shaking her head and clicking her seatbelt in place. “It'll be easier this way. I don't want to have to...explain.”
“I can understand that,” Damon said, thinking of his own silence. He hadn't told his brothers or sisters where he was going. Or that he was going at all. That would require telling them why. It would take a conversation he wasn't ready to have. When it was all over, when it was all done with, then he could tell everything.
The drive to Ricky's was short. Damon waited outside, leaning against the car door, as Tricia vanished inside. He wondered if she would have second thoughts. He half hoped she would. He had spent the past hour tuning out the better, bigger part of him. But now it was starting to seep in. When the door opened and she reappeared, he felt his heart slowing to a crawl as his stomach sank down, pre-emptive regret flooding his senses.
Why am I dragging her into this, he thought, watching her haul a duffel bag into the trunk. What the hell am I doing? She doesn’t need to get involved in this shit after everything she’s been through…
But then she smiled at him, slamming the trunk closed, and he knew why he was dragging her into it.
Because he was selfish, and he wanted her near him.
He wasn’t being his best self, and he wasn’t sure how it would all end if he was alone.
Then bring Kennick, or Cristov, or Mina, or someone who wasn’t just thrown into one of the worst shit shows a human can endure, he thought.
But for all the strength and steadiness he drew from his family, Tricia offered him something different. Something more.
Damon had always been the sort who could read a person quickly. And he’d only met Tricia once before he knew she was one of those women. The sort who could silence his demons with one glance, who could draw the best out of him like water being drawn from a well. Around her, he felt like putting his life on the line to protect her. Hell, he had put his life on the line to protect her.
And when you found a woman like that, you didn’t let her go easily.
The night they’d met, she’d been about as broken down as a woman could be, and she was about to suffer even more. But through all the pain and confusion in her eyes, he’d seen her truer self, and he’d made up his mind to try and know it intimately.
How could you get any more intimate than a road trip?
And she’d said yes.
She was either as crazy as she’d claimed he was, willing to go off with a near-stranger (albeit, one who’d killed a man for her) for an indefinite amount of time, or she felt the same thing he did, and was wise enough to take a chance on it.
But you shouldn’t even be thinking about a woman, that voice spoke up again. Are you forgetting what this is all about? Are you forgetting about the man in Miami? Are you forgetting about everything that brought you to this – everything you need to put to rest? This is no time to let your heart loose. This is not the season where a young man’s fancy should turn to thoughts of love.
But it was too late now. She was there, at the passenger side, watching him watch her. He realized an inappropriate amount of time had passed since they’d been standing there.
“Having second thoughts?” she asked, eyebrows raised, half a smile on her face. “I promise, I’m a really good DJ. No girly songs.”
Yes, I’m having second thoughts, I’m sorry, you need to stay here, get your shit out of the trunk and I’ll drive you back to Ricky’s apartment, he thought.
“No,” he said, unlocking the car doors with a beep. “Let’s make some miles. Did you tell Ricky where we were going, in your note?”
“Oh,” Tricia said, backing away from the door. “No, I’m so stupid, I forgot. I’ll just…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Damon said, relieved. “She’ll figure it out. Let’s go.”
8
Jenner’s stomach coiled, on instinct, as the door shook. Heavy fists banging from the other side. One hell of an alarm clock.
“Wakey wakey fuckface,” the voice came, sardonic and cruel. “Time to lick the bowls clean.”
Jenner groaned, his immediate fear replaced by a sense of drudgery. How many months had it been now, since he’d become the Steel Dragons’ bitch? He didn’t care to even try to remember. For all he knew, it would go on like this for the rest of his life.
As long as it’s not the first month again, he told himself, rising from the uncomfortable cot that served as his bed. Anything but that…
His body still bore the scars of that month. Between the beatings and the sleep deprivation and the hunger, he’d been broken down to his littlest parts, his smallest self. It had taken a month before his tormenters finally decided that he didn’t have anything to give them, that the confession they wanted wasn’t coming. So he’d been promoted to janitor at the clubhouse. Cleaning vomit and piss and shit from the toilets, scrubbing floors, washing dishes. All while wearing a pink, frilly apron.
This was so far from what he’d intended, it might as well have been an alternate universe.
He’d gone to the Steel Dragons hoping they could help him take down the Volanis brothers. He’d told them about how Cristov ran the gypsy’s marijuana business, dealing their homegrown organics to the locals. If the Steel Dragons came in, took over, wresting the profits away, it might instill doubt about the Volanis’ ability to run the kumpania.
And, for a while, it seemed like it might actually work. Jenner did some things he was less than proud of, but it seemed like the Steel Dragons had the upper hand. Cristov and his brothers were scared and clueless. Caught like mice in a trap.
And then it had all gone to absolute shit. The Steel Dragons had screwed up, kidnapped the wrong girl, and Cristov’s little girlfriend had known just where to find them. Big, burly, macho-man Damon had killed one of the club’s highest-ranking members. Another man had gotten a bullet to his gut, and a third had been caught trying to run from the scene, and ended up talking like a teenage girl at a sleep-over.
And somehow, the Steel Dragons had it in their heads that it was all Jenner’s fault. That he’d set them up. That he had some vendetta against them, or some reason to want them taken down. And they planned to make him pay.
Now, he had his own private room at the club, a scar across his face, and a pink apron. They never let him out of their sight. The door to his room was locked from the outside at all times, and there was no window. They let him out to clean up, and then it was right back in once his day’s work was done. They fed him, gave him water, and let him shower once a week – all under constant surveillance.
He’d done it all because he wanted to be rom baro, the leader. Now, he couldn’t even take a piss without asking someone first.
But he did have one thing. One little thing that kept him tethered to sanity. It lay under his pillow, and when he felt particularly frustrated or ho
peless, he would reach beneath it and hold it in his hands.
He’d taken a huge risk in getting it. One night, a young recruit had stumbled into a bathroom while Jenner was cleaning it, drunk as a lord and sick to his stomach. The kid had barely made it to the toilet before he started throwing up, mumbling incoherently all the while. Rock, who’d been supervising Jenner that day, cursed in frustration.
“Fuckin’ wimpy ass little shit,” he said. “This kid’s supposed to be on fuckin’ watch right now. Goddammit…”
Rock glared at Jenner.
“Don’t fuckin’ move, punk,” he warned. “I’ll be back in two fuckin’ seconds, and if you’ve moved a single muscle, I’ll make you lick that toilet bowl clean.”
Jenner nodded, putting his hands up to show he’d obey. Rock glared at him for one long moment, then stepped out of the bathroom. His voice echoed back through the door as he went down the hall, calling for anyone in charge.
Jenner looked at the kid, who was glassy-eyed and staring into the dirty bowl, breathing heavy. A phone, a little grey flip-phone, was sticking out of his back pocket. Jenner’s heart skipped a beat. If he took it and someone found it, he’d be screwed. It’d be more of the first month. More beatings. More hunger. More thirst.
But if he didn’t take it, he’d never get out of there alive.
Quick as he could, he grabbed the phone and shoved it down the front of his pants, into his briefs. Thinking quickly, palms sweating, one eye on the door, he pulled it out again and turned it off; if it went off before he could get back to the safety of his room, he didn’t know what would happen to him. Just as he was shoving it back down where the sun don’t shine, the bathroom door began to open. Jenner’s skin went cold, his heart racing like a sprinter.
“Ah, fuck,” Four-Story scowled, walking into the room with Rock at his heels. Both men gave Jenner a quick glance, but he wasn’t their priority. “These stupid kids. I swear, we would never have let a little shit like this try out before we got screwed. Roper’s so damn desperate for numbers, boots on the ground…”
“Well, someone’s gotta take his shift,” Rock said. “I’m on shitstain duty.”
“Shitstain duty can wait,” Four-Story said, giving Jenner a dirty look. “Take him back to the room and get on watch. We’ll have to live with dirty bathrooms for another day.”
“Lucky you,” Rock grumbled as he grabbed hold of Jenner’s arm and started walking him back to his private suite. “You get a day off.”
Jenner had hid the phone under his pillow and never turned it on. That day he got it, he had held it in his hands, staring at it for a long time, trying to figure out what to do with it. He didn’t have any friends left. He had no idea what had happened at the kumpania after he’d left, but he knew he wouldn’t be welcome back. The kid who’d squealed on the club would have squealed on him, too. Even his own mother wouldn’t want him back, knowing that he’d intentionally put the kumpania in harm’s way.
Of course, he could always try. But he wasn’t dumb; the sort of phone he’d lifted was a burner, the sort of thing that only had a certain number of minutes on it. He didn’t know how many, but if he wasted the last of them on a call to the kumpania, his one chance to escape would be null.
He could call the police – but that was just as bad. For one thing, it would be embarrassing as hell to admit that he, a grown-ass man, was being held captive by a biker gang. For another, he’d be looking at jail time for his involvement with the club before they’d taken him in as their own personal slave. He’d killed a dog for them, had acted as an informant, had been intimately involved in getting the girl kidnapped. He’d be trading one jail cell for another. And at least the Steel Dragons weren’t interested in taking his man-on-man virginity.
So the phone stayed in its place under his pillow until he could figure something out. If he could think up something to tell his cousins that would give him some leverage…if he could find out something that he could use against Kennick…if he could figure out some other way to escape the Steel Dragons, some other club that would help him in return for his services as an inside man…
Until then, he would keep playing his part. He’d do his chores, feeling like Cinderella. But he wouldn’t be waiting for a fairy godmother. He’d be his own damn hero. No matter what it took.
9
Damon had wanted to get a little further that first night, but waiting for Tricia to get her things together delayed them. Once they were on the road, the tires spinning miles between them and everyone they cared about, a comfortable discomfort settled between them. Tricia put on a Townes Van Zandt album she’d scrounged, with a full-to-bursting case of other CDs, from her storage unit. Damon approved. They drove in, mostly, silence, both letting their minds adjust to the situation, their bodies adjust to each other.
Tricia half-wished that they’d been able to leave in the daytime. At night, the highway was amorphous, the trees creating a mockery of landscape against a blue-black sky. She would have liked to see Kingdom receding. She would have liked to see the land pass by, to confirm what her mind knew but her heart hadn’t yet totally accepted. She was leaving home behind to spend an unknown amount of time with a basically unknown man. She was doing the craziest thing she’d done since college. And she was okay with it. She was excited about it. She felt…ready for it.
Damon, in the driver’s seat, focused on the zig-zag ballet of the highway, and thought about his future. It seemed to stretch out before him as dark and unknown as the road his headlights didn’t reach. But there was something there, looming and beckoning, pulling him forward. When he glanced over at Tricia, her profile angled towards the window, he felt a satisfied humming inside him. He was probably doing the wrong thing, bringing her along. But it couldn’t be so wrong, when she smiled back at him, her eyes calm and open wide; it couldn’t be the worst decision he’d ever made.
“Hey, don’t you, like, have a shop to run? That cheese place with the pun for a name?” Tricia asked an hour into the drive.
“Let it Brie,” Damon clarified with a smile. “I closed up, just until we get back. I don’t really trust anyone else to run it.”
“Won’t the cheese go bad?” Tricia asked.
“I heard a rumor once that cheese gets better with age,” he answered with a wink.
“You know, you’re not exactly the sort of guy that I’d imagine being a connoisseur of cheeses,” Tricia mused, looking out the window again.
“There’s an art to it,” he said. “Subtlety. It takes concentration, being able to pick out different notes and flavors…”
Tricia turned to him with an eyebrow cocked.
“I’m serious,” he said, amused by her disbelief. “The difference between a Fontina and a Berner Alpkäse is a matter of molecules, and time, and diet. All little things that make a big difference. And one Fontina is different than another. You can tell what the cows ate, and when, and at what elevation. It’s a science, an artful science.”
Tricia smiled at him then, but didn’t respond.
“What?” he asked, laughing lightly. “Think that’s not very manly?”
“No,” she said. “It’s just not something I ever thought about. All I know about cheese is that if you hand me a block of it, there’s a good chance you won’t get it back.”
“Well, cheese also has opioid properties,” he said. “I guess that could contribute to my interest in it.”
Tricia hummed, looking away. Damon noticed how her hands shifted slightly, moving against each other, in her lap.
“Fighting’s a science too, isn’t it? An artful science,” Tricia said, voice low. Damon’s knuckles tightened around the steering wheel, which only made the old scars and new wounds stand out more. She sighed. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I guess I just...it’s hard to imagine you discussing flavor notes one day and entering a ring the next.”
He didn’t need to ask how she knew about his fighting career. Even if she wasn’t best friends with Rick
y and Kim, who probably mentioned it, his body contained the story for anyone who wanted to read it.
“Yes,” he finally said. “It’s another art. A more physical one. Fighting’s about attention, focus. You have to see everything in a few moments. Where his hips are, which hand he favors, whether he shifts on his left or his right foot. And you have to train your body to react in kind, no matter what his strength is, no matter what your weakness is.”
“Ah,” Tricia said, but didn’t elaborate. He studied her in quick glances, keeping his attention on the road. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t offended. She was thoughtful. He relaxed.
“I don’t know much about any art,” she finally said. “I’ve always been more inclined to math. Logic. Computers and stuff. I like working in libraries because there’s such order to everything, everything has a place. It’s a numbers game. A book is broken down to its most basic and necessary parts, then catalogued precisely. The world is so full of knowledge, it’s overwhelming. A library makes all that knowledge simple, immediate and knowable. Even a book of poetry gets turned into numbers.”
“Math is art,” Damon said. “It’s a language. It’s a different sort of poetry. It’s philosophy with numbers instead of words.”
“I suppose so,” Tricia said.
“You could create a physics of fighting. You could write a formula for Fontina. A poem can be broken down to symmetry and chaos, playing against each other. Nothing is separate. Everything is art, in its own way.”
Tricia turned to him again, a smile playing on her lips.
“You always talk like that, don’t you?” she asked, not quite teasing.
“One of my worst traits, I’ll admit,” he said. “Hope it doesn’t make you want to jump out of the car while it’s still moving.”
“No,” she said. “I like it. It’s…”
“Kind of funny, right?” he finished for her, flashing her another smile.
