by Zahra Girard
“You confuse the hell out of him, dear,” Ruby says, out of the blue.
“Huh?” I say, looking up from her chart. “Who?”
“Please, I know you aren’t deaf and you sure as hell aren’t stupid. My grandson. You fucking vex him so much he doesn’t know what to do with you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, nor is the rest of me considering that I’m now stumbling around before I get drunk, but even I can see he feels something for you. Though Eli has no fucking clue what it is. And I can see you feel something for him, too.”
“He doesn’t. And I don’t.”
“Please, you helped him when you could’ve just left him to die —”
I’m sure she plans on saying more, but I cut in. My belief in myself, and as a nurse, won’t allow me to just sit there and hear her say that I’d let someone die. Never.
“Not a chance. I would never, ever, just stand there and let someone die. I’ve helped far worse people than your grandson when I was volunteering; I was in some very terrible places and you don’t just turn someone away because they’re fighting for the wrong side. Helping people heal is what I believe in. That’s the end of it.”
Ruby clears her throat and raises an eyebrow at me, which is an impressive feat considering most of her head is enswathed in bandages. “You can come down from your soapbox, darling. I get it, you’re a fucking saint.”
“Not hardly. I just won’t let someone bleed to death when I can do something about it,” I say, not even feeling slightly ashamed about steamrolling an injured old woman in conversation.
“Regardless, you’ve helped my grandson and you’ve helped me. When you didn’t have to. And he’s helped you, which is unlike him. He doesn’t trust easily, but he trusts you. You confuse him because you’re not his usual type and — what must be even more confusing for him — he respects you.”
“He doesn’t go for women he respects?”
I’ve stopped writing on my clipboard. I’m less concerned about checking Ruby’s steady vitals than I am about checking the condition of my relationship with that vexing biker out in the hallway.
Ruby sighs. “It probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that I wasn’t a good mother. I did a fair bit better with Eli when he turned up, but my daughter… well, she had her problems. My William and I tried to raise her right, to teach her to be strong and independent, but then she married a cop. A cop whose idea of being a man meant making sure his woman obeyed him like some meek Victorian flower. My son-in-law ruled his household like a coward’s idea of a strong man — by violence and threats. If he’d not been a cop, I would’ve murdered the cockless coward a long time ago.”
Ruby’s worked herself into a seating position and she has an iron grip on the handrails of her bed. Her chest is rising and falling with pent-up rage and her eyes burn with violence.
“Ruby, you need to sit back,” I say. I’m gentle when I touch her, but still firm enough to show her she is not getting up while I’m around. “You need to rest. Talk all you want but, please, be careful with yourself.”
“The son of a bitch drove my daughter to addiction with his fists and his relentless degradation. He turned her soul to wreckage. She took his abuse for years and then, when she finally worked up the courage to run away, it was only so she could find some rotten motel to crash in and the free time to shoot up enough to kill herself,” Ruby says. Her voice is shaking, full of pain and fury. “She left my grandson alone with that beast. He suffered until he was fifteen. Until he ran away, too.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, looking back towards the door to the hallway. It’s another few pieces to the puzzle that is Eli ‘Razor’ Davis. No wonder, for all the smolder that’s in his eyes every time he looks at me, he’s been so distant. So many people close to him have let him down or hurt him.
“In his life, with the girls that hang around the club, he rarely encounters a well-educated woman who knows she’s about. And he sure as hell doesn’t trust most women either, not after what his mother did to him. So, whatever you do, just know that he’s coming to you from a place full of pain.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
Ruby fixes me with a look of intelligence and clarity that belies her head injury and her advanced years. For a second, I’m stunned but then I remember this is a woman whose first inclination on hearing a crash, and seeing a bloody and unknown body in her driveway, was to grab a gun and find out what the fuss was about.
“I’m telling you this because I know you’re into this mess far deeper than you care to admit. If you want to survive, you will need my grandson’s help. The people you’re tied up with are human scum who don’t give a shit about how much good you do in the world. They will brutalize the humanity out of you and your loved ones just to get what they want,” she says, taking a heavy breath. “I don’t want to see that happen to you. So, please, exercise some fucking caution and don’t push away a helping hand.”
Her words hit me to the core. My eyes droop to my chart, where I feign making a few marks, if only to have the excuse not to meet her intense gaze.
“I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Take care, dear,” Ruby calls after me.
Back in the hallway crammed full of people, my eyes find Razor. And I see him in a whole new light; he might have a dangerous and painful past, but he’s trying his best to help me. As someone who’s spent her life doing the same for others, I respect that.
He sees me watching him and, though he’s engaged in conversation with a nurse who looks to be giving him a quick examination, he still smiles and waves.
I wave back.
Then garlic breath assaults my nostrils. A hand lands on my shoulder. My face twists in discomfort and pain at how hard I’m being gripped.
“We’re not through, nurse. I want my prescription refilled.”
I don’t even have a chance to open my mouth before Razor leaves his conversation and charges to my side. In a heartbeat, he’s ripping the other man’s hand off me and getting right in his face.
“You don’t ever, ever touch a woman like that,” Razor growls.
The man shrinks and takes a step back. Razor takes a step forward to stay right in his face.
“I didn’t mean it,” the man stammers. “Just calm down, buddy.”
“Bullshit. I should beat you right here and now. But I’m going to give you a chance to walk away. All you need to do is apologize to Samantha.”
“You’re joking,” the man says.
“Do you really want to find out?”
For a second, it looks like the man will try his luck. But something he sees in Razor’s eyes changes his mind. He turns to me.
“I am truly sorry, miss. I hope you can forgive me.”
“Please leave,” is all I say.
The man whirls and barges his way through the crowd, pushing aside anyone in his path as he makes a beeline for the exit. When Razor turns around, instead of a snarl, there’s a smile on his face.
“Are you OK?” He says, his voice warm and deep. I could wrap myself in it and forget about the world.
“I’m fine. People like him are a dime a dozen in a place like this. But thank you for the help.”
He clears his throat. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “It’s been a fucking day and I’ve fucking had enough of people. When do you get off your shift?”
I check the clock on the wall. “A couple hours. Why?”
“You want to grab a drink?”
“I do.”
“Good. It’s a date.”
Just like that, he turns and leaves. I watch him go and then feel my face; I think I might be smiling.
A date.
Chapter Eleven
Razor
We head to Spoke & Axle. It’s a bar that’s in Twisted Devils MC territory but is independent of Lone Mesa’s criminal organizations. It’s a place that’s appreciated because the firmest stance
its taken in its thirty-year history is that it’ll serve ridiculously strong drinks to anyone willing to pay for them but, the second you start trouble, you’re cut off from the cheapest drunk you’ve ever had in your life. To date, not a single person in Lone Mesa has had the courage to test the convictions of Spoke & Axle’s bartenders.
“Here?” Sam says as she shuts her car door behind her. She looks at the bar and the collection of motorcycles, pickup trucks, and beat-up cars in the parking lot like it’s a patient presenting with Ebola, syphilis, and the Bubonic plague combined. “I’m not so sure about this.”
“It’s a good place. Trust me.”
“Here’s the thing: I don’t really trust you.”
“And I don’t trust you either, but I trust this place. Give it a shot. One drink.”
Her lips set in a firm line and her posture gets rigid-straight, which just serves to accentuate her tits and get me hard in a heartbeat. Holy hell, this woman might be all kinds of wrong for me and more trouble than I can imagine, but she sure as shit knows how to stir up my blood.
“One drink,” she concedes.
“Come on.”
Inside Spoke & Axle it’s all hard rock, dusty denim, and the kind of men and women who don’t give a shit where you’ve come from or where you’re going, they’re ready to drink with you as long as you’re willing to leave your bullshit at the door.
It’s been a while since I’ve been here; I have trouble leaving my bullshit behind.
We take a spot at the end of the bar and I wave over the bartender. He takes our orders: the usual for me and a vodka and tonic for Sam.
“What’s the problem? Why the face?” She says as soon as the bartender sets our drinks in front of us. There’s a teasing smile on her face and a frown on mine.
“Vodka. The smell. I hate that shit,” I say. “It makes me remember things I’d rather not.”
Her smile softens. “Bad memories?”
“Memories of home. My mom. It’s what she liked to drink. When I smell it, it makes me think of what she’d do to herself to escape my dad.”
Sam nods, takes her glass in hand, and heads to two ladies sitting several spots down. She plunks the glass on the bar in front of them. “I just ordered this but changed my mind and I’d hate to see it go to waste. Want it?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer, she just heads back to her seat next to me and calls for the bartender to bring her a beer.
“Thanks,” I say.
“No problem,” she says. “Thanks for the help with that guy back in the ER. I thought another doctor had sent him away… He’s been trying to get himself a prescription that he definitely doesn’t need.”
“I saw a few of those kinds of people back in the ER. There seems to be more than the usual number of them all around town.”
“It happens,” she shrugs. “It’s been happening for years. Opiates are addicting and it’s taken a long time for people to wake up to that fact and be aware of how much they’re prescribing them.”
“It’s more than that, Florence. Especially here.”
“Well, I can’t speak to that, since I haven’t been in Lone Mesa that long.”
“I think there’s a lot that you can speak to. And I think there’s a lot you’re choosing not to speak about.”
Her eyes get cold as ice. “What? Do you think I’m a dealer? That I’ve got the energy to go straight from my exhausting nursing shifts — shifts that often end with my ankles and feet swollen like I’m nine months pregnant — to working street corners selling prescription meds? Jesus, get your head on straight. I’m not a criminal. Not like you.”
“Never said I wasn’t a criminal, Florence,” I say, taking a sip of my beer. “Just that the crimes I commit got more to do with protecting my home and my family than they do with turning my friends and neighbors into addicts.”
“Why did you ask me out?” She says. Then, turning her icy eyes towards the ceiling, she adds in a quiet mutter, “And why the hell was I so stupid to agree to it?”
“I think you know why I asked you out.”
“I really, really don’t.”
“We’ve both got the same problem: the Makris family.”
“I don’t know a damn thing about them, Razor. I’m a fucking nurse — not a biker, not a drug-dealer from LA — just a nurse.”
“I get that you’re afraid. But I can protect you. You have no reason to be afraid of me, and you’ve got every reason to want to work with me. Whatever those Makris assholes have over your head, I can keep you safe from it. All the MC wants, all we’ve ever wanted, is for this town to be a good place to live and a place that’s free of the shit those Makris assholes want to flood the streets with.”
“You really don’t know what you’re dealing with, do you?”
I set my empty beer glass on the bar and wave for another.
“I know enough to know that I want them dead. And I know that all I need to make that happen is to get those shady motherfuckers in front of me.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Then why don’t you educate me?”
“I hardly know you.”
“Seems we’ve been pretty damn intimate with each other the last few days, what with saving each other’s lives and taking a nice trip out to the desert to clean up the mess you made,” I say. “How long do you think it will be before they figure out you were the last person that dead guy saw? What do you think they’ll do then, Florence?”
“They know I wouldn’t do anything. They’re certain of that.”
“And why is that?”
She hesitates. Then stiffens in her chair.
She’s got so many walls built up inside her. Why can’t she see that things would be so much easier for her if she would just work with me?
“You expect me to just spill my guts to some man I hardly know? Someone who — despite his bright smile, his cocky attitude, and rare flashes of kindness — has interacted with me through shocking violence? It’s like every time I see you, there’s a crime being committed or covered up. How can I trust you?”
“I’ve been nothing but straight with you.”
“Anyone can say some shit in a bar. This is where people go to lie to each other and themselves and get drunk enough that they believe those lies. All I know about you is you’ve got an interesting grandmother, you’ve had some shit happen in your past, and you’re in an MC. That’s it. And you expect me to just open myself up to you, no questions asked? No way.”
I look at her a moment, drinking her in with my eyes. Not just her curves, not just her eyes — which are an icy intense green — but every one of her words; this woman is a whole new experience for me, a whole new challenge; most every woman I’ve come across has been the opposite — they’ve been an invitation to an easy fuck, a night of forgetting and then walking away with no questions asked.
She’s something new.
Something intriguing.
And fucking challenging.
And I want more of it. I want to solve the maddening puzzle that is Florence Nightingale.
“You want to know who I am? OK, fine, let’s go.”
“Go? We just got here.”
I put a handful of cash on the table and beckon for her to follow me. “You heard me. We’re leaving. I’ll show you what you’re looking for. Come on.”
We head to the parking lot and I get on my bike and she gets in her car.
“Where are we going?” She says.
“To get the answer to your question. Try to keep up, Florence.”
I don’t wait any longer — she has a habit of asking too many damn questions — and peel out of the parking lot. She catches up to me half a mile down the road. Together, with her right on my ass and driving like a maniac to keep up, we wind down the streets of Lone Mesa until we reach the desert and then, on dusty roads that have just the memory of pavement on them, we head further and further outside of town until we get to the monumental hunk of rock that gave the
city its name.
At the start of a trail, I stop. Hop off my bike. She gets out of her car right behind me.
“What’s this? Are we going on a hike?”
“Just follow me.”
“Oh, a hike with a strange man in the dark. Alone. I see no way this could go wrong.”
“Less attitude, more walking. Come on.”
In the late evening light, I lead her up a hiking path that I could navigate with my eyes closed. It winds around the mesa, taking switchbacks and scree until we reach the side overlooking the town. Coming from deep within the rock, through a small hole worn through the ages, is a small waterfall that quenches the thirst of the desert below. Beneath us, the whole town twinkles — a brilliant hive of lights against the blackness of the desert night.
“What is this place?” She says.
“I used to come up here a lot when I was a kid. Most times, I’d come up here with my friend Trips and we’d talk about how we wanted to get out of this town. We’d look out over Lone Mesa and remind ourselves that eventually we’d grow too big to be trapped here. That we’d move on to bigger and better things. See, when I first came to Lone Mesa, I’d been on my own for a year. I ran away when I was fifteen — not long after my mother took her own life — and I didn’t come here to Lone Mesa until I was almost sixteen. I thought I was such hot shit.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Oh, I still think I’m hot shit, Florence,” I say, chuckling. “But, what changed my mind about staying — aside from nana threatening to kick my ass if I didn’t finish high school — was I ran into the MC. See, one day, Trips and I got the bright idea to go joyriding. So we stole Stone’s bike. Right from the parking lot of the trucking yard he owns. About down on that road over there is where we crashed it. We made it fifteen miles, which is a miracle considering neither of us really knew how to ride. Then the MC caught up to us.”
“I imagine that didn’t work out so well.”
“Oh, Stone was pissed. But my nana and Stone know each other and, after a phone call, they came up with the appropriate punishment for me being a little fuckhead. See, even though Stone appreciated our guts, he couldn’t just let things slide. They stripped me down to my briefs, did the same to Trips, and the two of us had to push Stone’s bike from the ditch all the way back to the trucking yard. Our route took us right down Main Street. The MC followed behind us on their bikes, hooting and hollering and getting everyone’s attention to watch us two dumb kids pushing a motorcycle down the road while wearing nothing but our underwear. It was humbling as hell.”
