by A. J. Downey
24
Stoker…
Boom!
“What the fuck?” My head jerked up from the table we were sitting at and I exchanged a look with Nox and Rush.
Boom!
“Fuck,” I swore. “Serenity, where’s Serenity!” I cried.
Hope called out, “I saw her head towards the kitchen.”
“Somebody get those assholes to stop!” Rush bellowed, and I practically vaulted the picnic table and crossed the stone patio in two long strides, my feet barely touching the ground. I batted the screen door aside and flung myself into the downstairs of the lodge, going for the stairs.
“Kitchen!” I screamed, and one of the staff busboy and kitchen-prep guys pointed, his eyes wide.
I got into the kitchen to a goddamned mess. Contessa, the woman who ran the place, was sitting on the floor, holding onto Serenity who was terrified, her eyes wide, her face slack and stunned as her dark eyes saw what wasn’t here.
“Shit,” I muttered, and got down on the floor in the midst of broken plastic bowl and potato salad, snapping my fingers in front of her eyes.
“Orchid?” I asked, and she didn’t even fucking blink.
She just said in a dreamy, disconnected voice, “Kyle?”
She struggled in Contessa’s grasp, but Contessa had a good hold of her as she said with urgency, “Kyle, don’t!” and a second later, more forcefully, “Kyle, don’t!” and then all hell broke loose.
She collapsed on herself, screaming, and it was as if someone had reached into her chest and she’d had her heart ripped out. I’d never heard anything like it before, and I never wanted to hear anything like it again. Contessa struggled with her as Serenity thrashed and thrashed against the floor, kicking her legs out, sliding in the spilled food, the smell of mustard sharp as I reached for her and ordered Contessa over Serenity’s shrieking, “Give her to me!”
Contessa let her go and Serenity flopped but not before I grabbed her wrists and pulled her tight against my chest, slipping in the potato salad, going down hard on my ass, pulling her between my legs, wrapping my whole body around her as she screamed and screamed, her heart breaking in real time from something that’d happened ten years ago.
Flashback, this had to be a flashback, and rescue came in the form of Doc, the SHMC’s on-call physician with his old-school medical bag, thrusting his way through kitchen staff onlookers and ol’ ladies that’d been helping with the dinner cleanup.
“Hold her good, now!” he yelled over her screams and brought out a needle and a vial.
“What is that?” I demanded.
“Benzos,” he replied, drawing up a dose. “Put her right out for some hours, keep her from hurting herself.”
He raised her skirt and shot her right in the butt with it and she almost immediately calmed.
“S’okay, baby. I got you, baby,” I murmured into her hair and she whimpered ineffectually.
“Come on now, let’s get you both up,” he said.
The silence in the kitchen aside from our labored breathing was so bizarrely loud. I don’t know, it was the only way to describe it. We got Serenity up between us and over to a spot it was easy for me to pick her up.
“I’ll come help,” Faith murmured and she looked heartbroken for my woman, which made sense. I knew what it was the instant I’d seen my little orchid thrashing on the ground. I’d seen it before, knew what it was, thanks to Faith. She had her own set of triggers and had gone into a flashback of her own at one of our beach parties at something a tourist had said to her. Some kind of phrase he just happened to utter the right – or wrong – way had set her off.
“Thanks, Doc,” I said, and he shook his head.
“Go on, now. You take care of your girl while we take care of our own.” He scowled and I had a feeling somebody was going to get their ass beat and Doc would be doing a different type of needle work in the next couple of hours.
“Don’t hold back,” I called over my shoulder, adding, “and don’t feel like you need to wait on me.” I had better things to do than handle the justice side of things for this level of disrespect.
I’d told Cutter that I’d planned on taking Serenity for a ride, had told him we didn’t want any special accommodations, just to let me know when the shooting was supposed to begin and I’d get us out of there before it started. He’d reached out through Data to Dragon to make sure I was set, and when Dragon had learned the why of it, he’d taken it upon himself to be a good host and put a moratorium on shooting this go. It was supposed to only be between the hours of X and X, and somebody had defied him. At the very least, there was going to be a major ass whoopin’.
Faith helped me clean Serenity up; she was limp as a rag doll, but conscious. Sort of. Her dark eyes leaked tears, the occasional whimper escaping her lips as the drug worked its way through her system.
“She gonna be okay?” I asked, worried, and Faith smiled, petting her hair as I wet a washcloth in our little bathroom to start working on getting the potato salad off her feet and legs. Faith nodded and sat on the floor with Serenity’s head in her lap.
“She’ll be okay. She’ll sleep, and wake up feeling like shit, but she’ll be alright. Embarrassed more than anything, I’m sure.” She hung her head and hid behind her blonde hair before saying, “I always am.”
I opened my mouth to tell her she didn’t have anything to be embarrassed about, but that’s when Marlin stuck his head in the open door to our room and said, “There you are, everything good?”
Faith smiled at her man and nodded. “It will be, given some time,” she said softly.
“Need some help?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Naw, I got it, man. What happened?”
“Drunk motherfuckers from the Alabama chapter,” he answered.
“Why’s it always gotta be ‘Bama?” I asked rhetorically.
“At least it’s not Florida this time,” Faith said with an impish smile and a roll of her eyes and I cracked a grin. In that moment she looked so much like her youngest, but most responsible sister out of the three of them, Charity.
“Be my eyes and ears, man?” I asked Marlin, and he threw me some chin.
“You got it, bro.”
That’s what I loved about our club. He may have been the VP, but I was the wronged party according to most club’s charters. So, in this moment, it wasn’t out of pocket for me to ask someone considered my superior in the hierarchy to hook me, and help me out with something a citizen would perceive as menial or bitch-work that I should be doing myself.
I had more important things to do right now, which is exactly what I thought, looking down at Serenity as we got all the potato salad off her skin and I got her out of her slaughtered clothes and into one of my tee shirts to cover her. We got her tucked into the bed, and Faith sat with her, my woman’s head settled onto a pillow in Faith’s lap, while she smoothed back my girl’s hair, almost petting her, comforting. Something a mother would do for her frightened child.
Faith was honestly the expert in this arena, having gone through it more than any of us.
“Go,” Faith murmured. “I know you want to stay, but…”
“Yeah. Respect,” I muttered.
It was all right for Marlin to hold my place and be my eyes and ears for a while, but Serenity was my woman, my property, and so I needed to go out there and see this through. Not just for her, but for my own club. Respect is earned, not given, among our kind, and the outlaw code must be upheld. I needed to get out there and deal with these assholes myself. Or at least be a part of the proceedings.
I went to her, caressed her cheek and kissed her brow. She was out. The drug had taken effect quickly, sucking her under and into the temporary peace of oblivion.
I hurt for her. I had some guesses as to what her words and actions had summed up to back in the kitchen and I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but it gnawed at my insides just the same.
I went out to de
al with what I could; the stupid asshairs that’d caused her distress. Once they were dealt with, I could have a beer, calm down myself, and wait for her to come out of it so we could talk. If she would talk. I hoped she would. She couldn’t carry this burden by herself anymore and she shouldn’t have to. Not after this long.
I went out down to the lakeshore where Dragon, Cutter, and, I think, the president of the chapter whose boys had fucked up, were arguing.
“Who damaged my property?” I demanded, and the presidents all three looked up and over.
“Well, there you have it,” Dragon said.
“Come off it, D! –” The man whose cut read ‘Toe Beans’ shut up when Dragon raised a hand indicating he didn’t want to hear it.
“His property, his call, Beans.”
“I want their asses whooped, question is who’s doing it? Me, his crew, the enforcers…” I trailed off and waited expectantly for an answer.
“All you, buddy,” Cutter said. “Figured you’d want a personal touch.”
“Damn right I want to put the personal touch on this,” I grated.
The two dumbasses, Retch and Baltimore, stood nearby, a little glassy-eyed from whatever drunk or high they were on. Retch smirked at me, which just served to piss me off more.
“Look man, no disrespect was intended. Are they dumbasses? Sure. Did they fuck up?”
I didn’t let him finish. “Oh, hell, yeah, they most definitely did.”
“What’s your bitch’s problem, anyway?” Retch asked, swaying on his feet.
“No disrespect, huh?” I asked, arching a brow at their president.
He sighed, his shoulders sagging, and he looked at his two men.
“I tried, but you fuckin’ knuckleheads just couldn’t keep your damn mouths shut, could you?” he demanded. He grunted in dismay and turned back to me. “They’re all yours.”
Dragon was taking Toe Beans aside and saying, “Listen, I can appreciate you going to bat for your boys, but sometimes only lesson to be learned is a lesson learned in blood…”
And ho boy, I was gonna make Retch, at least, bleed. Baltimore wisely kept his mouth shut and didn’t have fuck-all to say except, “I’m sorry man. I didn’t know it would go down like that.”
‘Like that’… not ‘like this’. It wasn’t lost on me he was genuinely sorry for my little orchid’s suffering, not worried about his own. Still, by the look in Cutter’s eye, there wouldn’t be any going easy on either of them. We had a rep to uphold; the Kraken weren’t soft when it counted.
“You boys take your ass-whoopin’ now. Trig, Reave, get their hands.”
Impressive. Dragon wasn’t fuckin’ around. This wasn’t a fight, this was a lesson, so handcuffs came out from somewhere and they hooked up Retch and Baltimore behind their backs so they couldn’t throw down. They just had to take what I was giving.
Baltimore, I let off easy, with just a few punches to his face. Enough to bleed him and get him off his feet. Enough to leave a reminder any time he looked in a mirror for the next couple of weeks.
I beat the shit out of Retch. Not only would he have a reminder every time he looked in the mirror for the next week, he’d be fuckin’ feeling that reminder every day of it, too.
Their chapter buddies hauled them off to their tents, Doc trailing along behind to help get ‘em cleaned up and stitched if they needed it. I busted Retch’s eyebrow open pretty good, he might need a stitch or two. I think Baltimore fared better, but he was bleeding pretty good from his nose.
“Good job,” Cutter said with a nod, clapping me on the back. “Let’s grab a beer and some ice for that hand.” I nodded and shook the offending hand out, the knuckles scraped and bloody, two of them swelling. Gideon was gonna be pissed if it affected my playing. I needed to ice it, and keep it from getting stiff with some practice.
Faith appeared at my elbow as I was wrapping a bandanna full of ice from one of the coolers around my hand.
“She’s out,” she murmured.
“Thanks for sitting with her,” I said.
“Sure, anything else I can do, just let me know.”
“Actually, can you grab my bass from the room for me?”
“Sure.” She drifted over to Marlin for a quick kiss before she floated off in that way she had to do what I asked. I raised my beer in his direction, a salute to his woman, and he threw me some chin.
Later, two beers in and chilling by the fire, I was silently walking my battered hand through chords to keep it limber.
"Sounds to me she's got some real issues. You sure you're game to handle all that comes with?"
I stared at Dragon, who had spoken from across the fire and kept my trap shut. From what I gathered, he was the kind of guy that, when he spoke, you should listen. I was listening.
"She ain't a puppy, or a new pet. She is as her name implies," he said. “Orchids take a lot of care, the right conditions, to grow and bloom proper. Are you sure the MC conditions, that this life, has what she needs to thrive?"
I raised my eyebrows as I let my fingers continue to walk up and down the frets on my acoustic bass. Cutter looked from Dragon, to me and waited me out.
"I know that after today, it may not seem like it," I said with a heavy sigh, "but, hell, yeah. Citizens been letting her down for her whole life. We're something different. We understand loyalty, we get brotherhood and we don't give up. If I give up on her now, how am I any better than any of the people that have come before? Short answer is, I wouldn't be. So I'ma stay the course."
"My man." Cutter nodded and glowed with pride, and I gave him a nod.
"You got a good man, there," Dragon said, nodding in agreement.
I could see I’d passed whatever test. I didn’t much like being tested. I wasn’t a fuckin’ hang-around green recruit. I wasn’t a fuckin’ prospect. I’d earned my goddamned patch a long time ago. My indignation was tempered, though, by the fact that, clearly, my captain, and Dragon and his crew, had my lady’s best interests at heart.
"Thank you kindly, Dragon," Cutter replied and he looked back at me. "I surely do."
I threw my captain some chin and he inclined his head. I was about to say thanks, but Serenity’s melodic voice permeated the dark outside the ring of light thrown by the campfire.
“Stoker?”
“Oh, shit, hey, babe.” I handed my bass off to Marlin sitting nearby and he took it from me, no questions asked. I got up as she stepped slightly more into the light where she could be seen. She looked small in my oversized tee, wrapped in the throw from yesterday.
“You doing okay?” I asked, cupping her elbows.
“Can we talk?” she asked timidly, her dark eyes troubled, a storm of emotion behind them.
I nodded. “Yeah, come on.” I took her gently and steered her back in the direction of the lodge. When we were alone, walking back to our room, I asked her, “How are you feeling?”
“Awful,” she replied, and the way she held herself was stiff as we walked down the carpeted corridor.
“Can you expand on that a little?” I asked, and tried a gentle smile on her.
She looked up at me, a quick, solemn glance and said, “Head feels funny.”
“Doc put a sedative in you. He’s a real-life doctor and has helped Faith in the past, so I trusted him to do right by you, or I wouldn’t have let him,” I said.
“I-I-I don’t know what happened. One minute I was in the kitchen, and the next thing I knew I was back in the school, in the hallway, hearing the booms and running…” She trailed off and stopped outside our room’s door, gazing up the hallway helplessly.
I waited her out, waited to see what she would say or what she would do next and when nothing came for several strings of silent heartbeats, I broke first.
“Talk to me, baby,” I breathed quietly into the hallway.
Her dark eyes, so full of pain, flicked to mine.
“He was in the cafeteria… I watched him die. He killed himself because of me.”
Her f
ace crumpled and she broke down. I pulled her tight against the shelter of my body and smoothed a hand over her back, crooning into her dark hair.
“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you, now.”
“It’s not okay,” she cried. “It will never be okay. It’s all my fault. I couldn’t pretend, I couldn’t keep the horror off my face and he saw it and he killed himself right in front of me. Turned the shotgun on himself and – oh, God! I loved him so much and I didn’t know! I should have known, but I didn’t know!”
What do you do when the person you love the most let’s out a piercing cry like that? When she lets out the sound of their heart disintegrating, right in front of you?
I didn’t know what to do, all I knew is that I hurt for her. I hurt with her, and I didn’t know what to do either, but I ran on pure instinct. I held her. I let her cry, and I let us both into the shelter of our room to keep her away from any curious onlookers coming to see what the noise was, or who might be heading for their own rooms.
I shut the door behind us and took her by the arms, taking a step back, making her look at me.
“Nothing he did was your fault,” I spoke clearly.
She shook her head violently. “He said he did it for me…”
“Be that as it may, just because somebody does something for you doesn’t mean that it’s your Huckleberry, Orchid. He did it for him, he did it in spite of you. If he’d asked if it was what you wanted, what would you have said?”
“No!” she cried.
“Exactly,” I gave her a little shake. “I love you, babe. I love you, and I’m telling you, you’ve gotta let that shit go. I know, it’s easier said than done, but you can’t carry the responsibility of his monumentally shitty actions on your shoulders anymore.”
She sniffed, and stared at me with wide dark eyes, her tear-stained face lovely in the muted lamplight from the room’s bedside table.
“It’s not your fault. It’s super shitty, it sucks hairy balls, but it was never your fault.”
