Bodean (McKenzie River Boys #5)

Chapter One

Bodean

AJA FOXX

~ Bodean ~

Hospitals always smelled like a high school chemistry lab, all sharp alcohol and plastic gloves, with the added bonus of fear sweat and old people’s piss.

I sat in the ER chair, shivering in a t-shirt still damp with my own blood and something that looked like axle grease, staring at my reflection in the nurse’s glasses as she dabbed at the mess Harley’s boys had made of my face.

One eye was purpled and so swollen it looked like a rotten plum, my lip was split nearly through, and blood, or maybe a tooth, kept finding its way back into my mouth no matter how many times I spat into the little plastic cup she’d given me.

The room was brighter than noon, the fluorescent panels overhead flickering with an electricity that made the bruises along my jawbone buzz.

I could hear the low drone of medical equipment behind the curtain next door, a heart monitor piping out flatlines and staccato alarms while the nurse’s gloves crackled as she snapped them tighter around her wrists.

She didn’t speak except to ask for my insurance card, which I didn’t have, and then to tell me “Hold still, Mr. McKenzie,” in a voice that made it clear she’d rather be anywhere else.

I held still. I didn’t even wince when she pressed the antiseptic-soaked gauze deep into the raw meat of my cheekbone. I’d learned a thing or two about pain since I’d met Harley, and even more since I’d spent the last three years trying to outpace him down the length of the West Coast.

California was supposed to be far enough from Oregon, far enough from McKenzie River and everything that went with it, but the fucker had longer arms than I gave him credit for. I should have known better.

If I ever saw Harley Westbrook again, I’d return the favor. But judging by the tremor in my hands, the way the adrenaline was fading and leaving me with a hollow, panicked ache, I was still running—just not very fast.

“Nearly done,” the nurse said, her glasses flashing blue as she leaned in with the butterfly tape. “You’ll need stitches, but the doctor’s backed up, so I’m giving you the discount version.”

I grunted, something halfway between thanks and go fuck yourself. She taped the split on my lip with a gentle touch that belied her sour expression, then stood back to admire her handiwork. “You got family we should call?”

“Nope,” I said, the word slurred around the swelling.

She didn’t look convinced. “You’re sure.”

“My family doesn’t answer unknown numbers.

” Lie. Knox would pick up any call after midnight because he thought only bad news happened after dark, but I wasn’t about to explain my shit to a stranger with a laminated badge.

I just wanted out—back to the motel where I could bleed on my own sheets and maybe find the bottom of a six-pack before the night really set in.

The nurse peeled off her gloves and dropped them in the hazardous waste bin, the rubbery snap of them echoing louder than it should have. “You need to be careful,” she said, her tone softening for the first time. “You get hit that hard again, you might not walk away.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said, and as she left the room I let my head fall back against the wall.

For a second, I closed my eyes and let the aftershocks ripple through me.

It was the closest I’d come to real sleep in months.

In my head I could see the moment, burned in like an afterimage: the blur of headlights in the alley, the sound of motorcycle boots grinding gravel, then the first crack of a fist to my ear.

Harley didn’t do his own dirty work anymore.

He didn’t have to. He had enough idiots with three-syllable nicknames who owed him favors, enough money to keep me “reminded” of my place.

It was easier for him to send a message than to just pick up the phone, tell me I belonged to him, that I always would.

I dragged a hand down my face, flinched when my fingers caught on the mess of bandages and tape. My knuckles came away sticky with fresh blood, and for a moment I stared at them, numb.

I’d chosen this. Three years ago, I’d mistaken Harley’s control for the kind of dominance I craved—the kind that kept me safe, made me feel wanted, even if it was just as a thing to be owned.

I hadn’t understood the difference until I caught him “loaning me out” at a party, just to prove he could. The first time he handed me off like a pack of cigarettes, I’d walked out with nothing but a busted nose and a promise never to let anyone touch me again.

Funny, how that never worked out.

I heard a phone ring down the hallway, that old-school beeper tone they used for shift change, and opened my good eye just enough to scan the room. They’d left me in a chair by the nurse’s station, so at least I wasn’t abandoned in the hallway with the old men on oxygen.

I flexed my right hand, trying to coax some feeling back into the fingers, and realized I’d been tracing the tattoos on my forearm: a jagged sleeve of pines and rivers, inked so fine you could see the individual needles.

I’d drawn it myself, a panorama of the McKenzie Valley as it looked the morning I first ran away, the mist burning off the river while my brothers hunted for me in the tree line. I’d never told anyone what it meant. Not even Harley, not even the guys at the shop.

They’d probably be here soon, looking for the paperwork on my motorcycle, or my expired ID, or whatever it was you needed to check out of a hospital. I didn’t care about any of it.

The bike was probably totaled, lying in a splintered heap somewhere on the edge of town, and my sketchbook, the one I’d been filling with new tattoo designs, was no doubt scattered all over the highway.

I cared about the art, I cared about the way my hands felt steady when they held a pen, and I cared about getting out of this place with what little dignity I had left.

The rest was just noise.

The nurse popped back in, holding a clipboard and a handful of pill bottles. “Ibuprofen. You’ll want to start with four, every six hours. If you get worse—headache, dizziness, loss of vision—you come back. Understand?”

“Sure,” I said, and took the pills from her. The prescription bottle was sticky from the price sticker, the label already peeling at the edges.

She eyed the bandages on my face. “You got someone to drive you?”

“Friend picking me up.” Another lie, or maybe just wishful thinking.

She squinted, then nodded and left me to it.

The automatic door hissed open, letting in a fresh blast of fluorescent glare from the lobby, and I squinted after her, wondering what she’d say about me once the door shut.

Probably nothing. I’d seen enough of the ER in my life to know that most people left less interesting stories behind.

My phone vibrated in the pocket of my shredded jeans. I fished it out, thumbs sticky with dried blood, and squinted at the screen. Three missed calls from a number I didn’t recognize, and one text from Knox that just read: “When you sober up, call. We need to talk.”

I stared at the message, my pulse thumping loud in my ears. I’d sooner drive a nail through my other hand than call Knox when I was this fucked up, but the thought of ignoring him made my stomach lurch even harder.

I typed out a reply—“I’m fine. Bike’s not. Don’t need a ride.” I added a thumbs-up emoji, just to piss him off, then powered off the phone before I could second-guess myself.

For a while, I just sat and listened to the muted ER noise—the shuffle of nurses’ shoes, the low beep of machines, the constant, inescapable hum of bad lighting. My head hurt, my ribs ached, and somewhere under all of it was a bruised, stupid hope that maybe this time, I’d finally outrun my past.

When the nurse came back to release me, I was already halfway out of the chair. She handed me a packet of paperwork and a wet-wipe to clean the blood off my hands. “Take care of yourself, Mr. McKenzie.”

I nodded, then limped out into the sharp antiseptic cold of the parking lot, the taste of copper still thick in my mouth.

Maybe tomorrow, I’d go home.

Maybe this time, I’d stay gone.

I hadn’t even gotten the hospital stench out of my nose when I realized I had nowhere left to run. The sun was just starting to creep up behind the strip mall across the street, painting the parking lot in that queasy early-morning light that makes everything look vaguely radioactive.

I slumped on the curb, feet planted in a puddle of old engine oil, and tried to stretch out the kink in my back.

I’m not a small guy—nearly six feet, and my arms still held enough muscle to lift a half-dead motorcycle—but after a night of being used as a punching bag, I felt like I’d shrunk six inches and aged a decade.

I checked my phone again, not because I expected anything but because I needed an excuse to avoid dialing the one number that mattered.

Knox had texted twice more, the first a simple “Update?” and the second a threat only an older brother could deliver without an ounce of irony: “You got one hour before I call the fucking police.”

If there was a God, he had a sick sense of humor, giving me brothers like mine.

I thumbed a menthol out of the crumpled pack in my pocket, cupping the lighter against the damp breeze. The first drag tasted like burning trash and metal, but it woke me up enough to face the music.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about being the baby of the family: every mistake, every disaster, every fuck-up gets broadcast through the sibling grapevine at the speed of sound.

Add a mother who prays over her Crock-Pot and a father who still considers a belt a parenting tool, and you get a childhood where even breathing wrong could spark a McKenzie Summit.