24. Mack
24
MACK
T he Bastards ride like hell for the Scorpions clubhouse — or what used to be the Scorpions clubhouse. Because when we get there, it’s deserted. No signs of life. It’s like they all fuckin’ got raptured or something.
Which means our best bet of where Gigi is just evaporated into thin air.
The next couple days, I pretty much go out of my goddamn mind. Elmo is working around the clock looking for intel. Fury walks around looking like he wants to shoot everyone. I feel like my brain is on fire. Every second is torture, with me imagining what Gigi is going through right now — or worse, that it’s too late, and that she’s already gone.
Gone. Dead.
The woman I love.
I can’t fucking sleep, so I spend my time lifting weights in our training room, working until I’m physically exhausted and practically dead on my feet. I don’t eat, can’t drink away my troubles. Fury walks past me sometimes, catching my eye. He looks like he wants to say something to me, but he doesn’t. That’s fine. I can’t fucking have a conversation about his sister right now. It won’t end well. I’m barely hanging on by a thread, a hair’s breadth of losing all control.
Choppa comes and sits with me sometimes at the clubhouse. He tells me Gigi’s cat is prowling around the house looking for her. He tells me Reenie keeps asking about me. But I can’t call her, much less go over to see her. I know I’ll fucking fall apart if I do. So I stay away.
On the third day, I’m arguing with Magnus and Norse in the chapel about what to do next — I wanna fire bomb all the houses of all the Scorpions Elmo can locate — when a shout goes up in the main room of the clubhouse. Seconds later, Reed comes rushing in.
“It’s Gigi!” he shouts, looking like a wild man. “She’s here!”
The chair I’m sitting in clatters to the ground as I race out of the chapel. I skid to a stop in the main room, and there she is: Gigi, surrounded by Fury and half dozen of the men. She’s wearing only a sweat-stained, oversized shirt that comes down to her knees. She’s barefoot, her face bruised and battered.
Her eyes lock on me. The flat, dead expression in them chills me to the bone.
I rush to her and she collapses in my arms. It’s like all her muscles have given out at once. “Baby,” I murmur, scooping her up. She smells awful.
“Mack,” she whispers. “You’re not dead…”
“Christ, Gigi. I’m fine.”
I thought…” her voice breaks. She starts to sob. “I thought…”
“Sshhh. You’re okay. We’ll talk later. You’re gonna be all right.”
I keep murmuring things in her ear as I carry her to the apartment where she was staying before she went to my parents’ place. Inside, I start to lay her on the bed, but she shakes her head frantically. “I need to shower,” she says, her voice weak but insistent. I take her in the bathroom instead. I set her on her feet and start to pull the T-shirt over her head, but she grabs it and holds it down over herself. “No,” she insists, shaking her head frantically. “Please Mack, I want to shower alone.”
After not seeing her for days, the last thing I want to do is walk away and leave her in this bathroom by herself, but it ain’t about me right now. “I’ll grab you some fresh clothes,” I tell her, my heart sinking. Pulling the door to the bathroom closed behind me, I catch her expression as she turns away. She’s barely holding together.
And she’s shutting me out.
All her shit’s at Choppa and Reenie’s. I go out to the bar and ask Little Big Mama to grab a pair of her own sweats and a shirt so Gigi will have something clean to wear. When I get back to Gigi with the clothes, the door to the bathroom is still closed. The shower is running, and steam is billowing through the cracks in the door. She must have the water on as hot as she can stand it.
Fuck. What happened to her?
Gigi finally emerges from the shower, but refuses to come out until I give her the clothes for her to put on inside the bathroom alone. Wishbone arrives to check her out after that. I stay with them for the process, even though Gigi keeps glancing over at me nervously, almost like she wants me to leave.
It’s not until Wishbone asks her to lift her shirt that I realize why.
Track marks line Gigi’s upper thighs and torso. The cuts are just deep enough to scar, and deliberate. Made with a knife, by someone who wanted her to suffer. Blaze cut her. He tortured her. This is what she was living through, while we were here trying to figure out how to find her.
Gigi saved herself. I couldn’t do it for her. The thought rips through me like the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.
Right there and then, I vow to avenge her if it’s the last thing I ever do.
Wishbone stitches up the wounds that need it. He gives her ointment to put on the cuts, says he’s gonna give her some pain meds, and then tells me to wait outside for a minute. I almost argue with him, but the look Gigi gives me makes the argument die in my throat. I do what he says and step out.
Through the closed door, I hear their voices murmuring for a few minutes. Then the door opens and Wishbone comes out. He closes the door and pulls me aside to talk.
“Let her sleep,” he tells me. “The meds I gave her should knock her out for a good five to six hours at least. Maybe more. She needs the rest, mentally and physically. She’s been through a hell of a lot, that girl. She’s tougher than I would have given her credit for. A lot of women who’d been through what she has would never have made it out, much less be functioning enough to make it back here on their own.”
I try to ask him the question that’s been burning into my brain since we got Gigi back. “Bone. Is she… did he…?”
Mercifully, Wishbone knows what I mean without me having to say it. “No. But he was about to. Lucky for Gigi, she found the strength to fight him off before he could do what he intended to.”
“Oh, thank fuck.”
“Mack.” He steeples his fingers. “That girl’s been through a lot, and she’s pretty damn fragile right now. Don’t try to get any intel out of her now about what happened. Let her sleep. We can talk to her when she’s rested. We’ve got time now. The important thing is that she’s safe.”
I go back inside. Gigi has already drifted off, probably for several hours if Wishbone is right. I know there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to sleep, myself, so I sit in a chair across from the bed and watch her for a long time.
After a while I can’t stand it anymore. I get up and pace the room as quietly as I can, trying to think of what the hell I can do for her. It occurs to me then that I haven’t called Reenie and Choppa to tell them Gigi’s been found safe. I go out to the main room and call my mom to break the news. I give her an abbreviated version of the story — telling her who took Gigi and why — and to ask her if she can round up Tedward and bring him to the clubhouse. Having a familiar furry pet to cuddle might be just what Gigi needs right now.
When Reenie gets here, toting Tedward in his cat carrier, I’ve gone from antsy to just short of stir-crazy. She finds me sitting at the bar, tossing back drink after drink. Mom gives me a reproachful look as she slides onto a stool next to me and sets Ted’s carrier on the bar.
“You sure drinking is the best thing you can do for that girl right now?” she challenges, signaling to Little Big Mama for a Coke.
“It’s the best thing I can do to avoid going in there and waking her up to talk to me,” I growl.
Reenie harrumphs and grabs my glass, setting it far away from me on the other side of Ted. “How is she, Mack?” she asks gently.
I open my mouth to answer, but for a second, it’s too much. I put my head in my hands. “She’s alive. Physically, she’s bruised and… cut up. Other than that, not good.” I let out a ragged sigh. “He cut her. Tortured her. The look in her eyes… it’s like she’s so far away. Like she’s not really in there.”
Reenie puts a hand on my shoulder. Mama brings her her drink, and Reenie thanks her. “It’s going to take Gigi a while to come back to you. That kind of violation… it’s gonna take a toll. You need to be patient with her.”
I let out a dismal snort. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but patience isn’t exactly my strong suit.”
My mom huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, after close to three decades of knowing you, I got that. But you’re going to have to make an exception for the woman you love.”
I raise my head and squint at her. “What did you say?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “You know you’re in love with her, right?”
“I mean… yeah. But how did you know?”
Reenie shakes her head. “Oh, my goodness. You’re not the closed book you think you are, my boy. The way you look at her, there’s no more obvious thing on the planet. But you also know she’s in love with you, don’t you?”
I exhale, and fumble in my pocket for my pack of smokes. “Yeah, I mean, she said she was. Before…” My throat closes over the words. I clear it and try again. “But right now it seems like she wants nothing to do with me.”
Reenie sobers. Tedward lets out a soft meow, and my mom sticks a couple of fingers in his carrier to scratch him under the chin. “Son, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a man, and you might not be able to understand what’s happened to her. This man has violated her body and soul. Not once, but twice. Her body doesn’t feel like her own anymore. You need to give her time to come back to herself, before she can come back to you.”
I sit in silence, weighing her words. The truth of them hits me painfully.
More than anything, I need to feel Gigi under me. I need to be inside her. But Gigi needs something else right now. And I need to give that to her. My own needs take a back seat. For as long as it takes.
Reenie is examining me with a sharp eye. After a moment, her face clears. “You get it, don’t you? Good. I don’t want to have to kick your ass about this.”
In spite of everything, I have to laugh. Mom finishes her Coke, then slides off her stool and motions for me to do the same. She gives me a tight hug. “You’re gonna be okay. Just focus on her. On what she needs. Not what you need. That’ll carry you through. And you call me if you think she needs me. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a woman about these things.”
Reenie waves goodbye to Tedward and leaves the clubhouse. I stare after her, realizing maybe for the first time how lucky I am to have the parents I do. Gigi doesn’t have a mom to cry to. She never has.
I find myself wanting her to think of Reenie as that mom.
Hours later, when it’s long past dark, I climb carefully into bed with a still-sleeping Gigi. She rolls over in her sleep to face me. I gather her into my arms. She wakes, half-sedated, and lets out an ear-piercing scream. She starts to attack me, kicking out with both legs and trying blindly to connect with her fists. Alarmed, I hold onto her as carefully as I can. “Gigi, sshhh, Gigi, it’s me, Mack. Sshhh, it’s all right. You’re safe. You’re here safe with me…”
Before long, the wild look in her eyes dissipates as she slowly comes to and realizes where she is. She bursts into tears and cries into my chest as I continue to hold her, thankful that she’s letting me touch her.
Thankful that she’s letting me be anything to her at all.