Chapter 11
Eleven
If you call me and you talk to people in the background, I’m hanging up.
—Dru to Finnian
DRU
I should’ve never taken the ER shift.
If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been in the ER when a Truth Teller had come in, his face a mask of shock.
As it should be when the man was missing a leg and an arm.
“Motorcycle wreck,” the paramedic called out as we rushed to the ER trauma room. “We found his leg. That’s on the bus and we’ll grab it for you in a second, but hand’s missing.”
More was said, but I got into a groove, taking vitals, running fluids, and generally trying to help keep the man alive despite his body trying to tell him it was time to go.
At first, I didn’t notice that the big man was a Truth Teller.
I’d only noticed that he was huge, wearing all leather, and wasn’t doing too good.
But then he caught my hand, and I forced myself to look at the man’s face and not all of his injuries.
That’s when my heart literally leaped out of my body.
Because I’d recognized this man.
He and his wife had let me borrow a change of clothes and gotten me a cookie last night.
My entire being just…froze.
For a solid two seconds, when his green eyes met mine, I couldn’t look away.
“Jesus, Dru, move.”
I did, but made sure to do it in a way that I didn’t lose the man’s grip on my arm.
“Knight,” I breathed as I moved closer. “What happened?”
He opened his mouth, tried to speak, but couldn’t.
I leaned forward and moved some of the blood-crusted hair out of his eyes so I could see into them more clearly.
He opened his mouth, and the tiniest of words came out of his lips. “My wife.”
Fuck.
“Was she with you?” I asked, voice laced with panic.
He nodded.
“I’ll go check right now, okay?”
He didn’t let me go at first, eyes still trained on me.
“I’m going to die.”
I was already shaking my head. “Don’t think like that.”
“I’m going to die.” He smiled. “Been on enough tours to Iraq and Afghanistan to know what a fatal injury is. I have not one but two.”
I didn’t disagree with him.
“I need you to deliver a message.” He coughed, his lungs sounding like they were seconds away from a death rattle.
“What message?”
“To my club president,” he rasped. “Can you go find him? Can you tell him? Tell him when he finds my Elaine, to make sure that she’s not left alone for a while?
She will be heartbroken. We’ve been together since we were sixteen.
Only separated out of necessity. I don’t think she’ll take this well.
We’ve been together longer than we’ve been apart, and she’ll… ”
His voice broke.
“What else?” I asked.
“Tell Webber that I’m finally free.” His eyes closed and he loosened his grip on my arm. “Go find my wife, please. If I can, I want to talk to her one more time before I’m gone.”
I moved away, but stopped when I saw the shears coming out to cut the leather vest from his large frame.
“NO!” I called out, stopping the nurse. “Don’t cut it.”
“I have to cut it!” She started to go again.
But I was already taking the shears out of her hands. “No. These cuts are sacred to them.”
I may have been frightened as hell of the Truth Tellers, but I was intrigued enough to look into motorcycle clubs’ customs, rituals, and anything else that pertained to the life.
I knew that they loved their vests.
“We have to!” She reached for them again.
“We can’t,” I said. “This is no different than any other religious stuff we follow. We can get the vest off without cutting it.” I dropped my voice. “He already has no arm, darling.”
She paused and then nodded.
It took three of us to get the vest off and set nicely in the corner of the room.
His eyes met mine once again before I took off, and I could tell he was thankful for my intervention.
I smiled tightly and left the room, looking for the love of Knight’s life, but came up empty.
I did, however, find the paramedics stopped into the refreshment room grabbing a snack.
“Excuse me,” I said quickly. “The woman that was with him. Is she okay?”
The closer one shook his head.
“Nope.” The paramedic smiled sadly. “It was a really bad wreck. Eighteen-wheeler pulled out in front of them. Gave them zero time to react.”
“The biker did what he could, but in the end that wasn’t enough. He hit a guard rail and lost his leg and his arm in the impact. His wife…let’s just say she had wounds incompatible with life,” the second paramedic murmured.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“She was cut in half.” The first paramedic winced. “Died at the scene. Justice of the Peace pronounced her dead on the side of the road.”
“Dammit,” I muttered. “Thanks, guys.”
“No problem,” he said, but I was already halfway back to the trauma room.
I entered and found that there were more than enough people surrounding him and helping him, so I went to his head and cupped his cheek.
“Knight,” I said sternly.
His eyes opened, and he looked in so much pain that my entire being bucked. “She okay?”
I swallowed hard and lied through my teeth. “Yeah, she’s just fine. She didn’t even need an ambulance ride. She’s on her way here now.”
His mouth kicked up at the corners, and he had the sweetest smile on his face, despite his lips being cracked and bleeding. “Bet she loved being left behind.”
I’d bet that she felt horrible up there, watching over him, knowing she’d left him behind.
“Shit, his BP is dropping!” someone yelled.
I looked up at the monitors and damned if they weren’t right.
It was rock bottom.
“Hey,” I said to him, cupping his cheeks with both of my hands. “You keep your eyes open, okay?”
Fuck, I didn’t want him to die.
He opened them back up, but it cost him.
“You lied,” the man whispered.
I kept my hand pressed to his cheek. “Did I?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “You said that she was alive. She’s not. She’s waving me on. Telling me to come home.”
I felt my heart flip.
“Can’t ever go anywhere without me.” He laughed, which caused him to cough. Blood oozed out of his throat and stained his teeth. “Best and worst thing. Can’t go grocery shopping without me. Can’t go to the ice cream store. Always has to have me with her. I’d give her anything, even this.”
“This?” I asked carefully.
He opened his eyes, and I could see the life fading from them. “She wants me, she’ll have me.”
A noise left my throat, and he closed his eyes. “Don’t let him go, D. He needs someone in his corner. He’s lonely, and he will act like he’s okay but he’s not. Nobody can be okay after losing something like he did.” Then his face lit up with absolute joy. “There’s my boy. I see him. Octo’s here.”
Then his heart stopped.
“Fuck.” The doctors started to work frantically, as did the nurses.
I, however, stood back and out of the way.
They wouldn’t bring him back. Not if he didn’t want to be here. You had to want to live, and the man clearly had no reason to stay here when the love of his life was beckoning him into the beyond.
I had no doubt about that.
Picking up his cut, I waited just on the outside of the trauma room until they pronounced him, then I slipped out with only a passing, “I’m taking a lunch break,” to the charge nurse.
She nodded but didn’t look up from her computer.
I hustled out of the hospital and ran to my Blazer, knowing where I was going despite not having ever been there.
The Truth Tellers MC were famous in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
If you knew of them, you knew where they were at any given time.
You could always find them, because they had no reason to stay hidden.
I drove to their clubhouse that was a little bit out of town and then pulled over right before I got there.
My heart was literally aching, and I had to get myself under control so I didn’t start crying the moment that I saw someone.
I also took the time to send out an emergency text to my friends telling them I wouldn’t be back today because I was sick.
They didn’t need to know that I was sick because of what I was about to do.
Without waiting for a reply, I swiped the tears from my eyes and started to drive again, this time right up to the open gates of the Truth Tellers MC clubhouse.
I didn’t stop until I was right in front of the large, open front door.
I grabbed the cut from my seat where I’d folded it reverently, then bailed out of the truck before I could think of an excuse to leave.
Drawing in a deep breath, I started forward, not looking at a single thing that was surrounding me.
I still knocked at the door, despite the door being wide open.
When no one came, I pressed the doorbell and waited some more.
Footsteps sounded beyond the main room I could see, and I was unsurprised to find Finnian rushing toward me.
Somehow I knew he’d be here.
“Silla, what’s wrong?” he asked, taking in my appearance.
I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat, then extended the cut to him.
He glanced down, but he didn’t move to take it.
In fact, he’d frozen completely in place, staring at the blood-stained leather vest like it was a wild animal ready to attack him.
“What’s going on?”
Webber.
I looked up at him, and my heart physically ached for what I was about to do to them.
“I…” My voice cracked as I pushed past Finnian, who back-pedaled several steps so the blood didn’t get on him and moved to Webber. “I was working. In the emergency room today.”
Webber’s eyes stayed solidly on mine as I continued.
“A biker came in,” I said. “Missing an arm and a leg from an accident. An eighteen-wheeler pulled out in front of him. Him and his wife were on the bike, and they swerved in an attempt not to be decapitated.”
Webber closed his eyes, and I was sure that he was envisioning the scene I’d laid out.
“Unfortunately, he couldn’t swerve much because they were heading toward a creek, and there was a guardrail right beside them. They swerved right into the guard rail and hit it going pretty fast.”
“Fuck,” I heard someone say from behind Webber.
Webber’s eyes opened again, and he said, “He’s dead.”
I nodded. “Knight and his wife are dead.”
That’s when all hell broke loose.
I was still at that clubhouse twelve hours later.
Everyone had converged on the building within minutes of hearing the news, and there was so much food and family here that I was highly uncomfortable.
Yet, I’d never left.
And that had a lot to do with the man who was sitting in a corner, nursing his fourth glass of whiskey.
I’d attempted to leave twice now, and each time I’d been about to go and was saying my goodbyes, I’d look over and see Finnian’s eyes on me.
He hadn’t outright asked me to stay, but I could see the pleading in them.
He wanted me to stay, so I’d stayed.
But I really needed to get out of these clothes, and I was desperate for a shower.
I still had their family member’s blood on me, even if you couldn’t see it thanks to the dark color of my scrubs.
I walked over to Finnian, my eyes solely glued on him, and stopped directly in front of him. “Come on.”
He glanced up. “What?”
“Come on,” I repeated. “We’re leaving.”
He didn’t fight me, only stood up and caught hold of my hand.
I made eye contact with Webber on my way out, and he nodded his head in thanks.
I didn’t say goodbye to anyone else.
I walked out with the man on my arm and headed for my truck.
He didn’t complain about the way my seats sagged, and I had a five-gallon jug wedged between the front seats and the back, holding both seats up enough so they didn’t fall all the way back.
A new car was definitely on the agenda…I only had to pay off about eight hundred thousand dollars in lawyer fees first.
I didn’t ask him where to take him.
This time, he came to my place and not his.
He didn’t say a word about the gangbangers that were perched on their porch steps throughout the neighborhood.
He didn’t complain when I had to park eight blocks away from my apartment building.
And he didn’t complain that we had to walk through several homeless individuals, either.
I imagined that once he was back in the right state of mind, he would be pissed at the conditions I was living—most men were when they found out where I lived. Hell, even Eugene had been offended and had offered to ‘allow me to live with them until I could get back on my feet.’
I’d said no, of course.
I also had a feeling that his offer came more from a “I can’t have my fiancée’s sister living in a hellhole. What would people think about me allowing that?”
He hadn’t been concerned for me, to be honest.
He had been concerned with his reputation.
That reminded me that I needed to respond to her text messages soon, or she’d be coming over, and I didn’t want that.
Honestly, if she could just leave me the fuck alone for a while, I’d be happy.
I let us into my apartment, and only once we were inside with the doors locked did I let go of his hand.
“The bathroom’s in there. Go use it. Shower. Then you can crawl into my bed.”
He didn’t argue, which worried me even more.
He hadn’t said a word since I’d told him what had happened.
The poor man.
This was likely killing him and bringing up quite a few memories of the loss of his son.
Once he’d let himself into my bathroom—having stripped all his clothes off but his underwear as he went—I made us a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I was on my second one when he came out of the bathroom.
I placed two sandwiches in his hand and said, “Eat this,” as I moved into the bathroom.
I took the world’s fastest shower, threw my clothes in the hamper to get cleaned tomorrow, and exited the bathroom.
I found him in my bed, under the covers, on his belly.
His face was twisted to the side, so I couldn’t tell if he was awake or not.
I climbed in beside him anyway, and scooted close until I was pressed against the length of him.
This wasn’t sexual.
This was plain, old comfort as I wrapped myself around him and held on.
I fell asleep like that, clinging to him as I tried and failed to keep his pieces from breaking apart for a second time.