Chapter Twenty Nine
Jazz slept for hours. I lay there for a while, listening to her.
She sobbed to sleep eventually, her breath coming in little hiccups.
There had been something about her when she let her guard down.
Became vulnerable. Part of it had kicked me hard in the stomach knowing I’d put her through that.
That if I’d just let her go the first moment that it crossed my mind, she wouldn’t have been tortured by my club, and she wouldn’t be wearing my patch on her skin.
She smelt incredible. Just warm soap and something that I’d never smelt on anyone before.
Whatever it was, it was just her. Her skin was smooth.
Her body a little too thin. My doing. I could have fucking fed her better.
I would now, though. I’d take care of her.
Keep her warm. Keep her belly full. And her pussy if that’s what she wanted.
The throb started in my fucking groin again.
A deep pulsing and my dick swelled for the fucking third time.
I wanted to roll her over, sink into her, nut in her tight cunt so she would wake up with it dripping down her legs.
I closed my eyes. Stilling those thoughts.
Fuck. I was going to have to get up and take care of myself again in Baz’s shower.
There’d been no hot water left at all the last time.
But the chill of the cold had been needed, not before I shot my load all over the flowery fucking monstrosity of the tiles.
I sighed heavily, my breath moving her hair, the top of the tattoo peeking out underneath.
Her skin was unblemished apart from that tattoo, and a smaller one on the inside of her left wrist. A phoenix consumed in fire.
Fucking ironic. In other circumstances, I would have laid there all night looking at it.
At the claim on her skin. But I wasn’t proud of this one, and the red-eyed rat stared back at me tauntingly.
Day came, sunlight streaming in through the chintzy curtains, highlighting the frills down the side.
The room was similarly decorated. Besides the woodchip wallpaper, flowers covered the rest of it.
Floral and frill bedding set, floral pelmets curling around the top of the bay window, floral border on top of the dado rail.
It was everywhere. I felt like I was being suffocated by a bastard tea cosy.
And still Jazz slept, barely stirring. She probably hadn’t slept in days. Snatching it where she could, every slight movement of her body on that hook waking her. Every footstep and every voice sent her back to high alert.
I’d done all that. Every piece of suffering. Guilt stabbed me again from the inside out, twisting in my gut, and when it cleared, nausea took its place.
I’d defied my club. An MC I’d pledged my life to. There were only two ways out of a club like the Rats, and ignoring orders, beating up brothers and running off with club assets was not going to get me a pass out on good standing.
I was fucked. Well. And. Truly.
My brain whirred, thinking over scenarios and then discarding them as dead ends.
I couldn’t run home to my parents. That would be the first place they’d look.
And outside of the club, I had no friends.
Nowhere to lie low. And I still had to get her home.
Then what? Face the consequences from the Northern Kings?
If I thought the Rats wanted me dead right now, the Kings would want something worse.
My club had taken the sister of their Vice President, but I’d strung her up onto the hook in my warehouse.
I’d suggested branding her with the Rats’ back patch.
And then I’d fucked her. I was a goner. That was the only fucking thing I was sure about right now.
*****
I lay awake most of the day. Staring up at the ceiling that Baz had covered in fucking woodchip wallpaper. I’d heard him most of the day. He’d been up and down the stairs, carrying what I took to be plates and cups, as it chinked noisily with each heavy footfall on the creaking steps.
My phone was off. No way to track me, not that I was sure that the Rats would even think about that or had the basic skills between them to even consider it.
We were all a bunch of mechanics, labourers and general blue-collar workers, or drug runners.
The only skills I had were on a racetrack, enforcing Rats’ rule, or building motorbikes. And those were now fucking redundant.
I closed my eyes again, the memories raw in my mind.
For a moment, I was back there. The smell of petrol and hot rubber thick in the air, the kind of smell that crawled into your skin and stayed there for days.
I could hear it too. Engines growling lined up shoulder to shoulder, the pop and crack of throttles testing their nerves.
My gloves were slick with sweat, my pulse hammering in my throat.
Nothing came close to that feeling. That heartbeat before the lights hit green. The world balanced on a knife-edge.
Crowds, noise, a blur of faces pressed against wire fencing as I passed them too fast to make anything out other than smears of skin and the scattering of colour.
Anticipation hummed like static in the air, everyone waiting for the first corner, for that mad rush that sorted the men from the idiots.
I could almost smell the heat of the track, that sharp tang of scorched oil and hot tarmac.
I used to live for it. The speed, the freedom, the control.
Every cell in my body tuned to that single moment.
The bike and me, one thing, moving faster than fear, faster than thought.
And then… nothing.
Just the silence that came after. The kind that eats the edges of a memory.
One second the world roaring, the next, gone.
Like someone hit mute. My hands twitched, remembering the loss of grip, the ghost of vibration through the bars.
I swallowed hard, the weight of it dragging me back to the flowery monstrosity that surrounded me.
The boiler hummed and gargled away down the hall, slowly warming water and not quite warming the damp terraced house.
Further away a cough, hacking and tormented, relentless.
Yet Jazz’s breathing never changed, steady beside me, calming me in a way it shouldn’t.
I’d lost more than I realised that day. And I’d never found that again.
But something else had found me, filling a hole.
And now I’d walked away from that too. My brothers.
Their noise had replaced those engines in a different way.
Metal, loyalty, and the lie that all things were freedom.
Loyalty. It had been a beautiful thing. Until it wasn’t.
I turned my head. Jazz shifted in her sleep, her hand curled close to her face. Even now, with the bruises, she looked more alive than I’d felt in years. And here I was, just another man who’d fucked everything he touched.
I lay there listening to her breathe. Counting each one. Thinking about what came next. There was no going home. No calling in favours. The Rats would already be spreading the word. I’d be a dead man the second I crossed paths with anyone flying their patch. But it didn’t matter. Not really.
All that mattered was getting her clear.
And maybe, just maybe, outrunning the silence for a little longer.
The stairs creaked again, the clock on the yellowing bedside table clicking 4pm.
My stomach rumbled loudly, filling the room, yet Jazz still slept.
The air was cool on my flesh as I rolled out from under the heavy duvet, tucking it back in around her.
The thin carpet offered little comfort, heavily worn in the middle of the room, and I could feel the slats of the floorboards underneath.
My jeans were still wet on the radiator that sat under the curve of the window. It put out the tiniest of heat, just enough to take the cold off the top of the coated steel, not enough to heat the room.
I opened Baz’s wardrobe, thumbing through.
Old suits, dust thick on the shoulder pads, musty shirts, hanging damp.
I moved on, looking for something else. Something fucking wearable.
Jeans. T-shirts, jumpers, that would do.
I pushed my leg into some old Levi’s. They were tight.
Definitely didn’t fit Baz’s growing gut now, so I doubted he’d miss them too much.
The stairs grumbled under my feet, and I was sure the actual steps were bending under my weight.
I found him sitting in the living room when I reached the ground floor, staring at the old boxy TV on the pine stand in the corner.
The sofa was old, faded and fucking floral, like everything else in this house, and the room stank of weed, fresh and heavy. Baz’s way of keeping the edges blurred.
“Hey Baz. Thanks for last night.”
The man turned, eyes red-rimmed and slow to focus, lids half-dropped like the weight of the world was pressing them down.
His hair stuck out in greasy clumps, what was left of it, the centre just a patch of stubble and baldness, the sides he hadn’t even bothered to shave off.
The half-smoked joint trembled between his fingers.
His skin had that washed-out look, pale yellow, like nicotine and cheap lightbulbs had seeped into it.
He looked older than he was. Worn down and the kind of tired that sleep couldn’t fix.
Pity hit me before I could stop it. Baz wasn’t weak.
Just surviving the only way he knew how.
The joint wasn’t about getting high anymore; it was about making the world a little quieter, softening the sharp edges that came from holding up a life that was crumbling around him.
The smell hung thick in the air, clinging to those floral curtains, the sofa, him.
Baz nodded eventually when my words finally filtered into his brain.
“How long you here for?”
“Dunno, pal. Maybe another day,” I answered, rubbing the back of my neck as Baz reminded me I had no fucking plan. “You said you’ve got food in that freezer?”
“Aye. Chips and that.”
Chips would fucking do. Anything.
He was on his feet when I came back in with a bowl of fries.
“Help yourself to whatever’s here, but keep the noise down.” He looked at me pointedly. “She’ll be asleep. But the sleeping tablets don’t keep her totally knocked out. You won’t hear from her, though. She can’t talk anymore.”
He didn’t look sad as he said those words. They were just a matter of fact. Like he’d accepted it. I wanted to ask, but we weren’t friends. He just needed to keep his trap shut, and we’d clear out of here soon, once Jazz was ready to move again.
Baz shrugged into his jacket, pulling a black beanie hat over his balding head. But as he got to the door, he stopped, turning back to me.
“If you’re here, who am I handing over the gabapentin to tonight?”
Good fucking question.
I shrugged. “Dunno. But there’ll be someone there in a Rats’ patch. Just act surprised it’s not me.” Baz nodded, his hand turning the lock on the old wooden door. “And Baz. Don’t fucking tell them where I am, huh?”
He raised his eyebrows half in exasperation and then thought better of it before nodding and pulling the door open. Behind me in the kitchen, the cooker bleeped.
*****
Jazz was still asleep; the pizza I’d brought her up was long cold, and I’d given up and eaten half of it, anyway.
But as I sat in the dark corner of the room, hiding from floral and chintz, she began to stir.
She struggled up onto her arms; the bed covers dropping off her, and even in the shadows I didn’t miss her tits.
I leaned onto my elbows, gripping my nose, looking away, trying to think of something else and not my dick.
But I still sat in the corner like a fucking stalker.
“You need to eat, Tiger,” I said eventually, letting her know she wasn’t alone.
Jazz didn’t answer. But I could tell she was staring, her eyes fixed on me, even though the corner I sat in was dark and I was all but a shadow to her.
What was she thinking? Was she plotting an escape? Regretting last night? She said nothing, and she didn’t move. Not at first.
“What’s wrong?” She asked eventually, the words taking me by surprise.
I’d expected something else. Rebuttal. Rejection and at the very least retaliation.
“Just thinking.” I answered.
“What about?”
“What to do with you.” It wasn’t a lie. Maybe just in a different context.
“And what have you come up with?” That ring to her voice was back. Strong, composed and with more than a hint of defiance. Just the way I’d noticed it when I first met her. But perhaps with a little less anger.
“Fucking nothing right now,” I answered honestly. “Apart from if you don’t eat something…”
“You’ll do what?”
“Fucking feed you it myself,” I rose from the seat and walked to the big chest of drawers on the far side of the room.
Floorboards creaked under my feet. Every fucking thing creaked in this house. Including the stairs.
The stairs.
I stopped. My hand outstretched, just about to grab the plate with the remnants of pizza left on it. That creak again.
Baz had said he’d given his wife sleeping tablets, so unless she was sleepwalking, or they hadn’t worked, there was someone else here. Fuck.