Chapter Thirty-Nine
Grace
We walked down the hall in the hospital, surrounded by bikers. King held my hand while Gunner, Big Ben, Ace, Romeo, Shotgun, and Zero made a circle around us.
It was the safest I’d felt in the last forty-eight hours.
We went to Johnny’s room first, and as my hand hovered over the doorknob, tears filled my eyes, afraid of what I’d see when I stepped inside his room. I closed my eyes for a moment, and King whispered behind me, “He’s gonna be okay, and he’s been asking for you.”
I nodded, took a deep breath, and walked inside, closing the door behind me. I’d asked King to stay outside in the hall. But Gunner had gone in first to make sure no one was in the room with him. He came back out, and they all blocked the door to make me feel safe.
I wasn’t sure I would ever feel safe again.
Johnny lay on the bed, a tube against his nose, another one disappearing into his arm. And his chest was bare, except for the bandages that covered the incision from his surgery.
“Grace,” he rasped, and I broke down. Tears rolled down my cheeks as Johnny lifted his hand to me. “Come here, big sister.”
I rushed over and grabbed his hand. “I’m so sorry, Johnny. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Hey, this wasn’t your fault, Grace.”
“I should have stayed put. I never should have left the clubhouse.”
“Grace, look at me.”
I lifted my eyes, and the anger on his face hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew he would never forgive me.
“This was not your fucking fault. You don’t deserve to live your life locked up behind the clubhouse walls. You didn’t do anything wrong. Skinner is the only fucker to blame.”
“He’s dead, I think.”
“Yeah, Archie told me. King shot him in the neck as he shoved you over the fucking waterfall.”
I looked away. I remembered the feel of Skinner’s blood on my face and neck. I remembered the way I felt the peace wash over me as I flew through the air thinking my life was ending. I’d accepted it. Wanted it, even.
When King and Karlyn brought me back after fishing me out of the water, I was angry. I didn’t want to live. Not after what happened. I didn’t want to live with the memories. The constant reel running through my mind. I didn’t want to live a half-life, the way my mother had.
“Grace.”
I shook my head. “I can’t talk about it, Johnny. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
“He loves you, Grace. It won’t matter to him.”
I turned my glare on my best friend. “It matters to me.”
“Why?”
I clenched my teeth together tightly and tried to pull my hand away from his. He held me tight and wouldn’t let go. “Why, Grace? Why does it matter to you?”
“Are you fucking serious, Johnny? You don’t know what they did! You don’t know how they broke me! You don’t know what I have to live with now. The memories, the nightmares.” I closed my eyes tight. “I can’t get away from the feeling. The smell. I’ll never be the same person I was.”
“No, you won’t. That can be said of any experience, good or bad. Everything we go through in life makes us who we are, Grace. If I hadn’t lost my sister, I wouldn’t be here.”
“You wouldn’t be here if I’d stayed my ass home.”
“I meant here in Diamond Creek. Who’s to say I wouldn’t still be here if I’d gone to protect any of the women?
Or even if I’d gone with King somewhere.
Hell, I could be hit by a fucking car speeding down the road.
Shit happens, Grace. We can’t control life.
All we can do is accept it and adjust to it. Not let it kill us.”
“You don’t understand, Johnny; you couldn’t.
” I took a deep breath. I understood what he was doing.
But he’d never know what it was like. Being at the mercy of more than a dozen men.
It was more than just not being able to control the shit life threw at you.
I was raped. More than once, by more than one man.
I didn’t just have my control taken away.
They took my soul. It was ripped away from me.
“You’re not broken, Grace. You’re scratched. Scratches heal with time.”
“You’ll never understand,” I whispered.
“I started the fire.”
My eyes snapped up to his. “What?”
“The fire that killed my sister. I started it. I thought I could control it. She was so fucking sad all the time. I thought if I could just get him there. Let him see what she was going through, then he’d take her back.
But everything went up so fast, and when the fire department got there, they said it was too late.
He never even tried to save her. But I was the one who killed her.
I have to live with that for the rest of my life, Grace.
The guilt of knowing that what I did to try to help her was what ultimately took her away from me. ”
“Oh, Johnny.”
My heart broke for him. For a few minutes, everything I’d been through was gone.
It disappeared with his confession. It wouldn’t save me from the fear or the nightmares and memories, but it eased something inside me.
Something I couldn’t explain. Johnny and I had a connection I didn’t have with the others.
He was like a little brother, but he was also my best friend.
He’d always had a way of putting things into perspective for me.
He’d lost his sister almost ten years ago. What he went through wasn’t the same. It wasn’t even in the same category, but it was his trauma. It was the trauma he lived with that had made him who he was. He would never ‘get over’ what happened, but he’d learned to live with it.
Could I do that? Would I be able to get to the point where it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind day in and day out? Would I be able to live a ‘normal’ life again someday?
Laugh again?
Smile?
Make love?
I couldn’t see it. But maybe with time it would become a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe one day Stephanie would recede again and Grace could shine again.
The question was... would King still be there?
Johnny and I talked a little longer; I cried some more, and he held my hand. I felt safe, like I didn’t need to be on edge waiting to see how my body would react to sudden movements, or if the guys got too close, would I wince?
I didn’t want to leave, but I knew he was tired, and I still needed to see Maureen. So, I said goodbye and surprised myself when I leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“Time, Grace. It heals. There might always be a scar, but the wound will close.”
I nodded and stepped into the hall. I looked up at King. His eyes still held that fear, that worry that I would run. I didn’t want to get his hopes up, but the urge to leave had lessened just a tiny bit.
“You ready to meet Bennett?”
I nodded but didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if I was ready. I was sure she and the sheriff had heard what happened by now. There was no hiding from Maureen.
We took the elevator up to the fourth floor and stepped out. Colleen was just coming out of Maureen’s room when she saw us. Her eyes welled with tears and she rushed over and hugged me tightly.
“We were so worried about you.”
I wrapped my arms around her and just stood there, trying to hold back the tears that were the only constant in my life right now.
“I’m okay,” I lied.
Colleen pulled back and studied me. “You’re not,” she said.
“And that’s okay. Because you will be. We’re all here for you.
Whatever you need.” She hugged me again and added, “Go inside. Mom’s been champing at the bit to see you.
She threatened to leave AMA if you didn’t show up soon.
” Colleen smiled, and I couldn’t help the way my mouth lifted to smile back.
It felt foreign. Like it was something new I’d just learned.
“Are you leaving?”
“Yeah, I need to go take care of Tucker. Plus, she’s driving me nuts.” She laughed. “Let her smother you. She needs it as much as you do.”
Colleen said goodbye, and when I looked up, King was smiling back at me. I shook my head at his arrogance and opened the door.
“For fuck’s sake, it’s about time. Come here!” Maureen climbed off the bed and pulled me against her.
“Shouldn’t you be lying down?”
“Pfft, no. I had a baby. I’m not dying.”
“Reenie,” Declan warned.
She turned a glare on her husband. “Shush you. You don’t get to talk. Take your pain-in-the-ass brother and leave.”
“What the fuck did I do?” King asked.
“Don’t get me started. Both of you, out.” Maureen shoved the two men out of the room, and I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. Finally, she got back into bed. She looked exhausted.
“Grace, come sit.” She patted the bed next to her, and as I moved closer, she scooted to the side and practically dragged me onto the bed until I was lying next to her.
It reminded me of how my mom used to snuggle with me when I was sick. And how I laid in bed with her in the last few weeks before she died.
“When I was thirty years old, I was grocery shopping one day. I’d just returned home and was bringing the bags inside. Colleen was at school, and Duane was working. I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings and before I knew it, I was shoved inside the house, and I heard the door slam.”
My body stiffened. I tried to lift my head, but Maureen held me still. She had one hand on my head, petting my hair. The other was rubbing my arm that lay over her now flat belly.
“I was scared, but I always knew it was a possibility. I wasn’t the first Mob wife who had been attacked. Honestly, it wasn’t even the first time I’d been hit by someone who was pissed off at Duane, or Sal, or even Duncan.”
She took a deep breath, and I knew this was something hard for her to talk about. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I do. Because you need to know you aren’t alone. And you need to know there is another side to this shit. He grabbed me by my hair and pulled me into the kitchen. The one place that was my haven. It was like he knew that room would do the most damage.
“He was a cop who somehow thought that raping me would make him a big man. That it would get one over on Duane. He was a dirty cop who had screwed over the family, so Duane had cut him loose. He was no longer on the payroll. I paid the price for his anger.”
I closed my eyes. That was what I was. A pawn in this fucked-up war that had nothing to do with me. Maureen told me everything. Everything she’d felt, everything she’d believed about herself and her husband. And how all of it was wrong.
She said she knew all the things I was saying to myself, but she didn’t tell me not to think them.
She told me to let them out. To tell someone.
That keeping them inside meant they would stay with me forever.
I needed to unload on someone I trusted.
Someone who might never understand why I felt the way I did but putting them out there would go a long way in taking away their power.
She held me in her arms until the nurse came in wheeling a clear plastic bassinet. I hadn’t even realized the baby wasn’t in the room. Maureen had steamrolled right over my feelings and emotions in the best way possible.
The way a mom would.
We hung around oohing and aahing over little Bennett, and watching King hold his nephew brought tears to my eyes. Happy tears rather than sad. Tears that made me want a future. Tears that told me maybe one day we’d be in this hospital holding our own little boy or girl.