Chapter Sixteen
Merrick
Getting shot in the gut was a highly unpleasant experience.
Technically, he supposed the actual shooting wasn’t the worst part; the recovery, however… well, that just sucked donkey-sized balls if he was perfectly honest. The five-star meds pumping through his bloodstream were incredibly efficient at keeping the pain at bay, but once they started to wear off…
All pain and no respite made Merrick a grumpy boy indeed.
A week after the showdown at Serenity, he was spending less time in a drugged haze, much to his relief. The whole seven days were a fragmented collection of snapshots in time—mainly being prodded, poked, and sent spiraling into the morphine abyss.
Right now, with his faculties in full working order for the first time in what felt like forever, he actually felt somewhat like himself, aside from the wires and tubes hooking him up to various machines and drips.
“Welcome back to planet earth,” a voice said from the doorway. “Mind if I come in?”
Merrick cocked his head, lifting his hand—the one without the wires and gadgets attached to it—to wave Jasper in. “Door’s open. Didn’t think you’d still be here.”
It struck him that the sadist could don surgical scrubs and walk into an operating theatre without anyone questioning him. He wore the air of a man confident in whatever field he chose, and after he’d saved Merrick’s life, it was evident his path in life might have been far different.
“All packed up and ready to head home. We’ve been away from the gremlins for too long.” Jasper walked over to the bed, studying the monitors with a quiet grunt of approval before taking a seat. “Now that the bodies are buried and the community is no more, our work here is done. We confiscated all their tech equipment, and their funds will be used to help the victims acclimatize into civilization.”
“How many?” The gravel in Merrick’s voice surprised him.
“Too many. The elders had already started purging numbers.” Looking tired, the kind of tired that burrowed into a soul, Jasper shook his head. “Thirty-three women alive—including Tamsyn. Twenty-six girls under the age of twelve, and fifteen young boys already being indoctrinated into the community way of life.”
“Christ.” At the mention of Tamsyn’s name, Merrick glanced toward the doorway, hoping she’d appear. “The dead?”
Jasper laughed, but it was humorless. “By the time the team breached the hideaway, there were over thirty women already dead. Executed. The opposing mercs were short-handed with six men, and the community men were wiped out efficiently. The death toll stands at sixty-six, but we found the chasm where Tamsyn said the elders disposed of the other bodies.”
Did he dare ask? “And?”
Pale blue eyes shuttered. “We’re still counting the bodies. Some are decades old, little more than skeletal remains. Some won’t ever be found if the trail of bones leading through the surrounding area is any indication; the wildlife have been eating well for a long time up there. Early estimations are in the two to three hundred mark.”
As a man who loved women in general, it was a nasty strike to the heart.
As the man who loved beyond measure a woman who, if not for her courage and resilience, may very well have ended up as one of those two or three hundred murder victims, it was a fist to the sternum, a reminder of how close she’d come to dying alone and unloved as a statistic in the community’s books.
Nothing more than a product used, abused, and discarded once they broke her.
“What’s going to happen to them?”
“I don’t know. Atticus called in assistance, someone high up the totem pole in Denver. They’re going to identify who they can, but the majority will be community born and raised with no identification. Individual cremations, maybe? I’m not sure how anyone deals with a mass gravesite that extensive.”
“Does Tamsyn know—” Merrick cut himself off.
“That the people she grew up around are mostly dead, or that you killed her father?”
Ouch, that was blunt. Before Merrick could respond, Jasper lifted a shoulder. “The answer is yes, to both. Fordham’s been taking care of her since…” He gestured to Merrick’s wound. “She comes every day to visit you, spends more time than she should sitting in this chair waiting for you to wake up lucid, and hasn’t spoken a word to anyone in a week.”
Oh hell. While he’d been submerged in drugged darkness, his little owl had been left to flounder in darkness of her own. How much damage had been done in the last week, how many steps back had she taken? Was she having nightmares, flashbacks, all the horrible fucking memories they’d worked so hard to stop?
Struggling to sit up, Merrick grunted in pain as fire ripped across his abdomen.
“Oh, sit still, you idiot. A surgeon spent eight hours of his life trying to save yours and you’ll undo all his hard work if you carry on.” Jasper laid his hand on Merrick’s tense arm. “She’s outside, waiting to come in. I asked her to give me a few minutes to talk to you in private. Figured we won’t be seeing each other again for a while.”
“Is that wishful thinking?”
“A pity, actually. I like you, Merrick. Maybe you’re an idiot for tackling a guy armed with a gun when there was a sniper waiting to take the damn shot, but as a man who is also irrevocably in love with his woman, I know where your head was at. Next time, let the sniper do his fucking job, would you?” Amusement flickered in those blue eyes. “You should know you have a remarkable woman in Tamsyn. She stayed strong from the moment Tabitha got her back to the club until the second they loaded you into the chopper. She reminds me a lot of my Anarchy.”
That was a compliment and a half—it was blatantly obvious how Jasper felt about his wife, how much he revered her. If he was prepared to set Tamsyn on the same level, Merrick wouldn’t argue.
“Archie did some poking around in the community files. It turns out Tamsyn was partly mistaken about the elders not keeping birth records. Boys were given certificates, like she thought. The girls, while not officially documented with birth certificates, do have an basic online file. Mainly just a first name, the parents’ names, a date of birth. They were updated once the girls were traded or killed, much like livestock records.” The disgust on Jasper’s face mirrored Merrick’s feelings. “The good news is, Drake only sired one child despite having several trades under his belt. Tamsyn’s online record should be enough to secure her official documentation as a US citizen.”
Merrick studied his face intently. “Archie found it or ‘found’ it?”
Jasper grinned. “While I wouldn’t put it past my lovely wife to fabricate such a file in order to expedite the documentation process—and your wedding—this time, she didn’t need to resort to extreme measures. The files are there, Merrick. She’s going to filter through them once we get home, hopefully match some of the survivors with their own files. The seed I’m trying to plant in your head is don’t hang around, waiting to put a ring on your girl’s finger, Merrick. I know from experience—as do you now—that life and death don’t care about us mere mortals. We are the pieces on the board; they are the chess players.”
That was kind of eloquent in a morbid fashion, Merrick mused. Still, he didn’t need the sadist’s advice, as much as he appreciated it; the day he got out of this bed, away from the hospital, he was pulling every string at his disposal to make Tamsyn his wife.
Fuck the paperwork and official citizenship.
They’d deal with the finer details later, he just wanted her to be his as soon as humanly possible, no matter the cost.
Jasper checked his watch. “On that note, I better move my ass before my kitten sharpens her claws on it for being late.” He rose smoothly, every inch a distinguished gentleman, and his smile flashed like a knife under sunlight. “Hope you have a speedy recovery, Merrick. Where we come from, we take great pleasure in celebrating our kind of love.”
“Does that mean you want an invite?”
“Do bears shit in the woods around Serenity?”
Merrick laughed, grimacing against the stab of pain. “Probably.”
“Probably will do,” Jasper answered as he walked to the door. “Don’t do anything stupid like getting out of bed. Been there, done that. Hurts like a bitch.”
Waiting until his friend opened the door, Merrick said, “Jasper?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for the rest of my life.”
A white-blond eyebrow arched. “Don’t thank me; thank the angel sitting on your shoulder.” His cell phone chirped and he reached for it, giving a nod to Merrick as he walked out. “Yes, kitten, I’ll be there…”
Within twenty seconds, Tamsyn slipped into the room like a shadow. A shadow, he noted, far too reminiscent of the one he’d found huddled in the storage closet only a few months ago, withdrawn and silent.
She was covered in bruises, her pale skin mottled with various colors, and there were a few healing scratches and scrapes he could see. She’d lost a little bit of weight, nothing too drastic, but her hair was clean and shiny, hanging loose around her shoulders, and her clothes were freshly laundered.
Fordham was doing a good job of taking care of her in Merrick’s absence.
“Little owl,” he said gruffly.
Her head lifted, her sad eyes seeking his. They shimmered with tears, then she stumbled toward the bed with her arms outstretched. No hesitation, no fear; she needed the comfort only he could give, and he was desperate to hold her.
She draped herself over his chest, careful not to catch the wires and tubes, and jerked with the effort of throttling back a sob.
Merrick stroked his hand up and down her spine, soothing the trembles running through her. He was tiring, his legendary stamina straining to keep him awake for a few more minutes. He’d lost far too much time with her already. “I missed you, little owl.”
It was true—the brief moments when lucidity returned before more morphine flooded his system, she consumed his scattered thoughts almost as fully as the pain.
Another sob. Her fingers clutched the covers as she buried her face into his chest.
Fuck the pain. Fuck the discomfort.
“Stand up, darlin’,” he murmured. “Just for a second.”
He physically felt the effort it took for her to pry herself away from him. The loss of her weight, her warmth, was immediate but thankfully brief. Shuffling awkwardly a few inches to the right, he concealed a grimace and flipped back the thin blanket covering his atrociously weak body. “Come on, get in here.”
Tamsyn paled further, shaking her head.
“That’s an order, little owl. You’re not gonna hurt me, and I need you right now.” He patted the small sliver of mattress enticingly. “In about two minutes, I’m gonna be asleep, Tamsyn. Can’t help it, can’t fight it. It’s part of the healing process, remember?”
She licked her lips nervously, then nodded.
“I need you here with me, little owl. Right here in this ridiculously small hospital bed, pressed against me where I know you’re safe. Can you do me that little favor, darlin’?”
The way she wrung her hands together was adorable. She wanted to do as he asked, to already be snuggled against him, but she knew what it was like to be in pain and was obviously afraid of causing him more—her eyes were communicating a whole lot better than her voice at the moment.
“Pretty please?” he cajoled, pleased when her lips almost twitched.
Cautiously, as if the bed was on fire, she eased herself beside him, slower than a goddamn tortoise. Her arm slid over his chest, and when his curled around her back, she lost all inhibitions, clinging to him fiercely.
“There we go. There we go, little owl,” he repeated with a contented sigh, pressing a kiss to her hair. He let himself relax, finding the peace he’d been missing for what seemed like forever, and closed his eyes as exhaustion washed over him. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
He was on the downward slope, falling headlong toward sleep when he heard her whispered, “Merk?”
“Hmmm?”
“I missed you too.”
*
Tamsyn
From that moment on, with her head resting on his chest, listening to his heart beat beneath her ear, she didn’t leave his side. She politely but steadfastly ignored Fordham’s attempts to get her to leave the hospital, and instead dedicated every minute of the last three days of Merrick’s stay to learning from the nurses.
Watching how they changed the dressing, how they checked the wound.
How they handled the catheter bag and the way they studied the contents for blood.
She taught herself to read the monitors by listening to their comments.
The day after she fell asleep with him, eager to help yet lacking in all the relevant skills, Tamsyn attempted to assist with a bed bath. The simple task brought mixed feelings to light—pride in taking care of him the same way he’d done for her, embarrassment at seeing him at his most vulnerable, jealousy toward the nurse whose hands were also on Merrick.
When the doctor finally discharged him, Tamsyn was more than ready to go home.
Hospital policy dictated that a patient was required to exit using a wheelchair after major surgery, and she supposed in Merrick’s case, it wasn’t a bad thing. He’d lost some muscle mass and after ten days of bed rest, abdominal surgery, and a lot of strong drugs, he was no longer in his former peak physical condition.
Doubling her pace to keep up with the orderly’s quick walk, she was relieved when they reached the main doors and she was finally able to take a breath of clean, fresh air that wasn’t laced with antiseptic and the cloying scents of sickness and death.
No amount of lemon-scented bleach or air freshener could mask them.
It was nice to feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, even nicer to slip her hand into Merrick’s and hold him tight. They hadn’t discussed her father yet or the events he’d set into motion, the circumstances leading to his departure in a black bag.
The truth was, she didn’t care.
Jedidiah had been cruel, mean, vindictive, selfish… the list of his character flaws was a mile long. Like the other elders, personal gain had been his driving force, even if that meant profiting from the suffering of others and having copious amounts of blood on his hands.
Like the others, his death was a savage form of justice.
No one would mourn any of them.
“There’s our ride, little owl. Right on time.” Merrick squeezed her fingers as a black Jeep cruised up to the designated collection spot, glancing up at her. “Do you love me, Tamsyn?”
What kind of silly question was that? Scowling at him, she wondered if he thought his injury and the resulting scar might affect her feelings for him—as if it ever could. Did he not understand yet that her heart was stuffed into his chest beside his, beating in time with it, unable to function on its own anymore?
“You know I do,” she whispered.
“Do you trust me?”
Now she rolled her eyes, just a little. “With my life.”
“Perfect answer.” Grunting uncomfortably, he pushed himself out of the chair as the driver’s side door opened and Levi popped out of the Jeep. He swayed slightly, giving her a smile when she automatically stepped in close to use her body as a support. “There’s something I need to do when we get home, darlin’. Something vital. It can’t wait, not for a day longer, but I need you onboard. Will you be patient with me, wait for me to explain everything when we get back?”
“I…” Confused, she studied his eyes. His expression was earnest, his eyes full of nothing but love. Whatever the vital something was, it was obviously important to him. “Yes.”
He kissed her, slowly, sweetly, then Levi was there, hooking his arm around the opposite side of Merrick’s waist to lend additional support.
“Good to see you on your feet, Merrick, even if you’re unsteady on them.”
“A couple days, I’ll be back to normal.”
Tamsyn scoffed under her breath. She knew what the doctor had told him—nothing too strenuous, gentle exercises, no more tackling men with guns. Swinging chain link floggers and spanking people was probably high on the list of not-to-do things.
Levi sent her a wink. “Yeah, I think your sub has other ideas on that. You’ll keep him on the straight and narrow, won’t you, little one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll see,” Merrick said, growling under his breath as they reached the Jeep. “How come you pulled the short straw for picking my sorry ass up? You hate the city.”
“Don’t hate it as such, just prefer the peace and tranquility of the great outdoors. Besides, everyone found themselves busy this morning once they found out you were being released. Violet’s on a mission to make everything perfect for… when you get home.” Levi reached out and opened the front passenger door. “She’s got half the housekeeping team slaving away, and she roped Ericka and Felicity into concocting some surprise—so act surprised, would you?”
Merrick chuckled, but it turned into a pained groan as he struggled to lever himself into the seat. “I’ll do my best, just for you, Levi.”
Tamsyn stepped back out of the way, unsure how she could help. She was glad when Levi took charge, gently shoving Merrick onto the seat, then lifting his legs into the footwell. He shut the door, then turned to her.
“Want me to take that, little one?”
Take what? she thought warily.
He gestured to her right hand, and the small bag of Merrick’s possessions and prescription drugs she’d completely forgotten she held. She couldn’t remember picking it up from the chair in his room, she’d been so focused on Merrick and Merrick alone.
Instead of offering it to Levi’s outstretched hand, she pulled the bag to her chest possessively.
“All right.” His grin flashed. “Are you going to be offended if I open the door for you?”
“N-No, sir. Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Tamsyn.” With a flourish, he opened the door to the seat behind Merrick’s and gestured her in. “Buckle up. We’re on a schedule and don’t have time to get pulled over by the fine officers of the Denver police department.”
She knew what buckle up meant, thanks to Fordham. He’d shown her how to pull the seatbelt across herself and poke the flat metal key into the safety catch so she wouldn’t fly through the windscreen if there was an accident.
In total, her journey in the Jeep would make this her eleventh time in a vehicle, which was both magical and slightly terrifying when she looked through the window at how fast her surroundings went past—she’d almost thrown up the first time Fordham brought her to the hospital in his truck, but she swore that was a combination of fear, shock, and dread.
She dutifully buckled herself in as Levi shut the door for her, setting the bag on the seat beside her leg. She heard the click of the catch, then gave the belt a hard tug to make sure she was secure; Fordham had told her more than once it wasn’t necessary, but she thought it was after seeing how bad a car wreck could be—on the television, of course.
She really hadn’t liked that movie even though she’d politely sat through it with Fordham at the other side of the couch, although she supposed Merrick’s absence ensured she hadn’t really liked or enjoyed anything.
Food tasted terrible, music hurt her ears, watching TV felt lackluster and boring.
Poor Fordham, she’d probably made his life an unbearable hell during her time with him. Maybe she should apologize or bake him some cookies… but then, that meant she had to learn how to actually bake.
Resting her head back, she closed her eyes for a moment. Cooking the basics was on her capable list, she just couldn’t guarantee her food wouldn’t be bland compared to what the chefs at Serenity provided. Niceties like baking and sweet goodies didn’t exist in the community.
The faintest smile kissed her mouth when she remembered the community didn’t exist now, either. From the brief rundown Jasper gave her a few days after Jedidiah’s death, the men in black—the good guys—were thorough in their extermination of the elders and all they stood for.
The women and girls who could be saved, had been. They would be provided for, given a home and food, medical treatment and counselling. Treated like human beings for the first time in their miserable lives, seen as people rather than products to be traded and tossed away.
The lost ones, the ones who hadn’t survived misogynistic men and the system designed to benefit them, were still being recovered from the chasm. Efforts would be made to identify them, but Tamsyn didn’t know how they expected to do that when the women never had an identity from the beginning.
How very lucky she’d been, she thought as the driver’s door opened and shut. Not only to escape the community when she had, but to find a place where she’d been safe. To find a man who was willing to overlook her lack of… anything and help her find herself.
When the engine rumbled to life and the men started talking in low voices, she told herself to open her eyes and be present. Her voice was still reluctant to return to its former glory, stifled by the trauma constantly circling in her brain; she needed this opportunity to use it, to join in on a simple conversation.
But it felt so good to rest. She’d never tell Merrick how many hours she’d stayed awake since the shooting, how insomnia plagued her when they were apart. She sure as hell wasn’t going to make him aware of how she spent all three nights in the hospital guarding him, studying his monitors every ten minutes in case he decided to up and die on her.
She heard Levi laugh before her brain switched off of its own volition.