Two
T hree and a half months ago, I found a broken man, literally. He’d fallen from a vehicle, I think, and was in a terrible state, but somehow I’d saved him. I saw him crawling, moaning with pain, and I couldn’t help myself. I'd dropped to my knees beside him, and something about the state he was in left me unable to leave him behind.
I struggled to get him to my van, but it was like those moments, when people have a burst of adrenaline that helps them do the impossible. He found a last well of strength, and helped me lift him into the back of my van, and I got the hell out of there. Later, I realised that the heavy police presence there had been because of him, and that there had been an accident, but I’d been on my way back to the town where I lived, so I knew very little. What I did know was all that mattered.
He was a man who’d been beaten badly before that accident, and he needed my help. Maybe this was my chance to atone for my own actions, maybe I could redeem myself after the bad things I’d done in my life. Whatever he’d been through, if I could save a good man, then I could see myself as a good person, right?
He was starting to become more mobile, and now that he was feeling more capable, he was starting to reject my care. Why couldn’t he just take what I was offering, and let himself heal?
“Jesus, woman, will you get off me? I can do it.”
“You can barely stand, Mike, can you just let me help you?” He really objected to being helped in the bathroom, and sure, it had been weird for me at first, but his almost shyness, over being helped with things so intimate, had really endeared him to me. There was something so lost, and almost defeated, about him. Whoever had attacked him had clearly meant to kill him, but at least he’d managed to escape.
“If you touch my dick, woman, I swear to god, I’m gonna lose my mind,” Mike snapped, pushing me away, as he lifted the toilet seat. I backed up, and allowed him the space to do what he needed to, watching him struggle to wash his hands after, and then he leaned heavily on the sink and groaned.
I’d noticed he wouldn’t look at himself in the mirror above the sink, keeping his eyes down at all times. I noticed, because we could never meet eyes in the mirror, and I’d tried. Why wouldn’t he look himself in the eye? It was the only reason I could assume for why he avoided his image in any reflective surfaces, like he was hiding from himself.
“Mike, please-”
“Will you stop calling me that?!” He sagged even further against the sink and sighed. “Sorry, Soph, I’m just… I hate being this fucking weak and needy.”
I rested a hand on his shoulder, and rubbed it gently.
“There’s no shame in needing help sometimes, and really, when you think about it, at this point I’ve seen, and handled, every part of you.”
He cursed and pulled away from my hand. Clearly that was the wrong thing to say at this point, but I really thought it’d remind him that he wasn’t shocking me with any part of him. It was supposed to ease his mind, but he’d taken it the wrong way.
“I just meant that-”
“Yeah, I get the point, woman. Can you just… can you help me back to the chair, and I’ll keep busy or something. I’m sure you’ve got shit to do, beyond helping the invalid.”
“Want to use my spare laptop?”
He lifted his head, finally meeting my eyes directly, and dipped his head a little in agreement.
“Actually, that would be really kind of you, thanks.”
I nodded, helping him lift an arm around me, so I could lead him back to the living room, and settle him into the recliner chair he’d been practically living in lately. I rested the blanket back over his legs, and fetched the laptop for him.
“It’s connected to the wifi? I should check on my emails and stuff. Probably shitloads of junk mail to weed through.” I nodded, plugging the laptop in, since I had to go out to the workshop for the rest of the day, and figured it’d save him having to try and move too much.
“I’ll bring you something to eat, and then I need to get some work done.”
Mike lifted his eyes from the screen, his eyebrows pinching together a little as he regarded me. It hadn’t needed passwords or anything, since it was just a spare I used for non business stuff, and didn’t store anything on.
“You never said what it is you do.”
For very good reason . I smiled at him, knowing I’d never tell him.
“That’s right. Let me go get everything you need first.”
I left the room before he could question me more.
Micro
T he woman was a complete enigma, but I couldn’t deny that she deserved her privacy, could I? Sophie had rescued me after the van crash, and nursed me back to health, with just that shady guy I never met assisting her. I still had a recollection of him demanding something in return, but I had no idea what it was. What if it was something sexual? I wasn’t sure why that thought had my fists clenching over the laptop keyboard, because it really wasn’t my business, was it?
“This should keep you going. As before, use the phone there if you need me, and I’ll come back to help you. Please, Mike, don’t try getting up and moving around without me. You’re still healing, and you want to be fully fighting fit, right?”
Fighting. Fuck yeah, because at some point they’d track me down, and when they did, they’d kill me. Was there any point in caring about healing, when I knew my days were numbered?
“Mike?” At some point, I needed to correct her on my name, but in some ways, it added another layer of security, while I was still not quite back to full strength. Fractures were healing well, bones were knitting and getting stronger, and everything was close to being back in working order, in theory, but I’d lost so much strength and mobility while I was laid up, that I was having to build up again. Ah, who am I kidding? I could barely fucking walk, without this petite little woman helping me. What I wouldn’t give for a little of my former chemical assistance in rebuilding my strength. That shit always helped.
“Mike? Are you okay?”
“Uh, sorry, I was just trying to remember my password,” I lied, hating every untrue word, because she didn’t deserve dishonesty, but what if the truth did her harm?
“Okay, I’ll leave you to it. I put your painkillers there too, make sure you take some in half an hour.” I mock saluted at her, and she laughed as she left the room. There was something so light and carefree about her, which honestly just added to her natural beauty. What a pity she was so far out of my fucking league, not to mention clearly not remotely interested in me, because every touch was so clinical and emotionless, like she switched off the vital parts of her, when she went into ‘nurse mode’.
I waited until I heard the door close behind her, then counted to ten, in case she came back. Once I knew she was staying away, I logged into my servers remotely, and checked on them. Everything was still safely stored there, so by some miracle, Ice, and that Grease bastard, hadn’t found them yet, and there was more information downloaded, since the last time I’d accessed them.
I had camera feeds they hadn’t found, located within the clubhouse, and two cameras outside, that they seemed to have missed. A quick nose around the new information being stored showed me exactly what I expected to see, business as usual, only… every now and then I saw people who shouldn’t be there. Cops . Fuck me. As a person being hunted by both the club and cops, this was the last thing I wanted to see. Were they working together to track me down? Did they have something? Were they hours away from crashing through the doors here, and dragging me back for my retribution? Shit .
My heart started racing, and a cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck and shoulders. If they found me now, I’d have no chance of fighting them off. Fuck. Would Sophie get hurt in the crossfire? Would she be more collateral damage amid my fight with the Phoenix MC? I couldn’t let that happen, not to her.
I opened a messaging app, needing to work as untraceably as possible, and reached out to the only number I thought was worth a risk.
Me : Does your confidentiality clause apply to non-patients?
Was it cryptic enough? Was it ridiculously obvious? Was I risking my fucking life right now?
She took a while to respond, just long enough that I imagined her handing the phone to Ice, and him having one of his hissy fits, before he started using his kit to try and trace the message. I wasn’t worried about him finding me that way, because I was good at hiding my tracks, otherwise they’d have caught me long ago.
Lissa : That would depend on what needs to be kept confidential. Can you identify yourself, or is that part of the secret?
Huh. Was I being lured into a trap right now? Would responding get me killed? Hell, reaching out to her was another nail in my coffin, wasn’t it? Fuck it, what’s the point in acting coy, when I’m dead anyway?
Me : Did you get my letter?
Another long pause followed, and I imagined her sitting in that prissy little office, her red hair perfectly styled, and a shocked look on her face, or maybe she wasn’t shocked at all. Maybe she knew from my first message. Maybe she’d been waiting for something like this.
Lissa : Yes. Ice has seen it too. I don’t keep secrets from him, or the club, when it affects them. I’m sure you can understand that.
Fucking Phoenix MC. The reason for everything bad that had happened to me since… fuck … was I even putting the blame in the right place? Hadn’t my life gone to shit way back before then? Wasn’t the murder of my father a blessing in the end? What if I’d returned to the club under his rule? Would I be alive now? Would I be as brutal and evil as him?
Lissa : Are you safe?
Now why would she ask a thing like that? Was she fishing for information? Was she trying to trick me into saying something that would give away my location? Was Ice somehow tracking me, after all? Jesus fuck. What was I doing?
Me : For now. I won’t stay anywhere for long, so don’t try getting Ice to track me.
Way to sound like a petulant child, right?
Me : I didn’t know you were my sister. I’m sorry I came at you like that. I guess I just needed to say that.
Lissa : I can’t imagine what your upbringing was like, if you were stuck with our father, and I’m sorry for whatever you went through.
Why the hell was she fucking pitying me like this? My dad, our dad, was a fucking god. He was just a brutal animal with it, and he had to be. You had to be strong to be a Club President, and he understood that. Reacher was a very different kind of leader, but if I was honest with myself, I couldn’t exactly fault his methods. It was more about the fact that he’d killed my father, and stolen my birthright from me. The club should have been mine.
Lissa : It’s okay if you reach out now and then, like this, I mean. I won’t breathe a word to anyone if you stay away from the club. They’d kill you if you returned. You do understand that, right?
Yeah, of course I fucking understood that. I saved the chat and closed it. I couldn’t bring myself to respond again, and now that I’d closed the chat, the contact was broken, and she couldn’t reply. That was the only reason I’d tried it, because I knew I could back out and leave her without a trace of me. Lissa. My fucking sister . Why the hell hadn’t I known about her before now? Or before that day I nearly killed her.
Since I’d been more lucid, I’d been trying to filter my way back through all of my memories of my father, and I couldn’t remember one interaction that made me think he was talking about Lissa. Sure, he had old lovers, and ‘bitches’ as he’d called them, and sure, he disappeared now and then for a day or two, but that hadn’t been something I was allowed to question. ‘Don’t you dare fucking question me, boy’ had been drilled into my head at a young age.