RAZOR
I’m three blocks out when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out and read it before I’ve registered the motion.
Someone’s here.
The world goes very small and very loud.
I hit the throttle. I’m on the phone to King before I’ve changed lanes.
“They moved,” I say. “On Darcie.”
“Where.”
“Her apartment. I’m two minutes out.”
“We’re coming. Don’t wait.”
“I’m not waiting.”
I hang up.
Carlin’s people have figured it out. They know we’re looking. They’ve decided if the club’s coming then they’re going to get their hands on the one thing we’ve been putting a fence around — either to use her, or to hurt her, or to send a message before we send one to them.
I don’t know which. I don’t care.
What matters is she’s alone. What matters is I’m not there.
I don’t remember the rest of the ride.
I remember my bike roaring. I remember the speedometer moving places it shouldn’t. I remember the brothers joining me and burning after me somewhere behind. But I don’t remember the turns. I don’t remember breathing.
When I get to Darcie’s apartment, I take the stairs three at a time, and as I come round the corner of the second-floor landing I can hear them.
Her door is open.
Her voice. Tight and small, the way it goes when she’s holding something down.
“I’m telling you, I don’t—”
A man’s voice. Low. Ugly. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”
A slap. Flesh on flesh. Her sound, sharp, cut off.
I go through the door.
There are two of them.
One has her pinned against the wall next to the kitchen — forearm across her collarbones, his other hand wound in the front of her jumper, his knee wedged between hers so she can’t bring a leg up. The other is behind him, halfway into the living room.
Her lip is split.
I see it before I see anything else. Blood on her chin. A red mark on her cheekbone already darkening to something else. Her hair is across her face and she’s breathing hard and there is blood on her mouth and he put it there.
The red mist comes to me quickly. I am going to kill them.
Something in me that has been shut for ten years comes off its hinges.
The man pinning her sees me first, over her shoulder — sees my face — and I watch his expression change. I watch him understand, in about half a second, that he has made the worst mistake of his life. His hand loosens on her jumper. His weight shifts off her. He is about to say something.
He doesn’t get to.
I don’t remember crossing the room.
I am on him before he’s finished registering my face.
My hand is in the back of his jacket and I am ripping him off her, and he is weightless to me, suddenly, he is not a man but a bag of shit I am removing from my woman, and I throw him into the wall hard enough that plasterboard cracks and something in his shoulder makes a wet popping sound and he screams.
“You put your fucking hand on her.”
I’m roaring. I don’t recognise my own voice. The walls of her apartment are small and the sound of me fills them.
“You put your hand on her. You came into her apartment and you put your hand on her.“
I’m on him before he’s slid down the wall.
My fist connects with his face and his head snaps back against the plasterboard and connects again and again.
Blood splashes my knuckles. My arm. My shirt.
I’m not counting. I’m not stopping. His face isn’t a face any more — it’s a wet mess of red and something that used to be a nose. The rage shows no sign of stopping.
“You think you get to do that. You think Carlin pays enough. You think anyone pays enough that what I’m about to do you is worth you putting your hands on her.”
I hit him again. He stops trying to get his arms up.
“You think you can walk into her apartment. You think you touch her. Do you think there’s a world where you walk out of here.”
The second one is moving. I clock it in the corner of my eye — him coming at me, something in his hand, a knife or a bat, I don’t care — and I am across the room before he’s got near enough.
I catch his wrist and I break it.
I feel the bone go. I hear him scream. Whatever was in his hand hits the carpet. He tries to swing at me with his other arm and I catch that one too, and I slam him sideways into the coffee table and it breaks under his weight and glass goes everywhere.
He tries to crawl.
I don’t let him.
My knee is on his chest and my fist is in his face and I am still roaring, I can hear it, I can’t stop — you think you get to touch her, you think you walk out of here, you think there’s a world where you walk out of here after putting your fucking hands on her — and I hit him again and I hit him again.
I go back to the first one.
He’s conscious. Barely. He’s trying to get up. I pick him up by the front of his jacket and I put him back against the wall, and his feet aren’t on the floor, and I bring my face close to his.
“Look at me.”
He looks.
“You are going to remember my face. You are going to remember this apartment. You are going to remember that you put your hand on her. And every night for the rest of your life when you close your eyes I want you to see me. And I want you to know that I let you live. Because I don’t want Darcie to have to see me kill a man. Do you understand me?”
His mouth moves. Nothing comes out.
“Do you understand me.“
He nods. He’s crying. I don’t care.
I drop him.
I am breathing like I’ve run a marathon. My hands are shaking. My knuckles are split to the bone and I can’t feel them. There is a sound somewhere behind me that might be my name.
“Razor.”
Her voice. Shaking. Quiet.
“Razor. Stop. Please. Stop.”
I turn.
She’s still against the wall. Her jumper is pulled at the collar. Her hair is across her face. Blood on her chin. She’s looking at me like she’s trying to reach me through glass.
“He’s done,” she whispers. “They’re both done. Stop. Please.”
I look down at my hand. It’s red to the wrist.
I unclench my fist. I take one breath. Two.
“Darcie.”
She takes one step toward me and her legs buckle.
I catch her before she hits the floor.
I slide down the wall with her. I end up sitting on her kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets and her in my lap, one of my arms around her shoulders and the other already in her hair, and I am shaking and she is shaking and somewhere behind me the first man is making small wet sounds and I do not give a single fuck about him any more.
“Let me see,” I say. “Baby. Let me see.”
She tilts her face up.
Her lip is split at the corner. It’s already swelling. The mark on her cheekbone is going to be a proper bruise and there’s a scrape along her jaw from where he shoved her into the wall.
I look at my hands. They are covered in someone else’s blood. My knuckles are split to the bone. These are not hands that should be touching her.
I touch her anyway.
I wipe my right hand on my jeans first — useless, it doesn’t come clean, but I do it anyway — and then I lift it very slowly and I put it against her cheek, and I feel her lean into my palm like it’s the only warm place in the room.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t know where it comes from. “I should have been here. I should never have left you. I’m sorry.”
“Razor—”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay.”
“I’m okay.“ She presses her face harder into my hand. “Look at me. I’m okay. You got here.”
I brush her hair back with the one hand that doesn’t have somebody else’s blood on it, and I look at her, and I look at her, and I don’t know what’s happening in my chest but it isn’t anything I’ve got a name for.
“They hit you,” I say. Quieter. I should have been here.”
“You are here.”
I press my mouth to the top of her head. I close my eyes.
Behind me I hear the brothers coming up the stairs.
Three sets of boots. Rogue first, Lock, Ghost. They come through the door.
I hear Rogue say Jesus Christ very quietly.
I hear Lock already on the phone. I hear Ghost say he alive?
and Rogue say barely, and then the brothers get to work and I stop tracking it because Darcie is in my arms and that is the only thing in the world.
“They knew my name,” she whispers. “They said it was because of me the club was—”
“Stop. It’s not because of you. None of this is.”
Her fingers knot in the fabric of my shirt.
“I was scared,” she whispers. “I wasn’t sure you’d get here.”
“I was always going to get here. Do you hear me? Always.”
Kate comes over at eleven.
She walks through the door and stops in the middle of the living room and takes in the state of it — blood on the wall, broken glass on the carpet, Darcie under a blanket on the couch with a cut on her lip — and her face does a thing.
She doesn’t say anything.
She crosses straight to Darcie and gathers her up and holds her, and Darcie cries quietly into her shoulder. I stand in the doorway with my bandaged hands and I let them have it.
After a while Kate looks up at me over Darcie’s head. Her eyes are wet.
She closes her eyes and holds Darcie tighter.
When she leaves she hugs me at the door — proper, arms tight round my ribs, her face in my shirt — and when she pulls back she says, quiet: “You’d better be good to her.”
She goes.
I lock the door behind her. Chain. Deadbolt. When I turn around Darcie is standing in the middle of the living room watching me.
“Come to bed,” she says.
She falls asleep with her head on my chest.
I lie there with my arm around her and after a while her voice comes, soft, she wasn’t asleep after all.
“Razor.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
“I wasted ten years,” I say.
Her breath catches.
“Ten years of looking at you and telling myself I couldn’t. Ten years of deciding for both of us. I was wrong. About all of it.”
“Don’t.”
“I should have—”
“Razor.” Her hand comes up to my jaw. “Don’t.”
I close my mouth.
“Don’t waste any more,” she says. “That’s all. Don’t waste any more.”
I look at her for a long second.
Then I lean down and I kiss her — careful, soft, because of her lip — and when I pull back she’s smiling up at me like I’m something she’s still not quite sure she gets to have and I’m still not sure I deserve that.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay.”
She tucks her face into my throat. I feel her breathing slow.
I stay awake a long time. Watching the dark. Holding her.
Ten years of telling myself she was better off without me.
I was wrong about all of it.
EPILOGUE
DARCIE - SIX MONTHS LATER
Six months later
The drive home from the clinic takes eleven minutes if I hit the lights right, and tonight I hit every one of them right, which feels like a metaphor for something.
I graduated in May. Got offered the permanent position the same week. This is my first full week fully qualified. New name tag. New business cards with letters after my name. I keep pulling one out of my bag at red lights and turning it over in my hand like I’m checking it’s still there.
Dr. Darcie Reed, DVM.
It doesn’t feel real yet. It might never feel real.
Razor moved in two months ago. Not formally — he just stopped leaving, and one day his boots lived by my door and his toiletries lived in my bathroom and I accepted that my tiny apartment was our tiny apartment.
Being an old lady is less dramatic than I thought.
The other old ladies have embraced me into their world and I’ve never felt out of place.
I’m theirs now. One of them. I still don’t quite know how to carry it. But I’m learning.
I let myself into the apartment quietly because Bruno will lose his mind if he hears the keys.
He doesn’t.
I stop in the doorway.
Razor is on the couch. Flat out on his back, one arm over his eyes, sock feet up on the armrest.
Bruno is on his chest.
Seventy pounds of ridiculous pit bull stretched the full length of him, head tucked under Razor’s jaw, one paw slung proprietorially across his shoulder. Both of them are snoring. Slightly out of sync. The dog’s tail is twitching gently in whatever dream he’s having.
I stand there for a second and I just look.
Four months ago the Sons made a call to a rescue outside Phoenix about the dog fighting ring and a bunch of dogs were found and rescued - Bruno was one of them.
He was the dog that came into the clinic that day and I’d never been able to shake him out of my mind.
Eventually I adopted Bruno and he came back to Tucson in the back of Lock’s truck with about six pounds of weight to put back on and a permanent scar along one flank.
The day Razor carried him into this apartment and set him down carefully on the rug was the day I understood what he meant when he said always.
Bruno’s ear twitches. His head comes up.
He sees me.
The next three seconds are chaos. Bruno launches off Razor’s chest with complete disregard for the fact that Razor is a human being, hits the floor in a scramble of paws, and barrels into my legs hard enough that I have to grab the door frame.
“Yes. Hello. I missed you too. Get down.“
He doesn’t get down. He never gets down.
Razor groans and shoves himself up on one elbow. His hair is a mess. He looks exactly like he was just being used as a mattress by a dog.
“Rough life,” I say.
“He climbed on me.”
“Mmhm.”
“He’s heavy.”
“He loves you.” I scratch Bruno’s ears. “I’m starting to think he loves you more than he loves me.”
“Impossible.”
“Is it? He was on top of you.“
“He thinks I’m a heating pad.”
“He thinks you’re his person, Razor. Last week I caught you letting him lick your plate.”
“You didn’t catch me.”
“I have a photo.”
He grins. He grins so rarely that every time he does I feel it somewhere in my stomach.
I drop my bag by the door and toe off my shoes, and I look at the state of the apartment. Bruno’s food bowl. His bed he’s never slept in. A chew toy under the coffee table. Razor’s boots next to mine. His cut over the chair.
“We need a bigger apartment,” I say.
“Do we.”
“Look at this place. There’s a dog bed he refuses to use. Your boots. A toolbox in the hallway. Nowhere to put a Christmas tree.”
“It’s June.”
“I plan ahead.”
He looks at me for a long moment. His face has gone soft in the way it only goes when it’s me.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“I’ll find us one.”
I cross the room. Sit down next to him on the couch and tuck myself under his arm, and Bruno immediately tries to get into my lap as well, and Razor’s hand settles heavy and warm at the back of my neck.
“I love you,” I say. Quietly. Into his shirt.
“I know.”
“You’re supposed to say it back.”
“You know I love you.”
“Even with the dog?”
“Especially with the dog.”
I laugh into his chest. He presses his mouth to the top of my head.