Chapter Nine
Scarlet
I wake in the motel room. The sun is lighting the thin curtains and a bird sings from the roof. I roll over and find the bed empty. Touching it reveals no residual body heat.
“Reaper?” I sit and look at the bathroom. The door is open and it’s empty.
A heaviness balloons in my gut and I rush to the window, pull back the curtain. His bike is gone. I knew it would be.
“Damn you.” I slap my hand on the wall in frustration. “Damn you to hell and back.” I spot a note on the desk, beside the empty pizza boxes. Quickly I grab it.
Knowing you is the sweetest thing that’s ever happened to me, but I’m bad news for you, honey.
Get yourself a cab home. Go live a good life, be happy, forget about me, I’ll just bring trouble an angel like you doesn’t need.
My eyes prickle with tears. How can he have such a low opinion of himself?
I see him as brave and loyal and compassionate.
He went out of his way to help Consuela, a young woman he didn’t know.
That is caring and having a moral compass set due north.
I can see that, why can’t he? Not only that, isn’t it up to me to decide who I want to be with? Who I want to love?
I glare at the fifty dollars he’s left for a cab. Not the way I wanted to travel. I’ve become quite fond of the Harley.
I pick up my phone and send a message to his number: Running from something you should be grabbing hold of...WOW...I never would have thought you a coward, Reaper.
It’s a message written in anger and disappointment, I know that, but I can’t help myself. Perhaps it will shake him out of his self-loathing and wake him up to the truth.
After I’ve showered, I call a cab. I have nothing to pack, so I grab my purse and climb into the sedan, my mood blackening by the second.
What right did Reaper have to come into my life like a whirlwind of hotness, throw me into a wild adventure, and then piss off like that?
He was sadistic, that’s what he was, making me want him, giving me the best sex of my life, and then vanishing into the night.
If I ever saw him again, I’d throttle him, and then kiss the face off of him.
Once back in my small apartment next to the hospital, I make coffee and toast and put on music. I opt for Pink, I’m in need of her rebellious energy and emotional honesty. She can put two fingers up at the world in the most lyrical of ways.
I flip open the laptop and email the ER department telling them I’m no longer sick and will be on duty the next day. With each tap of the keyboard my heart shreds. I’d protected it for so long after I’d rebuilt it, and now, in moments, it has been broken all over again. New wounds, new scars.
How had he gotten to me so quickly? Maybe our souls were destined. Perhaps he was the exact opposite to Billy and that’s exactly what I’d needed. This thought has my head spinning, thoughts and memories of both men disorientating me.
I stand and go to the window. The outside world carries on as though I don’t have an ache in my chest that’s threatening to overwhelm me, a gut-wrenching sadness that is sucking the energy from me.
Closing my eyes, I remember his smell but that only exacerbates my sharp sense of loss.
It isn’t just him I miss, it’s thoughts of a future.
Oh, I hadn’t planned a house with a picket fence, kids, and a dog, that isn’t his style.
But I had entertained the dream of a man at my side to love and protect me and see me as an equal, a woman who added value to the world and not a worthless piece of shit, as Billy had been fond of calling me.
Yet Reaper had gone.
I look at my phone. He hasn’t read my text message. In fact, it hasn’t even delivered. Perhaps the bastard has blocked me! Yep. That would be about right.
I could go to the clubhouse, where I’d found him before. Not a chance. I have too much pride. If a man doesn’t want me, I don’t want him. End of story. Even though that hurts like a bitch, it is a rule to live by.
As the day progresses my appetite goes completely and I find it hard to focus even on a favorite Netflix series.
My emotions are in chaos, swinging from longing and anger to disbelief.
My mind constantly drifts back to stolen moments with him.
Kissing him, fucking him, the relief of seeing him arrive back at the safe house.
The way he’d defended me like a man possessed, determined to have my attacker destroyed.
I shiver and wrap myself in a throw despite the warm day. I begin to long for nightfall, for sleep and an escape from my torment.
The moment the sun slips from the horizon, I take myself to bed, curl up into a ball, and let blackness seize me. I’m exhausted and sleep finds me quickly—a thick dark escape into nothingness that I’m thankful for.
When my alarm goes off, I’m groggy and take a cool shower to wake up. After two cups of coffee and forcing a slice of toast down, I head off to work.
The ER will be a relief from my heartbreaking disappointment. Once there my mind will fill with the here-and-now and the lifesaving decisions demanded of me.
Which is exactly what happens. I’ve barely put my purse in my locker when Todd shouts across the department. “Crash in Bay Four! All-hands-on-deck!”
I rush to Bay Four. A middle-aged man is supine and blue. Todd is slapping pads onto his chest ready for defibrillation.
He glances at me. “Fifty-seven-year-old man, presented with acute inferior infarction thirty minutes ago.”
“Fibrinolytic?” I ask though I don’t need to, I can see the drug dripping into his arm.
“Yep. And ten of morphine for pain. He’s diabetic, type two.”
“Okay, charge to two-eighty.”
“Two more members of the nursing staff join us. One checks the oxygen and another draws up adrenaline.
“Clear.” I place the paddles on his chest and click the button to release a huge electrical discharge.
His cardiac monitor stays the same. I charge the machine again, the rising beep telling me it’s getting ready to go.
“Clear.” Once more I shock the patient. This time it results in the satisfying beep of sinus rhythm on the monitor.
“He’s back,” Todd says.
“Let’s give him some atropine, he’s a bit bradycardic.” I nod at the nurse with the adrenaline. “Stat.”
She nods and sets to her new task.
I study the patient for a moment, relieved to see his lips returning to a normal color. “You okay in here now, Todd?”
“Yep.” He looks at me. “Feeling better?”
“Yes, thanks.”
His gaze lingers on my neck. I have a red line there. He frowns.
“Shout if you need anything.” I duck out of the curtain before he can comment.
“Scarlet.” The head nurse rushes up to me. “Eight-year-old boy with stridor in two. I’ve given oxygen and a nebulizer but he’s getting worse. I don’t know why.”
“Okay, I’ll come and see him now.”
****
Reaper
Riding away from the Mountain Inn was one of the most gut-wrenching things I’ve ever done in my life, and I’ve done some difficult shit and been in some hairy-assed scrapes. But leaving Scarlet, the only woman who’s made me feel anything in such a long time, screws with my head and my heart.
But I have to be strong and stick to my resolution. I’m no damn good for her. She is the beauty to my beast. If I am the devil she is a fucking angel. I’d nearly gotten her killed not once but twice, and if it went to a third time, perhaps she wouldn’t be so lucky. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so lucky.
I drive into the clubhouse, park up, and stomp to the makeshift bar we have beside the meeting room. Ghost is sipping from a bottle of Bud. I swipe one from the refrigerator and shove a few dollars into the honesty box. I flip the lid and it clatters to the floor.
“Where’s your woman?” Ghost asks.
“She’s not my fucking woman.” I take a gulp then slam the bottle on the stained old bar and grab a seat.
“Huh, could have fooled me.” He raises his eyebrows.
“Did you see her with a knife at her neck? A Hyena holding it with murder on his mind?” I shake my head to try and rid the terrifying image. What I wouldn’t have done in that moment to have the knife at my neck.
“Yeah, I saw that, then I saw you kill the motherfucker.”
“And so did she.” I clench my jaw.
“And that’s a problem?”
“Yeah, don’t you get it, she’s a goddamn healer, a doctor, that’s what she was put on this earth to do, and I’m a monster, a killer, the exact opposite.”
He shrugs. “Opposites attract.”
“Not on this occasion, one opposite will get the other killed.”
He’s quiet for a moment. An engine revs outside, someone tinkering with their bike. “Shame, it would have been useful to have a doc around here.”
I jab my finger at him. “She’s more than an asset, man.”
“Hey, hey, I know that.” He holds up his hands in mock surrender then grins. “Certainly, to you she is.”
I scowl at him, my shoulders tensing. “Not anymore.”
“Yeah, yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”
“Why you being an ass, Ghost?”
“Because you’re my bro, and despite me being a big numb-nut I care about you, and when I’ve seen you with her, which ain’t much, you’ve looked more alive than you have in years.”
“Yeah, I ain’t exactly known her long, so no big deal. She’s gone back to her life and I’ve gone back to mine.”
“Her life at the ER?”
“You got it.” I take another slug of drink. “I’m fucking lethal, she protects life, we don’t mix.”
He huffs. “So, what she say to that?”
“I dunno.”
“You must have discussed it, man.”
My guilty expression gives me away. “I told her what was what. She didn’t ... I don’t know. How are words gonna fix this fucking Grand Canyon between us? Waste of time talking about it.”
“Ah, you fucking asswipe, Reaper. You ran out on her.” He shakes his head. “Woman like that deserves more respect, not least ‘cause she did us a solid on several occasions.”
I suddenly feel like an asswipe. One of my closest buddies has called me out and he’s not wrong. I rub my temple, a sudden throb starting up. “It was the only way.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, she wanted more. I can’t give her more. Look at where I fucking live.” I gestured around. My small apartment attached to the clubhouse was no place for a classy chick like Scarlet. Here it is basic, oil-stained, gritty underfoot, and the air is blue with curses most of the time.
“I reckon you should have given her the choice instead of running away like a scared fucking fool the moment you felt something for her.”
My hackles rise. “I reckon you should keep your fucking nose out of my business before I smash it into your dumb skull.”
He laughs and tosses his empty bottle into the bin. “Whatever, man, it’s your life.”
“Too right, it is.” I face away from him. Conversation over.
He walks off, still chuckling. I’m tempted to chase him down and give him that pounding.
Take the smirk off his face. But I don’t.
I sit there brooding, pop another beer, and think of sinking deep into Scarlet’s divine sexy body and watching her eyes flood with bliss when she comes around my dick.
I remember the cute little gasps and cries she makes when her orgasm is about to claim her.
My dick twitches in my leathers.
Damn it, I’ve fucked more in the last few days than I have all year, yet I still want more of her. Would I ever get enough of her? Would she be the only woman in my bed for the rest of my life? Am I done now? No one else will ever compare?
I groan and pinch the bridge of my nose. The urge to get on my bike and go to her is almost too much to fight. It’s a need, a real physical draw.
“Hey, Reaper, get your ass in here.”
I turn at the sound of Jock’s voice. “What’s up?”
“We need to go through club finances.”
“Sure.” I push from the bar and follow him into the meeting room.
“Gonna need a new goddamn safe house,” he says, smacking a file onto the desk. “Doesn’t have to be anything fancy but it’s an essential.”
“Yeah, I agree.” I sit, my back aches, and I’m not sure if it’s the strenuous fucking I’ve enjoyed recently or a strain from the gunfight the day before. “Heard anything on the grapevine about the fire?”
“It didn’t spread, which is good. No idea what Forensics have found if anything.” He shrugs. “And if they do ID any bodies, can’t imagine the cops will be crying over the loss of a few Hyenas.”
“True. But they’ll roll up again.”
“Yeah, we didn’t get them all.”
I frown, even more reason to keep Scarlet out of my life.
“Where’s your old lady?” He nods at the bar.
“Change the fucking record,” I mutter. “I’ve just had this shit from Ghost.”
Jock studies me for a moment then shrugs and picks up a calculator. “I reckon we can get something for about fifty grand if we don’t mind doing it up. An old barn even. Plenty of them around.”
“Good plan.”
We spent the next hour working out our budget and then another hour scoping out what was on the market using Jock’s dated laptop.
When we’d finished, despite it being only midafternoon, I’m exhausted. I’m not hungry, can’t be bothered to go for a ride, so I go to my apartment. It’s quiet and I throw a bundle of dirty washing off the bed and flop without even bothering to take off my boots.
It is as if a part of me had been poured out, a plug pulled.
Drained. My arms are empty without her and I miss her perfume, the feel of her unbelievably soft skin and the taste of her kisses and her pussy.
I want to run my tongue all over her, leave no patch of flesh unexplored, and adore her the way she should be worshipped.
“Damn it.” I press the heels of my hands onto my eyes. How has she screwed with my brain to the point I can think of nothing else but her? Will that ever stop? Not likely.
But maybe one more fuck would get it out of my system.
I sit. Yes. There’s a plan.
“What the fuck are you doing, Reaper, you dumb cunt?” I drop back down. Fucking her again would only drop me deeper into this hellhole of missing her. And it was hell. I was hot and twitchy. My thoughts scattered and my heart squeezing as it rattled along too fast.
I get up again, strip, and shower. My cock stiffens when I think of fucking her against the wall in the motel. She’d submitted to me, taken everything I’d given her and loved it.
Love! That’s a luxury I can’t afford. It doesn’t survive in my world.
I fist my dick, rub it root to tip, and whack out a quick one. Spunk slaps onto the shower tray before swirling away with the water. But the wank gives me no relief. If anything, it makes me want her more.
Needing another drink, I dress and head down to the bar. Several club brothers are discussing a bike one of them has just bought that needs work on the cylinders.
I bum a smoke and pour a whiskey. The conversation is a welcome distraction from the ache in my chest and the pull I have to go to the ER and claim what’s mine.