Chapter 7
RUSH
I don't sleep Friday night.
Every time I close my eyes, I see Everly—the way she looked at me outside the clubhouse, the anger in her voice when she called me a coward.
She's right and I hate it.
I am a coward—too scared to take what I want, too afraid of what'll happen if I let myself have something good.
Around three in the morning, I give up and get out of bed. I make coffee and sit at my kitchen table staring at nothing.
My hands are wrapped around the mug but I can't feel the heat, can't feel anything except the hollow ache in my chest.
My mind keeps circling back to the same place, the same memory I've spent years trying to bury.
Ms. Michaels.
Octavia.
The woman I shot when I was thirteen.
I set down the mug and press the heels of my hands against my eyes, but it doesn't stop the memory from coming.
It never does.
I don't want to do this.
The gun shakes in my hands, but I can't lower it. My fingers feel frozen, like they’re not even part of me. My palms are wet. My heart keeps slamming against my chest, like it's trying to get out.
Everything is wrong.
Cage is staring at me like I’m a freak. His hands are up. He’s scared. I don’t blame him. I’m scared too. I didn’t think it would get this far. I didn’t think she’d walk in.
Then I hear her voice. Her footsteps. And then…
She’s here.
She runs into the room and stops when she sees me. The gun. Cage. Her eyes go wide, and I see the fear, but she steps in front of him anyway. Of course she does.
She always protects him. Just like she used to protect me.
I used to feel safe when she was around.
When my ribs were bruised and my arms hurt, she was the only one who noticed.
She gave me snacks, let me sit inside when I didn’t want to go outside, told me I didn’t have to talk when the words wouldn’t come.
She never yelled. She never made fun of me. She just… cared.
I didn’t want her here. Not like this.
“You ruined everything,” I cry, and I hate the way my voice sounds. It breaks and shakes, and it makes me sound like a little kid. But I can’t help it. Everything's breaking. I feel like I’m about to fall into a hole and disappear.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Michaels,” I cry. The tears are coming fast now. I can’t stop them. “I don’t know what else to do.”
I mean it. God, I mean it. I didn’t plan to say that. It just came out. But it’s the truth. I really don’t know what else to do.
“Cage honey, I need you to go upstairs,” she says in that soft voice she uses when someone’s scared. She’s trying to keep him calm, trying to protect him. She’s always protecting someone. “Rush, talk to me. What’s going on?”
I want to tell her everything. I want to let her fix it. But she can’t.
Cage doesn’t move. I almost wish he would. I don’t want him here. I don’t want to do this in front of him.
“Move upstairs now. Don’t come down, no matter what happens,” she hisses. “Listen to me, Cage. Do it, now.”
He finally runs. I hear the stairs creak, and a small part of me unclenches. He’s out of the way. That’s good.
But I’m still here, with her—and the gun.
I start pacing because if I stop moving I might do it. I might shoot her without meaning to. My thoughts are spinning too fast. My voice is muttering on its own. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.
“Rush,” she says again, gently.
I want her to stop saying my name like that. It makes it harder.
A sob rips through me. I can’t hold it in anymore. I want her to hold me. I want to cry into her shoulder like I used to imagine doing on the really bad days. But I can’t. I can’t drop the gun.
If I do, he’ll hurt Ruby. And I can’t let him.
“I don’t want to be here, Ms. Michaels. I really don’t. But I have no choice.”
My voice is cracking. Everything inside me feels like glass, ready to shatter. I want her to understand. I need her to.
“Why don’t you have a choice?” she asks.
Her voice is still soft. She thinks I’m reachable. Maybe I am. But it won’t matter.
“My dad,” I snarl. Saying it makes my stomach twist. “He’s got my sister. He’s going to hurt her. I have to do this to save her. I can’t let him hurt her again.”
There. It’s out. The thing I wasn’t supposed to say.
Her face changes. Not anger. Just sadness. Real sadness.
“How old is she?” she asks.
“She’s six,” I hiss. My voice sounds like something cornered. “This is all your fault.”
I stop moving and I look at her. She needs to know how desperate this is. She needs to feel what I’m feeling.
“I can help you,” she says.
Her voice is calm. Still trying to pull me back. Still trying to save me.
“No,” I shout. “You can’t. This is all your fault. You did this. You called CPS and now mom and dad are under investigation.”
“Rush, I did that to help you. I know that you’ve been hurt while in their care.”
Wrong. That’s the wrong thing to say.
I feel it snap inside me. Everything twists.
“Your fault. You’ve done this,” I shout again.
And then my finger moves.
And the world breaks.
I come back to myself in my kitchen. My coffee is cold and there are tears on my face.
I wipe them away with shaking hands.
That memory is always there, just under the surface, waiting to remind me what I'm capable of.
The smell of gunpowder, the boom of the shot, the wet sound of her crying out.
The blood on the floor, on her shirt, on my hands when I tried to help.
I can still feel the weight of the gun, can still hear Cage screaming, can still see the way Ms. Michaels looked at me like she understood.
Like she forgave me even while I was hurting her.
And that's what kills me; that's what I can't escape.
She was kind and I shot her.
She cared and I hurt her.
She tried to help and I made her bleed.
I stand up and walk to the sink, splash cold water on my face until my hands stop shaking.
But it doesn't wash away the memory, doesn't change what I did.
Doesn't change the fact that I'd do it again.
The sun comes up around six and I'm still sitting at my kitchen table. I haven't moved in hours.
My phone buzzes with a text from Tank.
Clubhouse. Now.
I get dressed and ride over. The Dublin streets are empty this early on a Saturday.
Tank's in the garage when I arrive. "You look like shit."
"Didn't sleep."
"Yeah, I can tell." He hands me a cup of coffee. "Drink this."
I take it and the heat feels good against my palms, grounds me in the present instead of the past.
"What's going on with you?" Tank asks.
"Nothing."
"Bullshit. You've been off for weeks."
I take a drink of coffee and don't answer.
Tank leans against the workbench and crosses his arms. "This about Everly?"
"Partly."
"And the other part?"
I set down the coffee. "You ever do something you knew was wrong but you'd do it again anyway?"
"Depends on what it is."
"Hurt someone who didn't deserve it, someone who was trying to help you."
Tank's quiet for a second, then he says, "This about what got you sent to juvie?"
"Yeah."
"You were thirteen. You were trying to save your sister."
"I shot my teacher, held her kid at gunpoint."
The words taste like ash in my mouth.
"And she forgave you, didn't she?" Tank asks.
The question lands like a punch.
He's right, Octavia did forgive me.
She did. She let me stay with her and her family when I was released from juvie. Her and Digger gave me a home. They gave me a lifeline to cling to while inside and when I came out.
"I understand," she said when I was out. "I know you were scared. I know you were trying to save Ruby."
"I shot you."
"I know."
"I could have killed you."
"But you didn't."
"That doesn't make it okay."
"No, but it means you're not a monster, Rush. Monsters don't feel guilt."
Her kindness made it worse somehow, made the guilt heavier.
Because I didn't deserve her forgiveness, didn't deserve her understanding.
It sits in my chest like a weight I can't shake.
"She forgave me," I tell Tank now. "Gave me a home, told me she understood and that she didn't blame me."
"And you think that makes you worse somehow?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because I don't deserve her forgiveness. I shot her and she forgave me anyway. What kind of person does that make me?"
"Someone who was forgiven by someone kind. That's all it makes you."
I shake my head. "You don't understand. The worst part isn't that I shot her. The worst part is that I'd do it again."
Tank goes still. "What?"
"If Ruby was in danger and that was the only way to save her, I'd shoot Octavia all over again. I'd hurt someone kind and good if it meant protecting my sister."
The admission hangs between us, heavy and ugly.
"That's what makes me a monster," I say. "Not that I did it, but that I'd do it again."
Tank's quiet for a long time, then he says, "Or it makes you someone who loves his sister enough to do terrible things to protect her."
"That's the same thing."
"It's not. One is evil for the sake of evil, the other is desperate love taken to an extreme."
"There's no difference."
"There is, and the fact you feel guilty proves it. A monster wouldn't care, wouldn't lose sleep, wouldn't spend a decade punishing himself."
I want to believe him but I can't. The pattern is too clear.
"What happened to Ruby?" Tank asks.
The question makes my chest tight. “Octavia and Digger took her in and have raised her as their own ever since. She’s thriving and happy.”
"You ever see her since you moved to Dublin?"
"She calls me once a week and tells me about her life."
"She forgive you too?"
"She says there's nothing to forgive, says I saved her."
"Maybe you did."
"I shot someone, Tank. I held a kid at gunpoint. That's not saving anyone, that's just violence."
"It's both. It can be both."
I don't answer because I don't know what to say. How do I explain that the guilt and the certainty that I'd do it again exist in the same space?
How do I make him understand that loving Ruby enough to hurt someone for her is exactly what makes me dangerous?
I spend the rest of Saturday working on my bike. My hands are steadier when I'm doing something.