Chapter 12
Austin
Two nights later.
We park down the street from the Lost Carousel Motel at eleven. Twelve bikes are in the parking lot, which means we outnumber them, but not by enough to be careless about it.
Prez signals and we move. We keep to the walls, single file, not a word between us.
This is what we train for, what the years of brotherhood build toward, twelve men who know each other's movements well enough to operate in silence.
I know where Brick is without looking. I know where Cash and Ramsey are.
I know Knuckles is three steps behind me and I know exactly how much force he's going to bring when this opens up.
We can hear voices from one of the ground floor rooms, low and indistinct. Light under the door. Prez moves to the front and holds his fist up and we all stop. He looks at us and then he looks at the window and we split, half on each side of the door, backs against the wall.
He pulls the flashbang back and throws it through the window hard.
The bang is enormous in the quiet of the parking lot.
There are shouts from inside, movement, disoriented scrambling.
The door comes open and men pour out into the night, half-blind, hands up instinctively, and we’re on them before they've worked out which direction they're facing.
It's fast and it's controlled and it's ugly in the way violence always is when you're close enough to feel it, and I don't think about it while I'm doing it, I just do it.
One of them has a VP patch. Prez points and we take him down without finishing him. He goes in the van, alive, useful.
I'm backing toward my bike when I feel it.
A hot sting in my left thigh, sharp enough to make me stumble a step.
I look down and there's blood already spreading dark through my jeans.
One of them crawled out of the room and into the car park and he's shooting at anything moving, half-blind and desperate.
Knuckles puts him down before he gets another shot off.
I put my hand over the wound and assess. Not arterial, the blood is coming steady but not pumping, which means I’ve time. The sirens I can hear in the distance mean I don't have as much time as I'd like. I get on my bike.
My first thought, before the clubhouse, before Doc, before anything practical, is Savannah. I notice this happening and I don't try to talk myself out of it.
Doc is good. He's kept every man in this club alive at some point.
But Doc is also three miles in the wrong direction and Savannah is two minutes from here.
I know what her hands felt like treating EJ and I know what her face looked like when she was focused.
She's the better doctor. I know that. And yeah, I want to see her.
I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Going to her is a choice and I'm making it with both reasons fully acknowledged.
I call Brick as I ride.
"I've been shot. I'm getting patched up."
"You're going to Savannah's." It's not a question. He sounds amused.
"She's closer. And she's better."
"Yeah, alright. Are you going to tell her that?"
"Tell Prez I'll be back as soon as I'm stitched. I want to see the VP's eyes before the night's over."
"I'll let him know. Oh, and Sprog?"
"What."
"You hate that road name."
"Fuck you, Brick."
I can hear him laughing as I hang up.
SAVANNAH
The banging drags me up from a dead sleep.
I look at the clock. Just past two in the morning.
I pull on a sweater over my pajamas and pull open the door.
Austin is there and my first thought is that he looks wrong somehow.
He doesn’t look the way he did when he left this morning, That’s when I see his hand pressed to his thigh and the dark stain around it.
"Austin."
"I need your help. I'm not here about earlier, I just need you to..."
"Come on." I open the door to let him in. The doctor part in me takes over, which is the part of me I know best and trust most. "My office, now." I unlock the connecting door and push it open, before heading to an exam room to turn on the lights. "Up on the table."
He climbs up. He's moving well enough, weight-bearing, which is good. His skin is pale, but his eyes are clear and focused.
"Those jeans are coming off," I say, pulling on gloves. "Take them off or I'll cut them."
"I'll take them off. Otherwise, I'm riding home in my boxers."
"That’s your problem, not mine." I turn to get the equipment I need and when I turn back he's worked the jeans down. I make a point of looking at the wound and only the wound. Entry point, left outer thigh, just above the knee. Bleeding has slowed. The bullet is in there.
"What happened?" I ask, setting up the tray. I already know I'm not getting the full answer.
"I should have left two minutes earlier than I did." He watches me work. "Let's just say that what happened to EJ won't be happening to anyone else anytime soon."
I look at him over the tray. "That's not an answer."
"I know. It's club business."
I hold his eyes for a second. "Okay." I go back to the wound. "I'm going to clean this and then I need to take the bullet out and stitch you up. You need an x-ray to confirm there's no internal damage. I can't check that here."
"I'll be fine."
He points to a mark on his chest, visible above the neckline of his t-shirt. "I've had worse. That was a through and through and I didn't need an x-ray for that one."
I look at the scar. Then I look away. "That's not a good argument."
He almost smiles.
I give him the local anesthetic around the wound and wait for it to take hold. He doesn't react to the needle, and I note this about him. He doesn't perform pain for me, and he doesn't perform stoicism either. He just sits there, watching me work, and I find it easier to concentrate because of it.
I sit down when the area is numb and lean in with the forceps. He's watching the ceiling now. I work carefully, slowly, tracking the angle of entry. The bullet is lodged in the muscle, no bone involvement that I can feel. Good. I get the tip of the forceps around it and start to ease it out.
I’m a professional. I keep my eyes exactly where they need to be.
But I’m also not unaware that I’m sitting with my face at approximately his thigh height while he’s wearing only his boxers, and his boxers are doing very little to conceal the fact that his body has developed a strong opinion about this proximity.
"Austin." I don't look up from the forceps.
"I know." His voice is completely level. "I'm sorry. You're just... you're right there and your hands are..."
"I'm doing surgery."
"I know. I'm still aware it's you doing it."
"Think about something else."
"I've been trying. It isn't working."
I look up at him briefly. He looks genuinely apologetic and faintly amused. I look back at the wound and say nothing because if I open my mouth right now something will come out that I'll regret or not regret. Either way it's not going to be helpful.
I refocus. I find the bullet. I ease.
It comes free with a small pull and I see Austin's jaw tighten.
"Almost done," I say, and then I look at the bullet in the forceps, and something moves through me that I don't have a clinical name for. A cold rush. My hands tremble, just once, just for a second, before I get them back under control and drop the bullet into the tray.
I turn away to get the suture kit.
"Sav."
"I'm just getting the thread." I keep my back to him for the three seconds it takes to get my face right. Then I turn around.
He's watching me. He saw it. He doesn't say anything, he just holds my eyes for a moment. In that moment I understand that he knows and he's not going to make me talk about it. That’s exactly what I need from him right now.
I sit back down and start the stitches.
"You warned EJ before the antiseptic," he says. "You didn't warn me."
"EJ is nine. You can handle it."
"That's your professional opinion?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
He settles back and lets me work. My hands are steady now.
"Does this bother you?" he asks after a while. Quieter. "What I do? What today was?"
I tie off a stitch. "Why would it?"
"Because you're asking me what happened and I can't tell you. That bothers some people."
I think about that. About whether it bothers me. About what the honest answer is. "As your friend," I say carefully, "yes. I don't want to see you hurt."
"As my friend." He repeats it and there's a smile in his voice without there being one on his face.
"Don't push it, Austin."
"I'm just noting the category." A beat. "So, you do care about me."
"Don't make me regret saying that."
He laughs, just quietly, and it does something to my chest that I don't examine.
I finish the last stitch and dress the wound before stripping off my gloves. I'm about to tell him he can go when he reaches out and takes my hand. Gently. Not grabbing, just taking it, and I don't pull away.
"Sav." He sits up and eases his legs around so they're hanging off the table, which brings him level with me, which means we’re suddenly very close.
His hand is still around mine. "I came here because you're the best person I know to do this.
And because I wanted to see you. Both things are true and I'm not going to pretend one is truer than the other. "
I look at him. At the particular blue of his eyes in the low light of the treatment room. At the line of his jaw and the ink on his forearms and all the ways he is the same and yet not the same as the boy I knew.
"You are so much trouble," I say.
"Yeah," he says. "I know."
He lifts his free hand and touches my face, his thumb against my cheek, and I let him. He watches my face the whole time, checking, making sure I'm still here, still with him. And then he leans forward and kisses me.
It's not rushed. It's not the desperate thing I might have expected after everything that's happened tonight. It's slow and deliberate and when I open my mouth for him and feel his tongue against mine, something in me that has been clenched for approximately ten years loosens.
I step forward without deciding to and his hands find my hips to pull me closer.
I let him, one hand on his shoulder, the other gripping the front of his t-shirt, and I can feel the heat of him through it.
I can feel every place where we're touching and there are a lot of them. It’s the best thing that has happened to me in a very long time.
His hands move up my back, and I tip my head to give him more access when he makes a sound low in his throat that I remember.
I remember that sound. I remember what it means and what it does to me.
Apparently ten years has done nothing about that particular problem because it does exactly the same thing now.
When we pull apart, he rests his forehead against mine. His breathing isn’t entirely steady, and neither is mine.
"God," he says.
"Don't," I say.
"I'm just..."
"I know." I step back but I don't go far. "I know."
He looks at me. His face is doing the thing it's been doing all night, open in a way that costs him something, not performing for me but actually showing me. "I haven't kissed anyone since you," he says. "I want you to know that. Not in ten years. I didn't want to."
"Austin."
"I'm not saying it to pressure you. I'm saying it because it's true and I think you should know the truth about me."
I look at him for a moment.
"Even EJ's mother?"
"Especially her." His jaw tightens briefly. "She was never mine. She was a mistake that became a miracle. A miracle that is completely mine."
Something turns over in my chest.
"Does it bother you?" he asks quietly. "That I have EJ? What we were supposed to do together."
I take a breath. "I don't know yet. Honestly. It's a lot to hold." I look at him. "But EJ isn’t something I'm going to be able to not love, so."
He looks at me like I've said something significant.
"I need you to go," I say, before either of us says anything else. "Rest. Let those stitches settle."
"Okay." He gets down from the table, careful on the leg, and he reaches for his jeans. While he's pulling them on, I write up my notes and I keep my face doing the thing it does in clinical settings, calm and professional, and I mostly succeed.
He comes to me at the door and he cups my face in both hands and kisses me again. Just briefly. Just enough.
"Thank you," he says. "For patching me up. And for the other thing."
"Don't get shot again."
"I'll do my best."
He walks out of my office, and I follow him to the door. I watch him get on his bike and I watch him ride away. When he's gone, I stand in the dark doorway for a while before I go back inside and lock up.
My hands are still not entirely steady.
That is what Austin does for me. He’s always been able to make me feel like that, out of control.