10. Darla
Darla
If there was a better way to die than in a shit bar with sticky floors and a laminated menu older than my mother, I hadn’t found it.
The Pink Beaver was the only place on the east side where you could order a double whiskey at four p.m. and not get carded, or shanked, depending on who you sat next to.
I liked it here. The air was fifty percent smoke, the music was so loud you could bleed out under the table, and nobody would notice, and the regulars were too tired or too tragic to give a damn about what you were running from.
Today I was running from myself, again, and maybe from the memory of Axel Martin’s face, swollen and purple and stitched up like a child’s failed art project, staring at me with all the judgment of a dying animal and none of the fear.
It’d been two weeks since I saw him at the hospital, two weeks that were pure hell.
I wore jeans tight enough to stop a clock and a black camisole that did less to hide my tits than to advertise them.
Dad would’ve had a stroke if he saw me walk out the door in this, but he was busy sermonizing to a room full of polyester souls while I nursed my third vodka cranberry and wished the earth would swallow me whole.
Heather, my favorite bartender, gave me the “steady now, sugar” look every time she passed, but she knew better than to play den mother.
You didn’t last behind this bar without learning when to mind your own business.
The college boys showed up around five. I clocked them before they even made it to the bar—blue-and-gold Greek letters, jawlines like breadboards, the smell of money and deodorant.
Three of them, loud, already drunk, and eyeing everything female with the intensity of a searchlight.
They squeezed onto the stools two down from me and started the time-honored tradition of pretending not to look.
The blond one made the first move. “You come here a lot?” Like I was the punchline in a joke he’d already told.
I swirled my straw, not looking up. “Only when I’m desperate.”
He laughed, not getting it. “We’re new in town.”
I gave him my best deadpan. “Congratulations.”
The one with the backwards cap leaned in. “You got a name?”
I glanced at him. “Nope.”
That slowed them, but only for a second. The third, beefy and pink-faced, whistled and told Heather to “hook the lady up with whatever she’s drinking.” She shot me an amused look, raised an eyebrow for my approval, and when I shrugged, she poured the drink and set it in front of me with a flourish.
“It’s on me,” Cap Guy said, winking.
“Chivalry’s not dead,” I replied, knocking back half in a single gulp. “Just very, very stupid.”
Blondie edged closer. “What’s your deal, anyway?”
“Clinical depression,” I said, “but the pills make me boring at parties.”
They all laughed, and for a second I wondered if I’d gone too far, but no. They liked it. It made me seem dangerous, like I’d eat them alive and spit out the bones. They were used to girls who giggled at their jokes, not ones who went for the jugular on the first date.
It could’ve stayed harmless, but nothing in this life ever did.
I checked my phone. No new messages, not even from the church group chat. I wondered if Dad was praying for me, if Axel was still alive, if maybe I should just let these three take me apart and get it over with. I was about to order a fourth when the bar changed.
It wasn’t the music, or the lights, or the way Heather went stiff at the register. It was the air itself, pressure shift, animal warning, the kind of thing that says predator just entered the room.
The Royal Bastards MC weren’t subtle, and they didn’t need to be.
When a prospect walked in, even the daylight got scared.
I saw him in the mirror behind the bar, moving through the haze with a limp that said fuck you and a face that was barely stitched together after the last time he lost a fight with the world.
Leather cut, hair slicked back, blood dried on his knuckles—Axel Martin, and every woman’s worst decision in one slow-motion package.
He didn’t look at me. He headed straight for the end of the bar, where the owner was counting out the register with shaky hands and two bouncers standing guard like it was a bank vault.
You couldn’t hear the conversation over the music, but you didn’t need to.
It was business, and business was always done with fear and the occasional threat of violence.
Axel leaned in, said something to the owner, and the man started nodding like he was at a revival tent.
One of the bouncers handed over a white envelope, thick enough to make any man’s day, and Axel took it with a bored flick of the wrist. He peeled it open, counted the cash, never losing eye contact with the guy, then tucked it away and turned to the crowd.
That’s when he saw me. Or maybe he saw the three college boys, now circling closer, one hand already on my thigh, the other tracing lazy circles on the bar.
I waited to see what he’d do. I always liked men who were predictable in their unpredictability.
The boys were getting louder. Cap Guy started to brag about his frat, how they ran shit back at Louisville, how they once spent a night in the drunk tank but got off with a warning because his dad “knew people.” He didn’t notice my eyes were over his shoulder, locked on Axel’s reflection.
Blondie tried a new angle. “What are you doing after this?”
I shrugged. “Probably rehab.”
He laughed, then went in for the kill—hand on my waist, body pressing closer. It wasn’t offensive, just inevitable, like rain in April or Dad’s disappointment.
Cap Guy went for my hand, squeezing it like we were old lovers. His palm was sweaty, and I wanted to shake him off, but it was easier to let it play out.
Pink Face leaned in, close enough that his cologne made my nose sting. “Come party with us,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”
I thought about it. I thought about a lot of things—Axel at the end of the bar, his hands flexing as he watched, the envelope of cash, the way Heather was moving slow and careful now, like she was afraid of breaking something fragile.
“Maybe later,” I said, sliding off the stool. “I need to pee.”
They tried to follow, but I was already gone, weaving through the crowd toward the bathroom.
I locked myself in the stall and sat on the lid, breathing slow. My heart was running a race I didn’t remember signing up for. I checked my phone again—still nothing. I wondered if Axel would come after me. I wondered if I wanted him to.
A few minutes later, I heard the door open. Footsteps, then a knock on the stall.
“You okay in there?” It was Heather.
“Yeah,” I lied. “Just needed a break.”
She lingered. “You want me to call someone?”
I almost laughed. “Who? Ghostbusters?”
She didn’t push it. “You know they’re trouble, right? The frat boys.”
“Everyone’s trouble,” I said, softer now. “That’s the only reason anyone comes here.”
She left, and I sat there for a while, counting the cracks in the paint and the stains on the floor. I wasn’t scared of the boys. I was scared of myself, and of the way the world seemed to shrink down to nothing when someone like Axel was in the same room.
When I finally came out, the bar had gotten louder. The college boys were gone, maybe outside, maybe plotting. Axel was still at the end, nursing a beer and watching the world with dead eyes. I slid back onto my stool, and he didn’t look away.
It was like a game of chicken. Who would blink first? Who would do something stupid enough to ruin everything?
I ordered another vodka cranberry, and this time Heather poured it strong, almost overflowing. She slid it to me, whispered, “Careful, sugar,” then went back to polishing glasses that would never get clean.
The music changed. Someone put on “Highway to Hell,” and the whole place seemed to lean into it.
Cap Guy returned, this time with Blondie and Pink Face in tow. They were drunker, louder, and less interested in playing nice. They boxed me in at the bar, one on each side, hands already roaming. I tried to ignore it, but then Cap Guy grabbed my chin, forced me to look at him.
“Let’s go,” he said, voice thick. “Now.”
I considered my options. Scream? Throw the drink? Knee to the balls? None of it would work. They’d just laugh, or worse.
Instead, I smiled and decided to leave.
I made it three steps from the bar before I felt the clamp on my wrist. Not a friendly tug, not even a horny, "let's go make out in the parking lot" pull, but a full-on chokehold for my hand, and I knew, with a sickening snap of clarity, that I had officially left the land of “flirt” and crossed into “crime scene.”
The music was so loud it almost covered the little gasp that slipped out of me. The crowd didn’t notice; why would they? I wasn’t the first girl to get manhandled in this place, not by a long shot.
I twisted, tried to yank free, but Cap Guy’s grip only tightened. “Come on, don’t be a bitch,” he said, face too close, breath thick with peppermint schnapps and desperation. “We just wanna talk.”
I tried to pull back, tried to remember what Heather told me once—elbow, then knee, then scream if you have to—but my body just went cold and useless, a puppet with strings tangled. Blondie blocked my exit, smirking, while Pink Face hovered behind, waiting for his turn.
My heart was punching holes in my chest, but my voice sounded steady. “Let go of me.”
Blondie laughed. “She’s a feisty one.”
I was about to escalate—maybe throw a drink, maybe just lose my shit and bite his arm—when I caught the shift in the bar’s gravity.
It was subtle, the way a dog senses a thunderstorm before the clouds even roll in.
The crowd parted, and over strode Axel, not in a rush, but with the same certainty that rain will eventually fall.
He looked bigger than I remembered, or maybe it was just the way his jacket hung off him, like a wolf pelt stitched to his shoulders.