Chapter 27 Lucy
LUCY
The ride to the clubhouse is painfully quiet. The tension stretches.
I feel woozy, like the world is all in soft focus, and there’s a bitter metallic tang in my mouth.
Adrenaline is a funny thing. In the moment, it makes you feel like a superhero, capable of anything.
When that biker smashed the window, I was convinced I was going to get dragged through it, possibly snagging an artery on broken glass.
But instead, when his hand reached toward me, fight or flight kicked in, and the next thing I knew, I put the blade all the way through the back of his hand.
I felt every lump and bump of bone and gristle as I pushed it through.
Another wave of nausea strikes me.
Wraith and Atom swarmed our truck once Gulch and his friends drove away. The rest of the Outlaws arrived. Catfish is driving my father’s truck. My hands shook way too hard to be able to drive it myself.
But I keep playing over what Gulch said.
You’re going to fix it for us.
I have zero intention of paying my father’s debts. I’ll go public with all of it before I let them get their claws into me. But I want to move back here permanently, and I’m not sure if the Rebels will let me.
Grudge has been quiet since we got in the truck, but it’s painful trying to give him the space to think when we’re in such closed quarters. I want to pepper him with questions.
Who were those men to him?
What is their history?
What do we do now?
Grudge reaches across the console and puts his hand on my thigh, squeezing firmly. “You okay over there?”
“Just thinking.” I don’t tell him how ill I feel. It will only make him feel worse, and I’m sure he has other things he needs to focus on right now, rather than worrying how I’m doing.
He glances over to me as we pull into the clubhouse lot. “Don’t let what just happened ruin everything that came before. I just got you back, Luce.”
I put my hand over his fingertips, trying to avoid knuckles that are temporarily bandaged with strips that Atom tore from a clean T-shirt that was in Zach’s gym bag.
“It would be impossible to. But I think we need to build ground rules.”
Grudge parks his truck next to what looks like a large, decommissioned ambulance. “What kind of rules?”
“We resolve this, the two of us. Whatever happens. I want us to be in this together, and I can’t do that if you shut down and start to talk about church and club business, like it’s a part of your life I’m not involved in.”
Grudge smiles at me and lets his thumb trail along my cheekbone. “What do you know about church and club business?”
I shrug. “Okay, so maybe I watched one too many episodes of Sons of Anarchy. But I’ve got a great brain.
I can help dance the law. I know, last time, it was my fault we weren’t in it together, but this time…
it needs to be the two of us. I’m going to investigate what my father’s been hiding.
There was more information about my father’s dealings I’m trying to understand.
And I know you aren’t going to let sleeping dogs lie.
Something happened when the club was raided.
How Catfish was arrested. Maybe it was just the FBI.
Maybe it was local law enforcement watching more than you know.
Maybe you’ve got a mole…an informant. Maybe a Rebel has taken a plea deal to give intel on the Outlaws.
Any of those things could be true, and you can only brawn your way through so many of them before we’ll need intelligence rather than size. ”
He slides a hand around the back of my neck. “Agreed.” He brushes his lips along mine. “But first, we get our wounds seen to. Once you’re stitched, I’ll let you go as Nancy Drew as you want.”
His eyes track over the cut on my temple. He wanted me to push his T-shirt against it. But it’s so sore and tender, I couldn’t face having anything on it. “At this point, I’m sure I look like an extra from a horror movie.”
“Seeing you get hurt is the nightmare. Nothing could ever make you less beautiful, though, Bug.”
The gentlest touch of his lips to mine is enough to set off fireworks in my tummy.
Butcher hammers on the window. “You two really hurt, or you just gonna make out in there all day?”
Grudge winks at me, then turns to face Butcher. “Yeah, yeah. Get out of my way so I can open the fucking door.”
“What happened to the window?” Butcher asks when Grudge steps outside.
I don’t hear the answer.
“Hey, wait.” Grudge hurries over to my side as I jump down. “You could have a concussion.”
“Another?” I ask. “Doesn’t one roll over into the next?”
“Luce!”
“I didn’t hit my head that hard,” I say. “Plus, you’re the one who got knocked down by a pistol.”
“Let Greer take a look,” Butcher says. “At both of you.”
When I get to the back of the ambulance, Grudge picks me up to put me inside, but I see the way he winces.
“You should be seen first,” I say. “Your injuries are worse.”
Greer shakes her head. “I’ll decide.” She peers at the gash on my head, right up by my hairline. “I think yours might be bleeding like a fountain just because of where the injury is. It needs stitches, but it’s probably not as severe as it looks.” She turns to face Grudge. “Let me see yours.”
Butcher unwinds the first strip of T-shirt, Grudge the second.
“And he was nailed in the back of the head,” I say.
“Spin,” Greer says, and Grudge does as he’s instructed. She parts his hair and peers at his wound, for a minute.
“You,” she says finally to Grudge. “Yours are worse. Come up here.”
Grudge shakes his head. “Not treating me until you’ve treated Lucy.”
“Zach,” I snap. “Get up here.”
He shakes his head again. “Not happening, Luce. Sooner you get stitched, the sooner Greer can move on to me.”
“No. This isn’t the time or the place for misplaced gallantry.”
“Bug,” he says, an eyebrow raised. “Get the stitches before I hold you down on that goddamn bed and do it myself.”
Greer gestures to the bed. “Let’s get you done, first, Lucy. Knowing these men, there’s no way they’re going to budge until their women are taken care of.”
I shake my head and jump up onto the medical bed. “They’d rather die, first.”
Greer chuckles. “It’s why women live longer—we wouldn’t make such rookie mistakes.”
“I can hear you, you know,” Grudge says.
“That was the point,” Greer says loudly.
I close my eyes while Greer works her magic. It’s uncomfortable. The pinching and pulling. The local anesthetic helps. But the ambulance rocks, and a large hand takes mine. “You’re doing great, Bug.”
“Bug?” Greer asks.
I smile. “Love Bug. That’s what he used to call me. I guess I was clingier when I was younger.”
Grudge squeezes my hand tightly. “Hey. It was nothing to do with being clingy, and you know it.”
“What happened?”
I know something’s wrong.
Grudge takes my hand and tugs me down onto the sofa next to him. “My mom. She’s struggling with Dad inside, I know she is.”
“Struggling in what way?”
Grudge sighs. “Every way. She misses him in her life. And I think money is tight, now that she’s only getting her income plus a stipend from the club.”
“That sucks. How can we help her?”
Grudge cups my cheeks. “We?”
“You and me. I get an allowance that’s more than I need. I can give you some to help her out.”
“You’d do that for me? For her?”
I nod. “Of course.”
He tugs his lips to mine and kisses me in a way that makes me shiver. “I hate that your parents don’t see how good you are.”
“Meh. They see how unambitious I am. But I’m here for you. And your mom. And whatever she needs.”
“There is no version of you going to Harvard that is unambitious. Harvard Law is as ambitious as it gets.”
I shrug. “Not if you intend to help low-income folks or victims of injustice. Apparently, that makes me a pathetic waste of talent, according to my father.”
He lets his hands slide over my ass. “You know what I need?”
“What’s that?”
“Something to take my mind off shit. Help me out, Love Bug?”
I smile as my fingers slip beneath the hem of his T-shirt. “Love Bug?”
“Yeah, you got so much love inside you, you gotta share it around.”
“Done,” Greer says, snipping off the end of the thread.
A sharp antiseptic tang lingers in the air.
“It was a clean laceration, not too deep, but deep enough that glue or strips wouldn’t hold it well.
So, you have five stitches in total, with a fine nylon suture.
The scarring will be minimal. Come see me in five days, and I’ll take them out. ”
“I feel like I deserve a sticker or something,” I say.
“I’ll give you something for being brave,” Grudge says.
Greer laughs as she steps away. “As long as it doesn’t involve water anywhere near her stitches for twenty-four hours, then you can do whatever you want.
After that, you can gently clean it with a mild soap and water.
But do yourself a favor: no scrubbing, no makeup, and definitely no picking. We’re trying to minimize scarring.”
“I don’t know. A few scars might help my clients take me a little more seriously.”
She rolls her eyes. “If it looks redder, more swollen, or gets hot, if you start to notice pus or any kind of drainage, come see me again right away. Come to the house if you want to. It’s a sign it’s infected.”
Grudge takes both my hands and helps me sit, and I admit, after lying down for a few minutes, I feel woozy sitting back up. The world spins a little.
“Let’s get you to my room so you can lie down again,” Grudge says.
I shake my head. “I’m fine. Just moved too fast. And I’d feel a whole lot better if you’d just get on that bed and get your head and hands looked at. I’m not going to argue with you about this.”
Grudge studies me for a second, and whatever he was thinking of saying is bitten down. He looks outside the ambulance and sees Butcher chatting to Wraith.
“Butch,” he shouts. “Do me a favor and take Luce to my room.”
Butcher strolls back to the ambulance. “C’mon, Lucy, let’s get you settled.”
The two men help me out of the ambulance. “I’m not so badly injured that I can’t get out of—”
“Shut up, Lucy,” both men say at the same time.
I bite back a grin. “Fine.”
Grudge hands Butcher a key, and he takes it.
“What happened, from your perspective, Lucy?” Butcher asks as he takes my elbow and walks me inside.
I start when we first saw the truck pull in. Butcher doesn’t need to know what we were doing beforehand, but from the wry smile on his lips, I think he already knows. In replaying it for him, I get to process it a little more.
“They said one thing you might like to hear, though, Butcher.”
Butcher leads me down the corridor to a room near the end. “What’s that?”
“They said, ‘Guess Butcher didn’t make the wrong choice putting you in charge, did he?’”
Butcher grins and then opens the door before handing me the key. “I didn’t. I have every faith in him. Just…Lucy. If you’re not staying, for any reason, don’t do this dance with him again.”
“I’m staying, Butcher.”
He puts his palm to my cheek. “Good.”
As we turn to walk down the corridor, two club girls eye us suspiciously. I’ll face them later, but for now, I need the bathroom and to lie down for a few minutes until the spins stop. They aren’t caused by an injury, but from hyper breathing through the whole “needle” thing.
Grudge’s room is casually messy. While the bed is made with rumpled navy bedding, clothes sit piled on an armchair, rendering it useless. There are stacks of papers and mail on the desk, and several of the pens are missing their lids that sit in a pile on the corner.
There is a large window that has bars on the inside, not the outside. They sit wider than the timber frame. Someone would have to take the whole building down to get rid of them.
But the room is clean, and lying down on covers that smell like Grudge, for a few minutes, helps ground me back in the moment.
The immediate terror dissipates as I remind myself just how safe I am within the walls of the clubhouse.
But Grudge is still out in the ambulance, likely worrying about me, and trying to get Greer to rush through whatever she’s doing to come see me.
I sit up, and, thankfully, the world has stopped spinning. I shuffle to the edge of the bed and catch myself in the mirror above his desk.
My hair is a mess, and I pull out the small twig nobody thought to tell me was in there. There is mascara beneath my eyes, and I give it a rough swipe with my fingers. If my aesthetician could see me, she’d probably ream me out for being so harsh with the gentle skin beneath my eye.
I stand, sniff, straighten my jeans and sweater, and tug my boots back on. If I want to convince Grudge to let me be a part of the solution, it’s crucial I show him I’m fine after being shook up.
After a quick minute in the bathroom, I ready myself to step back outside.
When I open the door, the hallway is quiet, but the volume increases as I approach the bar. The two girls who were eyeing me earlier have their backs to the bar.
“I’m his favorite, you know,” one of them says as I pass by.
I wasn’t joking when I told Grudge I’d seen plenty of Sons of Anarchy episodes. Club girls think they rule the clubhouse, but the truth is, they don’t.
“Really?” I say, putting a big smile on my face. I offer my hand to shake hers, and, surprised by the action, she takes it. “I’m Lucy.”
“Isla,” she says. “And Karlie.”
“Were you his favorite too?” I ask Karlie.
She smirks. “I fucked him a lot more than once. So, yeah, you could say I was a favorite.”
I see Isla’s eyes narrow slightly.
I nod as if I’m mulling something over. “Well, here’s the deal: Touch him again, and I’ll kill you.”
I’m not sure where the threat comes from. In my head, I was going to make a much more polite request. Maybe it’s the fact I just put a knife through a grown man’s hand.
Isla stands up straight and moves into my space. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“You might have been his favorite, but I had him first, because I’m his favorite ex-wife.”
Her mouth opens. I’m not sure if it’s my words or if she didn’t know he’d been married, once. “What?” she asks.
“You heard. I’m his favorite ex-wife.”
Bandaged hands slide around my stomach. “Wife.” Grudge places a kiss to my neck. “You’re my favorite wife. I’m working on the ‘ex’ part. So, girls, upset her, do anything that makes her leave, and I’ll throw you out of this clubhouse so fast, you’ll bounce. Am I clear?”
“As crystal,” Isla says, but she looks like she’s about to cry.
The two of them head back down the corridor, and I’m left looking at our reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
“Wife, huh?” I ask.
Grudge turns me around. “Not today. But eventually. Yes. You want a different title?”
I shake my head. “Wife works.”
He puts his hand around my throat, squeezing it hard. “Good.”