17. Chapter 17
BLUE
When I came to again, I was still in the bathtub, but my mouth was free of tape, and only Aunt Rita was in the room with me. She sat on the closed toilet lid right beside the tub, gauze and medical scissors in her hands, fingertips wet with blood.
“I’m so sorry, Faith,” she whispered softly, her age-creased face crumpled and damp like a used napkin with tears and snot.
She’d been crying for me, then.
My entire head hurt, face to neck, and my left hand was one fire where it lay limp across my chest, but the rest of my body had been spared. It seemed Hazard only wanted to make his point by scaring me.
“How bad is it?” I croaked.
It hurt badly enough to think it had to be grotesque, one side of my face suddenly made into a bloody mockery of the Joker’s smile.
Aunt Rita’s fingers trembled as they fluttered ineloquently. “Oh, it’ll heal.”
Shame burned through me, brighter than the actual pain.
“Help me up?” I asked quietly, trying to adjust so I could stand, but my good hand slipped on the blood from my wound that stained the side of the porcelain.
I must have struggled when he cut into me.
Aunt Rita stood to offer me her hand. She was old but as strong as an ox, pulling me easy to my feet. My head swam, vision popping with bursts of colour and darkness. I closed my eyes to settle myself for a moment and then carefully, hand still in my aunt’s, stepped over the rim so I could stand in front of the little stained mirror above the sink.
I didn’t open my lids until my right hand was curled over the edge of the sink because I knew when I looked at my reflection, I wouldn’t like what I saw. Sucking in a deep breath, I told myself that no matter what I looked like, Aaron would still want me because his feelings for me were bone-deep and not superficial.
It didn’t help as much as I wanted it to.
Because the truth was, I’d fought hard to find myself beautiful, to emphasize my assets and forgive my flaws. I’d learned everything about cosmetology so I could make others feel as pretty as I’d learned to make myself believe I was.
The idea of being scarred across the face was the exact right way to pierce the heart of the confidence I’d built in Rooster and Hazard’s absence.
My ‘husband’ had been back for less than a day, and he had already reduced me to rubble.
“Even before you left,” Aunt Rita spoke softly into my ear as she gripped my shoulders comfortingly. “Even at your unhappiest, you only had to smile at someone to become the loveliest girl in the room.”
A sob bubbled up my throat and stuck there.
“I am a selfish old lady stuck in this life and its ways, but I always hoped you would find happiness somewhere else. Happiness that brought that smile out every day instead of once or twice a year.” She paused while I sucked in a shivery breath. “I think you’ve found that now, outside of these walls?”
I nodded even though it made my head pound to do so.
“Well, then, whoever is on the other end of your happiness will still love the shape of that smile, even if it’s a little scarred.”
I tried to breathe through my nose to stop the tears, knowing from experience that the saline water would sting the wounds, but it was a lost cause. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was the blue of my eyes.
It was vain, but I always tried to match my hair to the same shade, a rich cobalt blue. They popped even more vibrantly against the bloodshot white and the livid red wound stretching from the edge of my left ear to the corner of my mouth. Hazard’s hand was steady enough to make it seem like an exact straight line except for the end which flicked up beside the end of my lips. Aunt Rita had used butterfly bandages to close the wound, but some blood had sluggishly leaked from the edges, merging with my tears to drip pinkly from my chin into the basin.
“Fuck,” I cursed, squeezing my eyes shut again.
There were no clear thoughts in my head, only emotion that filled me to the brim until I felt like I couldn’t talk or think or even breathe.
Vaguely, I was aware of a knock on the door and Aunt Rita shuffling over to crack it open to speak to someone.
“How is she?” Cedar’s voice whispered.
My chest clutched, but I didn’t turn. It had been years since I last saw him, and the time felt like a chasm between us. We had been something like friends back then, but I had no idea what kind of man he was now.
Actually, I was inclined to think he wasn’t a good one given the company he still kept.
“I’ll keep her in here tonight with the door locked so he can’t get to her again,” Aunt Rita was saying. “He did a number on her sweet face.”
“Goddammit,” Cedar cursed, his fist thumping against something. “I’m sorry, Faith. I should’ve stepped in.”
It went unsaid that unless he’d put a bullet in Hazard’s brain, he would have done as he pleased anyway, and Cedar would just have suffered for trying. Once, back then, he’d stepped in to stop Hazard from hitting me, and he was cut from the club funds for six months, not to mention the bruised face he’d turned up with the next time I saw him.
“He’s leaving,” he continued. “We’ve got a meet with the man who’s takin’ us on.”
“Who?” I asked, eyes snapping open so I could turn and drill them into Cedar. “Who is it?”
His mouth worked, pursing then flatlining before he uttered quietly, “A man named Javier Ventura.”
I had no recognition of that name, but I filed it away for later.
“Thank you,” I said because I had the feeling he knew exactly where I would take that information.
He’d always been too smart for this lot.
He dipped his head. “Take care’a yourself, Faith. We’ll be gone for hours, and we’re takin’ a few men, but it’ll still be a pretty full house. Don’t do anything stupid.”
His tone was all wrong, though. Not a warning, but a suggestion.
I shuttered my gaze and turned away with a small nod.
“If you cut across the left fields, you hit the road eventually,” he said even softer before disappearing behind the door.
Aunt Rita gripped my good hand. “Are you going?”
“I have to,” I admitted because it was the only light at the end of the tunnel illuminating a way through this darkness. “A…friend got Grouch and his family away today. I-I wish I could take you, but––”
She snorted, waving to her haggard face. “I made my choice a long time ago, ducky. I only wish I could help. I have some money saved––”
“No,” I insisted. “I kept my cash tips from Rooster so I have some, too. And I think, where I’m going, they’ll take care of me until I can get on my feet.”
In fact, I knew they were.
The Fallen took in strays like an animal shelter, cobbling together the kind of found family that shouldn’t have worked on paper but did beautifully in real life. Military veterans, orphans, black sheep, lost souls, the odd psychopath—all of them broken and made whole by their connections to each other.
A totally different organism than the blood family I had and the ways of this club and the one before that.
“Wait until they’ve left and everyone’s settled down,” she whispered. “And let me clean that cut again.”
I laughed, a shocked little bark because hope had momentarily blocked out my memory and the pain from the wound. And suddenly, it was a little more bearable because I knew that I’d already taught myself to find happiness when life was hard, and a little scar wouldn’t change that.
“I’ll miss you,” I told Aunt Rita while she cleaned my face with stinging antiseptic because I would, so much it momentarily robbed me of breath.
She was a constant in my life with Rooster, the only one to ever kiss my forehead or tuck me in sometimes as a child and the only person to offer me solace when I’d returned as an adult. It felt wrong to leave her behind, but then, she’d never left herself.
“I’ll miss you, but every time I think of you, I’ll imagine you with this smile,” she said, touching the edge of the tremulous expression on my mouth. “Now, I’ll go gather some of your things so you’re ready. Try to wrap your hand with the rest of the gauze so you don’t damage it worse.”
“There’s a phone and mum’s ring in the lining of the mattress,” I said. “That’s all I really need.”
“I’ll grab what I can,” she promised before squeezing my hand again, dropping it and leaving the room.
I locked it behind her, sucked in a breath, and fell to the edge of the tub because my knees were suddenly weak. I’d been so overwhelmed that I hadn’t thought to worry if Aaron and his friends had made it out of that fight relatively unscathed.
And if he had, I didn’t even know where he lived because I’d never dared to visit it.
So I’d head for the clubhouse, but it was a good forty minutes by car to Entrance and my Mazda was back at the bar. If I was lucky, I could hitchhike, but it wasn’t exactly safe on the side of the Sea to Sky Highway’s winding, mountainous roads at night especially when the Raiders could notice me gone and come after me.
I could call Aaron to come meet me if he was well enough to do so, but I had to get a head start while I could get away. Besides, something told me if he knew what Hazard had done, Aaron would drive up to the house without fear and light it up, guns blazing.
I wasn’t opposed in theory, but there was no way he could take out a house of twenty armed men by himself.
I waited for what had to be half an hour, but Aunt Rita didn’t return.
Finally, unease turning my gut sour, I opened the door and headed into the hall. It was eerily quiet in the big, ramshackle house when usually voices were raised in laughter or conversation over the sound of music and the television downstairs. It was such an old house that it creaked and groaned as people stepped through it, but only the pop of warped wood under my feet could be heard.
When I rounded the corner to my room, Macho was there, leaning against my door with a cruel smile.
“Little Auntie had to make herself useful downstairs,” he said with a mocking pout. “She seemed to think you needed shit from your room. Of course, you don’t need three changes’a clothes to get ready for bed, do ya, Faith?”
Slowly, scalp prickling with dread, I shook my head.
“That’s what I thought. Now, you’re gonna spend the rest’a the night in your room, and I’m gonna drink my beer right outside the door. Fancy’a bit’a quiet anyway after those fuckers nearly killed us,” he said with a saccharine-sweet smile that looked just as wrong on his ugly, mean face as a scowl did on Aaron’s.
He lashed forward to yank me by the arm so I stumbled into his foul-smelling body, but at least he didn’t grope me or anything.
This he explained by saying, “Fuckin’ ugly mark the VP gave ya.”
Fury burned through me, but I kept quiet as he pushed me into the room because I knew I could access my phone to text Aaron.
That was until Macho grinned widely at me, showing a blackened eyetooth. “Don’t be lookin’ for this.” He raised my burner phone in one hand to give it a little shake. “I think Hazard’ll be real interested to see what you have on your secret phone when he gets back.”
Fuck, my world was falling apart around my ears all in the span of a single night.
“Please, Macho, it’s nothing,” I tried, stepping forward with a sweet smile because I’d been able to sway some of the men to go easy or keep things quiet before.
He laughed loudly. “Yeah, maybe that cute shit would work before he cut you up, but I got no desire to use an ugly bitch like you. And thanks for this.” My mother’s sapphire ring winked in the light where it was pushed down over the fat tip of his pink finger. “This’ll bring me a nice little payload.”
I lunged for it before I could help myself, but Macho only slammed the door shut on me, and the sound of a key turning in the ancient lock told me he’d found the key to the bedroom.
“Fuck,” I breathed out on a sob, hitting my good hand against the door as Macho laughed to himself on the other side. “Fuck, fuck.”
I let myself wallow for a few minutes before I hauled in a deep breath that burned my lungs and then let it out in a gushing stream.
“Okay,” I told myself softly, turning away to pull a scarf from my closet to fashion a makeshift sling for my arm. “You can figure this out.”
If Hazard came home and saw the text messages on that phone, he would quite literally kill me. If Rooster was here, it might have been different. Even though he was cruel, I didn’t think my own father wanted me dead, but Hazard was another story entirely. So much more had happened to him overseas than just losing his leg, and he’d returned home with a lost sense of pride and anger that flared like a supernova, taking out everything in its path.
After eight years of separation, the knowledge of my secret rival biker boyfriend would send him so far over the edge, I knew there wouldn’t be much left of me to find if he got his hands on me.
So I had to get out of there.
Like hell I was dying in this pathetic place when I had love and happiness on the other side of the highway.
The window opposite the bed faced the barn, where I could see a few men shooting beer bottles in the dark, laughing uproariously when they didn’t connect and taking gulping draughts of beer when they did. It was obviously some kind of drinking game that would leave them senseless, but there was no way I could leave that way when they had guns in their hands.
The window beside the bed was painted shut, but it overlooked the back of the lot and just below it was the covered porch where I could hopefully land when I dropped from the sill.
I just had to get the window open.
Thank God for my backup nail drill.
I dropped to the ground by the bed to fish out my backup cosmetology kit, fingers shaking with adrenaline as I wrenched it open and found my spare nail drill. Relieved tears flooded my vision for a second, but I wasn’t even sure if it would work to grind away the paint.
The tool buzzed as I kneeled in the bed and brought it to the windowsill so I kept an ear trained to the door when I brought it down on the paint and it started to peel away from the old, soft wood.
No one stirred outside the door.
So I continued, fingers cramping as I moved the drill around the seam of the window, once and then twice to work the paint and grit free. I sent up a grateful prayer that it was my left hand with the broken fingers and not my dominant right hand.
“Please, God or whomever, let this work,” I begged as I curled my right hand fingers under the hinge and pulled with all my might, standing up in the bed to leverage everything I could.
Nothing for one painful moment and then a sharp crack and groan as it pulled away from the sill and slid up inside the frame.
I paused, breathing hard, listening for Macho.
Only the sound of music drifted in under the door.
With a huff to blow my hair out of my sweaty face, I heaved once more until there was enough of a crack to press myself through. It broke my heart to leave my mother’s ring after Aaron found it again, but nothing was worth more than my life. So without hesitation, I kissed my nail drill and left everything behind, slipping awkwardly out the window to perch with my ass on the sill.
It was still a decent drop to the veranda roof, and I knew the landing would make some noise, so I waited anxiously until the sound of shots and shattering bottles rang out again to push myself off the window.
And drop.
My landing was graceless, knees banging into the flat roof, hand skidding as I tried to catch myself, burning the skin off my palm. Even in the sling, my left hand throbbed at the jarring impact.
I froze, straining to hear if anyone would come to investigate.
The creak of the screen door opening and two sets of boots moving outside onto the porch below me.
“You hear that?”
“You know this place is a dump, probably just settling. It’s humid as fuck so the wood’s probably swollen.”
“Like you know anything about construction.”
“More than you.”
“Get fucked!”
Their voices drifted back inside, but I waited for a few long moments before scooting to the edge of the roof and peering over. It was another fair drop straight to packed earth, but there was nothing for it.
I waited for another round of the shooting game when suddenly there was a whooshing noise and the sound of shattering glass from the other side of the house and a heavy thump from within followed by shouting.
The waiting game was no longer an option.
I dropped to the ground with a tiny squeak of fear and landed hard on my right side, but the blast of pain was dull and didn’t stop me from getting quickly to my feet.
Another gunshot, so much louder than the ones by the barn, thundering through the air so it seemed to echo across the fields.
More cries.
I turned and ran toward the left field like Cedar had suggested. Cardio and fitness were not my friends, but I pushed as hard as my tired body and aching head would allow, my vision trained on the dark stalks of corn.
Relief made me light-headed as I hit the field and shoved through the crops, pushing them with my right hand even though more battered my whole body as I plunged through the dense growth. I just had to get through this field and out the other side and I’d be so much closer to safety.
Then, out of the dark, something reached for and in my haste to evade it’s grasp, I tripped over a slippery corn stalk and fell sideways.
Right into my pursuer.
We fell to the ground with a muffled thud, and I opened my mouth to scream even though it pulled open the wound at the side of my face. A hand covered my gaping maw, thwarting the sound, but I knew even when I tried to scream that no one would come for me.
This had been my one and only attempt to save my life.
And now I was caught on the ground in the pitch dark probably minutes away from death.
“Where are do you think you’re runnin’ to, little bitch?”
Piston’s voice, recognizable for the nasal drawl even though it was so dark in the field I couldn’t make out his features.
Terror punched me in the chest because this was the worse person to find me save Hazard.
Piston had been leering at me for weeks, and if it wasn’t for the threat of Hazard and the watchful eyes of Rooster, he would have taken me already. I could still remember that beer-wet texture of his mouth against my breasts as he’d forced his face between them one night.
And now he had the chance.
His laughter, putrid from sour beer, wafted over my face in triumph. He only had to pin my one hand above my head because my left was caught in the sling so he could use the other to reach for the button of my jean shorts. They were undone too quickly even though I kicked and bucked beneath his heavy weight, screaming and shouting now that he’d released my mouth.
But there was no one to hear, maybe, or no one to care.
He reached for his own belt, pulling himself out of his jeans. I gagged, about to squeeze my eyes shut, when I saw the telltale movement of stalks swaying behind Piston’s head.
Motion in the cornfield coming toward us.
I kept my eyes fixed on it as I shouted for help again and again.
“Shut up,” Piston grunted as he released my hand to pull at my shorts.
I shoved the heel of my hand into his nose as hard as I could so his head snapped back. A moment later, something broke through the little clearing our struggle had made in the crops, a flashlight trained on Piston’s form looming over mine.
And then bang !
A gunshot split the night, and blood erupted across the little clearing a moment before I lost myself in darkness.