Chapter Eleven
Caymen
As soon as I saw where we were heading, I knew the only option was the park where I’d grown up.
It was just secluded enough. And once you drove in past the privacy fencing, it was pretty easy to hide a car from the road.
If the guys pulled in, yeah, they’d see it.
But there was no reason to assume they’d find us in the office building.
They were more likely to think we were in one of the trailers.
People around there didn’t take too kindly to strangers showing up at their doors and asking questions.
Someone would come out with a gun and chase them off.
Then, once my brother and Coast were in place, we would be safe to leave.
That didn’t mean I was feeling any good kind of way about being back.
I was surprised how much my guts seized up and my shoulders tensed. It had been a long time since I was a little kid at the mercy of my parents, but there was still a knee-jerk panic response to being in the neighborhood again.
I still remembered the last time I’d needed to hide in the office supply room. I’d been sixteen, going on seventeen. Getting bigger, but still nowhere near as strong as my lifelong roofer father.
He’d woken up after a night at the bar (and, one could imagine, shooting or snorting whatever he could get his hands on) and found his wallet empty of the cash my uncle had just paid him.
Instead of assuming he’d blown it all on the bar and drugs, he blamed me.
He’d come at me too quickly to avoid him.
He grabbed me by the throat and pinned me to the wall, screaming in my face, last night’s stale beer on his breath.
“You think you can steal from me, you little shit?”
He yanked me forward then slammed me back against the wall, my head hitting hard enough to make my vision spark for a second.
I’d been too fucking pissed to think beyond it.
I reached down, grabbed the bottle of vodka on the end table, and cracked him on the head with it.
He stumbled back, swearing. And I ran for my fucking life. Knowing full well that he would have killed me if he found me in that kind of rage.
I hauled myself in the window and didn’t leave until it was time to pick up Dixon from the bus stop.
I took him to the park, stole some food from a local deli, and didn’t go home again until our parents took off to some party or another.
I kept vigil over Dixon that whole night and the next morning, jumping at any noise, flinching at the sound of my father’s voice.
But he’d forgotten all about it.
That was probably the worst part about the addiction and abuse.
Not necessarily the hunger and the beatings in and of themselves.
It was that the drugs could shake the memories right out of their heads of all the awful fucking shit they did to me.
But I carried it with me. I couldn’t forget, no matter how much I wanted to.
They’d go on and act like nothing happened.
Even when looking at my bruised and bloodied face. It was so fucked.
It wasn’t long after that when I got serious about saving money, about getting my brother out of there.
I even started slowly packing up our stuff and hiding it in the woods so my parents wouldn’t see the packed luggage.
In my mind, I guess I thought they’d fight harder to keep Dixon around. But that was me looking through my own parental lenses. I couldn’t imagine just leaving him. They couldn’t be bothered even to report him missing.
I couldn’t help but wonder how long it took before they even knew we were gone gone.
I made sure Dixon never missed school, so there was no reason for any of the officials to come knocking, looking for him.
That was the kind of shit that was going through my head as I cleaned up the storage room so we could sit and relax after a hell of a night… and a day that wasn’t shaping up any better.
But the second Noa lowered down onto my lap, it was like those thoughts became too slippery to stick anymore.
All there was anymore was her.
Her soft hair under my fingertips. Her pretty eyes looking up at me, getting heavier by the second. Before finally sliding closed.
There was a strange feeling in my chest then, something light, yet somehow weighted. Meaningful.
Noa’s body went slack with sleep, her lips parting ever so slightly.
The urge to lean down and gently press mine there was nearly overwhelming.
That was new.
Kissing was always simply a precursor to something more, not something to do just for the sake of it.
Hell, maybe I should have been catching some sleep too. Clearly, I was tired as fuck if I was thinking about soft-kissing a woman I barely knew.
Well, that wasn’t right, was it?
Were there other women out there that I knew better physically? Yes. But I already knew Noa better, in a more significant way, than any other woman before.
Even more telling, she knew more about me than I’d ever shared. Not just with a woman… but with anyone. There was shit I’d told her that I hadn’t even told my brother, who’d shared that life with me, just seeing it through a very different lens.
Maybe an argument could be made for all the adrenaline amplifying feelings of connection.
I had a feeling that it was more than that, something more meaningful.
I hadn’t been holding all that shit in for decades just to spill it because of a pesky car chase or shooting. If that was the case, I’d have confessed that shit to one of the other club brothers by now.
It wasn’t about the situation.
It was about the person.
I wouldn’t pretend to know what that meant. If it even meant anything at all.
All I did know was that it felt good to share it. Especially on the same day that made me circle back to my old life in a way I’d been avoiding for years.
So when the urge to keep running my fingers across her scalp and through her hair while she slept, I just went with it. I figured it would help her insomniac self stay asleep even in a foreign space. And at the same time, it was oddly comforting to me.
Even when, at some point, a voice grew closer—familiar, loud.
I’d been away from home for many years. My stomach still tensed up at the sound of my father’s voice. He wasn’t even yelling, but that automatic response seemed to be stitched into my DNA.
I thought I’d forgotten what my parents sounded like ages ago. It was strange to realize I could still recognize it.
In my mind, some part of me hoped that he was better, that they were better. And I was surprised by that grace, given how little they’d ever given me.
But then my father’s voice grew closer. “Stop fucking bitching. Just reuse the old one.”
It was a common argument I’d overheard a thousand times growing up. My mom upset that she didn’t have fresh needles, then my old man telling her to just reuse the old ones. Like infections weren’t a serious risk.
Well.
I guess I knew where things stood, even all these years later. I was just glad there were no kids around to suffer through their addiction with them, since they showed no signs of wanting to turn things around, even all these years later.
All the while I listened to them talking, bickering, arguing, my fingers kept sifting through Noa’s hair. And my heartbeat stayed steady. My stomach unclenched.
In a small way, it felt a little like healing.
When my brother eventually texted me that he and Coast were around and didn’t see anyone around, I texted him back saying to give it an hour to make sure.
When that hour was up, I demanded he find some cardboard and slide himself under the car to make sure there wasn’t some kind of tracker on it.
That took another solid forty minutes for him to finish. And I requested just one more drive around to check for a suspicious car with blackout windows and the paint scratch down the side.
I was just buying Noa some time, since I knew she was going to want to hit the ground running once she got up, and whether she wanted to admit it or not, she needed sleep.
Eventually, before I could even wake her up, she shifted in her sleep, her brows pinched, then she blinked awake.
There was a second of confusion and shock, but she relaxed back down.
“You make a good bed,” she said.
“You slept hard. Feel better?”
“I think so. How long was I out?”
“Three hours, give or take.”
“Three hours?” she jerked upright. “Why did you let me sleep so long?”
“I wanted to be sure about the trail being cold. And have my brother check your car for a tracker.”
“Was there one?” she asked, sounding hopeful.
“No.”
“Alright,” she said, sighing. “So we can get out of here?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, getting to my feet and grabbing her bags.
A quick glance out the window showed me no one hanging around, so I opened the window, tossed out the bags, then waited for Noa to push herself through.
“Alright. We need to talk next moves,” she said, sounding fully refreshed after catching a few hours. There wasn’t that desperate edge to her words like there’d been before. “What happened while I was asleep? Is your friend working on this?”
“Yeah. But he just got started not long ago.”
“Why?”
“Well, it was odd that he wasn’t home when we showed up there last night. Arty is always home. Always. The guy hardly goes anywhere. And wherever he was, apparently, he got roughed up. So the guys were getting him patched up before he got to work.”
“It’s not related, is it?”
“No, no. He won’t talk about it, but I’m assuming it has to do with something else he’s working on. We’ll be keeping an eye on him now.”
“Why?”
“Know you haven’t met Arty, but he’s… not like us. He’s what you think of when you think of a skinny gamer guy, maybe with some neurodivergence and a baffling lack of self-preservation.”
“Oh, okay. Poor guy. Hey, guys,” she said, giving Dixon and Coast a half smile. “Thanks for helping out.”
“Weird being back here,” Dixon said, glancing down in the general direction of our old trailer. “Did you see them?”
“No. Did you?”
“No. Did you want to?” I asked.
“Can’t imagine why I’d want that,” he said, shrugging.
“So what’s the next move?” I asked, looking at Coast, since he was the patched member of the club.
“Unless Noa has another lead on these guys right now, we’re kind of at the mercy of Arty tracking down the traffic cameras. Huck said you need some sleep. And Noa and her car need to get off the street right now.”
“I have a safe house,” Noa said. “It’s probably just as far from here as the clubhouse, but it’s mine.”
“Don’t think the distance matters as much now, if they’re on the run.
And York and Velle are crashing at Arty’s place.
Dixon and I will probably head over to see Zayn or hang at Teddy’s.
Since you’re the only one getting shot at and chased, I think maybe your safe house is the best bet temporarily,” Coast said.
“I agree,” I said.
“Alright. Well, then I guess I’ll see you guys—”
“You’re not going alone,” I interrupted her.
“I can take care of myself.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I kind of agree with him on this one,” Dixon said.
“Agreeing with your brother? Shocker,” Noa said with an eye roll.
“Actually, babe, gotta agree too. You’re an asset in this. We need to make sure you’re safe.”
“Alright,” Noa said, shrugging. “But fair warning, it’s going to be roughing it.”
“It can’t be worse than hiding out in a dusty storage room.”
But it could.
It really could.