Chapter Twenty-Four
Harley
“So, what do you think?”
I grin back at Leah, who made sure she was angled in her chair so I could see her talking.
Christine flanks me to my left, also angled in.
The staff at the spa were kind enough to shift the chairs a little, at Leah’s request. Normally I hate people knowing about me being deaf, but Leah was so efficient and to the point that it didn’t make me feel uncomfortable.
“It tickles.” I flex my toes in the sudsy water. Thankfully, no one has started touching my nails yet, though I figure that’s coming next. I have really ticklish feet. I might end up nailing the poor girl, who’s barely older than I am, in the face when she attempts to file them or whatever they do.
“I think it’s relaxing,” Christine sighs. She leans back in the chair, her pink cast resting on full display. “It’s so freaking hard to do anything around the house with this stupid thing on.”
“It is relaxing,” Leah sighs. “I might not have a cast, but I needed a break from the bullshit going on at home.” I tense, and Leah casts me a contrite look. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to talk about that.”
“It’s okay,” I assure her.
I don’t really want to bring it up, but now that she has, it’s easier than me doing it myself.
I think about Edge sitting quietly on the back deck, overlooking the new garden.
Just sitting, staring off into the swampy part of the yard beyond.
He refuses to talk about it, but it’s been three days.
Three days that felt like three years. I can feel the pain coming off of him in waves.
It fills up the whole house, permeates the very air like an unseen force, deadly and dark.
“I- I heard that Edge… that he left…” Christine pitches in reluctantly. “I mean, everyone’s heard. It’s all anyone is talking about, even though they say they won’t.”
Leah’s smooth brow creases into a deep frown. I can’t take the guilt I see in her eyes, but I don’t know what to say to make it better.
“I’ve tried talking to Steel. About everything.
A hundred times. I’ve never seen him like this.
He won’t listen to reason. He just stomps around, in this horrible mood.
I keep thinking he’ll just wake up one day soon and realize what an ass he’s being, but so far, that’s a fucking no-go.
I’ve tried to talk to him about other things too, but he cuts me off before I can even get a word out.
I need to talk to him, but he just assumes it’s going to be about everything that’s already happened.
That I couldn’t possibly have anything of my own to tell him. ”
“You really don’t need to—” I start, but I trail off. “My dad is stubborn. I want him to come around. I want to come home and talk to him, but I know he won’t hear me when he’s like this. So sure that everyone else is wrong and he’s the one who’s right.”
“It’s not even about being right or wrong,” Christine says gently.
Thankfully, the spa people aren’t around, it’s just us three, our feet soaking in warm, soapy water.
“It’s about him refusing to accept that you’re grown up and you can make your own choices.
I think that if it was anyone else, he would have had them pinned up on the wall by now, their balls in a vise. ”
“You’re probably right,” I admit. “I never had to deal with this when I was younger, all the boys at school were too scared of my dad anyway. They never would have asked me out.”
“I’m sure they wanted to. Edge knows what a prize he has. That’s why he quit the club. If it wasn’t so terrible, it’s kind of romantic.”
I tend to agree with Christine, but I don’t want to think about it like that. “I hate that it was me that came between my dad and Edge,” I admit. “I hate that Edge felt like leaving the Riders was the only thing that he could do to make anything better.”
“I’ll keep working on it,” Leah assures me gently. She offers a small, genuine smile that warms up a chunk of the ice that’s formed around my heart. “I have some news that’s going to change everything. He might stop thinking about Edge if he has something else to focus on.”
I turn so sharply that my neck cracks with the movement. “What? Are you…”
Leah nods, and a pretty pink blush creeps up her neck to bloom on her cheeks.
“Yeah. I found out a few days before your graduation. I was saving the news until after. I didn’t want to take away from your big day, but now…
it’s hard to get a word in to actually tell him.
I don’t want to just blurt it out, but I feel like that’s what’s going to happen. ”
“Oh my god!” My grin is so wide that it feels like my face is going to crack.
I shove out of my chair, spilling half the basin of soapy water all over the floor.
I only spare a second of guilt for it though, because in the next, I’m wrapping Leah up in my arms, hugging her tight to me.
“That’s amazing. A baby! I- that’s incredible. ”
Christine offers a shy smile, the kind a woman who is already a mother gives to another mother-to-be, that private smile, a welcome to the sacred club of motherhood kind of smile.
I pull away and glance down at the basin I just spilled. “Shit. Do you think if I get back in the chair they won’t notice?”
Leah giggles. “I don’t know. It’s okay. It’s only water. They’ll just bring a mop.”
“I was just so shocked. Oh my god! Wow.”
Leah’s blush deepens to a darker shade of red. “I mean, do you think he’ll be happy? He’s older than me. What if he doesn’t want any more kids? I- we didn’t exactly talk about kids and now he’s in this terrible mood all the time.”
Guilt gnaws at my heart and sinks its claws into my stomach, but I push it away. “Of course he’ll be happy! You’re the best thing that ever happened to my dad. I never had a mother or a sister, and I always thought that it would be nice for him to have someone there for him.”
Leah laughs, the sound soft and beautiful.
“I know when I first found out about you and my dad I was upset. I couldn’t believe he’d choose someone who was a few years older than me.
I thought it was just wrong… That you were using him or playing games or something.
” I can’t look at Leah, because the heat starts in my own face.
“But then I saw how you looked at him, that same day, when he swept into the office to give everyone hell. I saw how he looked back at you, and I just knew you were the right fit for him. I’m glad that you stuck it out.
All of it. My dad isn’t an easy man to love.
” I shake my head, my smile coming back at the thought of Leah and my dad with a baby.
My dad with a newborn. I can’t imagine it.
It’s kind of funny, thinking about him changing diapers, even though I know he did it for me.
He did everything for me, but I wasn’t around to witness it.
“You shouldn’t be worrying about Edge or me or anything.
You should just be focusing on this. On that baby. ”
“Maybe if I tell him, it will shock him out of this, and he’ll get his head back on right and tell Edge to come back home where he belongs.”
“Maybe he’ll talk to me,” I agree.
“Maybe men always have their heads up their ass,” Christine chimes in.
“That’s probably true.”
“I know a good way to snap them out of it…” Christine gets that twinkle in her eyes, and we both know what’s coming, but her words are interrupted when she swivels her head to the side sharply and I can’t see what, if anything, she finished that up with.
I glance sharply at Leah, but her head is turned too, a sharp frown cutting into her forehead, her lips pursed.
The hairs on the backs of my arms stand on end. Something isn’t right. They’re looking at something. A noise that I can’t hear.
It reminds me of that night at The Canteen. When I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t define it, couldn’t put my finger on it. The sick churning sensation in my stomach is back, and an icy cold band of fear wraps around my heart, slowing down the beat to a near standstill.
There’s no warning, no screams that I can hear, nothing, before three men in black rush in, huge guns tucked under their arms, ski masks pulled down over their faces.
They’re big men, terrifying in their size.
I immediately throw myself in front of Leah as they circle us.
I feel like I can’t breathe, like someone has sprayed fire into my lungs.
All three of us freeze. The only thing I dare move is my eyes, which stare at the first man’s face as he barks orders I can’t hear and can’t see because of the mask over his mouth.
I can tell he’s talking though, because the other two incline their heads.
They train their guns on us, their eyes, two sets of brown and one set of blue, absolutely frigid.
These men don’t care. They don’t care about our lives. They don’t care if they hurt us, if we live or die. I can sense the ruthlessness in them, the rage and adrenaline rolling off of them in acrid, choking waves.
My heart pounds so hard that I know the vein in my neck is jumping visibly. I reach behind me, so slowly that I know the men don’t see me do it, and clutch at Leah. I catch something, her knee, I think, and squeeze.
It’s not much, but it’s all I can do. She stays frozen to her chair behind me, and thankfully, Christine doesn’t move either.
No one does anything that would make the men jumpy or trigger happy.
I already know, with a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, that they’re going to take us.
Kidnap us. I just hope that the staff at the front wasn’t hurt.
That when my dad or Edge or any one of his old club brothers comes looking for us, they’ll be able to point them in the right direction.
The third man, the one on the far left, produces three black things from his pocket. Some kind of cloth bags, I realize. They’re huge and when it finally dawns on me that they’re going to slam them over our heads so we can’t see anything, panic claws at my throat.
The second produces a bag of zip ties. He shakes them in the air like he’s just won a prize at the fair and is damn proud of it too. I can’t see his mouth, but I can sense his wicked grin, the elation at the thought of hurting us.
Fear bottoms out my stomach, but I force myself to remain calm. Not to move or do anything that would be considered a threat.
Even as I watch the second man with the ties drag Christine to her feet.
He bends her arms behind her back, actually taking some care with the cast, probably because it’s a hard to zip tie her hands with that cumbersome pink block in the way.
I don’t move or say anything when the man with the bags in his hand tears me away from Leah, when the second man comes over and cranks my arms behind me so hard that my shoulders snap in protest and burn from the sockets, when the stitches in my upper arm scream in protest. I don’t make a sound.
Not even when Leah is dragged up and roughly handled, her hands tied behind her back the same way mine are.
Not when the thug slams one of those cloth bags over her face, not when he does the same to Christine.
I barely even breathe when that same sack is shoved over mine and I’m plunged into blackness.
I don’t give them the fear that they so desperately want, that they’ll feed off of. I don’t give them so much as a breath as I’m marched, blindly, through the spa, out into the harsh humidity that hits me with wet, clinging force, the second we’re paraded out the door.
Only when I’m lifted and thumped down roughly on what I already know is a bike, do I sink my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from crying out.
And it’s only when the roar of that bike thunders to life and I know it won’t be heard, do I let out a small breathless gasp of pain, rage, and fear.