Chapter 2 – Presley
PRESLEY
As I sat by my daughter’s bedside, I tried to get a handle on my emotions. I was scared for my daughter, angry at her for putting herself in the position she was in, and embarrassed at the way I reacted to the man who rescued her.
I just couldn’t make myself understand how it happened.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think my child was capable of sneaking out or breaking the rules, because obviously she was.
But she just wasn’t like that. And we’d talked about alcohol, drugs, and date-rape drugs many times. I was an ER nurse, for crying out loud.
When we talked about me picking up a few night shifts at the hospital, she said she felt comfortable staying home alone overnight and promised not to have anyone over. She also promised to let me know if she was going anywhere.
I thought I was doing okay, but I suddenly felt like a failure as a parent.
“Would you like some coffee or something to eat?” Ember asked and pointed to a table filled with bags of food and cups of coffee.
“Oh, um, yes, please,” I stammered. “Where did all of this come from?”
“The guys went and picked it up,” Ember explained.
“Oh, I didn’t realize they’d left. I’m sorry, I’m not usually so antisocial. Thank you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Annabelle said. “You’ve got a lot going on. Is there someone we can call for you?”
“Thanks, but no. My parents are out of town. If I call them, they’ll come home right now, and I don’t think they need to do that just yet.”
“Come on,” Ink said. “Have something to eat. Aren’t you nurses always telling the family members to eat, sleep, and take care of themselves?”
“Only the nurses who like dealing with hypervigilant, overzealous family members say that,” I said.
“I bet there’s still some truth to it,” Ink said and ushered me to a chair.
“You can at least keep me company while I eat.” He pushed a bedside table in front of me and pulled up a chair on the other side.
Phoenix handed him a large bag of food, followed by two cups of coffee.
“We just got a little bit of everything from the breakfast menu—bacon, eggs, ham, hash browns, grits, toast, pancakes. Help yourself to whatever you like.”
“And biscuits and gravy,” Ember added from across the room.
“Biscuits and gravy, please,” I said.
I was about to dig into my food when I heard one of my coworkers shout for help, followed by, “Page Urology and General Surgery, stat!”
“I’m going to go see what’s going on,” I said and rose to my feet.
Ink reached out and gently grabbed my hand. “You should eat,” he said simply, but it felt weighted.
When I looked down at his hand clasping mine, I thought his knuckles looked red and swollen, but he let go of my hand and pulled his back before I could get a good look. “Okay,” I said and sat back down.
The commotion from earlier died down. From what I could overhear, three guys were found outside the ER. They had been beaten, and one had serious injuries.
No … No. No freaking way.
I tried to eat my meal without looking at his hands.
I really tried. But I was sitting directly across from Ink.
I was working on my second biscuit when Ink reached for a napkin and my eyes went straight to his knuckles.
His red and swollen knuckles. I tried to remember if I looked at his hands before they left to get food. If I did, I didn’t notice anything.
I also didn’t notice Ink watching me stare at his hands until it was too late to pretend like I wasn’t doing exactly what I was doing. When my eyes met his, he held my gaze. I couldn’t tell if he was waiting for me to ask or if he was trying to give me the answer.
“Your food’s going to get cold,” he finally said and went back to his meal.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
I hurried to the supply room, grabbed three small bags, filled them with ice, and returned to our curtained-off area. Without a word, I placed two on the table where the food had been. Then I handed one to Ink before I sat down and resumed eating my meal.
Ink rested his hand in his lap and placed the bag of ice on top of it. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
“If that happened how I think it did, I should be thanking you,” I said low enough for only him to hear.
“What do you think happened?” he asked.
I looked at him pointedly and raised my eyebrow.
He grinned and nodded. “Well, if it did happen how you think, I would say it was my pleasure.”
I waited a few moments before asking, “Do you know their names?”
“Yes. Do you want to know them?”
“Yes, but not now,” I said and glanced at the curtain. I didn’t even realize I had done it until his next words.
“They’re here,” he said and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“I, uh, I don’t know that.” And I didn’t. I assumed, perhaps deduced.
“I do,” he said and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Are you concerned about something happening?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said with a bit more sarcasm than I intended.
He nodded thoughtfully. “I can safely say that the injured parties are in no shape to be a threat. And the ones responsible for their current shape are satisfied with the results. So, that just leaves you.”
I couldn’t help myself. He was basically telling me he beat the man who drugged my child and tried to rape her. He made him hurt. And it sounded delicious. With wide eyes and an overeager expression, I leaned forward and asked, “Will you tell me about it? Hypothetically, I mean.”
He gave me a curious look. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know if they screamed or cried. Did they piss themselves? Vomit? Did they beg you to stop? Did you make them hurt enough to reconsider ever doing anything like this again?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Yes?”
“The answer to everything you asked is yes.”
“Really?”
“Hypothetically,” he reminded me.
“Right. Hypothetically.”
He continued to stare at me with a look I couldn’t decipher. Finally, I looked down at my plate of food and started eating again. He’d satisfied my curiosity and my need for revenge for the time being.
There was something to be said about the way they handled things.
While it wouldn’t be considered the right thing to do by many, I had to disagree.
If the boys had been arrested, they would have been bailed or bonded out within a few days at most, free to continue terrorizing innocent people until their court date, if they didn’t reach some kind of plea bargain resulting in community service and court-mandated classes.
Instead, the Blackwings taught them a lesson they wouldn’t forget and put them out of commission for a few weeks.
The next few hours went by at a snail’s pace but were, thankfully, uneventful. Well, uneventful as far as the girls were concerned. I, however, did something I shouldn’t have.
I excused myself under the guise of going to the restroom and stopped by the nurses’ station on my way back.
“Hey, Presley,” Cheryl said. “How’s Ariel?”
“Still waiting for her to wake up,” I said. “How’s it going out here? It sounded pretty busy earlier.”
“Girl! You missed a good one,” Cheryl said. “They found three guys outside the front doors. Somebody beat the hell out of them.”
“Really?”
“Yes! All three had the usual associated injuries, but the one guy,” she paused and shook her head.
“Somebody did a number on him. His jaw was broken in two places, but that wasn’t the worst. Both testicles were ruptured!
Both! Dr. Quincy had to come in and remove them.
She said there was no way to save them. Makes you wonder if he did something to someone. Or someone’s daughter.”
Like my daughter! Shit! Shit! Shit!
“Or maybe he was cheating on someone or with someone. Or it could have been one of those social media challenges gone wrong. Wasn’t there one where guys were having baseballs thrown at their nuts by a pitching machine?
It could’ve been something like that.” I stopped myself from continuing to talk and overselling my point.
I just needed to lead her away from the absolutely correct first conclusion she jumped to.
“Yeah, I bet you’re right,” she said.
“Well, I'd better get back,” I said and tried to walk away casually.
Thankfully, I didn’t have time to dwell on what Cheryl thought happened because Blaze started waking up minutes after I returned.
As expected, she opened her eyes, groaned in pain, and threw up. Her dad moved faster than I thought possible and managed to get the basin under her mouth in the nick of time. “My head,” she croaked. Then her eyes popped open, and she glanced around the room while frantically trying to sit up.
“It’s okay,” Annabelle soothed. “Relax.”
“Where am I? What’s going on?”
“You’re in the hospital,” Annabelle explained.
“What? Why?”
“What do you remember?” Phoenix asked.
She closed her eyes and grimaced in pain. “I don’t … I can’t remember anything.”
“That’s okay. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Eating dinner with Raven,” she said. “Raven! Where’s Raven?”
“She’s right here,” Annabelle said.
“I think something happened, but I don’t know what. Why are we in the hospital?”
Phoenix sighed. “You two were at a party, and someone drugged you. Raven managed to call Flint before she passed out.”
“No,” she cried. “No, no, no. Oh, I’m going to be sick again.”
“He got there in time,” Annabelle assured her. “Well, he got there before anything major happened.”
“What does that mean?” Blaze asked weakly.
Ink stepped forward to answer her. “Me, Dice, and Edge tagged along. I called Raven on the way. She passed out, but I could hear what was going on in the background. It sounded like a guy was trying to force you to suck his dick, and you bit him.”
At that, Blaze threw up again.
“We’re assuming he hit you before he moved on to someone else. When we got there, you were on the floor with a red cheek and a bloody nose.”
“Is that why my face hurts?” she asked.
“Probably,” Ink said.
“You said he moved on to someone else. Was it Raven?”
“No, it was Ariel.”
“Who?”