CHAPTER 13
When a person reveals their limits, it is with respect that you acknowledge them, and with love, you cross them when warranted.
“Goose! Hey, man.”
Fuck off. I hold up my hand, eyes fixed on Lily’s performance.
She weaves seduction through her movements like it’s a magical ability.
The song is “After Dark” by Tito & Tarantula, and it delivers a slow, thumping beat—a beat she hits with each seductive sway of her hips.
It’s a combination of belly dancing intoned with the luring call of a siren.
In no time at all, she’s got all the males here under her spell and has become the main attraction at the club.
Great for the club. But hell on me and my security team.
The more the clientele watch her, the bolder they get.
If I look to the right, I can easily find a man palming his crotch and laughing off his blatant arousal with friends. If I look to the left, I’ll find the same fucking suit from her first night here, sitting in his regular spot, staring up at her like she’s some goddess come to life.
She’s reeled them all in.
And day by day, week by week, I’ve had to witness every single man pant after her like some dog in heat.
I hate seeing it in their eyes—the sick gleam of their obsession. The lust for more with her. It triggers dark thoughts in my own mind of murder and dismemberment. Because so help me God, if they touch her or cross those fucking boundaries in any way, I won’t be above putting one of them down.
Thoughts like these have spiraled a bit out of my control.
But I blame it on the unrequited desires she’s stirred up in my blood, and the maelstrom of need I can’t get a handle on.
Not to mention that, for weeks, I’ve also had to watch Stone put his hands all fucking over her bod, and watch them lip-lock nearly every fucking night that he visits the Wet Tips, which has increased from one or two nights a week to a bare minimum of four.
The more time that passes, the darker these thoughts become. And God forbid she pays any of the clients special attention.
Because the woodpecker in my brain doesn’t like that one fucking bit. He goes into goddamn frenzy when she does, driving his sharp fucking beak repeatedly into my temple like he’s wielding a goddamn sledgehammer.
Bam, bam, bam. Like there’s not fucking brain matter and important shit I’m trying to store up there.
Like now, as she crawls forward and motions to the man in front of her, sitting at the edge of the stage.
She draws him in with the crook of her finger, then seductively dances just for him, palming her breasts, bucking her hips, mimicking riding his cock like she’s at some fucking rodeo.
One hand travels up her thigh. The other tunnels into her hair, lifting her curls to frame her face.
It’s sex—or what she’d look like getting fucked. And it’s enticing as hell.
And it doesn’t stop there. She covers her mound with her hand when it travels back down her body, and she kicks her head back the moment she touches herself, letting out a gasp as if in the throes of pleasure.
My vision blurs a bit. The woodpecker throws a hissy fit and jabs at my skull. It hurts the way I imagine getting stabbed in the eyeball with a pen would.
I cover my right eye and brace against it. Sometimes it helps. Today, not so much.
My hands start to shake. I hold on to the bar with my left hand, trying to stay steady.
Memories—fleeting but intense—hit me in a rush. I grunt and pinch the bridge of my nose to stave off the blinding pain that crashes next into my head.
I get a flash of a woman walking in front of me.
Her hand behind her, her fingers locked with mine as she pulls me through some trees.
The sunset is cresting just above the treeline.
Dandelion seeds float on the breeze. A heightened view of the city I know so well, Albuquerque.
A girl is lying on her stomach on a mattress, watching a movie on a small TV.
Her legs are bent and crossed at the ankle.
She’s popping candy into her mouth. Then I’m standing in the doorway, looking at the words scrawled in black Sharpie on a bathroom mirror, “SMILE MORE”, written in big, bold letters, with a squiggly line underneath.
The visions are vivid one moment and break apart like smoke the next.
I try to force them back. But my knees buckle as another spike of pain drives home inside my skull.
“Goose!” Bodie’s voice is suddenly at my side. It’s so loud. His voice. The music. And these fucking lights. They’re too much.
I press both fists into my eye sockets, pushing back against the pain. I groan out my frustration because I’m so done. So fucking done with this shit. This fucking pain. Some days, it’s all there is.
Another flash of memory: a single pink flower in a vase on the table next to a fashion magazine. There and gone. Then another. A dreamcatcher. They come too fast. Too fucking fast to grasp them all.
“Goose! Goddammit, G, look at me!” It’s Bodie.
I brace against the spikes and work hard to stay upright. “Jesus fucking Christ!” The words are a low, vicious snarl. They rip from my chest like an animal has taken over to fight back against this onslaught. I rage back at my own mind. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”
I decide my own fucking fate.
Not you!
Someone grabs me and spins me around. “Goose!”
“What?” I snarl, tearing the hand away from my shoulder and opening my eyes.
Bodie draws back at the fury lacing my tone. His expression shifts from shock to apprehension. “You’re fucking bleeding everywhere, man.”
His words don’t make sense at first. “What?”
“Bloody nose,” he says, motioning to me.
As soon as he says it, I smell it. Taste it. The metallic tang sits right on my tongue. I feel the warmth of it on my lips. I swipe my hand under my nose, and it comes away smeared with crimson. Looking down, I see a fuck ton of blood. “What the fuck!”
My chest is covered with it, enough to look like I’ve slit my own throat. Apt, since I feel like I barely survived a battle with my own fucking mind.
Grabbing a bar towel, I press it against my nose. I need to get the fuck out of here and pull myself together.
Dozer comes to stand beside Bodie. Maverick steps behind them.
Griz comes up behind me and lays his hand gently on my back. “You okay, brother?”
More brothers are on their feet and staring at me, ready to do something to help.
Like I’m weak. Like I need looking after. Like, I can’t handle my own shit.
“You all right, man?” Dozer asks. “What can we do?”
“Nothin’. Just give me a minute.” It comes out garbled with the towel covering my nose and mouth.
Their concerned eyes track my every move as I leave the bar.
Dozer hollers, “Okay, just tell us how we can help.”
I don’t know what the fuck is happening.
This hasn’t happened before. I shake my head as I stride toward my office, because fuck, I don’t think anyone can do a damn thing to help.
All I know is Lily’s performances make it worse.
Something about watching her perform like that, for these men, is affecting me on another level.
It’s sparking an intense physical reaction in me. And it might just be the thing that kills me.
As I make my way down the hallway, my vision narrows and blurs a bit. A few more steps and the world tilts sideways. The walls close in like a tunnel in an Indiana Jones movie.
“Goose, hold up!”
I do, only because I’m afraid I’m going to drop. I lean against the cool wall, one hand braced on its surface as I take a few deep breaths.
“What?” My voice is rough, but I force it out.
Bodie is the one who responds. “Do you need to take one of your pills?” His hand lands on my shoulder. It feels heavy as hell, like its weight alone will send me to my knees.
“No, I’m fine.”
“What pills?” Dozer’s voice joins in, his tone low and edged with worry.
I laugh bitterly, a wet, rasping sound. “They don’t work. Nothing does.” I don’t have time for this. Don’t have time to explain my relationship with all the fucking pills.
I pull the towel away. My nose hasn’t stopped bleeding. Blood immediately leaks into my mouth, warm and thick. My body is betraying me. It’s faltering. Giving up the fight.
“Tilt your head back.”
I roll my eyes, but do it. I lean against the wall and stare at the ceiling. When the lights bring more pain, I close my eyes and groan against the agony spearing inside my skull.
“Shit! We need to get you horizontal.” Bodie’s arm hooks under mine. “Lean on me. Dozer, get his other side, man.”
“I can walk.”
“Just lean the fuck on me and stop your bitchin’,” he snarls back.
“Fuck. All right.”
The thought that I can’t walk to my own goddamn office without assistance makes me want to lash out. But it’s not Bodie I want to fight. It’s my mind and whatever is going on up there.
How the fuck do you fight an opponent you can’t see and don’t know shit about? It feels like a battle I can’t win, no matter how hard I try.
Inside my office, they lay me on the couch.
“Hit the lights,” Bodie says.
Any sound, even the thud of what I assume is Dozer’s boots, hurt my brain. Darkness wraps around me as the lights go out. It helps, if only a little.
Bodie’s voice breaks through the haze. He’s squatting beside the couch. “Where the fuck are your pills, Finn?”
Turning my head, I squint at him. “No pills.”
“What pills?” Dozer asks.
“Pills for his migraines. He’s been getting them more often,” Bodie says, his voice almost a whisper because he knows what I’m like when they hit hard.
“I didn’t know it was this bad. I knew he got headaches, but not like this. Why haven’t you said anything, man?”
“Not the time to have this conversation,” I grate out.
Bodie tells me to shut up, and I hear him tell Dozer, “He won’t listen to reason.
Alister prescribed him some new meds. Gave him a few options for surgery, but he says the pills fuck him up one way or another, and the surgeries in the past haven’t fixed the problem so he doesn’t want to go under the knife again. ”
“There’s gotta be something that’ll help.” Dozer’s voice is closer now. I can feel the weight of his stare. “What kind of pills has Alister recommended?”
I pull the towel away, but blood streams from my nose again. “Ones that don’t fix me. Make me a goddamn zombie or fuck me up even more than I already am. I can’t protect the club like that.”
I hear drawers rattling as Bodie’s voice cuts through the fog. “I’m callin’ Allister. You need somethin’. What the fuck have you done with the meds?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I’m not taking them.” As I lie there, I think back on all the faces that were staring at me like I’m a freak or like I’m broken and in need of help. It guts me—them all seeing me this way.
Something about Lily is triggering the flashbacks, and I don’t know why.
The answers I can’t for the life of me grasp, because I don’t have the brain power to think through any of it. All that exists for me is this motherfucking pain and scattered memories.
Fuck!
Is this all there is to look forward to? More of this until it kills me?