Chapter 30 #2
“Stop,” she puts her hands up. “You came here to explain, so explain.” She tells me as she steps backward, sitting in the chair across the room.
“Okay.”
“Sit there.” She points to the couch. “If we’re going to do this, we have to have some ground rules.”
I can’t help that the thought of it amuses me.
“What would those be?”
“We stay on opposite sides of the room.”
“Why would we need to do that?” I tease her.
“Eli, stop. You know exactly why.”
Knowing she’s right. I nod my head.
“So, explain.”
“Where do you want me to start?” my voice cracks as I ask it.
“At the beginning.”
“Okay.” Nodding my head as I look up at her, my mouth starts before I can think about what I’m saying. “I never intended to fall for anyone, especially not you. It was so off the plan I didn’t even know how to handle it. I had these two boxes everything in my life seemed to fit in, and…”
“I didn’t fit into either of them.”
Slowly, I just shake my head.
“Sorry for being an inconvenience.”
“You were never an inconvenience.” I gasp as I get up off the couch.
“Separate sides.” She points to the couch.
“Sorry.” Holding my hands up for a moment as I sit back down.
“What were these two boxes?”
“Well… I had my ‘life’.” I air-quote the word life. “Or the appearance of a life. I had my job and the bullshit I made people believe. I put on the facade of a person who would be on the police force. Who believed in all of that shit?”
“That’s not who you are?”
Slowly, I just shake my head. “Who I really am.” Looking over at her.
“It was nice cause I haven’t been able to show that to anyone in so long, but I was able to be him again.
The night I found you on my porch. I told you I went and found him after you passed out.
” She nods her head. “I felt more like myself than I had in so long. I thought I’d almost forgotten who I was. You made me remember him.”
“Why is the real you in a separate box?”
“Because no one on the force could know that Eli.”
“Then why did you join?” she pauses. “Fuck.” She mumbles as she looks up at me again. Piecing it together herself. “That’s why you have the tattoo?”
All I can do is nod my head to her.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“I was never really a cop. I mean, I never considered myself one.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t join to be a cop.” I pause, hoping she’ll give me another question to answer, but she doesn’t. She just continues to sit, staring at me and waiting. “Ash came up with the plan.”
“Dad?”
“You had to know that’s what it was.” I tell her, causing her to nod again.
“I was thinking in the shower, and I feel like I remember a time when I saw you at the clubhouse before they died.”
“Yeah. I was there a few times.” I nod my head. “I went to talk to him a couple of days after you yelled at me at the party.”
She giggles a little.
“I wanted to talk to him about prospecting.”
“But he wasn’t letting anyone in; he was forcing people out.”
“Yeah,” I nod. “Jeff had just retired, and he thought that a better idea would be for me to join the force. He knew he was gonna die soon. He knew Z would want to step into the club. And if I were on the force, I could watch over him. After all of you. Maybe stay one step ahead of whoever was after the club.”
“So you did all of this because my dad told you to?”
“Yes, no… kind of. I dunno.” I pause again. “He said the tattoo would help people believe it when things came out.” Shrugging my shoulders as I continue talking before I’m able to catch what I’m saying. “He said that mixed with the…”
Realizing what I’m saying, I stop myself, my eyes widening as I look up at her.
“Mixed with what?”
“Can we come back to that?”
Tilting her head, I can see she’s growing frustrated with me before I nod my head, stand up, and walk towards the door.
“I thought you wanted to explain. Where are you going?”
“It’s easier if I just show you.” I admit to her. “It’s down in my saddlebag.”
I don’t wait for her to answer me. I just walk down the steps, into the parking lot, and grab it out of the side bag.
Opening the door, she’s still sitting in the same spot, staring off in the distance. I’m not sure if she believed I was coming back or not.
“What’s that?” She asks, her eyes landing on what’s clasped in my hand.
Holding it out for her to see, her mouth drifts open.
“That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t come back.”
“Drew, the call woke me up. I didn’t know what I was walking into until I got to the station. I kept trying to call and warn him, but he never answered.”
“And they didn’t see the incoming calls?”
“I’ve never called him from my actual number.”
She looks at me, confused.
“He doesn’t know it, but he has the number to my burner.”
“Burner?”
“Yeah, it stays in a Faraday cage in my truck.” I pause. “Your dad put it in before he died.”
“You couldn’t give me a heads-up.”
“It’s not just that.”
“You what? Suddenly felt like we were disrespecting my brothers, my dad, by…” she trails off, not wanting to admit what we had.
“I was lying to you, and you deserved more than that.”
“You could have told me.”
“I couldn’t.” Shaking my head. “I didn’t know what was going on when I got called in, just knew it was an all-hands kind of thing.
When I pulled Darren off of Z and switched cars, I’m looking at my best friend in the back seat, who hates me.
And who has every right to hate me, but not for the reasons he actually does.
I knew right then that the charade of my life was coming to an end.
That I was going to have to choose a side publicly.
And I knew I was choosing the MC. I knew Darren and most of the force would do everything they could to take the club down after that, and I knew whatever they tried, I’d have to be the one to make it go away. ”
“To destroy the evidence.” She whispers.
“Yeah, that’s what it ended up being.” Nodding. “And if I told you that, if I told you what was going on, that’d put you at risk.”
“Don’t you think that should have been for me to decide if I wanted to or not?” she scoffs out. “For fuck’s sake, Eli, I grew up surrounded by this sort of shit.”
“Exactly, you never got to choose it.” Shaking my head.
“I choose this, Drew. Telling you after…” I pause, not wanting to say that she loved me.
Not sure if it’s because I don’t want to hear her say she doesn’t anymore, or if just saying the words will be too much for me to finish.
“It just felt like you were once again not getting a choice.”
“Bullshit.” She snaps, glaring at me.
“What?”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“It’s not…” I look back at her.
“You’re leaving something out.”
“Okay.” I pause. “We called Axe from the car. He’s telling them to take the girls and you up to purgatory, that you needed to stay as far away from it as possible.”
“So you didn’t come back because my brother said so?”
“No, I didn’t come back because I agreed with him.”
Her eyes shift as I say it.
We sit in silence for what seems like hours until she finally whispers.
“You know I have to call him, right?”
“Yeah…” slowly nodding my head.
Standing up, she walks over to the counter, rummages through her purse, and pulls her phone out. She looks over at me, as if she’s wanting me to tell her to stop, not to make the call. We both know how this is going to end.
“You want me to, don’t you?”
I just nod my head, serving a double purpose of telling her I want her to go ahead. “It has to come out.”
Pressing on the screen, she steps over to the window, looking out as she presses the phone to her ear.
“Hey… yeah, everything’s fine. I need to talk to you.” There’s a pause. “Can you come here?” another pause. “Z, I swear, I’m okay. There’s just something...” she trails as she glances over at me. “Okay… thanks.” Hanging up the phone.
“He’s got a couple of things he needs to finish up, and then he’s heading over.”
“Okay.” I nod my head as she moves back towards the chair.
We fall into another uncomfortable silence and stare at one another.
“Why now?” she whispers.
“What?”
“You didn’t want to tell me all of this until now?”
“I had a lot of time to think it over…” I trail off, not really sure what to say to explain it.
Or how lying on a cot in a cell, night after night, made me think over my entire life.
Made me question what life would be like without her in it…
and how much that pained me to think about.
“And Liv came and saw me a few weeks ago.”
“Fucking Liv.” She laughs.
There’s another long silence before I look up at her. “I’m not relieved.” I finally admit to her after months.
“What?”
“At the hospital, you asked me if I was relieved. And I’m not.”
“But…” her eyes widen as she looks at me again.
“I’m not upset with you for not telling me. I understand why. But at the same time, I wish you would have. I wish I could have been there for you. And I’m not relieved.”
“Why? I thought…” she trails off, not really sure what to ask. We just look at one another, my mouth opening as I’m about to say something, but the knocking breaks the conversation.