Chapter 6
Chapter Six
GHOST
We cradled our coffees, sitting quietly beside each other as the light started to fail, and I wondered if being here in the dark would be too much for her. She’d been so strong, so brave, but she was starting to disappear into herself again, and I was terrified to lose her once more.
“I’m working on the rebuild over there,” I pointed, and her eyes followed my gesture. I figured focusing on the new things here might help, so I continued.
“The first floor is laid, and we’re working on preparing the upper floor.
Both floors will curl around the courtyard we’ll lay, and that’ll house living quarters and a larger gathering area.
Church will be over here,” I was on a roll now, describing things she wouldn’t care about, but it felt important to keep going.
This was something I could talk about that wouldn’t delve so deeply into our shared past. It was all about the future.
She listened, her eyes moving around as I pointed, but as she sat quietly, I couldn’t help wondering if she was trying to work out where it’d happened.
Where her body had been assaulted, and her mind broken.
Where they’d laid waste to the future I’d been planning for us.
Where they’d betrayed both of our trust, and destroyed us.
“Ghost?” I shut the hell up and turned to look at her, because that was the first time she’d said my name since that night. The first time she’d voiced who I was. The first time she’d referred to me as the man and not the monster, not the night that took it all.
“Yeah?”
“They’re really gone?”
I didn’t have to ask who she meant, but I figured Sophie had told her, and I wasn’t about to hold back any truths.
“Dead and gone, yeah. Every last fucking one of them. There are about twenty of us OG guys left, and the Phoenix management have been tough on them. Any signs of not being decent men, and they’re out.”
“But they kept you.”
Was that a dig? Was she saying I wasn’t worthy of still being here?
“So far,” I finally said, feeling the weight resting heavily on my shoulders once more, when I hadn’t even realised it’d dissipated for a while.
“I wasn’t saying… I didn’t mean you don’t deserve that.”
“I don’t though. I told... I mean, Micro knows everything. He uh, he runs a tight club, you know? You hold shit back and it just comes out later. Better to put it all out there and let him decide.”
“You say that like he’s a god who gets to decide if… well, I guess if he was the one killing the old guys, then maybe he is. I don’t really understand how this stuff works.”
I sipped my coffee, eyeing the Pres and his old lady, who were both laughing over something, maybe something the baby just did.
“Phoenix are different. The old club was a bunch of assholes who ride, but live for crime and cruelty. I didn’t know that until I was in so deep I couldn’t get back out.
I was pathetic and weak and I stayed, but Phoenix?
They’re about decent guys coming together as family, riding together, working together, having each other’s backs.
That’s what I wanted when I joined an MC, but I picked the wrong one. ”
She snorted. “No argument from me.”
I deserved that, or they did, maybe both.
“Yeah. I’ll never stop regretting that. I guess, maybe I see being with Phoenix as a way to try and redeem myself. They have this whole metaphor about… well, you know how phoenixes rise from the dead. I guess some of us need that in a more literal way than others.”
Elizabeth set her coffee down and folded her hands together in her lap.
“That night, I mean, before it happened, I was so happy. I saw my future in you. I was on the back of your motorbike, holding onto you, feeling the world rushing by, like we were something separate from it. Like we were above it all,” she tutted at herself, “but I was brought back down to earth in a pretty hideous way, right?”
“You deserved to feel the way you felt before. That’s all I wanted for you. For us.”
This wasn’t fixing anything, and even though she was feeling strong enough to talk, it was almost dark, and I didn’t want the past invading on her moment of clarity, or self-empowerment, whatever it was.
“I’ll walk you back to your car, if that’s okay?”
She nodded, standing up and straightening her hooded jersey. She looked really pretty in it, but I figured it wasn’t my place to notice those things, and definitely not to voice them.
We both waved at the Pres and Sophie as we passed them, and they nodded.
“Stop by any time, Elizabeth. You’ll always be safe here,” Micro called out to her, and I could have hugged the fucker.
He just kept proving what I was trying to convince myself of.
This was a good place now. It could be. It would be.
Even if it was too late for Elizabeth and me, at least others could find life and love here.
We reached her car, and I leaned past her to grab the door handle, a gentlemanly instinct that I instantly rethought, as it put me closer to her than she’d consented to.
She froze briefly, but then stepped aside for me to continue with my gesture, and pull the door open for her.
Grateful for something to lean on, I rested an arm on it as she stepped past me, and hesitated.
“If… if we bump into each other again, I promise not to run.”
She slid into the car, and I allowed her to pull the door from my grip to close it.
Did she really just say that? She just hinted that she’d talk to me again, right?
That maybe the door wasn’t closed forever on us?
Was I reading too much into it? Was she just throwing me a bone, when she fully intended on never bumping into me ever again?
Something in my chest eased, because either way, her words were clear.
She wouldn’t freak out again, because she understood that I wasn’t the monster, or at least wasn’t associating me with them in her head now.
It was more than enough. Screw that. It was everything.
ELIZABETH
At my therapy session the very next day, I explained how the visit went, how I’d accidentally ended up back in that place, but in some ways, I think it helped me heal a little.
A tiny bit. Like maybe it removed the place from my fears now, because it may still be there, but it was no longer the house of horrors it’d been.
It was a new place. Populated with new people, and new mentalities.
No longer filled with cruelty and abuse. Now filled with family, and support.
I’d felt safer there than I’d expected. It was new, but I liked the feeling.
“Do you believe that returning there is the key to your way forward into healing?” Dr Ashen asked, tilting her head at me.
“I don’t know if it was the place or the people.
Something settled inside me. Something eased.
I don’t mean that I’m healed, because I don’t think I ever will be.
I don’t mean that I feel safe again, because I may never.
I just know that, for the hour or so I was there, I felt temporarily normal.
I liked it, so I guess that was progress? ”
She smiled. “Does this mean you intend to go there again? I should warn you, one good experience there won’t undo the past, nor will it mean it’ll always be a healing experience there.”
I tucked my legs beneath me on the sofa, settling in for the long haul.
“I suppose I want to build on how I felt yesterday, even if it means risking it being less cathartic next time.”
“And are you welcome there?” Was I? It certainly seemed that way. The president and his wife were lovely, and the others had seemed discreet and respectful, as if they understood fears and panic. As if they knew how to deal with a headcase like me.
“I felt welcome, is that weird? They don’t know me, but they were friendly and open, and supportive.
It was nothing like the group who were there that night.
Nobody was predatory or creepy, and nobody approached me except the president and his wife.
I feel like he’s a good person, and his people do what he tells them. ”
Dr Ashen nodded, making a note on her tablet.
“And do you feel like they would follow this president if he demanded they do something awful to you?”
My breath caught in my throat and I stared at her in horror, but I realised almost instantly that she was asking something vital, and not trying to be cruel. Did I feel that way?
“I honestly don’t think he’s that kind of person. There’s something kind about him, something the other president definitely didn’t have.”
“And Ghost? Do you think he’s a better person now?”
I held up a hand, shaking my head at her.
“He was never a bad person. It took me too long to realise that, but he didn’t hurt me.
He tried to help me. He… I think I put his face on the monsters in my mind, because they wouldn’t have had me in their grasp if he hadn’t taken me there, but he didn’t take me there for them to hurt me!
He took me there because he wanted us to be together. I wanted that too.”
Was that approval on the doctor’s face as she nodded, making another note, her cool, calm persona never shifting.
“So you think you want to see him again?”
I stared at my fingers, at the long carefully shaped nails I’d painted last night.
I painted my nails. For the first time in more than a year, I chose to make a part of myself pretty.
It was just a start, something small, but it felt huge as I was doing it.
It felt significant. The soft pink was pretty, not too outwardly noticeable, but it was there.
An adornment chosen by me. To make my outside more attractive. For me. Only for me.
“I think maybe it’s time, you know? Like, for so long I hid from everything, including him…
I literally lived outside of town, so I couldn’t bump into him or any of them, but I’d heard the rumour that the club was gone, and maybe that’s why I had the courage to return.
Maybe that’s why I’m starting to feel like this is home again.
Maybe it’s all part of the same journey.
Before it happened, I was seeing him as my future.
The one, you know? I could have fallen in love with him. ”
“And now?”
Her tone was mild, but those sharp eyes were fiercely focused on me, looking for something, but was it the words I was about to say?
“I think, maybe.” She smiled and nodded.
“That’s enough for now. You shouldn’t rush anything, or rush into anything.
Maybe have coffee somewhere public, and see if you still feel things for him that suggest friendship or more.
If not, draw a line under it, use seeing him once more as a step in your healing process, and move on.
It’s not about fairness to him in this instance, it’s about guiding you to your own future. ”
It sounded harsh, particularly since I’d witnessed his pain, sorrow, and guilt in that one meeting last night. I understood her point though.
“I think I’ll just let fate take us to the next step. If I bump into him, then maybe it was meant to happen, you know? Perhaps we’re meant to know each other again, even if it’s just as friends who say hi now and then.”
I meant those words that day, and in the three days that followed, I still meant them, but why wasn’t I bumping into him?
Now that I’d opened the door to that possibility, I was frustrated that I couldn’t move onto this next phase of growth and healing.
He was key to it. So maybe that’s why I drove there again.
Maybe that’s why I bought two Danish pastries and two coffees and drove there, but I had no idea what I was expecting from this gesture. Not at all.