Chapter Six
Beautiful
Rosalie
I stood in bra and panties, leaning over the
basin in my new bathroom, staring at my face in the mirror.
The bruising down either side of my inner eyes was now just
shadows. Except for the pad prints of Beck’s fingers, all the discoloration on
my neck was gone. Sometime since yesterday, the final stitches had fallen out
of the gash in my brow and the one on my jaw, leaving only red marks I hoped
would recede. And the tape was coming off my nose tomorrow at my final
follow-up with my doctor.
Lifting my chin so I could see them both, I stared at the
red marks.
Rainman had opened up my brow.
When it happened, I felt it tearing. He always wore heavy rings and made it
clear in heinous ways that he felt like continuing to be accessorized during
the festivities.
Those rings had skulls on them.
And some had crosses.
So he’d opened me up with what amounted to a crucifix,
marking me maybe forever, reminding me every time I looked at myself or
someone’s eyes drifted that way of my time spent in that warehouse.
Every time any brother of Chaos looked at me, they’d be
reminded too.
And most of all, Snapper would too.
I lifted my hands, rubbed them through the wet hair I’d
combed back after my shower and moved to the closet, doing an inventory and
finding out where all my stuff was.
I tugged on jeans, went back to the bathroom, sprayed on
deodorant and perfume, then back to the drawers in the closet to grab a cream cami-shell. I pulled it on, then snatched out a thin,
nearly see-through, dusky-blue, five-button thermal that didn’t even pretend to
be about keeping me warm.
The buttons undone (like they were then, like I always wore
them) showed some cleavage. The material clearly displayed the shell. It was a
full torso, subtly sexy peek-a-boo worn by a scarred, beaten, disposed-of biker
old lady.
“Okay, damn, where is my head at today?” I snapped, forcing
myself to pull it together.
I had to call Colombo’s and tell them I was good to go on
the next schedule. I had to unpack the bags that were filled with stuff Mom had
run to my old place to grab while I was in the hospital because we both knew I
wouldn’t be going back there until I could face it before we knew I wasn’t
going to go back there at all. I needed to familiarize myself with where the
Chaos old ladies had put my stuff and move anything if they’d done it the way I
didn’t want it.
And I needed to think about what I wanted to get out of the
conversation that night with Snapper because I’d let stupid, dreamer, happy
Rosalie get the better of me last night and I’d used him to cuddle with and
sleep with and make myself feel safe.
But now I needed to decide where my head was at because he
didn’t deserve me playing with his heart.
I went to the bedroom, made the bed, padded down the stairs
and inspected the kitchen, doing the minimal cleanup of the donuts Snap and I
had dragged on last night’s clothes and went out to get, that we’d brought back
and eaten standing up at the counter before he took off. This being crunching
up the donut bag and tossing it into the built-in trash drawer.
I poured myself another cup of coffee and sipped at it,
opening and closing cupboards, finding the women had done me right in more ways
than I already knew. They set me up perfectly.
I took the coffee with me as I wandered and found, through
the other door on the wall down from the powder room, there was a nicely
outfitted laundry room with washer and dryer, soaking sink, shelves and
wall-mounted dryer racks.
I mean, seriously.
I could live here the rest of my life and be happy.
Though it wouldn’t fit any Travises
or Nashes.
Or Hermiones.
Just me.
A man and me.
I heard my phone ring and I moved out of the laundry room to
the table by the door where it was sitting, deciding next up was the goodness I
knew I’d discover digging through the Sephora bag that was still there.
I set my coffee down and picked up my phone.
The screen said Snap and seeing it my heart felt
happy that he could finally be displayed on my phone for anyone to see that he
was in my life and thus belonged in my phone.
But my head felt full of ominous gray clouds.
“Hey,” I greeted after I took the call.
“Hey to you,” he replied. “You good?”
I closed my eyes, opened them, and stared at the long
stretch of lawn that led to the street.
There were bushes down either side of the property. I
couldn’t begin to know what they were, just that they were cut low for the
winter.
I wondered if Snap provided lawn maintenance for his
tenants, and if he did, if he did that himself or if he expected them to do it
as part of the rental agreement.
“Rosalie,” he called, his tone sharper.
Not sharper.
Worried.
“I’m good,” I told him, though I wasn’t sure I was
considering how it felt that he’d been gone maybe a little over an hour and he
was already calling me, checking on me.
That should feel good.
It was just my head was so messed up, I wouldn’t let it.
“You don’t sound good,” he noted.
“The stitches all fell out,” I shared.
“Noticed,” he murmured.
Of course he had.
“I’m gonna have scars,” I told
him.
There was a beat of silence before he declared, “I’m comin’ back.”
“Snap, don’t.”
“Babe, you went from bein’ cute in
bed and smiling eating a donut to whatever the fuck you sound like now and
talking about scars. You’ve fallen into your head, it’s not a good place to be,
so I’m comin’ back.”
“I need to sort this stuff out for myself, Snapper.”
“Why?” he asked.
Suddenly, the big yard in front of me was blurry.
“Sorry?” I asked back.
“Why do you have to do it yourself?”
I…
Didn’t know.
I told him what I did know.
“I’ve relied on a man all my life, Snap.”
“Okay, so?”
My head jerked.
“That’s not very strong,” I pointed out.
“Have I ever told you why I joined Chaos?” he queried.
I felt my shoulders straighten because he hadn’t, I knew
something big was coming, and last, I bucked up so I could be prepared because
I wanted so badly to know that something big.
Precisely…why he’d joined Chaos.
“No,” I told him.
“I’m a quiet guy. I’ve always been that guy. First thing I
did when I got my driver’s license was go to a movie by myself,” he shared.
There was something immensely cool about that.
There was also something immensely Snapper about that.
Then again, it was kinda one and
the same thing.
“Was the first I did that,” he went on. “Wasn’t the last. My
brother and sister, they got big personalities. They’re almost pathologically
social. Just like my mom and dad. My sister, she’s crazy. Lovable, but crazy.
Always getting into trouble. Fightin’ with Mom. Then lovin’
on her. My brother was the big man, sports star. Soccer. Really good at it.
Earned a scholarship on it. I played tennis.”
I felt a sudden, inappropriate-at-that-juncture giggle
welling up in me and choked it back.
But I couldn’t quite hide the disbelief in my, “You played tennis?”
“That’s all about me. The court. The racket. The ball. My
game. My strategy. It isn’t even about my opponent. He was just someone who, if
he could, lobbed the ball back at me, and it was up to me to get a bead on his
strategy. You are totally in your own space. You are totally in your own head.
Win or lose, it’s all on you.”
I could see this about Snap and not just the fact that,
knowing this, I realized he had a tennis player’s body, if that tennis player
was Boris Becker.
“I read,” he continued. “I ride. I don’t play tennis anymore
and haven’t since high school but when I did, I liked it. I got my properties
and those are mine. I buy them. I manage them. Brothers might help out fixin’ them up, but the vision and the follow-through is
all on me.”
“Okay,” I said when he stopped talking.
“But back then, whatever I got into doing, I went home to my
family. I was the middle kid but I didn’t get any of that middle kid mindfuck
bullshit because they were the way they were. Totally not like me but they
didn’t make me feel like an outsider because I was how I was. They gave me
space to be me. They came to my matches. I went to their shit. I didn’t exist
among them. I was part of them as who I was, not how they wished I would be.
That’s still my place. They get together a lot more than I get with them, but
when I show, I’m just as much a part of my family as the rest of them. It’s
just that I’m not into family game night every two weeks and they don’t give a
shit I’m not. They’re happy for me to show when I want to show. They take me
when I want to give them time and they leave me be when I’m not feelin’ it.”
“That’s cool,” I said when he paused.
“I wanted more of that,” he shared. “I wanted to be around
people who let me be me. I didn’t want to be in a corporate situation where it
was about toeing the line or clawing to the top. I didn’t want to be in a
different situation where every day was the same until you realized your life
was a long line of drudgery. I wanted a family but I wanted that with freedom.”
“That makes sense,” I noted.
“And since I ride, since my bike is a big part of my life,
since that freedom is the biggest part of me, I found a brotherhood that shared
the same ideals. And the biggest part of those ideals, I give it to them and
they give it to me. That ‘it’ being, I let the brothers be the brothers and all
the brothers let me be me.”
“I love that you found that, Snapper,” I said softly.
“I do too, Rosie,” he returned. “And the point I’m makin’ with that is, if I wanna
hole up in my room in the Compound and read a book, I can. Then I can walk
right out and share a beer with a brother. I can be alone, but I’m never alone.
Are you with me?”
I was with him.
And I was breathing funny.
“Babe, are you with me?” he pushed when I said nothing.
“I’m with you, honey,” I forced out.
“I got somethin’ on my mind, I go
to Tack. I go to High. I go to Hop or Pete. Or I go to my dad or my brother. I