19. Vandal
VANDAL
Tears sting my fucking eyes.
I can’t even look at Daisy.
It’s a cruel trick of the fates to have something so perfectly put into your grasp, only for your hands to be too weak to hold on to it. I’ve known Daisy eleven days.
That’s it.
And now I understand why Knox fell for Maren in less.
Because when you find someone who’s perfect for you in every way, you want to march forward with the rest of your lives.
Move in together. Have kids together. Take her everywhere on the back of your bike while she proudly wears your property patch.
Make her daughter breakfast and make sure she gets to kindergarten safely.
Instead, while my cock softens in Daisy’s pussy and the two of us suck in air, I have to take myself back. I’ve got to unbox ghosts that I’ve kept drowned in a slosh of alcohol. And that means being honest to my president about who I am now.
It’s looking Havoc in the eye and asking him what I do next.
And I’m not going to be able to outrun everything that happened if I stay here, literally hiding in the softness of Daisy’s body.
I kiss her shoulder. Her neck. The sweet soft spot by her ear, her jaw, her cheek, her eyelid, her nose, and then finally her mouth. I memorize it, because I have a strong suspicion that detoxing is gonna be a pretty grim and ugly process.
There’s got to be something good in my life to keep me sane during those hours. And her name is Daisy.
I reach between us and pull out of her, lamenting the loss and comfort of her body. In her, I was someone else for a little while, someone who felt more familiar. Now that it’s over, I feel as lost as when I began.
“Hey,” Daisy says, sensing my unease, “I know you’re going to go, and it’s probably best and less confusing for Elsie that you do. But just come lie here for a minute with me. Just for a little longer.”
I stare at the condom in my hand for a second before tying off the end. It’s a weird plastic tribute to our enjoyment. But somehow symbolic. My cum on the inside, hers on the outside.
Never the twain shall meet.
I grab a tissue from the box next to the bed and wrap it in it, tossing it to the end of the bed so I remember to deal with it, before lying back down next to her.
She snuggles up next to me and puts her arm over my chest. The room falls quiet, and the panic in my chest subsides.
Daisy rubs small circles on my chest with her fingers. I thread mine through her hair, over and over, letting the curls spring from my fingers.
I stare at the ceiling as seedlings of hope and affection take root amongst all the other emotions I carry. They’re like a lighthouse in a stormy sea.
Let me ease you, Vandal.
If only she knew how she does. How much it means that she didn’t ask me to be stronger, she asked to help carry some of the weight.
I close my eyes and lose the fight against exhaustion.
When they open again, I’m disoriented. I’m on my side, and Daisy is pulled up against my chest. The scent of her is the first thing to orient me.
I lift my watch, and in the dark, it tells me it’s four in the morning. So I carefully extract myself without waking Daisy, grab my clothes and the condom, and head to the bathroom to quietly dress because there’s no way I need a run-in with Elsie this early.
Once I’m clothed, I grab my cut, throw it over my shoulders, and don’t look back. I open the door and step out of the apartment which locks behind me. The sky is still inky dark when I grab my phone and call the one person I know will catch me right now.
Havoc answers on the fourth ring. “What’s up, Van?” His voice is thick with sleep.
“Is Knox at the clubhouse?”
“Nah, man. He left for home when we got back.”
I don’t ask for details of how it went trying to find the captain of the boat. If I get sidelined by conversations about club business, I’ll lose my nerve with what I’m about to do.
“Will you meet me there?” I know what I’m asking. No one ever goes out to Knox’s house. It’s his private domain. Certainly not at ungodly o’clock.
“On my way,” Havoc says without even asking the reason.
“Thanks, brother.” But the words come out hoarse.
“Vandal?” Daisy’s voice echoes off the concrete.
“See you there,” I say, hanging up on Havoc before I turn to face her.
She’s so damn pretty, even though she looks blurry from this distance.
“You don’t need to go,” she says.
I take a deep breath, but I don’t step closer to her. One step will become two and will become three, and before I know it, I’ll be back in that tiny apartment that the two of them have made so damn cozy.
“I do,” I say. “This isn’t the version of me either of you deserves. I told you that.”
I can see the conflict in her eyes, can feel it as surely as I feel the pressure of today bearing down on me. “But I can help you.”
I look down at my boot. “It’d be easy to let you try.
But you can’t. My brothers haven’t been able to, and they know my every strength and weakness.
And you deserve better than me half paying attention to you and Elsie when I’ve got the devil on my shoulder and the constant itch of withdrawal screaming at me to take a sip of something to make it go away.
I’m gonna go, Daisy. I’m gonna try and beat this. Give me a few weeks to at least detox.”
She chews on her lips, then does the most unexpected thing.
She runs at me.
And I catch her.
Then she kisses me again, and I wrap my arms around her and kiss her back.
Those soft lips on mine.
The weight of her in my arms.
I let every bit of her hope and goodness and happiness sink into me because I don’t know how long it’s going to have to last for.
“Be safe,” she says, finally.
“I’m gonna text you Havoc’s number. You need anything at all, you call him. I know enough about myself that I’ll come running if you call and probably fuck up my progress.”
She hugs me one more time, and then I put her down, because I’m at real risk of not letting her go.
Then I jog down the stairs without looking back.
It’s easy to get on the bike. It’s harder to hit the road to Knox’s because it takes me past the site where I was taken.
But I pause in the road where it happened as my engine idles.
It’s too early in the morning for anyone else to be around.
But the thought I had while deep inside Daisy comes back to me.
To move forward, I’m gonna have to go back. And why not start here?
I allow myself to think about that night while pretty sober. To think about how I flew from my bike. How I felt relieved the van had stopped. And then how my heart stopped when I realized why.
How it felt to be dropped on the ground outside my clubhouse. How Knox and Havoc tried to reassure me, but the fear was frothing like a badly poured beer.
And then the surgeries. Plural. To fix me back up again. Not that I’m fixed. I still feel my ribs ache every minute of the day. But the pleasure with Daisy outweighed it.
I rub a hand over my jaw and force myself to sit with the urge to flee. My palms sweat thinking about so much trauma.
The crash.
The torture.
The shame.
The surgeries.
My heart thuds heavy.
Just ride, Van.
“No,” I say. “Just sit. Ten more seconds, Van. Prove you can just fucking sit.”
A light bounces off my bike mirror, and I look over my shoulder. But there’s only one beam. It’s a bike.
The light flashes on and off when it gets closer as my best friend shows me it’s him.
But I can’t talk to him yet, so I start moving before he pulls alongside me, and Havoc doesn’t try to communicate. Just silently rides to my side.
When I see the tall, stilted house surrounded by cypress trees and Spanish moss, I start to rethink my life choices for half a heartbeat, but then I remember why I’m here.
The light of a bike headlamp follows me in a moment later, and Havoc pulls up his bike alongside mine.
“You okay?” he asks once he’s killed his engine.
“I just really need yours and Knox’s help, and it couldn’t wait.” I climb off my motorcycle.
Havoc does the same. “Whatever you need.”
Which reminds me to pull out my phone and quickly send Havoc’s number to Daisy.
By the time I look up, Knox is standing at the top of the steps to his home. He’s barefoot, jeans unbuttoned, and a shotgun pointed at the two of us.
“You two got a good reason to be at my home this time of night?” he asks.
To the best of my knowledge, Knox has always had this rule in place, that no one should ride out to his house to see him without invitation.
He said once someone starts coming to his house anytime they feel like it for club business, it becomes an extension of the clubhouse, and everyone starts showing up.
For a second, I wobble. Like, could this have not waited until tomorrow? “I need your help as a friend.”
“Then you better come up,” Knox says.
Havoc throws his arm over my shoulder and practically walks me up Knox’s steps to where a row of wooden chairs sit.
“Everything okay?” Maren says, stepping out onto the porch. She’s yawning as she ties the belt of a fine silk robe.
Knox pulls her to him and kisses her forehead. “Go back to bed, sweetheart.”
She sighs. “Can I get you guys anything before I do? Want me to bring the whiskey out?”
Knox looks at me and, as if guessing why I’m here, shakes his head. “We’re good. Go get in bed.”
Maren looks over at me and Havoc. “Night, boys.”
I tip my chin in her direction. Everything felt so clear when I left Daisy’s house. I was gonna get clean. But the shaking in my hands is getting worse.
And the relentless itch is so bad, I wanna hit something.
Knox looks at me for a second, then shocks the hell out of me by stepping up and pulling me into a hug. And not a slap-on-the-back, you’ll be okay kind of hug but a full one. He wraps his arms around me tightly and doesn’t let go. And then Havoc wraps his arms around the two of us.
Somewhere in the middle, between two people I trust, I close my eyes and cry like a fucking baby.
It’s not pretty.
It’s a hot mess of tears and snot and saliva that leaves me so weak, I can barely stand.
I cry for the pain I felt.