A Dream of Summer (Bleeding Angels MC Book 3) (14 page)

We come together, like we have ever since that first time, and I wish that I could bottle that feeling of being completely together with someone. I’ve never felt closer to anyone and I wish that I could keep that feeling forever, to take it back with me to the Angel’s compound to keep me company.

When we’re both exhausted with pleasure, I stay inside of her, wanting to feel her around me until the very last moment. There’s less than an hour left before I have to leave and I haven’t slept in two days. But I don’t care. I stroke Aimee’s smooth back until her breathing evens out, signaling that she’s fallen asleep. But I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t want to miss even one second of being with her, because I know that as soon as I sleep, I’ll be missing something. I’ll miss the way that her chest rises and falls in its own special rhythm. I’ll miss the little moans she makes as she dreams.

When it’s time for me to go, I don’t wake her. I know that she’ll probably be mad with me for sneaking out, for not giving her the chance to say goodbye. It’s selfish, but I do it anyway. I want to keep this image of her in my head, looking as calm and at peace as she does now, asleep and as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. I kiss her softly on her lips and I try to stop myself from thinking that it feels like the last time.

I drive back to the compound faster than I’ve ever driven before and I make sure to hop off the bike a good few hundred feet down the road. It’s almost 6am. I stayed too long with Aimee, but it was just so damn hard to leave her. She’d told me about her mom waking up and she was still trying to figure out how that made her feel. I wish that I could be there for her, to help her. But instead I’m here and I can only blame myself.

I walk as carefully as my heavy boots will allow and park the bike in the same position as I found it last night. As I head back towards my windowless room, I nearly expect to see Spike standing outside asking me where the hell I think that I’ve been before he starts putting his steel-toe boots to good use. But there’s no one there. The compound is completely silent, as if the whole place were completely empty, just waiting for me to get back.

I open the door cautiously, holding my breath against the creak that I know I’m going to hear. Once inside I lay myself down on the bed, I think over what Suzie did for us and wonder if we can trust her after everything that’s happened, or if she’s not done playing with us yet.

Before I can come to any kind of a conclusion I fall asleep, because the next thing I know a group of bikers has stormed into my room, led by Elvis, who looks like he hasn’t had any sleep—but not for the same reason as me.

“Rise and shine, Jakey-boy!” Elvis hoots like an owl and the shrillness of his voice gives me a headache. When I don’t move, his tone changes from a coked-up clown to an angry motherfucker. “Didn’t you hear me, Summers? Get the fuck up! You wanna sleep, you sleep on your own time. This is my time and you don’t waste my time.” Elvis is manic and he’s so buzzed that he’s not making any sense. None of the other bikers seem to notice; they all look about as far gone as he does.

“Sure thing, Elvis.” I sit up, wondering how long the human body can go without sleep before actually cracking up. “What’s on the agenda today? Any old ladies to mug or kids to steal lollipops from?”

Elvis laughs like a hyena, slapping the other bikers on the back. For a split-second it looks like he might suffocate himself on his own laughter. “That’s funny, that’s funny shit, Summers! He’s a funny guy!” Elvis throws this out to the floor, almost like he’s challenging someone to disagree with him. No one does. “We’re taking you for target practice.” His eyes shine and I’m not sure if that’s because of the drugs or because he really likes guns. I figure that it’s probably a bit of both. I wonder how someone as high as him is going to shoot a gun without hurting anyone, but I keep my thoughts to myself.

“Great; let’s do it.” I’m surprised at how easy it’s getting to pretend that I’m one of them. I remember Aimee’s words from earlier, telling me I’m not anything like them. I hold onto that. Here, in this place, around these poor excuses for human beings, it would be all too easy to forget who I am. But if I can focus on Aimee and on what we need to do to get out of this nightmare we’ve been calling a town for the past ten years, then I feel like I can make it. In the meantime, I guess I just have to take anything that the Angels throw at me and, today, that’s target practice.

As the over-stimulated group lead me out of what I've—much to their general hilarity—dubbed the Summers’ suite, I catch sight of a familiar face skulking near the entrance. I take a chance, figuring that the men are too high to notice if I slip away from them for a few seconds.

“Are you alright?” I take in Suzie’s appearance. She looks pretty far from alright, but we both know that I’m talking about last night.

“I’m fine. A couple of roofies go a long way!” She smiles a toothy grin, looking like a little girl that got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

I feel relief flood through me that she hadn’t put herself in danger on my account. Then I surprise both of us. “You should go talk to Aimee.” It’s not a request. “We need your help, to get the Angels.”

Suzie shakes her head so hard it looks like it might fall off and roll around right here on the ground in front of us. “She doesn’t want to hear from me. She wouldn’t even spit on me if I was on fire.” She crosses her arms and then she looks behind me and her eyes widen. “Like I said, you gotta give me somethin’ if you wanna get somethin’ back. You get me, pretty boy?”

I crease my brow in confusion but it doesn’t take long to understand why she’s suddenly put on this act. “Hey, lover boy,” Elvis’s voice is close; he’s standing right behind me. “Believe me, you don’t want that.” He points to Suzie as if he were talking about a piece of shit on his shoe. “She’s damaged goods like you wouldn’t believe! You can do better. If you’re looking for pussy, we can set you up with something.” He encircles my shoulders with his arm, as if we were best buds and I have to stop myself from pulling away from him automatically.

“You, go back to whatever rock you crawled out from. This one isn’t for you.” He waves Suzie off and as I steal a look behind me while Elvis leads me off into the opposite direction, she looks like she doesn’t know whether to cry or to kick Elvis’s head in. If I were her, I’d probably do both, but that’s just me. I can only hope that she’ll do what I’ve told her. I can’t make her go to see Aimee, but something tells me that I won’t have to. It’s clear, to me at least, that Suzie is trying to do the right thing. But then, Aimee had said that I would always see the good in people, right up until they hit me between the eyes. I hope that this isn’t one of those times.

“I’m sorry that I haven’t been here for a while, Dad. It’s kinda been a crazy few weeks. But I guess you know that already.” Sitting on the curb, I look up at the sky as I talk to my father on the spot where I watched him die.

I feel bad that it’s been so long since I was last here, and the memories of this place are mixed up with Suzie’s betrayal. I wonder what her game is, why it is that she’s suddenly playing the good citizen. The most likely option is that she’s just trying to fulfill some of her own wants; maybe the Angels put her up to it, just like they did everything else. She was at the point now where she would do anything for drugs—anything at all, and it didn’t matter who she hurt or who got in the way. All that mattered was that she scored her next high.

“Mom’s doing better. The doctor can’t explain it, but it’s like one day she just woke up.” I scuff my sneaker in the dirt and wonder why it’s so hard to talk to him today. Usually the words just flow out, like there’s no stopping them. But today, I find myself searching around for something to say. I guess it’s because there’s too much. It’s like sending a letter to a friend you haven’t seen in years and you’re trying to condense your whole life into a few pages of white paper. There’s too much to tell him. And besides, I figure he’s up there looking down on us, looking out for us, so he already knows.

It occurs to me that he’s the one person outside of Jake that I can talk to about our plans to take down the Angels and the fact that we’re no longer working on our own. “I’m working with the Feds now.” I lower my voice as I say the words. It’s an automatic reaction, but there’s no one around to hear my secret.

“I want to get them so badly, Dad. I want things to go back the way they were, before the Angels, before this town lost its way. I want to have a normal life. I want to get out of Painted Rock, go to college, see the world, be with Jake without having to look over our shoulders the entire time or worry about what the Angels are going to throw at us next.” As I say the words out loud I realize how true they are and how little space I’d given them in my mind. I haven’t given my wants and hopes a lot of time, because they had seemed so far away from reality that it was a little like lying to myself. But now, things are different, and I felt like this was a turning point. That maybe, just maybe, this might be a war that we win, despite having lost so many of the battles up until now. College. I say the word in the same way that most girls would say “Prom.” But that’s all I’ve ever wanted—for my little world to be opened up.

“You’ll get there.” The voice comes from behind me, making me jump and scramble to my feet. But I don’t have to turn around to find out who it is. I would know that voice anywhere.

“Don’t you have any respect?” I can hardly believe that she’s here. “After everything that’s happened you have the gall to come here? Here, of all places!” Seeing her here, at the place where my dad had died, the place where she’d betrayed me that first time, it’s like reliving it all over again.

“I’m not here to fight with you. I just want to help.” Suzie spreads her hands in a peaceful gesture.

“I’ve heard that one before; tell me another.” I squint at her in the early morning sunshine. There was a time when I would have believed her, no questions asked, but that time has long gone.

“I told Jake this was a bad idea,” Suzie says under breath as she starts to turn away.

“Jake told you to come here?” I know that Jake has always been more trusting than I ever was. But, bearing in mind he knows about Suzie and everything she’s done to us, why would he think that her coming to see me was going to go down well?

Suzie stops what she’s doing and turns back around to face me. I notice that her cornflower blue eyes look clearer to me than they have in a while. When she looks at me there’s something different about her, but I can’t quite put a name to it.

“He told me that you needed help. A man on the inside. I guess he figured that a woman would do just as well.” The lopsided smile that she gives me doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“And why would you ever think after all that you’ve done, that we would trust you? In what parallel universe would that make any sense at all? Remember when I said that you weren’t someone that I wanted to know anymore? Those weren’t just empty words. I meant them.” I know I’m being hard, but the memory of her taunting me, telling me what she’d done, the lies she’d told to get Jake to go with the Angels quietly. It was the delight that she seemed to take in what she was doing, as if it were fun for her to hurt me. It’s that more than the betrayal itself, it’s that I don’t think I can forgive.

“I don’t expect you to.” Suzie’s reply is so simple that it catches me off guard. I had become used to her deception, but not to hearing the truth. “But for some reason, Jake does. I guess he doesn’t think that you hate me quite as much as you seem to. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here.” Her voice breaks and she looks down at the floor, like she’s just realized that things aren’t going to work out.

I tilt my head to look at her, as if that’s going to give me a better perspective of what seems different about her and then, all of a sudden, it hits me. “You’re not high.” I say the words slowly, because I can’t quite believe them. This is the first time I’ve seen Suzie sober since she got involved with the Angels.

“Haven’t been for a few days now.” She holds her head a little higher, like she’s proud of it.

“But the day you were at the body shop...” I trail off, trying to fit the pieces together. “You were more doped up than I’ve ever seen you.”

Suzie shakes her head and looks down at her dusty feet again as if she’ll find some answer there. “I wasn’t high; I was strung out.” The admission seems to embarrass her, like she’s confirming just how bad things had got with her. “I was desperate for a hit, needed it so badly I’d have done anything for it. The Angels, they cut me off, wouldn’t let me in on their supply. It didn’t take long to get me to the point when I’d say anything, do anything, just to stop feeling like I wanted to tear my own skin off.”

I can feel myself being pulled into her story. It makes sense—how frenzied and violent she’d been that night at the studio. When she was raging at me, she had been like an animal. I’d thought it was the force of her hate for me, fueled by drugs driving her on. The little turbo-charged devil on her shoulder.

But Suzie hasn’t finished with her version of what happened. “I hate them for what they’ve done to me, for what they’ve made me do. You don’t have to believe that I want to help you, but it shouldn’t be hard to believe that I want them to pay for what they did to me.” As she says the words there’s fieriness in her blue eyes that reminds me of the friend that I used to have.

What she’s saying has the ring of truth about it, but it’s so hard to trust anything that she says anymore. But then, actions always did speak louder than words. “Prove it. How can you help us take them down?” I cross my arms, waiting for her response. I’m surprised at, despite everything, how much I want her to come good. But I’m really just expecting her to come up with some bullshit story that’s going to end with Jake and I in even deeper shit with the Angels.

She pulls something out the pocket of her dirt-stained jeans and throws it at my feet, watching me as I pick it up. It’s a small plastic bag, filled with a white powder.

“That one’s heroin,” she says, looking at me instead of the packet I’m holding. She licks her lips and I notice the tremble in her leg. “The Angels have a deal with one of the cartels over the border in Juarez. They buy the drugs—heroin, cocaine, whatever—and then deal them, over the whole state, passing them on to other gangs, selling them at a premium as they go.”

“Okay...” It’s getting harder and harder not to believe what Suzie’s saying. “And how does this help us? A tiny packet of heroin and your word against theirs isn’t exactly a huge scoop.” I know I’m being unfair—it would have taken time for Jake and I to get this information on our own and Suzie has just handed it to us.

“I can tell you when the next meeting with the cartel is. You tell the Feds, and the Angels are caught with their hands in the cookie jar.” Suzie shrugs like it’s the simplest plan in the world.

I can’t quite believe that this has fallen into my lap and I’m still not sure that I can trust what she’s telling me. “That all sounds great, but how can I be sure that this isn’t just another trick?”

Suzie’s face falls and, in spite of myself, I feel bad for doubting her. I have to remind myself that she hasn’t done anything to win my trust in recent weeks.

“You can’t be sure,” she eventually sighs. “I guess only you can decide if the risk is worth it.” There’s no challenge in her tone. It’s just a statement of fact. I don’t say anything. I’m not really sure what
to
say. “I better get going, before someone notices I’m missing.” She stands awkwardly like she’s not sure how to end this conversation. There was a time when we would have hugged each other tight, but that time has long since passed.

“Suzie…” I start to say that I want to believe her, but that I’m still not sure if I can. They’re words that her eyes tell me she’s already well aware of. It seems redundant to say them out loud when she’s clearly already heard them in her own head. “How do you know all of this?” I decide to ask the easy question rather than the hard one.

Suzie smiles and it’s not the fake or harsh smile that I’ve seen from her recently. It’s a real Suzie smile that reaches her eyes. “They think I’m stupid, and I guess I was so out of my mind on drugs for a while that they figured I wouldn’t take anything in that they talked about. But I paid attention. It’s easy to overhear things that you’re not supposed to when people don’t think anything of you.” The last words are sad, but she shrugs like it’s no big deal.

“They should’ve known better than to underestimate you.” I find myself speaking before I’ve had a chance to moderate what I’m saying. I want to kick myself for letting Suzie through that chink in my armor.

“Thanks, Aimee. That means a lot coming from you.” Her shoulders relax and it seems like a weight has been taken off of her.

“I know how hard it must have been for you to come here.” I take a few steps towards her and she looks at me somewhat afraid, as if it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that I might try to hit her. “Thank you.” I hold out my hand for her to shake, surprising myself. I might be kicking myself for this later if Suzie disappoints me again. But the truth is, I don’t have a whole lot of other options. Either I believe Suzie and give her a chance to redeem herself, or I don’t and I’m right back to where I started with no real clue of how to get to the Angels.

Suzie hesitates for a split second before taking my hand, as if she’s worried it might be a trick. We shake, and I notice how thin her hand is. It feels like, if I squeezed her too hard, it might be liable to break.

“I’m sorry for what they did to you,” I tell her, looking in her eyes and wondering if I would have been stronger if I’d been in her position, or if I would have fallen just like she did.

“I’ll be fine. I land on my feet.” Suzie shrugs, brushing off my words, but I can tell from the sheen in her eyes that they’ve affected her. She drops my hand and steps away, but she seems lighter than when she’d arrived, like she’d managed to get rid of something just by taking my hand. “I should go,” she repeats, and this time her legs follow her mouth and she starts to edge away from me, as if she’s afraid of making any sudden moves that might change my mind about her. “When I find out about the next drop-off, I’ll be in touch. You’ll need to be ready.”

“Don’t worry, I will be,” I assure her, unconsciously weighing the packet of drugs in my hand.

Suzie just nods, turns around, and walks away from me. I’m sure it isn’t my imagination but she seems to walk a little straighter, stand a little taller, than she did before. I wonder if she’ll be able to keep it together and stay clean. I’ve never experienced addiction—it’s just not in my nature—but I can see how easy it would be to slip down that road. If I hadn’t had my mom to look after when my dad died, then I might not have stayed on the straight and narrow. The amount of addiction, be it alcohol or drugs, that goes on in Painted Rock is testament to how hard things have been for this town.

Suddenly, I don’t feel like I can judge Suzie for what she’s done. It was one of my dad’s favorite sayings—that you shouldn’t judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Or, I suppose in this case, her high heeled wedges. Yet again, my dad was right. He usually was.