Equilibrium (Marauders #4.5) (7 page)

After a while, they stopped trying to keep me awake. No matter how much fun they had, they couldn’t keep going with the same enthusiasm, I assumed. The doctors had told me later that my brain was probably shutting down my body to spare me.

I did have a few memories of being found by the Marauders, though. I remembered Bull’s voice, and how I started to cry in relief. I remembered my Dad drying off my face, and how I’d felt a blanket covering me. I’d held on so hard to that damn blanket because it was the first time in hours I’d had some kind of privacy. It had made me feel like a human being again.

And I did remembered Roach being there, which meant he’d seen me, possibly before someone had the decency to cover me with the blanket.

Neither of us had ever mentioned it, that he’d been there, but it felt like this might be the right time.

Before I managed to bring it up, though, we were interrupted by Mom—who asked Roach if he wanted to have dinner with us—and the moment passed.

~oOo~

Roach

The previous night at The Booty Bank had been unusually eventful. Most customers knew who owned the club, and they didn’t try shit. A truck driver had apparently missed that information and got handsy with one of the girls in a way she hadn’t appreciated. When he was told to keep his fucking hands to himself, he hadn’t taken it too well. Roach had manage to keep his calm until the big fuck started yelling about how he’d paid good money and could do whatever the fuck he wanted. Roach had a huge problem with men who thought that money gave them
the right
to another person’s body in a way that caused the owner of said body discomfort.

It had gotten out of hand quickly, and the fat fuck had landed a punch on Roach before Roach had managed to take him out. Tired, and with a splitting headache, he’d stumbled into his dorm room once his shift was done, and fell asleep there.

The side of his face was still hurting when he woke up, but it wasn’t worse than what a few painkillers would take care of it. After a shower, he grabbed painkillers and went out to get some coffee to swallow them down. The caffeine would kick-start the effect.

Eliza was sitting by the bar, and she smiled when she saw him.

“Morning, Princess,” he said and sat down next to her. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. Sisco said you’d spent the night here.”

“Should’ve just banged on my door.” He poured himself a coffee and swallowed down the pills.

“I didn’t know if you had company.”

“Ah. I didn’t, but…” On occasion he did, and Eliza seemed to know what it was he didn’t say out loud.

“I know. I’ll just wait here,” she smiled. “What happened to your face?”

“A too eager customer who didn’t understand the concept of ‘no touching.’”

“It’s not a very hard concept to grasp.”

“One would think so.” He poured another cup. “Have you had breakfast?”

“Would you believe me if I said yes?” she asked, and her smile was growing.

Since that first time at the diner, she hadn’t tried to fake eat in front of him again. They never really talked about it, but they both knew he kept a slight eye on it even if he never said anything. He wasn’t about to make her eat, and he wasn’t nagging either, but at least she tried when she was with him, so he kept taking her to diners and cafés. So far she wasn’t complaining. He suspected it was easier for her to eat when she didn’t feel forced.

“Wanna have breakfast in Tucson?” he asked.

“What’s in Tucson?”

“It’s not Greenville,” he answered and leaned his head against the bar. “I just wanna get out of here for a while. It feels too small today.”

He didn’t mind Greenville, it was pretty okay, but sometimes the lack of people and high rises made his skin crawl, and he had a feeling this was one of those days. Tucson wasn’t New York, but at least it wasn’t Greenville, and those days it was the only requirement he had. To be somewhere not Greenville.

“Why not Phoenix?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just felt like Tucson today.”

“Can we ride?”

He turned his head and looked at her. “You’d ride with me?”

“Yeah,” she smiled. “I’d ride with you. I like riding.”

“Get your helmet.”

She nodded and took off.

Roach wasn’t that experienced with having passengers, but he’d done it, and he knew Eliza was a very experienced passenger. The drive time was just over an hour. If he’d been alone he would’ve been able to shave off quite a lot of that, but he would take it easier with Eliza behind him.

Eliza met him outside by his bike.

“Did you tell Mel or Brick we’re leaving?”

“Yes.”

He started his bike, and she climbed up behind him. She definitely knew how to ride bitch, and even though he never forgot she was behind him, he soon picked up speed and enjoyed the ride. By the time they reached Tucson, the headache was gone, and both he and Eliza had silly smiles on their lips.

“I love riding,” she said as soon as he’d turned off the bike. “Mac was going to teach me to ride myself, but Mom threw a fit. I might do it now, though.”

“You’re eighteen. Why not?”

“I’m an eighteen-year-old with a job my dad gave me, and I live at home. The smart thing is to do what my parents tell me. At least until I graduate from high school.”

He laughed and got off the bike, too. “Yeah. Stay away from the bikes a while longer.”

She ordered a cheese omelet, and about two thirds of it was still on the plate when she pushed it to the side and had her second cup of coffee.

“The plan was that I’d go back to school this fall,” she said.

“But?” he asked and then pointed at the plate. “Are you eating that?”

She shook her head and shoved the plate in his direction.

“It’s a bit stressful. You know, when you say, ‘I’ll go back next year,’ a year sounds so long. But then it’s sneaking up on you, and you realize that it’s almost the end of the year.”

“You’re not sure if you can do it?”

“That. Or I just like this sitting on my ass and doing nothing too much. You know.” She shrugged, and then she started singing about being busy doing nothing.

“Rihanna?” he asked. Eliza really liked her, and Roach hadn’t been able to figure out why.

“It’s Ace Wilder.”

“Never heard of, and I don’t wanna know. You have a crappy taste in music.”

“Do not!”

“Anyway,” he said, determined to not get into another discussion about her shitty music taste. “You’re not just sitting on your ass. You’re getting better.”

“Honestly, the idea of sitting on my ass for yet another year is freaking me out, too.”

“That’s promising.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely,” he said. “You feel the need to move on. Even if it’s not the dominant feeling right now, at least you got it in you. That’s a good thing.”

“If you say so.”

It could’ve sounded dismissive when she said it, but it didn’t. It sounded more as if she had mentally already moved on from the discussion they were having. She did that sometimes. Usually when they touched upon the rapes, but at other times, too.

Just a few days earlier, on the deck at her parents’ house, she’d opened up, and he knew it would come now and then, when she felt secure and comfortable. The first time was the hardest. He’d just reflected on how it wasn’t likely that she’d do it when they were in public when it happened again. And it took him some time to reel back his thoughts to be able to understand what she was talking about. The night when they found her.

“Weren’t you?” she asked, but he’d missed the beginning of her question.

“What?” he asked.

“You were there when they found me.”

“Yes,” he said.

There was no fucking way he’d ever forget that sight or anything that had happened during the night that followed. The men who’d been in the house where they found Eliza had been gathered, gagged, and tied up—the ones still alive. They’d been taken to a warehouse, and Bull had gotten to work. While they’d chained them up around the walls, Bull had explained that the honor of killing them was Brick’s, but Brick had told him to prepare them. After taking off his clothes down to his underwear and putting on an overall, Bull had gone to work. Halfway in, he’d gotten a call. The only thing he’d said was ‘I understand,’ and then he kept going. For a while after that, Roach had been worried Bull would accidentally kill one or several of the men, but he hadn’t. And then, sometime around dawn, Brick had arrived. Roach had been relieved that it was about to end, but instead of killing them, Brick had placed a chair at the center of the room, lit a smoke, and simply sat there and watched them die. Amazingly, the look on Brick’s face had actually been the scariest thing of the whole night.

“When you saw me then, did you think… I could come back? I mean, have you seen it… like that?”

“Yes I’ve seen it like that, and… I’m not sure I thought about it right then. It was more about having found you.” He stopped and looked at her. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

She nodded.

“Then you keep looking at me. I need to see you to know how you’re reacting, okay?”

Another nod, and she kept her eyes on his.

“I’ve seen worse. Maybe not a lot worse, but that’s rarely what matters. I’ve seen people who’ve looked pretty okay, and they still haven’t been able to deal with it. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I think so.”

“That in the long run, it’s not about how bad it was, but how you deal with it. Or even that you deal with it, and you are.”

She averted her eyes, and he let her think on it. He had a feeling she was done for the day, but he was wrong. It didn’t take her long to look at him again.

“Is that what happened to your sister?” she asked, and Roach didn’t know what to say. Eliza shook her head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Yes, that’s what happened,” he said. “She gave up, and I didn’t do anything about it.”

“Not much to do when someone gives up,” Eliza said with a shrug of her shoulders. Roach had heard the same thing so many times, that there’s no helping those who didn’t want to be helped, and he wasn’t sure he believed that. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

“Okay.” She smiled.

“Still hooked on guns?” he asked her.

“Um… It’s really the shooting I like.”

“But you do know gun safety and cleaning guns?”

“Sure.”

“Wanna help me clean guns this weekend?”

She stared at him, and then she started laughing. “Told you they’d see you as a prospect if you started cleaning in the clubhouse. He put you on gun cleaning duty.”

“Actually,” Roach smiled. “I asked for it. Thought you’d like it.”

~oOo~

Mel

Mel had been going to the window every time she heard a bike approach. Given that she was at a damn biker club she’d gotten a proper workout that day.

“By the window again?” Brick asked with a laugh when he came into her office. “She’s fine.”

“I don’t like it when she rides with people I don’t know, and she touched him.” Mel turned around and looked at him. “Do you trust him with her?”

“I trust her,” Brick answered. “And whatever he’s doing is working. Don’t worry so much.”

But Mel worried. She’d bloody worried since the day that girl was born, and she would continue to worry. She wanted to trust Eliza just like she used to, but it was hard. If this was because Eliza was different or because of what had happened, she didn’t know.

After what happened, they’d talked to counselors, as a family, her and Brick as a couple, and individually. For them as parents it was a lot about how to behave when they were with Eliza, which Mel understood perfectly well was necessary, but she’d found it hard to act in ‘the right’ way while her whole goddamn world was falling apart around her. She’d tried to pick up the most important parts and keep those in mind, but she was so scared. Not only about saying or doing the wrong thing but also about not being able to cope. The counselor had told Mel it was a mourning process for her, too, but when the hell was she supposed to mourn? It wasn’t that fucking easy to mourn the loss of a person who was still alive. Not without feeling extremely selfish.

So she didn’t, and now, when Eliza was getting better, Mel was apparently having her own mental breakdown.

“Hey,” Brick said and came up behind her. She felt his arms around her waist, and then his mouth was on her neck. “She’s a strong girl, she got it from us both. And she’s smart. Even at her worst, she knew how to read people. Also, Roach has a pretty good idea of what I’ll do if he hurts her in any way.”

“Okay,” Mel said and turned around. She put her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss. “I love you.”

“How much?”

He hardly ever asked that, so she glared at him. “What are you after, Brick Baxter?”