Hunter: MC Romance (Hell Reapers MC Book 1) (17 page)

You can’t be with Hunter. There’s just no way that it could work. Some invisible hand clutched at my heart, cursing me with some hurt that I just couldn’t shake. Perhaps if I wrote the article about the Hell Reapers in such a way, that they didn’t have to be portrayed as criminals, maybe that would work. I chewed on the thought

32…33. No, that’s not what Gates wants I’m sure of it. He’d never go for an angle that didn’t appeal to the story that
he
wanted to tell, if what I wrote was anything less than damning for them – he would surely have me fall on the sword.

I can’t afford to lose my job. Can’t afford to not write this paper.

I finally reached my mother’s room and I peeked inside to see her laying down in her bed, covered up and reading one of her favorite books
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. Opening the door and stepping inside, I smiled at her, “Hey mom.” I could make out the steady rhythm of beeps coming from her machine, the IV hooked up to her arm.

Mom whipped her head over to look at me and her lips curled tightly with happiness, “Jessica,” she drawled. “I’m so glad to see you, my Blue Jay.” It was still painful to see her without her hair that she loved so much, where once was tangles of wild orange, only the baldness of her head remained.

“I missed you,” I confessed in a low tone as the door shut behind me and I stepped over to her bedside. “Still reading it eh?” I pointed with my chin at her book.

She looked down almost as if she had forgotten what was there, “Oh, Dorian? Yes,” she chuckled, “you know me, stubborn and always going back to the one’s that I love. I never could get into those books that you tried to persuade me into reading.”

“Couldn’t convince you the sky was blue even if I pulled it down on top of you,” I grabbed a chair and scooted it over, planting my butt down. “Guess I don’t get my stubborn streak from dad, huh?” Better still that I didn’t inherit his alcoholism.

“Not even a little, my sweet Blue Jay,” her smile melted me at my core. Every bone in my body lit up with this great mix of pain and joy, my heart swelling just being around her. She’d called me Blue Jay ever since I was just a young thing; used to talk to the birds when we went on our camping trips in Tallulah, Georgia. Used to always without failure spot those perfect creatures that I’d swear, when I was a kid at least, were called ‘boo jay’. Guess it was something she couldn’t forget either.

Momma Beatrice cleared her throat, “I hate to ask you this—“

“No no,” I insisted, “you don’t have to hate to ask me anything. Uh besides, when I push something from
my
womb I fully expect you to be the grandma that backs me on having them be my exclusive and eternal minion,” I grinned.

Mom shook her head, but I could tell she liked the idea of being a grandma. “Could you fetch me a glass of water?”

“Of course mom,” I lifted myself from the chair, grabbed her foam cup and carried myself all the way to the water fountain, taking from it a nice, cold sip and making my way back. The door closed behind me again and I handed her the cup.

“Thank you,” she said, always one for manners. Taking the cup from me, her leathery hands shook just a tad. She took a sip of her water, “yes your father really was the patient one of the family,” she set the cup on her nightstand. “Always, always putting up with the things that I would do and say. You know I tried to make sure you never heard me curse,” she gave me a wry look, those crinkled golden eyes full of pride and yet, so too of shame. “Cursed enough for the both of us, I suppose.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I said, “and yes, you did your best. You always did your best. But I had ears, mom. I heard your sailor of a mouth. Dad had one too.”

She laughed at that. What she didn’t know was that these ears of mine, so long accustomed to her tones, picked up on so much more than what she wanted me to see and hear. I could hear the pain in her voice, could make out the fear that gripped her; the regret that hung around her neck like a special burden that only she could hold witness to.

My eyebrows went up when I remembered some of the other things that I’d heard throughout the years of living in the household of Ives.

“What?” She asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Oh, Jessica,” she said, “nothing is always the furthest thing from it.”

“It’s just,” I started, and then chuckled to myself, balling my hands up against my thighs. “I remember hearing a
lot
of things. Like how you guys used to fight.”

She grumbled something low and nodded. “We did. Couples fight, sweetheart. You can fit together in every way and still want to rip each other’s throat clean off. Your dad mostly just did it to my clothes,” she shrugged.

“Oh,
mom
,” I closed my eyes and shook my head, wanting to throw my head into a bucket of bleach. “I don’t want to hear that.”

“Oh please,” she said, “like you said. You were a kid but you had ears!”

“Yeah well I can also choose not to listen!”

“Bullshit!” She argued, and we found each other wrapped up in our own apparent joy.

I didn’t want to lose her. Didn’t want these to be the last conversations that we would ever have. The anger found me again, the sorrow biting at my chest and sucking the energy right from my bones. Couldn’t let this be any longer, what kind of daughter am I? Unable to keep my mother in this world, the one that brought me into it.

“Jessica?” She asked, noticing that something was wrong. It was just too hard to come to terms with what’d happened to her. I remembered how she was; how she and dad were back in the day. Wearing her milk-white shorts with her hands firmly planted on her hip – the sun striking her hair that made it look like captured fire.

“Sorry just, dozing off or somethin’ I guess.” But I wasn’t. I could feel the strings of my soul tightening, being pulled taut.

“Oh and now I’m boring?” She pretended to be hugely offended.

“Did Bernstein get back to you?” I asked.

She gestured no.

“Damn him, how many times did you call?”

“Tried six times at least the past few days. He won’t pick up.”

“This is such bullshit that they won’t cover you all the way. You’ve never missed a payment and you’ve
never
been
god. Damn. SICK.
” The last word came out in a rage and I threw my arms out in anger.

“Jessica—“

“No!” I shot out of my chair and immediately felt overcome with a dizzy sensation, a sickly warm feeling spreading through my body like an unstoppable disease.

I couldn’t even pretend to imagine how
she
felt. “It’s not right, mom.”

“I’m not saying it is but you need to keep your voice down.”

“I know,” I sighed, rubbing at the temples of my head now – I almost didn’t notice the stinging as I pinched away a warm tear. I sniffled and drew in as big a breath as I could. “I’m just tired of it,” I wasn’t looking at her anymore, maybe it was too painful to do so. “I’m tired of it, I’m so damn
tired
of it I just can’t do this anymore – I just can’t have you here dying and wasting away.” Pacing became my newest friend. “Even at only twenty percent of the final bill it’s more than I could make in
years
of work, even with what I’m doing now it only
might
be just enough to have them start your treatment. And probably only towards the end of the year.”

Beatrice froze in her sick bed. We’d been fighters all of our lives, but fighting something you couldn’t touch or see or smell? Fighting something inside of you, there was nothing more impossible. She swallowed hard, “What are you doing?” She asked weakly and I swore that I could hear the smallest ray of hope. “It’s nothing I wouldn’t want you doing…is it?”

“No,” I snorted, “it’s nothing bad per se. I was offered a special project at the paper.”

“I always told you that you had talent, Jessica.”

“It’s not that,” I tried to brush the compliment off. I’d written a lot in college and DJ’d on the side, though in those days I was more about partying than worrying about earning a serious income. “The girl that was assigned the case got strep or something,” I said, “and I think my boss picked me because I’m a bit of a wild card, more so than for my actual writing merit.” I didn’t want to tell her that the status of her health definitely had a role to play in it.

“I see. What is it?”

I sidled back to my chair and sat down, trying to push away the draining moss that wrapped itself around me. “I’m tasked with the great duty of having to investigate a gang,” a club, I mentally corrected, “of bikers. Supposed to go into detail about how they’re dealing drugs and killing people and whatever other kind of dirt they might be into. I’m only certain that they’re pushing drugs right now,” I blabbed. “The pay’s really, really good though,” and the men are walking and breathing sex incarnate, of course.

“That sounds dangerous, Blue Jay. How’re you going to stay safe?” Her voice was thick with concern.

“Please mom,” I whined, “you know I can handle myself. Do you think I just walked up to these guys and announced I was here to screw them over?” That’s what I was doing, too. They’d fall if I kept digging and writing.

That vicious and cruel knife of hurt plunged itself deeper.

“You shouldn’t underestimate them,” Mom said, and then cleared her throat. She picked up her cup and drank deeply from it. “Sorry,” she needlessly apologize – I gestured that it wasn’t a problem. “People that break the law like you’re suggesting they do, they’re a different breed honey.” Mom sat the cup back down and clutched at her blanket, the book she was reading tumbling to her side. “It’s not worth getting hurt over, or worse.”

“It is,” I argued through grit teeth. “For you it always will be.”

“I’m not going to bury my daughter,” she whispered, her lip trembling almost imperceptibly. “Even if I wouldn’t be able to. I’m not going to bury you.”

“You won’t, momma,” I pleaded, getting up from my chair and moving over to her, leaning in and hugging her tightly.

She locked her arms around me and buried her face against my shoulder and neck. I’d do anything to take her pain away.

Even if it cost me the man that made my heart soar.

Chapter 16

Jessica

Opening up the fresh bag of dog food, I poured the content of the stupidly heavy bag into my large plastic bin that I’d gotten years ago from a yard sale. Barristan sat patiently on his hind end beside me, his tail wagging up a little storm; a thoughtful rumble rolling from the dog’s chest. He always tended to do that. Kind of just grumble without opening his maw.

But I found it cute, and it was very much decidedly his thing. It helped to make him, him. “Okay buddy,” I said in sing-song, “it’s dinner time.” I grabbed the red scooper and plunged it into the sea of wood colored pellets, and then brought it over to his metallic bowl, which loosed a hundred tiny rings for every drop of food.

Barristan swaggered his way over to the dish and dutifully looked up towards me with those thankful brown eyes; they still reminded me of when he was just a puppy. The long-haired retriever dipped his head down to the bowl and started chowing down, his tail wagging dying down considerably – though it still thwacked my leg.

I gave the boy a couple of pats and strokes against the length of his back before heading over to the fridge, my sore and impatient muscles flaring up in pain once again. Pain was a strange thing like that. You get used to it, comfortable with it almost – but when you rest and find peace, when you stop thinking about it for long enough, it all comes roaring back at the slightest remembrance.

Staring at the handle of the fridge, I must have stood there for several minutes just spacing out. Focusing on my breathing, focusing on the constricting pains in my legs and the hurt dwelling deep in my heart – fighting off the crawling repulsion that the tiniest flicker of Jerry brought me.

Be strong. You
are
strong. I pushed out a long breath through my nostrils and then opened the fridge, grabbing the half gallon of milk and unscrewing the cap. I brought it to my nose and sniffed for cautions sake, even though I knew that I’d just bought it less than a week ago.

Good thing there was nobody around to judge. I brought the mouth of the opening to my lips and tilted my head back, spending a few seconds drinking it right out of the container.

After having my fill I wiped my mouth with a paper towel and discarded it into the trash, moving past Barristan who was still going to town on that late dinner. I brought my feet up to the wall and started undoing the laces, taking off my boots and tossing them with one hand sloppily towards the door.

One knock, from my boot hitting the wall. Then a second.

…And then a third. My eyebrows furrowed hard and I craned my head towards where I tossed the boots, and when I heard the knocking sound again – I honed in on my door. Just who the hell was that and why did they have the audacity to provoke me before I had the chance to plant my ass down and rest? I huffed to myself and announced aloud that I was going to the door.

The knocks just came louder, and the pulsing pain flanking either side of my head pounded in rhythm with it. “I said I’m coming!” I repeated myself and practically glided to the door, taking a peek through the seeing hole.