Welcome to Sugartown (19 page)

“
Come on,
Moose. I just killed a brother for you.” His voice catches on that
last word and I can see him trembling as the truth in his words
sink in. “I just killed my VP for you.”

“
And I spent
three years in prison for
you
, now we’re even.”

“
What are you
gonna do, Moose? Shoot me?”

“
I’d rather
not, but I don’t see another way around it.”

“
I won’t
breathe a word, brother, I swear it.”

“
Don’t know
if I’m willing to take that risk, Kick.”

“
Come on,
man, I just killed our fucking VP—”

“
Your
VP. I never made patch on account of me being
behind bars.”

“
You really
think I’m gonna rat you out? If it gets out that I killed a brother
me and everyone I’ve ever met is as good as fucking
dead.”

“
You gonna
run instead?”

“
You gonna
let me?”

I shake my
head. “You run and they’re gonna know you had something to do with
it. The way I see it, you got only one option. Bandidos have a
chapter in Byron Bay. Fake an ambush.”

“
There’ll be
retaliation.”

“
Not my
problem.”

“
You’ll have
to knock me around a little, otherwise they’d never believe
it.”

“
Oh, I’ll
knock you around, alright. It’d be my pleasure.”

After
checking on Ana—who is still shaken enough to let me help her get
dressed and hold her in my arms for a moment before shrugging out
of my grip and falling to her hands and knees to throw up—Kick and
I work quickly to make the scene look like a set-up.

When it comes
time to rough him up, I can feel Ana watching me like a hawk. I
hate the fact that she’s seen what she has tonight. I hate that I
completely lost control around her and gunned down a man not three
feet from her side. But, most of all, I hate that she’s seen this
side of me—the side that proves my degeneracy. I also hate that
another man has had his fingers inside my woman, and that if I
hadn’t acted quickly it could have been so, so much
worse.

I turn toward
her. She’s studying me like I’m someone she doesn’t know, which I
guess is partly true, but still, her eyes volley back and forth
between Kick and I like she’s waiting for another fight to break
out. I know that isn’t the case. Kick is dead unless we do this,
and he knows it, too. “Baby girl, look away.”

I slam my
fist into the side of Kick’s face while his attention is still on
her. He rocks back on his heels, but I don’t allow him time to
recover. I beat him again and again until he lies motionless on the
ground. I’m pretty sure I’ve broken his nose, fractured his
cheekbone and cracked a few of his ribs, and while I may have
relished that first punch as if it would give me back the three
years I spent inside after taking the rap for him, I didn’t revel
in any of the rest of it.

At one time,
Kick had been my only real friend. A part of me missed him. A part
of me resented him, but no part of me wanted to do him grievous
bodily harm. He had, after all, killed a brother for me, and if the
club ever found out what had really gone down here, they’d make him
an example. And let me tell you, you don’t ever wanna be the
example. You’d pray for the devil himself to take you before the
Angels had their way with you.

Chapter Sixteen

Ana

The nurse
gives me an uneasy smile as she leaves the room with a promise to
return with more bandages. All our other wounds have been tended
to. My fractured forearm would be in a cast for another six
weeks,
and the cuts on both our foreheads
had only been superficial, but the gravel rash on my arm was
bleeding like crazy. My jacket had to be cut away because blood had
dried and fused my skin to the leather, and I wore a paper hospital
gown while the nurse pried the remaining bits of gravel and debris
from my skin.

Elijah grabs
my hand and squeezes as he mutters for the millionth time since
getting off the bike in front of the hospital “I’m so sorry,
baby.”

I squeeze his
hand back, lifelessly—on account of the painkillers, or the fact
that something has broken inside me tonight, I’m not sure. I don’t
say anything in return. I don’t want to, and I don’t have time,
because the nurse comes back wielding bandages, and begins sluicing
more fluid over the wound, and extracting more pieces of road from
my arm.

Elijah—no,
Ethan,
because despite the insanity of what happened on
that road, I hadn’t missed the fact that they’d called him that,
several times—rises from his seat beside me and says, “I’m just
gonna go make a phone call, tell your folks we’re okay.”

He was
calling my dad?
Was he completely freaking
nuts?
I give him
a horrified look, at least I think it was horrified. The
Endone the nurse had given me probably makes me look like a
schizophrenic koala bear. Elijah/Ethan/Moose shoots me a meaningful
look, smiles at the nurse and clasps my face in his hands. I don’t
have time to react, but I think I probably would have pulled away
if it weren’t for the drugs clouding my brain. “You must have hit
your head harder than you thought, baby girl.”

I think he’s
angry I’m putting a chink in the armour of his precious ruse. When
we’d hobbled into the emergency room he’d sprung into this story of
how we’d been out for a carefree night ride and hit a pothole and
come off the bike. He’d made no mention of being run off the road
by a group of vicious biker fucks who’d tried to rape me and
torture him. He made no mention of the fact that he’d blown a man’s
head off and beat another within an inch of his life. The way the
lies had rolled off his tongue had made me sick because he was so
damn good at it. He’d been lying a long time, it seemed.

As he stares
at me, waiting for his words to sink in, I suddenly remember the
phone call. How stupid of me to forget. He’s not calling my dad;
he’s just calling “the club” with an anonymous tip that one of
their boys is broken and bloody and tied to a motorcycle in the
middle of nowhere. I smile and nod and play along because I know
there’s something off about him right now, as if that isn’t the
fudging understatement of the century, and I’m worried that he
might not step outside and make that phone call after all and right
now I really, really need to be away from him.

“
Be right
back,” he says to the nurse and shuts the door to my room behind
him.

Once I’m
certain he’s gone I reach out with a shaking hand and grab the
nurse’s hand. I look at her name badge and her friendly, sweet
face. “Jane, does that door have a lock on it?”

“
No, but I
can alert security if you need me to?”

I shake my
head. If Elijah can’t get to me through security he’ll likely freak
out and start thinking with his fists and, as far as I want to be
from him right now, I don’t want him going back to jail. “Do you
think we could shift rooms?”

“
Are you in
danger, Miss Belle?”

I ignore her
question and rummage through my bag for my phone. “No. I’d just
really rather not see him right now.”

“
Do you have
someone else to come and pick you up?”

I nod and
Jane places a wide sticky bandage over my arm and gently pats it
into place. “You’re all set here.”

“
Thank
you.”

“
I’ll switch
off the lights and tell him you’ve gone in for a CT scan. That’s
the most I can do without calling security.”

“
Thanks.”

I hit the
call button on my phone and after three rings she picks up,
sounding breathless. “You had better be calling me with details or
the next time I see you I’m going to club you over the head with my
battery-operated friend here.”

“
Holly, I
need you to come pick me up.”

We pull out
from the parking lot and head toward the town’s exit. The same road
I travelled on with Elijah just a few hours ago.
Funny how so much can change in such a short
amount of time.
After all my paperwork was
signed and I was given the hospital’s okay to leave, Jane had snuck
both Holly and I out of the service entrance. We’d climbed into
Holly’s Peugeot and hightailed it out of there without being seen.
Or, at least, I thought we’d gone unnoticed, but if I was correct,
the headlight tailing us belonged to Elijah.

“
Okay, I
don’t want to alarm you but I think we’re being followed,” Holly
said glancing between her rear-view and my stoic face.

“
I
know.”

“
Should I
pull over? Make him grovel on his knees?”

“
Just
drive.”

“
What the
hell happened? Two hours ago you were pledging your love and
preparing to hand over your virginity with a big red bow and now
you’re avoiding him?”

“
We didn’t
have an accident.”

“
Yeah, I got
that much. What’s with the super secret squirrel act?”

“
Elijah used
to belong to the Hell’s Angels.”

For a moment
I think she’s hasn’t heard me properly but then her screech of,
“GET THE FUCK OUT!” fills the car and I want to cry, but I think
the Endone’s numbed my brain cells, too. Suddenly, all I want to do
is sleep away this nightmare and wake up healed and as far as
possible from the shit storm Elijah’s dragged me into.

“
We were
chased and sideswiped, held at gunpoint. One of them tried to rape
me.”

“
Are you
fucking kidding me? Are you alright?”

“
I wish,” I
whisper, and feel tears finally prick my eyes until I’m sobbing
again like I was on the side of that road.

“
Ana, what
should I do?” Holly asks and I almost laugh, because in the
fourteen years we’ve known one another I’ve never heard her sound
so serious and afraid.

“
Just keep
driving.”

“
You wanna go
home?”

“
No. Dad will
flip if he sees Elijah and I fighting on the front lawn with me
looking like this. Take me to your place, please?”

“
Of course.”
She looks at my shirt, the one Elijah had taken off once my jacket
had been cut away and insisted I wear home. I can almost hear the
wheels turning in her head. “You said tried? They didn’t, did
they?”

“
No. Elijah
stopped them.”

“
Of course he
did,” she mutters and then clearly, after she’s thought some more
about it she asks, “How?”

I turn and
give her a look that pretty much says, “Don’t ask” and she
doesn’t.

Elijah
follows us all the way to Sugartown. He never once tries to
overtake, or to force us to pull over by cutting us off. He drives
straight past his motel and follows us down Holly’s street all the
way to her driveway where he disappears as the automatic roller
door slides down behind Holly’s Peugeot, separating us from the
rest of the world.

“
You head on
up to my room.” Holly gives me a fragile smile. “I’ll sort him
out.”

“
Thanks,” I
say, and wipe at my tears before opening the car door and standing
on shaky legs.

Holly’s house
is newer than mine and built in a much nicer neighbourhood. It also
has a garage adjoining the house and, as I climb the stairs, I’m
thankful I don’t have to walk outside and right past him. I’m not
sure I’m strong enough to keep running from him tonight. I don’t
know what that says about me, but it’s the god’s honest truth. I’m
afraid I’d melt into a puddle the minute he placed his hands on me,
so I hurry up the stairs and duck into Holly’s bedroom where I
gently slide the window overlooking the front lawn open.

Thankfully,
Elijah had the sense to wait for one of us to come to him and
hasn’t tried banging down the front door to get to me, but he’s
certainly not quiet when he says, “Where the hell is she,
Holly?”

“
You can’t be
here.”

“
I’m not
leaving until I see she’s okay.”