As they started talking, Vera broke away from Pop’s side and slid in next to me on the couch. She put one arm around my shoulders, and as she pulled me in close, she ran her fingers gently down the side of my bruised face. “I’m sorry this happened, baby girl.”
I shook my head at her. “Where’s Trix?”
“Tommy Gun’s old lady’s got her. She was at the club, so I had her come on over to the house. Trix is fine. She’s playin’ outside.”
I nodded and started to speak, but Pop cut me off as he pulled another chair out of the kitchen.
“What’s goin’ on, Brenna? Ain’t never seen that boy hit a woman in his life. Just don’t have it in him.”
I cleared my throat. “I know. I never thought he would either.” I glanced at Grease, who stared back with no expression on his face.
My head was on Vera’s shoulder with her cheek resting on part of my hair as she spoke from above me. “They all got it in ’em. Just takes more for some than others to make it come out.”
“Yeah, I’d say this was, um…more,” I told them, bracing myself for the fallout of what I was going to reveal.
As I told the story, I started at the beginning, and I didn’t leave anything out. I told them about the night we met, how I’d wanted to stay, but I didn’t. I told them about my decision to marry Tony and the repercussions of that. Some of the story Pop and Vera had already heard, but it was all new for Grease, who had started pacing restlessly. I told them all of the things that I wished I had told Dragon. About how much I missed my son. About how after we were home from the hospital, I’d wake up at night in a cold sweat because I’d thought I could feel him moving around in my belly.
When I started speaking of Draco, I heard Vera sob once above me, but when I tried to lift my head, she just held me closer. When I told Pop how much I missed him, he cleared his throat and walked out of the room and then all the way out of the house. Eventually, he reappeared, once again stoic.
I didn’t leave anything out, even the confrontation between Dragon and me that morning. I told them everything. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to do by being so transparent.
I was so mad at Dragon. I was in shock that he’d hit me and hurt that he’d left me lying on the floor. But overwhelming all of those feelings was a knot in my stomach that reminded me how badly he was hurting. I didn’t want them mad at him. I didn’t want them looking for retribution.
I wanted them to understand all of the things that led up to this overwhelming betrayal. This wasn’t a smack because I’d looked at another man or burned dinner. He hit me because right now he was out of control, completely lost and hurting, and I was the reason. He was lashing out because it was too much to deal with. I understood it as much as I hated it.
He was like a wounded animal, and I was the hunter who’d wounded him. I didn’t know if he would ever forgive me, and that hurt worse than the betrayal of my swollen face.
If he’d wanted to hurt me, really hurt me, he could’ve. I had no illusions that if Dragon decided to beat the hell out of me, there was nothing that could have stopped him. He didn’t. He hit me once, almost in reflex, and then pulled back as if he were surprised. I’d seen the look on his face.
Even though I knew all of these things, even though I knew that there was nothing left on earth that would make him swing his arm back and bring it across my face again, I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him. That hurt worse than the thought of him never forgiving me.
I hit her. I fuckin’ hit her.
Fuck me.
When I left the house, I called Casper to come keep an eye on things. As furious as I was, I wasn’t about to leave Brenna unprotected. Unprotected—what a fucking joke. I wasn’t any better than her douche bag of an ex-husband. I’d seen the look on her face.
When I’d opened up Brenna’s box of important papers, I thought I’d just grab Trix’s birth certificate and head over to the club to meet with our lawyer. The suit we did business with was a good guy, but he didn’t usually handle custody shit. For what we were paying him though, he could hire outside help.
I was getting annoyed with the amount of shit Brenna had in the box when I finally found it, all by itself in a brown envelope. I stuffed everything back in the box and carried the certificate into the kitchen. I wanted some fucking coffee, but I couldn’t look away from Anthony fuckin’ Richards’s name on my child’s birth certificate. It burned in my gut that Brenna had allowed it.
Something caught my eye, and for a second, I hadn’t understood what I was seeing. When I realized what it meant, I thought my fuckin’ knees were going to give out.
By the time Brenna woke up, I’d been sitting at the kitchen table for hours, stewing. When she ran from me, I didn’t even hesitate before I followed her. I was beyond fuckin’ crazy at that point. It all went downhill from there.
I fuckin’ lost my shit.
So, when I left her, I just rode. I didn’t have any place to be. I wasn’t headed anywhere but away from the fuckin’ mess I’d left behind. It took me a few hours before I realized that Casper wouldn’t have gone in the house. He took his lookout post pretty damn seriously, so he would’ve just camped out on the porch. I didn’t want to deal with the questions, so I just texted Casper to check on Brenna. He’d take care of her or call someone to deal with it. I couldn’t deal with anymore shit.
My son. Fuck.
I turned my phone on silent and pulled back onto the highway.
Vera and I decided that Trix shouldn’t see me, so I called her and let her know that she got to have another sleepover that night. She didn’t know what the hell was going on, and I could tell by her voice that she wanted to come home, but she couldn’t see me this way. My face was bruised, and my eyes were so swollen from crying that it was a chore just to open them. I didn’t want her to see me like that. Not again.
Pop and Grease took off not long after I got done telling my story, and they must have gone to the clubhouse because shortly after, a guy in a button-down and slacks showed up at my front door. The lawyer. The reason Dragon had been in my papers.
He was really good-looking. If I were looking for another suit-wearing breadwinner, he would’ve been at the top of my list. His hair was a sandy brown, but it was cut short, almost shaved. He had light brown eyes and sharp cheekbones, and if the whole lawyer thing didn’t work out, I figured he could probably be a salesman…or even a model. He had that look. The minute he opened his mouth, the salesman idea went out the window though; the guy was a dick. He also wasn’t what he appeared to be because when he rolled up the sleeves on his dress shirt, he had tattoos covering his arms to the wrist.
We sat down with Vera, and I signed a bunch of papers for him, agreeing to the paternity test and handing over Trix’s birth certificate. When we were almost finished, another thought occurred to me, and I jumped up from the table so quickly that my head spun. I ran into my room. I knew the rest of the paperwork I needed was in there somewhere. When I finally found it, I raced back into the kitchen where Vera and the attorney were talking quietly.
“Here, can you get this one changed, too?” I asked him, handing over Draco’s birth certificate.
“Ah, I’m not sure. I’ll see what I can do.”
This guy seemed so far out of his element. It would have been funny if he weren’t holding my life in his hands.
“Well, they were twins. It seems like if you could get Trix’s changed, it shouldn’t be hard to change Draco’s, too.”
“That may be the case, but…well, does it really matter at this point?” he asked me callously.
“Yes, it fucking matters!” I tried to get my emotions under control, but this guy was just rubbing me the wrong way. “Please just try and get it changed.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he repeated as he gathered his papers and nodded to Vera before walking out of the house.
“He’s not real friendly, but he’s kept the boys out of a hell of a lot of prisons the last five year
s,” Vera told me as she got up from the table. “He’s good. If he can’t figure it out, he’ll find someone who can. Don’t you worry, baby. This’ll be over soon.”
“Wait, only five years? I thought I recognized his name! He’s new?” I asked in alarm.
New lawyers were always on a sort of probation for as long as the club felt they needed to be. There was too much at stake to trust anyone right away, even lawyers could be bought off.
“Yeah, but his pop was the old lawyer. Wanted to retire, so Slider brought his boy in. Worked out well for everyone. You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about,” she told me as she stepped around me, looking for her purse.
I didn’t believe her, but I nodded as she got ready to leave. It was getting dark outside, and all I wanted to do was climb into my bed and pretend that the house wasn’t quiet and lonely anymore.
“Casper’s outside. Never left, poor kid. He’s probably starvin’. I’ll call ya in the mornin’, and we’ll figure out what to do with the baby. Okay?”
“Okay, thanks for coming. Give Trix a kiss for me,” I told her as I hugged her good-bye.
It had been hard to let Trix sleep somewhere else for one night, so two days was torture. I just wanted her home.
After Vera left, I quickly made Casper a sandwich and brought it out to him.
“Hey, Brenna! You didn’t have to do that. I’m fine,” he told me as I set his sandwich and potato chips in front of him.
“You’ve been here all day. You must be hungry by now,” I teased him.
It was nice that he wasn’t looking at me like I belonged in a sideshow. He took the swollen face and ratty hair in stride.
“Eh, it’s no big deal. I don’t mind.” He took a few bites of his sandwich, and we sat there in silence as the night turned darker.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come in the house earlier. I figured you would want privacy. Didn’t need me up in your face all day, so I just sat on the porch and waited for you to come out. I didn’t even think to go in the house—”
I sat there in surprise for a minute before I cut him off. “Don’t be sorry!” I blurted out. “You had no idea what I was doing in there. There’s nothing to be sorry about. I would have gotten up eventually. I was fine,” I told him, but we both knew I hadn’t been.
“Didn’t think Dragon was one of those. I’ve seen quite a lot of them, in and out of the club. Didn’t think Dragon was like that,” he told me as he finished off his food.
“He’s not. He’s…well, you heard the story earlier, right? I mean…I’m pissed as hell, but God!” I ran my hands through my messy hair. “I was going to tell him. I was. I just hadn’t figured out how to do it yet, you know? And then, the way he found out was just…it was so fucked-up. It was out of control. I should have told him before.”
“When should you have told him exactly? When your ex was showing up at the club with his fucking henchmen? Maybe when Trix was sitting with you two, eating her dinner? How about during sex—that sound like a good time to tell him? Seems to me you hadn’t had a chance to tell him yet,” he told me, sounding far more practical and clearheaded than anyone I’d talked to that day.
I stood up to go inside. “How’d you get so smart?” I asked him with a crooked smile on my face.
“Probably Yale,” he answered completely serious.
“No shit?” I asked incredulously.
He didn’t answer me, so I headed toward the front door. Right before I walked inside, I heard him say, “No shit,” under his breath.
What the hell was some kid who’d gone to Yale doing becoming a recruit for a motorcycle club in Eugene, Oregon? I asked myself this over and over again as I got into bed. It gave me something else to focus on besides my life that was currently swirling down the drain. Casper was interesting. I noticed that he was well-spoken from the first time we’d met. He also didn’t seem to have the same chip on his shoulder as the other recruits I’d seen over the years. I couldn’t figure out why he’d chosen this life when he was obviously really fucking smart. Yale. Holy hell, I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. Sure, I’d gotten into the University of Oregon with pretty good grades and average test scores, but Yale was a horse of a different color. I thought about Casper and all the different reasons he could have dropped out of school until I drifted off into a restless sleep.
I woke later that night to the covers being pulled down on the side of the bed.
Dragon was back.
I lay there, still as a statue, as he climbed in beside me just inches away. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to pretend I was sleeping and roll over close to him or drag my ass out of bed and onto the couch. Both sounded equally as good, so instead, I just stayed where I was at, waiting.
I didn’t have to wait long before he scooted toward me and burrowed down to lay his head just below my breasts, wrapping his arms around my waist. He didn’t do anything else. He didn’t try to speak; his hands didn’t roam. He just lay there, snuggled into me, like he couldn’t get close enough.
I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands. They had been up under my head when he came in, but when I’d been rolled to my back, they sort of floundered in the air above him. Should I put my hands on his shoulders? Should I refuse to touch him and keep them up by my head? His body started to shudder, and my answer was made. I pulled the tie from his hair and ran my fingers through it softly, quietly comforting both him and me. God, we were a fucked-up mess. I had no idea where we would go from here.
“I fucked up, Brenna. Shouldn’t have hit you,” he told my stomach.
“Yeah,” I whispered back.
The night was stifling around us, and I was afraid if I raised my voice, the spell would be broken, and we’d be at each other’s throats again.
“Fucked-up. I’m so fucked-up,” he told me, and his body relaxed into sleep, never moving from mine.
“Me, too,” I told him, but he didn’t hear me.
When I woke up the next morning, Dragon was gone. His side of the bed was still warm, so he had to have just left, but I was in no mood to follow him. The last couple of days had made me leery of getting out of bed at all, but I eventually got up and gathered my clothes and a towel, so I could take a quick shower. I hadn’t showered in the mess that I liked to think of as the day of reckoning, so I was getting pretty rank. I needed some shampoo and scented body wash, STAT.
When I made my way into the hallway, I could hear Dragon and Pop talking in low voices in the kitchen, and I paused outside the bathroom door, trying to hear what they were saying.
“You don’t have to do it this way, son. Duncan says he can get custody with the photos I took of Brenna when she got here. No need for you to get involved.” My pop’s voice was compelling, but Dragon brushed him off.
“Getting my name on that birth certificate one way or another. Not arguin’ about this shit anymore. Have him send the papers.”
“Yeah, I hear ya. But—”
Pop’s voice cut off when I leaned against the bathroom door, and it banged open. I’d thought it was closed when I leaned against it, and after the loud noise, I scrambled inside before they could see me. I didn’t know what was going on with Pop, but that was the second time I’d heard him trying to talk Dragon out of getting the DNA testing done. I decided I’d think about it later as I spun around and locked the door. It wouldn’t keep Dragon out if he really wanted in, but I doubted he would come barging in anyway. If his absence in bed that morning was any indication, he was as leery of me as I was of him.
I took a longer shower than I had planned on, taking the time to shave my legs and carefully wash my face before I got out. Long showers were a luxury that I hadn’t had in four years, and it was kind of nice to take my time. I eventually stopped dawdling, knowing that if I took any longer I’d look like a coward. I climbed out of the shower and got dressed in a summer dress that I’d found in the boxes Vera brought over. It was a little tight across the chest, but I thought it looked okay anyway. It was loose and fl
owing, perfect for a hot summer day. I also liked the irony of dressing up a little when my face looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The swelling on my cheekbone hadn’t gone down much, but I was pretty sure the brunt of the trauma was when I’d hit the wall. Dragon’s slap had just added the little bit of extra it took to make me look like a monster. I didn’t even try to cover it up with makeup; nothing was going to help.
When I got to the kitchen a few minutes later, I took a deep breath and tried not to look at Dragon sitting on the couch, alone, with his elbows resting on his knees. He looked how I felt, uneasy. I got my cup of coffee and turned around, leaning against the counter, to catch my breath. I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t know what to do in this situation.
When I was with Tony, the beatings were nothing like this. He liked to hit me. There was no purpose, no anger in it. He got off on it. The next day would be business as usual, and he would expect me to act like nothing happened. With Dragon, he’d hit me once. He hadn’t beaten me. He’d been angry and devastated, and the underlying reason was still stretched between us like a foul-smelling moat that I didn’t know how to cross.
He didn’t say a word to me. He just sat there, looking at the floor, like he had all day to do so. The tension in the air finally caused me to take a few steps in his direction, and when I did, his head snapped up. All at once, I saw everything he was feeling. He wasn’t angry anymore. There was no censure in his gaze, no fury in the lines of his face. The pain I saw was enough for me to take a ragged breath and another step forward, but it was the guilt in his eyes that led me to sit next to him on the couch.
When I got there, he turned toward me, and I flinched as he raised a hand to my swollen face.
“God, baby. I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and I knew that he was.
I knew he was sorry, but whether that mattered or not remained to be seen.
“I know,” I told him quietly, but I couldn’t tell him he was forgiven. I couldn’t tell him it was okay, and I was fine. I wasn’t fine.