Doc: Devil’s Nightmare MC

by Bourne, Lena

  Four weeks? How the fuck am I gonna keep my hands off Anne for four weeks? Especially if we’ll be spending it cooped up in my cabin.

  That was the first chink in my well-laid plan of sending Anne out of sight as soon as possible.

  The next one came when I called Hawk.

  I’d already convinced myself that one little false identity for Anne won’t bring the FBI down on the club, especially not if she leaves town — and even the country like she’s planning—right after she gets it.

  But Hawk didn’t pick up the phone, nor call me back.

  I even went looking for him up at Sanctuary, but, predictably, all I found out there is that they’re all still dealing with the Russians in Vegas.

  I spent the rest of the day riding the empty roads of Resolution Hill atop which Sanctuary stands and which belongs to Devil’s Nightmare MC in all but name and deed. No one comes here. If I bring Anne here, no one will find her. I’d keep her close and watch over her. She’d be safe here.

  That was the third chink in my decision to let her go and forget her.

  The sun is setting and dusk isn’t far off now. I should get back to her. Start a fire for her. See if she needs anything.

  That’s the only decision that makes any damn sense at all. Realizing that made for the fourth and final chink—the one that caused it to fall apart completely.

  8

  Anne

  I cleared up the table and washed the dishes after he left. I know he’s right about me needing to relax, but I was too restless for that. So I kept on cleaning the kitchen after I was done with the dishes, took everything out of the cupboards and washed them inside out. Then I washed all the dishes and plates, and the mountains of food cans he has stashed everywhere like he’s prepping for the apocalypse. Most of them had a film of dust on them half an inch thick, and some of them were expired.

  Once I was done cleaning the kitchen I knew two things very clearly. The first was that Matt bought this cabin to live here in peace and calm, but that dream didn’t come true for him. And the second was that I’d need at least a week to clean this place properly. My manic cleaning never solved a thing though, and it’s not doing it today. I used to spend hours and hours cleaning my house back in Seattle until everything sparkled while Benji was away. I did it because he liked it clean and would complain and hit me if it wasn’t, but also because it gave me something to do. Kept me busy. Allowed me not to think. It’s doing the opposite now.

  I can’t stop my mind from racing, memories of Benji and all the bad things he’s done to me flashing in and out of my mind with no timeline to them, until it feels like a volcano of pain and regret erupted inside me and there’s nowhere to hide from its devastation. I’m drowning, suffocating, in the mess of hurtful, horrible things I survived. I wish I didn’t have to remember them. But I do. Vividly. Painfully. Inescapably.

  The most crushing of all is my failure to leave it all behind. It’s all my fault too. Despite knowing better, I pushed myself and crashed my car right near where Benji was. Is that because we’re meant to be together no matter what? I used to believe that with all my heart in the beginning when everything was perfect. And for a long time after he started hitting me, I believed his apologies and promises that it would never happen again, because I so very much wanted to get back to that loving, perfect place where our relationship started.

  Maybe we still can return there?

  As soon as that thought popped into my brain, I walked out of the cabin and into the woods, with no idea where I was going, just a burning wish to get outside, to be free under the clear sky, breathing the clean air, released from the walls closing in on me—those around me and the ones inside my head.

  Of course, I can’t return to Benji. He’ll never change. Our perfect romance was a lie and I nearly died living it. He’s a monster. A monster that’ll end up killing me if I let him.

  I used to take a lot of walks in Seattle too. Sometimes I ran, but I always returned to the house, to the home that was my nightmare, until I believed it was the only thing I could do. It took me years to shake that belief, years of hitting bottom until I finally reached the lowest level of it and knew it couldn’t go on. Why is that epiphany so damn faded right now?

  I know I need to get far away from Benji. I know it’s the only way I can live again. The only way to get my mind and my life back.

  So why is the call to get in touch with him so loud?

  Why do I miss him?

  Why doesn’t the voice in my head align with the truth I know?

  He took something from me. More than one thing. He took my trust and my strength and a huge chunk of my soul. Took them and never gave them back. I need him to give those things back. He’s the only one who can. I won’t have them back until he does.

  Stupid thinking! But no amount of convincing myself of this makes my heart believe it. Benji has the real Anne locked away somewhere. He’s the one who stole her and the only one who can give her back.

  I walked so the dirt road leading up to the cabin was always in my sight because these woods are vast, and I have no phone or GPS to help guide me back if I get lost.

  It was a struggle staying that sensible though, because a huge part of me wanted to get lost. Just disappear between the trees and leave all my problems behind. Because I have no idea how to solve any of them. No idea at all.

  Best if I just disappear.

  Dissipate like morning mists do once the sun rises.

  Gone like last year’s snow.

  An engine rumbling enters the void inside me where those thoughts are coming from, growing louder and louder, shaking loose the cold, icy shackles those rock-bottom thoughts wrapped around my soul, bringing life and warmth and hope back to the place where there was none of those things before. I’ve walked almost all the way to the main road, and I keep walking along it now, towards the rumbling, which grows louder with every step I take. It’s all I can hear, all there is, by the time Matt rounds the last bend in the road as I knew he would.

  Saved by Matt. Again. That’s what I’m thinking as I smile wide and wave him down.

  “What are you doing here, Anne?” he asks. “Is something wrong?”

  I appreciate the concern in his warm blue eyes, love the accent in his voice that reminds me of home, like his strong, solid presence next to me. Being near him feels like sitting by a fire lit just for me, hot and bright enough to chase away even the darkest darkness.

  “Not anymore,” I say and smile at him, tie my hair into a knot behind my head and climb on the back of his bike without being asked. I could add, Not now that you’re here, to the end of that sentence, but even in my weirdly euphoric state, I know that would be over the top.

  “You wanna go for a ride?” he asks hoarsely and kind of breathlessly.

  “I do,” I whisper and he actually groans as I wrap my arms around his waist. The fire he brings is inside me now, hot enough to melt all the ice in the world. No darkness can oppose it.

  Then the sound of the engine is loud again, drowning out everything: every thought, every memory, every emotion—missing or painful—everything that is not how light and free, yet grounded and present, I feel in this moment.

  The woman I used to be becomes more than a faded memory with every bend in the road we’re riding on. She’s not Benji’s prisoner anymore, because he’s gone. It’s safe to let her out now, safe to become her again.

  * * *

  My cheeks are still tingling from the wind of our ride, and things inside me—things that hurt so bad before I almost wandered aimlessly into the darkness of the woods—feel like they’ve been swaddled in thick bandages and now they don’t hurt anymore, they barely pulse.

  The outside world is pitch dark, but the fire is crackling merrily, we’ve just eaten, and I feel like I already have one foot in a dream.

  “It is very peaceful and serene up here,” I say, putting some emphasis in since I’m referring to the question I asked him earlier.

&n
bsp; He just murmurs something that could be assent, but should probably be taken as, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  But I do want to talk. I’ve done years and years of just thinking in silence, and it hasn’t helped much. I think maybe he’s done the same.

  “Do you ever miss home?” I ask, changing the subject to something I hope he does want to talk about.

  He shrugs and finishes off the bottle of beer he’s been cradling in his hands.

  “I sometimes do,” I tell him when I realize the shrug is all I’m gonna get. “Life was so much simpler there.”

  “Why’d you leave in the first place?” he asks, surprising me. I assumed he’d just let me talk to myself like he’s been doing until now.

  “I met a guy and he was from Seattle,” I say and grin at him, but he doesn’t return it. “It didn’t work out, but I was a nurse by then and had found my calling. Plus, after the heat and humidity of Texas, I fell in love with the rain and the cold. And home wasn’t home after Billy died.”

  He grunts and nod, and after a few minutes of silence I realize that’s all the response I’m going to get. Maybe I should’ve stayed silent too. My mind is whirring with memories of how that first serious relationship of mine went south and what I allowed to be said to me, and even done on a few occasions, before I finally ended it. My next two relationships weren’t much better. If I’d spent more time working on myself, looking for and fixing the reasons why I fall so easily for men who treat me like dirt, then maybe Benji wouldn’t have happened. He seemed so perfect in the beginning, an answer to all my prayers when it came to men, but I should’ve seen the signs. I could’ve prevented it.

  “But that was a long time ago,” I say wishing for the torrent of bad and accusatory memories to stop. “Why did you leave?”

  He tries to drink more of his beer, but the bottle is empty, so instead he just stares into the fire, his face completely frozen, until I start to think that maybe he didn’t hear my question.

  “I never really belonged there, and after I joined the Army there was no place for me back home anymore,” he says suddenly, in a coarse voice. “My father didn’t want me to join and he wasn’t a forgiving man.”

  Matt’s family owned the biggest cattle ranch in the area, and they were richer than kings, as my mother used to say.

  “Your dad wanted you to stay on the ranch,” I say, remembering bits and pieces of conversations I overheard between him and Billy when I was small. Most of those conversations were about joining the Army, and I remember Matt was very worried about his father never letting him do that.

  He nods and leans over me to toss another log on the fire. His closeness brings its own heat, of the searing kind, makes sparks fly inside me, hotter than the ones he stirred up in the fireplace.

  “My father’s plan was that my older brother Carl would take over the ranch, and I’d become a vet so I could look after the animals,” he says. “I’m pretty sure he made that plan right after I was born, and he laid it out for us every chance he got. He wouldn’t hear any argument from me. He had it all figured out and he wasn’t used to not getting his way, if you know what I mean. But me, I wanted to be a soldier and do some damn good in the world, not spend my life worrying about horses and cows. Dusty, hot Sunnyvale was always too small for me.”

  “Joining the Army was all Billy would talk about since I can remember,” I say, smiling wistfully at my brother’s enthusiasm on the subject.

  “Him and me both,” Matt says, and chuckles in a soft way like he’s remembering it fondly too. “I held out for a couple of days after he joined though, tried to forget the dream and go to college to do what my father wanted. But I couldn’t do it, so I said fuck it and joined too. My father was livid and would’ve disowned me on the spot, if it weren’t for the patriotic tendencies of where we’re from. He did it in private a couple of years later, when I refused to leave the army and come back home after my first tour.”

  “Billy died during that tour,” I murmur.

  He takes my hand and looks me straight in the eyes. Flames are dancing in them and they’re not all just a reflection from the fireplace. “I did all I knew how to save him, but that damn grenade fragment nicked his femoral artery and nothing was working. He bled out in my arms. A stupid, stupid injury to die from. I was only a medic back then, but afterwards I became a doctor and spent my whole life doing what I could to save others. I want you to know that. I want you to know I did everything I could to save your brother, and that he wasn’t alone when he died. I told your mother and father this back then, but you were too young.”

  I lay my hand over his on mine. “They told me, and we were all very grateful to you for it. Billy’s was a senseless death. What’s helped me was knowing he died doing what he loved.”

  He scoffs. “That’s a nice way of looking at it. But he died too soon. He never got the chance to live the life he dreamed about.”

  His eyes were hard with anger, flashing even, as he said it, but they grow much more liquid as they meet mine.

  “I’m glad you found your peace with it,” he mutters.

  “I found a way to go on,” I say. “Just as you did. But I understand, you two were very close, much closer than he and I were.”

  “He was like a brother to me,” he says. “And I saved a lot of lives after he died, but none of it was ever enough to erase failing to save Billy. Maybe helping you will be.”

  I squeeze his hand, and don’t let go. “Is that what you’re doing now? Saving me so you can atone for not saving Billy?”

  He nods, a bare shadow of a grin on his lips. “I wish it were that easy, but yeah, you could say that. How am I doing so far?”

  His face is just a couple of inches from mine, his eyes still burning with flames hotter and more beautiful than any fire, and his hand is so solid and warm in mine—like a crutch, like something that will always be there to support me.

  “You’re doing good.” I lean in and kiss him.

  He tastes like the fire, like the wildness and birdsong I listened to on my walk, like the life-waking rumbling and vibrations of his bike we rode earlier. My entire body fills with that same rumbling as he kisses me back, shaking things deep inside me back to life. It’s not just noise and vibrations, it’s pure healing, making the swaddling bandages on my hurts unnecessary and redundant, unneeded. This right here is an answer to my prayers. He is. And a tiny little voice deep in my brain is saying I think this about pretty much every guy I fall for, but it sounds dumb and inconsequential, and not convincing at all. Matt is different. And I want him to keep kissing me the way I’ve never wanted anyone to kiss me.

  His fingers are in my hair, his tongue is playing with mine, and his lips are softer than clear water from a virgin spring deep in the forest.

  I wish this kiss would last for all eternity.

  But it doesn’t.

  He pulls away abruptly and gets up fast like he’s ready to run.

  “You should get some sleep now,” he says and walks out of the cabin, leaving me questioning whether I dreamed the kiss and all that came with it.

  But my lips are tingling from the kiss, and my insides are still vibrating from the energy that passed between us, the healing energy we created. It felt like a dream, but it was real. It was what is meant to be.

  So why is he gone?

  9

  Doc

  That kiss she gave me carried all the peace, calm and silence, I’ve craved for decades, but never found. For the few moments it gave me all I ever wanted, but I bolted like a spooked horse anyway. Because it’s just an illusion, it has to be. A kiss can’t do all that. The only reason I’m thinking it, is because of how horny having her on the back on my bike made me.

  Sex was the only thing on my mind when we returned to the cabin, and it was torture trying to turn off the desire her arms around my waist, her breasts pressed against my back, and her soft thighs around my hips, woke. But I did it. Talking about Billy helped. I won’t use her jus
t to satisfy my horny desire. She deserves more than that.

  Now that I’m alone in the dark woods, where I’ve sought but never found peace or calm, the only thing that makes complete sense is that kissing her made both of those a reality. All the reasons why I shouldn’t go back to her and continue where we left off, are no longer solid, no longer as concrete and immovable as they were before I tasted her lips.

  The deeper I go into the dark forest, the clearer my mind becomes.

  These woods and this cabin have finally provided the peace and silence I so desperately searched for all these years. I ran from it. But I shouldn’t have.

  * * *

  Anne

  I ran after him, but I was too late to catch him, the darkness had already swallowed him by the time I reached the porch railing. He didn’t take his bike, just walked off into the forest. That eerily reminds me of my own aimless walk this afternoon, the walk that brought me too close to the edge until he found me again. A part of me knows I need to find him now, even as another, more sensible part thinks that a nighttime walk could be something he does all the time when he’s alone up here. I don’t know him. Not truly. But I feel like I do anyway, like I’ve known him very well and very intimately forever.

  It’s been awhile since he left, but I’m still just staring into the darkness, paralyzed, feeling so alone in the world that I’m not even sure I exist anymore.

  I’ve been in this place before. I’ve spent the last three years of my life living like a ghost, slowly fading more and more until I was sure I’d just disappear completely one day. At times, while I was home alone, I wasn’t completely sure if I was even alive anymore.

  I’m that ghost again right now. Matt kindled the fire that brought me back to life, made me want again, desire again, let me feel like the woman I used to be again. It wasn’t a roaring fire, just a couple of small flames, fragile and delicate, and now, as I stare off into the darkness that swallowed him, they’re fizzling out, sparks flying and dying, until only coals remain. I’m just a ghost again.