Craving Redemption

by Nicole Jacquelyn

  I was in a fog, not making a noise as they set my shoulder and checked out the rest of my body. My legs and stomach were bruised, my nose was broken, and they were most worried about my eye that was swollen so much that if I looked across the bridge of my nose, I could see the eyebrow on the other side.

  They took photos that I knew they’d never need, but I didn’t fight them. I didn’t do anything but move when they moved me, and stared blankly as they tried to get answers.

  At some point, Cody showed up at the hospital, and I could hear him in the hallway arguing with Farrah, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

  Not even my son.

  Because when Asa’d left me, I’d successfully retreated to that special place where nothing mattered.

  They kept me in the hospital for a few days to make sure I wasn’t going to lose my eye, poking and prodding, and asking question after question as I stared at them blankly. But even after they knew that I would keep it, they didn’t discharge me.

  Instead they moved me into the psych ward.

  They sent in a nice psychologist who asked me questions while I stared at her, and even though I could see the frustration in her eyes, she kept coming back. I guess she was getting paid for it, though, so it wasn’t surprising that she was tenacious. She had beautiful strawberry-blonde hair. I wondered how Farrah would look with hair that color.

  Gram and Farrah rarely left my bedside, taking shifts with Will so I wouldn’t be alone, but they didn’t get through to me and neither did Cody when he showed up. Nothing was getting through—and sometimes I’d hear them quietly arguing about what to do.

  Something had broken in me when Deke was talking about my parents. I don’t think anyone understood why I’d just disappeared inside of myself, but I didn’t expect them to, not really. Only I knew what I had tried to ignore, what I’d pushed back so far that I’d rarely thought about it anymore. Only I knew that I’d been building those walls between my memory and myself so that almost nothing could breach them.

  No one had hidden with me inside that tiny space, listening to my parents die and their killers calling my name. Only I knew that horror.

  Asa was the only one who could’ve guessed where my mind was, we’d had a vague conversation about it years before, but for some reason—he wasn’t there. If I had been feeling anything, I think I would have been sad about that.

  I lay there, listening to Gram yell at the psychologist as I thought about the water stain on the ceiling. I wondered if anyone noticed it or if it was only patients that ever had that view and they just never said anything.

  “You’ve been doing it your way for three weeks and this shit isn’t helping,” Gram thundered. “I don’t give a shit what you think. I’m going to do this my way, and if you’ve got a problem, I’ll just take my granddaughter home with me!”

  The pretty-haired psychologist murmured something soothingly that I couldn’t hear.

  “Oh fuck you and your fancy degree!” Gram shouted. “I know her! I’ve wiped her ass and bandaged her cuts. I’ll do what I think’s best!”

  I didn’t hear anything for a while after that.

  “Callie,” Gram snapped, hours later, pushing the button on the side of my bed until I was sitting up. “You look like shit and you’re ignoring your son who’s been crying for you for weeks.”

  I watched her, detached as she opened the curtains in my room, making me squint as the bright sunlight filtered through. She rearranged my bedding so it was lying flat on my lap, and brushed the hair back from my face as I watched her silently.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” she informed me as she strode out the door.

  When she came back in, she was carrying my beautiful son in her arms.

  His face lit up when he saw me, but it fell when I didn’t react to his presence.

  “You hold your son. He misses you,” she told me firmly as she placed him in my lap.

  He snuggled into my body, pressing his head against my chest, and all of a sudden I felt like I couldn’t breathe. He smelled really good, like baby shampoo and chocolate, and the warmth of his body seeped into mine until I wasn’t sure where he ended and I began.

  “Mama,” he sighed, reaching up to pat my breast like he’d done a thousand times since he’d stopped breastfeeding almost a year before.

  “Come on in,” I heard Gram call as I stared at Will, forcing my arms to move around him until I knew he wouldn’t fall off the bed.

  The emotions overwhelming me were too much. Hope and fear and love and horror and grief—so strong that I clenched my jaw against them, begging for my brain to send me back. I’d almost succeeded, my vision going gray at the sides, when I felt him reach the head of the bed.

  “Hey, Sugar,” he whispered gently, reaching out to run his hand down my hair. “We’ve missed you.”

  My entire body jolted and I raised my eyes to his, the tender look on his face opening the floodgates as I began to cry. I cried in loud, obnoxious, gasping sobs that made Will start screaming in fear, and even then I couldn’t stop them. Gram came to get the baby, tears on her face as she kissed me on the head, and in the next minute, Asa was in the bed with me, wrapping his entire body around mine.

  “You’re okay, Callie,” he murmured over and over, never once letting go as I let out years of pain by screaming at the top of my lungs and pummeling my fists against his back.

  When I’d finally calmed down into sobbing quiet hiccups, he pulled his face away from my neck.

  “If you ever scare me like this again I’m going to paddle your ass,” he rumbled, his voice sounding gravelly and raw. “Our boy needs you, Sugar. I need you.”

  I nodded once as he rubbed my back, and stuffed my face into my favorite spot between his jaw and shoulder.

  My emotions were all over the place, but I let him have that moment. Once my body had relaxed, I noticed that his was trembling, and some place deep inside me wouldn’t let him go uncomforted. I loved him so much, and guilt piled on top of grief when I thought of all the things I’d put him and the rest of my family through over the month I’d been gone.

  I didn’t know where I could go from there. I felt too exposed, too overwhelmed to just go back to my day to day life. The walls I’d built to keep me safe, to keep my world sane and ordered, had shattered around me and it felt as if I was standing in the middle of a war zone with no help in sight.

  I loved Asa. I loved him so much, and I reveled in the way his arms wrapped around me and held me tight against him. I loved the scruff of his beard against my chin and the way he always smelled like smoke, Armani cologne, and leather. I loved the way he looked at me and our son.

  I loved him, but that didn’t seem to make any difference, because the moment he crawled off my bed, I was going to tell him I didn’t want to see him anymore.

  I couldn’t bear to look at him.

  Chapter 74

  Grease

  Leaving Callie after her breakdown was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I wanted to protect her, to save her from whatever demons she’d been fighting.

  I didn’t understand how I could have been so stupid, how I could have thought that I’d saved her. That I could fix her.

  She’d been slowly drowning for years, and I’d missed it. I’d missed all the signs because I’d believed that as long as I took care of her, she’d be fine. I’d fucking loved the way she needed me, reveled in the way she’d been so clingy in the beginning of our relationship.

  And in the end, that had fucked her up even worse.

  It killed me to think of the way I’d ignored her when I was pissed, the way I’d thrown her out of the house because she wouldn’t go get groceries, the way I’d pushed and pushed for her to act normal when she was doing the best she could.

  I hadn’t seen it before, but I sure as fuck saw it as she held me off with a pistol bigger than her arm.

  So when she’d told me that she didn’t want to see me, I’d taken her at her word for once. I’d g
iven her the space she needed as I watched her slowly get stronger and leave the hospital.

  I’d given her space as she met with a psychologist three times that first week out of the hospital, and I’d waited. When no word came from her that I would ever be welcome again, I said goodbye to my son.

  “You know you can come see him whenever you want,” Gram assured me sadly. “She doesn’t mean to keep you from him.”

  “I know, Rose,” I told her with a nod as I watched Will drive his monster truck into a table leg.

  “Told you years ago to call me Gram,” she scolded, wrapping up banana bread for me to take.

  “Shit’s different now,” I mumbled, my heart breaking as I watched Will’s little diaper-covered ass shake to the low music coming from the stereo.

  “Nothin’s different for me,” she scolded over the edge of her glasses. “You’re still one of mine.”

  I nodded again, my throat feeling tight, and then jumped to my feet as Cody came barreling in the front door.

  “You leaving?”

  “Yeah, it’s time I take care of some things and let your sister be,” I answered, the words tasting like acid.

  “You getting payback?”

  “Payback?” I laughed a little. “You mean am I going to take care of it? Yeah.”

  “Take me with you,” he demanded earnestly. “That’s my sister. Those were my parents. Take me with you.”

  I stared at him for a moment and realized that the kid I remembered—all big feet and arms that were too long for his body—had turned into something entirely different. He was a man. When the hell had that happened?

  He looked like a backroom brawler, cleaned up in Ivy League clothes.

  “Your sister would kill me,” I mumbled, aware of Gram’s eyes on the back of my head.

  “My sister isn’t even talking to you,” he replied bluntly, making me want to punch him in the fucking mouth.

  “You okay with this?” I asked Gram, turning my back on Cody.

  “He’s an adult,” she murmured, looking up at Cody and then back at the bread she was wrapping. “He can make his own choices. Don’t put me in the middle of it.”

  How the fuck I ended up riding to Eugene with Cody following behind me in a piece of shit rental, I will never understand.

  And once we were there, he made himself known. He joked with Slider and Poet like they were his best friends, and in doing so, bought himself the respect of every member in the clubhouse that night. It was insane, but I was too wrapped up in my own shit to give a fuck.

  Missing Callie was like missing a limb. It still felt like she was there, and at times I’d reach for her as I slept, or pick up the phone to call her, and in a rush of clarity realize I couldn’t. I’d spent so much time waiting on her and working toward our life together, that I didn’t know what to fucking do with myself once she was gone.

  The boys and I headed down to San Diego that week, using Cody as a sneak to find out what was going down with the Jimenez brothers. He had contacts all over the fucking place, and I had no clue how, because he’d been going to school out of state for the past ten years. However he found them, I couldn’t argue that the guy wasn’t effective. He knew shit before the rest of us did, and he could move in and out of places like no one I’d ever seen.

  He just seemed to blend into the crowd, wherever we were, and fucking disappear. You could be looking right at him and still not see him. It was weird as hell.

  We used his contacts to find out where the big dogs were having their weekly meeting, and sure as shit, we found them in a warehouse so far south that it may as well have been in Mexico. They didn’t expect us, and not even one of them had the time to rise from his seat around the poker table before he was dead.

  “Don’t fuck with my family,” Slider mumbled, leading us back out of the warehouse and onto our bikes. “Good work, kid.”

  Cody lifted his chin in reply, but I could tell by the wild look in his eyes that he was about to lose his shit.

  “Lock it down, little brother,” I warned him, grabbing the back of his neck and giving it a squeeze. “All over now. Callie’s safe and you got what you came for.”

  He nodded a few times, climbed on the bike he’d bought from one of the brothers, and slid on his helmet. The little shit was going to keep his cool. Thank fuck.

  “Hey,” Poet called as he climbed on his bike and motioned toward Cody with his chin. “Name’s Casper. Kid moves like a fuckin’ ghost.”

  We headed home that night, not stopping longer than it took to refuel. I was surprised when Cody didn’t take the exit when we rolled through Sacramento, but it wasn’t like I could ask him about it. I’d wanted to stop and see Will on the way through, but I was afraid that it hadn’t been long enough between visits, and I didn’t want to upset Callie by stopping in when I wasn’t expected.

  The doctors had told Gram that they thought Callie had PTSD. They weren’t sure what the cause was, she’d refused to talk to them about it, but the rest of us knew exactly when it had started. Thankfully, she’d found a doctor that week before I left that she liked enough to start telling her story. I only hoped that the guy would be able to help her, because time kept passing and I didn’t know how long I would be able to live the way we were without losing my mind.

  I spent the next months the way I had years before, working as much as I could and taking any time I had to drive to Sacramento. But those days, I was seeing my son. He was growing fast, and every time I saw him, he’d know more words that he’d recite to me like a little dictionary. It was cute as shit, and I wished that I could joke with Callie about it.

  I hadn’t seen her in months because anytime I went to spend time with Will, he was at Gram’s when I got there, and Callie was locked firmly in her apartment until I was gone.

  I’d promised to give her space, but that didn’t mean I liked it, and one of the hardest days came almost nine months later. Poet’s daughter Brenna had come home one day out of nowhere, and she’d brought a kid with her that looked exactly like Dragon. I tried to stay out of their shit—it wasn’t any of my business how they chose to deal with things—but fuck if they didn’t keep pulling me back in.

  One afternoon, I stopped by the house and found Cody sitting outside while the house was quiet. He hadn’t felt comfortable enough to check on Brenna that entire morning, but the silence had finally made him anxious enough to unlock the front door and step inside.

  I was right behind him when we’d found her, and the swelling on her cheek took me instantly back to a different time and place, filling me with rage. She’d calmed me down as best she could, and proceeded to tell her pop, Vera, and me the entire story. I’d understood it. I’d understood how it could have happened the way she said it had, but I hadn’t been able to clear the red haze from my vision. Dragon had hit a woman I’d thought of as a little sister, and I’d wanted to fucking kill him.

  But the time I’d wanted to hold Callie the worst, the time I’d had to give my bike keys to Tommy so I wouldn’t be tempted to climb on and drive to her, was the day we’d found Brenna beaten bloody by her ex-husband and Cody shot in the shoulder, lying in the doorway of her house. He’d been trying to protect her.

  I’d thought they were dead when we’d found them. For a guilty second, I’d thanked God that it wasn’t Callie—that she’d survived and was somewhere in Sacramento living her life—even if that life didn’t include me.

  I’d felt so guilty for bringing Cody into the mess he was in, that it took me three tries to get up the nerve to call Rose that night, letting her know what was happening. She’d taken the news well, like I hadn’t just told her that her grandson had been shot, and I was amazed all over again at the strength of that woman. But even as I spoke to her, worried about her reaction, I was still fucked up enough to be disappointed when I didn’t hear Callie’s voice in the background as Rose thanked me for telling her and hung up the phone.

  I’d wanted Callie so bad that night. I’d want
ed her to come to me and run her fingers through my hair so I knew that she was okay. I’d needed to know that she was safe.

  But I forced myself not to contact her—because if she was getting better, and she needed time away from me, I was going to give her that.

  Chapter 75

  Callie

  It was almost a year after I’d told Asa that I couldn’t be with him anymore, and I was finally ready to speak with him again.

  My time in therapy had been the hardest thing I’d ever done, and I’d probably never be able to go without it. I’d had a lot of guilt hanging over me from my parents’ deaths, and though it wasn’t going away, with Dr. Howell’s help, it was getting easier to understand and manage.

  Dr. Howell was an old, grizzled war veteran, and I’d liked him instantly when we’d met. He not only told dirty jokes when he knew I needed to take a step back for a few minutes, but he also knew how guilt and blame could royally fuck up someone’s life—he’d lived through it when he came back from Vietnam.

  I learned to let things out, and we worked on facing my demons head-on in a way that I’d never let myself do before. He’d told me something, and I’m sure he’d stolen it from someone else because he was always quoting self-help calendars and coffee mugs, “Demons come out in the dark because they’re afraid of the light. We need to smash those motherfuckers to smithereens with light.” Okay, I’m pretty sure he paraphrased, but the result was the same.

  We brought everything out into the open.

  I was ashamed that I’d blamed Asa and the club for a lot of things that they couldn’t have changed, but I finally understood that my jumbled emotions had been totally normal.

  My life had been a series of unfortunate events for a long time, starting with my decision to sneak out of my house to go to a party and ending when I’d kicked Asa out of my life completely. Looking back, I don’t know that I would have been able to get my shit together, knowing that he was there to protect me. It would’ve been too easy for me to slide back into old habits.