Little Jack

by Atlas, Lilly

  “Let him go!” she yelled. “Get off of him.”

  Biscuit grabbed the pant leg of one of the officers, near his ankle, shaking it as though attempting to kill a rabbit.

  “Get this fucking dog to stand down!” the officer cried.

  Holly forced herself to stop struggling and try to make eye contact with the officer who was now dragging her away from the fray. “Please,” she said in a much calmer voice. “Please let LJ go. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t hurt me. Please, I promise.”

  The officer snorted. “Your face says differently. So does your father. And the blood on your hands.”

  Her face. Jesus, in all the chaos, she’d completely forgotten about the ruin of her face. That’s what the raid was about. Not the nightmare. That was just the icing on the cake. To walk into LJ on top of Holly while she tried to free herself.

  “No! Please, you don’t understand. Oh, my God, what are they doing to him?”

  LJ continued to struggle on the ground, though he no longer appeared to be out of it. Now he was fully conscious, cursing, and fighting for his life. He had to be so confused. To be jerked into reality only to discover four men on top of him, screaming and holding him down. One of the officers reached into his utility belt and pulled out what looked like a small yellow gun. He shoved it into LJ’s side and pulled the trigger. LJ’s body jerked and he shouted in pain, but finally stopped struggling.

  “What are they doing to him? Did they hurt him? Stop! LJ! Please make them stop,” she begged the man holding her back.

  “Miss Lane, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down,” the officer who still held her around the waist said. “And you need to call off your dog before we are forced to subdue him.” Biscuit was still in full-on protective mode, growling at anyone who went near him.

  “Wait! Where are they taking him? Where is he going?”

  “He’s under arrest Miss Lane. Call off your dog!”

  “What?” she screamed as the four officers guided a disoriented LJ out of the apartment. “No! Get him back here! This is fucking crazy!”

  It was then she noticed her father standing near the door. He slapped one of the officers leading LJ on the back. Holly read, “Good work” on his lips.

  “I want to speak to my father. Let me talk to my father.” She started struggling again, kicking her legs out, so the officer was forced to hold her in midair. “Put me the fuck down!”

  “Miss Lane,” he stated, far calmer than she. “Call. Off. The. Dog.”

  “B-Biscuit,” she finally said. Her dog immediately stopped barking and stared at his master. “It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s okay.” A lie if she ever told one. “Come here, buddy.” Biscuit trotted over to her, but he didn’t stand down. Instead, he emitted a low growl at the officer with Holly.

  The officer kept a hand on her arm but stepped farther away from her protective dog. She’d honestly believed Biscuit would have been useless in a situation where she needed protection. Clearly, she’d underestimated her gentle giant.

  I’m going to need you to come down to the station to make a statement. Then we can formally press charges.”

  “Press charges?” She lifted an unsteady hand to her head, pushing the wild mane of her hair from her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. Why wouldn’t a single one of these assholes listen to her? “I don’t want to press charges against LJ. Jesus, aren’t you listening? He didn’t do this.” She finally jerked free of her captor and stood in her now quiet apartment where her father and two other officers were waiting for her to exit.

  They each wore looks of pity. Like she was the battered woman, unwilling to take action against the man who’d hurt her. Well, fuck that. She was more than goddamned willing to tell the whole world who hurt her.

  “Fine,” she said, held high despite her face which now hurt like a bitch and her hands which were smeared with LJ’s blood. “I’d love to come down to the station and press charges against the man who did this to my face,” she said, pointing to herself.

  She marched forward until she stood right in front of her father. He pulled her into a gentle hug. “Jesus, Holly. He’s going to pay for this, okay? I promise that piece of shit biker won’t lay a hand on you ever again. I’m throwing every charge I can possibly think of at him.”

  Holly stepped back and out of his embrace. “Can you please have one of your deputies find some pain medication for me?”

  “Yes, of course.” He gestured to one of the remaining officers. “Find her something to take for the pain.”

  “Great.” She looked her father dead in the eye. “I don’t want to be hindered by pain when I formally press charges against Richard Schwartz for what he did to my face.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  BILE BURNED THE back of LJ’s throat as he sat in the interrogation room listening to the deputy recount the events of the morning. Someone had found him a T-shirt one size too small, and it stretched across his back, adhering to the dried blood from the scratches Holly had given him.

  He’d hurt her. Fucking choked her. Did anyone here realize just how easily he could have killed her? Of course, they did. It’s why they’d been dispatched to the house. Some neighbor of the sheriff saw his daughter’s ravaged face and called him. Naturally, he’d assumed the guy Holly was seeing had been responsible for the abuse.

  Fifteen hours ago, LJ would have lost his shit if he’d heard someone thought him capable of harming Holly. The notion had been inconceivable. Now? Well, now he sat silently in a sterile room with his hands cuffed to the table and his back stinging from Holly’s brutal fight for survival. He’d declined any kind of counsel. Whatever they wanted to do to him, he deserved times ten.

  “Nothing to say?” the deputy asked. The guy looked like he could have been Schwartz’s long-lost cousin. Same high and tight haircut, same swinging-dick swagger, same smug grin. No doubt a bromance existed between the two.

  Two assholes cut from the same motherfucking cloth.

  LJ remained silent.

  “So, all we’ve got outta you so far is that you don’t remember hurting her because you were having a nightmare?” the deputy asked, humor lacing his tone. He’d introduced himself at some point, but LJ’s brain was still a bit fuzzy. Something super generic like Smith or Jones…Brown. Deputy Brown.

  “What’s the matter?” Brown continued. “Boogieman come to you in your dreams? Tell you to hurt that sweet woman? Come on, man. We’ve heard all sorts of shit excuses from abusers like you. Dinner was cold, she looked at another man, she’s always bitching…any shit to try and justify their barbaric behavior. But, a nightmare made you do it?” He laughed. “Now that’s some funny shit.”

  Grinding his teeth together, LJ lifted his gaze. Fuck my life. And fuck this guy. The only reason he’d mentioned the nightmare was because he’d been so disoriented when he came out of it to find four large men pinning him to the ground, he’d fought like hell. After they’d tased him and he’d nearly pissed himself, he was wrung out with a foggy mind. He’d let the nightmare thing slip.

  No one knew the extent of his nightmares. Not even the therapist he’d seen after being medically discharged from the military. Not a single soul knew how they plagued him. How he woke on the floor in a sweaty, confused panic at least once a week. But now this jackass knew some of it. And his judgmental response was the very reason LJ had kept his mouth shut and suffered in silence for years.

  “What about the face? Nightmare make you crack her across the face too?”

  Any other time, LJ would have had some choice fucking words for the deputy, but the choking incident was too dark a mark on his soul to be overlooked. The cops wanted to toss his ass in jail for a bit, fine. He fucking deserved it for being dumb enough to sleep next to Holly.

  Actions had consequences, and this was his.

  A commotion in the hallway had both LJ and Brown turning toward the open interrogation room door.

  “Where the hell is he?” came Holly’s frantic shout fr
om somewhere in the building. “LJ? Where the fuck do you have him? I want him released immediately! Do you fucking hear me? This is bullshit!”

  A muffled response LJ couldn’t make out was followed by more fury from Holly. The woman swore more in the last twenty seconds than she had since he’d met her. Goddamn, he was so proud of her. Not taking shit, not being railroaded by the police or her father. He sure as hell didn’t deserve her loyalty, but it made him fall just a little deeper anyway.

  Too fucking bad. The morning’s incident drove home the lack of future for him and Holly like nothing else could have. Didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate her for the kick-ass woman she was.

  Deputy Brown rose and stepped out of the room, leaving LJ alone, cuffed to the table. He hung his head as the weight of his actions settled deeper into his consciousness.

  I hurt her.

  “No! I will not fucking calm down. You see this?” Holly yelled, and LJ imagined her pointing to her black-and-blue face.

  Had anyone gotten her any pain medication? Ice? Did they actually give a shit about the fact that her injury had to be throbbing like a bitch? Or were they all just hell-bent on locking up the biker?

  “This was done by Deputy Schwartz last night. He was drunk off his ass and acting like a dipshit. It was mostly an accident, but still, something that never should have happened. I’m more than happy to sit down and give you all the damn details you want, but not until LJ is fucking released.”

  “Holly!” The sharp bite of her father’s voice had LJ dropping his head. Fucking helpless to do anything but let this scene play out.

  “LJ didn’t do this, Dad,” she said much softer. So much so, LJ had to strain to hear. “Please let him go. He wouldn’t hurt me.”

  LJ squeezed his eyes shut. The pain in her voice hit him like knives carving into his skin. He focused on her words, the pitch and volume of her voice. He focused on the cold, heavy feeling of the cuffs around his wrists. The hard, unyielding metal of his seat. Anything and everything to keep him grounded in reality and not let the helplessness pull him back under.

  “Holly,” her father said back. “The way we found you—”

  “Is none of your business,” she fired back without hesitation.

  If only LJ could see her instead of being chained up like a damn animal. She was so fucking strong, so fierce, marching in here and making demands on his behalf.

  “Look, Dad, I’m telling you LJ did not hurt me. Not last night and not this morning. I’m not willing to discuss what you walked in on this morning, but I am willing to talk about what happened with Deputy Schwartz last night. However, I want LJ released first.”

  The building grew quiet. With no other options, LJ sat waiting for whatever came next. Deputy Brown never returned, but about fifteen minutes later, Holly’s father entered the room. The sheriff shared those light blue eyes and the shape of his nose with his daughter, but that’s where the resemblance ended. The rest of Holly’s features must have come from her mother.

  “She’s sticking to her story. Says you didn’t do this. Says it was Schwartz,” the sheriff said.

  LJ nodded. “It was.”

  The sheriff scoffed.

  “You saying your daughter’s a liar?”

  Sheriff’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t take the bait. “Spoke with Schwartz a few moments ago. Poor guy is nursing the hangover from hell. Doesn’t even remember seeing Holly last night.”

  “Convenient.”

  “The deputy is quite taken with my daughter. Has been since their first meeting. And instead of dating her, he’s forced to sit back and watch her be with you. A biker. A loser heading nowhere in life but prison. A scumbag who couldn’t be less deserving of her affection.”

  The words hit his battered soul like bullets, but LJ forced himself to ignore them for now. “You saying his actions are justified because he’s pissed he didn’t get the girl? That’s your daughter he hit.”

  The sheriff’s eyes widened and he took a step back. “No. No, of course not,” he said with a shake of his slightly graying head. “Of course, it shouldn’t have happened. But you have to admit you can understand the guy’s need for a few drinks.”

  LJ stared at the man whose hatred for bikers ran so deep, he preferred a man who’d punched his daughter over the MC member who’d rather die than hurt her.

  But he had hurt her. Unintentional, but then again, Schwartz hadn’t purposefully harmed her either. “And if I’d been the one to get blitzed and fuck up Holly’s face?”

  The same blue eyes he loved so much on Holly stared at him with so much revulsion, it practically oozed from his sockets.

  “Thought so.”

  How he could lose himself in those eyes on one person and despise them on another was a mystery.

  As he stepped around the table, the sheriff said, “You’re free to go.” He unlocked the cuffs. “Deputy Brown will give you a ride home.”

  Not happening. “That’s a hard pass. Spent about as much time with that douche bag as I can take. One of my brothers will be here by now.”

  “Brothers,” the sheriff said with a scoff as though the concept was completely unfathomable.

  As soon as the cuffs were off, LJ veered straight for the open door.

  “Your club’s done,” the sheriff said from behind him.

  LJ froze but didn’t turn.

  “It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Whatever you say, old man.” With a shake of his head, LJ took another step forward.

  “If you care about her at all, you’ll let her go before she’s caught in the backlash.”

  They agreed on one thing, he had to let Holly go, only not for the reasons the sheriff wanted. What kind of future could they have if he couldn’t even fall asleep next to her? A life of separate bedrooms and Holly waking in the night to the screams of LJ’s haunting past?

  He could have killed her. Easily.

  Killed her.

  The thought had his steps faltering as pain slammed into him. Shit, what the hell was he doing thinking in terms of a future? Years ago, he’d resigned himself to quick fucks and blowjobs from random women to take the edge off. Not even one-night stands since that implied sticking around for the night.

  And it had been fine. LJ had been fine. He had his work and his brothers with plenty of willing women to step into the role he’d allow them to fill when the itch struck. Then Holly had to go and fuck it all up with her sweetness, and her irresistible body, and her warmth. Now, all he could think about was how she brought him those goddammed Nutella cupcakes at work. And how she called him every morning, the second she woke up. How well she got along with his brothers and their women. The way she curled her fingers into his ass and held him deep inside her even after they’d both come. And now, the way she fucking felt clinging to him in sleep.

  “Stop at the desk on your way out,” the sheriff called behind him. “There’s some paperwork for you to sign.”

  Fuck that. LJ lifted his middle finger, strode straight past the geriatric manning the desk, and out the front door. The morning sun had warmed the air in the hour since he’d been dragged to the station.

  “You okay, brother?” Rocket called from across the lot.

  Relief shot through LJ at the sight of his bike ready and waiting for him.

  “Ain’t a thing,” he replied as he crossed to where his Harley and his brother waited.

  “Bullshit,” Rocket said. Sunglasses blocked his eyes, but LJ bet they were dark with anger. “Are. You. Okay.”

  “They thought I hit her.” Christ, those words made him want to tear something apart. Tear someone apart.

  “Figured. Fucked as it is, figured they’d pin that shit on you. Holly stand by you?”

  LJ nodded and rubbed his gritty eyes. “Yeah, she was…incredible. But it’s more complicated than just that.”

  As was his way, Rocket sat silently on his bike, waiting for LJ to continue.

  Throughout the two years he’d worke
d for Rocket, LJ had confided in his brother to a small extent. Though he had no desire to get into the weeds, LJ needed to unburden to someone. The lid would likely blow off his pressure cooker otherwise.

  “Fell asleep with her for the first time. Almost made it through the whole night too. But I had the mother of all fucking nightmares. When I came around, I was face down on the floor with four fucking cops screaming in my face. Turns out, when they busted in, I was on top of Holly, choking her out.” He shook his head. His heart felt shredded. When the hell had his heart become such a strong part of the equation?

  “Fuck,” was all Rocket said.

  “Didn’t remember a thing. Still don’t. So now she’s been clocked in the face and fucking choked all because of me. I gotta go, brother. Need to put an end to it.”

  “She want out?”

  LJ shrugged. “Fuck if I know. Doesn’t matter. Way it’s gotta be.”

  “It matters, brother. Things are fucked right now, and shit got out of control, but it matters. A good woman, a woman like Holly, she won’t leave because of that shit. She’ll make you work through it and hang by your side the entire ride. You think you feel bad now?” He snorted. “Wait until she gets you talking. You’ll feel like your insides were ripped out, beaten with a bat, and shoved back in all fucking lopsided. You’ll wanna crawl in a hole and fucking die. But then you’ll realize she hasn’t left. She’s still there, still holding you, still fucking you, still loving you. Then shit gets a little better. And the next day, a little better than that. Until one day, you realize you’d do anything, and I mean fucking anything to keep her tied to you. You’d rather die a million deaths than lose her. That’s what the love of a good woman will do for you.”

  With wide eyes and a hanging jaw, LJ stared at the man he considered a brother. His words hit deep, digging down under LJ’s fears and planting a small seed of hope. “Fuuuck, Rocket. Didn’t know you could string that many words together at once.”

  Rocket flipped him off with a grunt. “Don’t like to waste my air on bullshit. But I’ll give it to you straight when it’s important.”