Holding a gun.
Standing over the body of a dead man.
Doug.
"Hey, honey, okay," Calloway found his voice first, tucking his own gun away, moving toward her with his hands out, defensive, not entirely sure she wouldn't shoot him.
I didn't blame him.
There was a wild look in her eyes.
Her arms were shaking violently.
"Hey, Joey," he tried again, getting closer, almost close enough to put a hand on the gun, push the muzzle downward. "It's alright. You're alright."
"I know I am," she said, voice a distant whisper. "I made it that way."
Up until that moment, I think we all assumed Doug had somehow managed to get past the fences, the security system, the bars on the windows, that he was invading, trying to get revenge. That he just so happened to be in Joey's room because he had last known it as a storage room, unoccupied.
But there was something in Joey's tone that told me none of what had happened was happenstance.
"Relax," Calloway demanded even as Hatcher was shooting off a frantic text. To Thayer, of course. I was sure we would all hear a bike rumbling in a matter of seconds. "Let me have this," he demanded even as he pulled the gun from her hands, handing it backward to Hatcher who had tucked his phone away already. "Alright, come here," he demanded as her whole body started to shake, her gaze still fixed on the glassy-dead-eyed Doug on the floor. "Come on, it's alright. It's over. It's all over."
With that, he stooped down, scooped her up, cradled her to his chest, and got her out of the room.
"Sera," Hatcher's voice snapped through my swirling thoughts. "Go on. Get out of here," he said, looking down at Doug's body even as the rumble of bikes got loud outside the clubhouse. "Check on Joey," he added, making my head jerk back, realizing that hadn't been my first thought. That was always my first thought. What was wrong with me?
I whipped around fast enough to make my vision spin, was almost at Calloway's door - where I imagined Joey was stashed away - when the door to the outside flew open, revealing a panic-eyed Thayer followed by Roux.
"Is she alright?" he asked, rushing in, hand grabbing my arm.
"I, ah, I think she's a little in shock. Thayer... she did this."
"Shot him? I know, babe. It was self-defense," he insisted, shaking his head.
"No. No. I think she planned this," I told him, feeling a gut-punch at saying that about my own sister.
"Planned it? Babe, are you sure you're not the one in shock?" he asked, brows furrowing, looking at me a little harder.
"No, she's right," Calloway said, stepping out of his room. "She planned this."
"Planned what? To need to defend herself?"
"No... she planned to lure him here," Calloway told us. "She's a little out of it, but she told me that much. She said it had to be over. She needed to stop seeing his face in every corner. So she had to end it."
"But... how..." Thayer started, shaking his head.
"Her phone," I supplied, all the pieces starting to fall into place. "She nagged me until I got her a new phone."
I had actually thought it was a little odd when it had happened a few days before. She'd been really insistent. Which was weird since she had no one to call or text except for me. But then she hadn't even asked for my new number. She hadn't asked anyone for their numbers. When I had given it to her, she'd mumbled her thanks, then tucked it into her top drawer.
She hadn't wanted the phone to get in touch with me when I was at work, or to call one of the guys to ask they bring her home something.
No.
She had wanted the phone to be able to get in contact with Doug.
"Yeah, babe, but everyone has a phone," Thayer insisted.
"No. This was different. I bet if you found her phone, the only person she's had contact with is him." As if to prove my point, Roux was walking back out of the bedroom where Doug's body was, holding two cells in his hands.
"This is what she's been doing all that time locked up in her room," he told us, holding out the phone, scrolling through the text log. The very in-depth text log.
"She's been planning to bring him down since she got back from California," Roux concluded.
"She didn't trust us to handle it," Thayer said, sounding hurt, something I rarely heard from him.
"I think maybe she's just not in a good place," Calloway supplied.
"Yeah, I mean... I know Doug did a lot to you guys, but think about what he has done to her," I reminded them. Sure, they lost their club, they spent some time in cells and hospitals. But they weren't beat, drugged, held down. Daily. Nothing they had gone through came anywhere close. "I can see how she wouldn't be able to feel safe until he was gone for good."
"But if she had a way to contact him, why didn't she come to us? Why didn't she let me-"
"Maybe she wanted to do it herself," I cut off Thayer. "Maybe she wanted to get her own revenge on him for what he had done to her. I think we can all understand that." Especially since each of us had been one-hundred-percent sure that we would have taken him out ourselves had we needed to. Or simply came across him on the street somewhere.
Hell, when I saw how broken Joey was, I found myself fantasizing about how I could kill him in the most painful way possible.
And he hadn't physically done anything to me.
Now I got to see how much he was still affecting Joey.
Maybe it hadn't been the fallout from the lack of therapy that had Joey in her room so much, but the fact that she was planning a murder.
Joey.
My sweet, do-good sister.
Oddly, where I probably should have been feeling sadness for the parts of her lost to the whole incident, I felt an unexpected surge of pride. For her even thinking of retribution, for having the strength to follow through with her plan, to lure her predator to his death.
It took a lot to do that.
Strength of spirit.
A bone-deep desire to move on from her past.
"Alright, well, we need to handle the body. Get rid of the phones and the gun," Thayer started, barking off orders to his brothers.
"No," Calloway told him, shaking his head. "I'm staying here," he said, moving further into his doorway, closer to Joey.
"She likes when you sing," I told him, watching as his gaze snapped to me. "Maybe that will help calm her down," I suggested.
"Right," he agreed, already turning, going in, grabbing his guitar, then slamming the door right in my face.
"Babe," Thayer called when I reached for the knob. "Give them a minute. Maybe their demons recognize each other. Let him calm her down. Then you can talk to her."
Seeing the logic there, I nodded. "Okay."
"Here, you want to go through this for some answers?" he suggested. "In our room," he added a bit pointedly.
Because he didn't want me to see them clean up the body, the blood.
That should have been what struck me the most.
Somehow, though, it wasn't that.
It was the one word.
Our.
Our room.
Before this moment, it had always been the room. I had always maybe saw it as his room.
Right then, though, I saw something with absolute clarity.
It was ours.
The room.
The life we had in front of us.
This makeshift family.
All of it was ours.
EPILOGUE
Thayer - 2 weeks
I knew it was killing her a bit that Joey hadn't simply snapped out of it after Doug was handled. I don't think she was necessarily expecting miracles. She just figured it was the ghost of her attacker hanging over her, weighing her down.
The reality was a bit sadder.
Joey was changed.
Darker.
More serious.
She still spent too much time in her room.
She ate too little.
She refused to go out save for her twice-weekly NA meeti
ngs.
She didn't take Sera and me up on an offer for extra solo therapy.
She did, however, walk like a zombie out of her room every single night like clockwork when Calloway would go into his room, grab his guitar, start playing.
I tried to convince Sera that this was its own sort of therapy. That when she was ready, when she had sorted some things out, she would start taking better care of herself.
I had no idea if I was right or not.
I just wanted to take some of the weight off her shoulders. Each day that passed when she didn't see her sister smile or laugh or think wistfully about the past, her shoulders seemed to slump further and further down.
"What is that?" she asked, brows furrowing, reaching for the remote.
"It's Cal," I insisted, trying to take the remote from her since we were getting to the peak of the action scene.
"No," she insisted, muting the TV, leaning over me slightly to listen harder. "That's Joey," she told me, sounding a little amazed.
I didn't hear it at first, but as my ears adjusted to the silence, there was no mistaking it. You could hear the guitar, the deep sound of Cal's voice, and a light, sweet female voice.
"Do you hear that?" she asked, climbing over me, stark fucking naked, padding over to the door, pressing her ear against it. "She's singing about blackberries."
"Like you used to collect at the park," I recalled, watching as she turned over toward me, lips curved up, brows drawn together. Like she was surprised - yet pleased - that I remembered that story.
"Exactly."
"You know what, babe?"
"What?"
"I think maybe this means she is trying to find her way back to us."
To that, her eyes went soft.
"I think you're right."
Sera - 6 months
"Absolutely not," I insisted, shaking my head as I put the finishing touches on the new design Bea had asked me to work on for the club - just an updated logo to add to the new fliers and the website she was having built.
"Come on, don't be proud," Bea urged me, rolling her eyes.
"It's not pride."
"Then what would you call it? It is a fantastic opportunity for your future. Why else would you turn it down?"
"I already owe Thayer way too much."
To that, she let out a long sigh. "You're being ridiculous. You don't owe him anything."
"The money for Joey's reha..."
"He doesn't want that back. He's told you that a dozen times already."
She wasn't wrong.
It was a subject that led to a fight literally every time we talked about it, so we had decided a week or so ago just not to talk about it for a while. It wasn't worth the frustration. Though, to be honest, the angry sex was off-the-charts.
I understood his side. He saw Joey as family. And he felt it was his place to take care of and provide for family. That was how he was raised, how he was wired. No amount of trying to reason with him changed that fact.
He simply refused to see my side.
I felt indebted to him.
And I didn't like that feeling.
It sat weird with me.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I still hadn't fully accepted the that I was capable of trusting someone, leaning on someone, letting someone help me, maybe even take care of me.
Everything in my nature rebelled against even the words as they crossed my mind, making me feel uncomfortable, antsy.
"But the point is, if you let him help a little at the beginning, it gives you the power to never have to really worry again forever. Without feeling like he was providing for you."
Bea was quite a few years younger than me, sure, but she was far more advanced when it came to things like businesses and plans and setting down solid foundations for the future.
Peaches had always been a lucrative business, from the sound of things, but with Bea at the helm, it was even more so. Christ, the money was all but pouring in. Just from the club alone. I didn't even want to think about the money from the deals Thayer and the guys made. It had to have been Never-have-to-worry kinds of money, a concept that was so foreign to me that I could only comfortably consider it for hedge fund managers and venture capitalists and oil magnates. Not people I knew.
But Bea rocked a brand new wardrobe, the bags they came in boasting designer names. She was throwing tons of money at their old childhood house. Every week, there was a new crew there working on something. Wiring, siding, the roof, the septic, sod, finishing the basement and blowing out the dining room and kitchen.
I honestly didn't even know how to calculate the probable costs of that kind of work. My mind didn't want to think about it.
I had a pair of socks with a hole in the toe that I was waiting to throw away until my whole toe poked through them.
I lived in a very different world.
I was wondering, though, if Bea was right.
If I was being prideful.
Thayer had offered me the money to open my own shop not because he needed another business - he made enough money - but because he wanted me to have a business. He wanted me to have something of my own. He wanted me to be able to know that I would be secure in the future. Comfortable. Without worry. He wanted me to know what their life was like without me feeling like he was providing it to me.
Because he understood how important that was for me.
"He would have a financial stake."
"I was the one who helped draft the paperwork, Sera. He would have a stake until you made back the money to buy him out. It would likely be yours completely in less than three years if you go by current trends, the demand, your unique approach to having a female-friendly atmosphere. Three years is nothing. We're halfway through one already. I just think you should think about it, that's all I am saying. Don't do that nose thing."
"That nose thing?" I repeated, brows furrowing.
"You know... cutting it off... I'm having a mental lapse," she admitted, reaching for her coffee.
"Likely because you're working sixteen-hour-days and running on coffee instead of sleep. And it's 'Cut off your nose to spite your face.'"
"Exactly. That's what you're doing. So, you know, stop doing that," she said, shaking her head at herself.
"I think you should head off to bed," I suggested. "I will have this ready for you in the morning."
"I would disagree with you, but a second ago, I was staring at my cell and blanking on what it was called. So, yeah, I think I am fried today. Do you think..." she started, trailing off when the front door opened, bringing in Roux and some unnamed woman.
Season Six, Episode Fourteen of the Roux and Bea show: The Brunette with the Big Boobs.
It wasn't my imagination that Bea's gaze went to her own chest, which was small just like the rest of her. There was even a held breath and long sigh before she caught herself, shaking it off, turning to give me the fakest smile I had ever seen.
"Goodnight!"
"Goodnight, Bea," I told her, trying to hold back my smile.
"'Night, Bee," Roux called. His focus was on her, not his supposed date who clearly noticed this, watching his profile with no small amount of anger and disappointment.
Roux's face held disappointment as well when Bea ignored him on purpose, going into her room, closing the door with a pointed slam.
"Yeah, no, I think not," the brunette said, moving away from Roux. "I have too much self-respect to play stand-in for some other chick."
"Good for you," I called to her as she stormed out. "What?" I asked Roux, shrugging. "It's not my fault you are too chickenshit to work out your issues with Bea. And I will always praise a woman who knows her worth, and won't settle for a guy who is clearly in love with a different woman."
"Fair enough," he said with a sigh, not bothering to contradict me since we both knew I was right, then storming outside himself.
"What'd you do to Roux?" Thayer asked when he came in, giving me a knowing look.
"I didn't do anything!"
"Babe," he said, shaking his head.
"I just... gave him some truth, that's all. You know what?"
"What?"
"Bea gave me some truth a little bit ago. It is making me think."
"About?" he prompted when I didn't go on.
"The tattoo shop."
"I've been doing some thinking on that too."
My stomach twisted, sure he was going to tell me that after some deeper consideration, he realized that I was right, that it was a terrible idea. Or that he didn't trust me to make it successful. I didn't exactly have the best track record.
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah."
That was it.
Just... yeah.
"Did you come to any... ah, conclusions?"
"I did."
Thayer was not usually so tight-lipped. In fact, he could be a bit of a talker when he was in the mood.
This was odd for him.
"Do you care to share?" I asked, feeling that knot in my stomach twist tighter.
"Yeah, figure I've been sitting on this for about long enough," he agreed, reaching into his pocket, turning toward me, laying his palm flat. "How about we trade that one type of paperwork for another?" he suggested as my eyes fell on the ring sitting on his hand.
"Wait... what?" I asked, my voice airless, sure I was misinterpreting this whole thing. Because there was no way he was asking me to marry him, to sign up for decades of my mood swings, to deal with my crazy. After only six months.
"Come on, babe, you know you wanna," he said, eyes dancing, so damn sure of himself.
"You can't possibly know that you want to spend the rest of your life with me after six months."
"I was pretty fucking sure of it when I told you I loved you, babe. That was a first for me. I didn't take that lightly. I'm not taking this lightly either. I'm sure, Sera. Or I wouldn't have asked you."
He was sure.
Of course he was sure.
He always knew his mind.
It was one of his most appealing qualities. He never had to sit for hours or days mulling something over. He had a good gut, and he trusted it. He was a man used to making decisions, to following through with them.
Revenge - Reckless Renegades 1 Page 19