by A. J. Downey
His expression cooled and hardened into steel as he read my face. His shoulders eased from their tense posture, though his hands, where they held my face, had never gripped too hard, had been as gentle as if he handled a kitten. He trailed his fingertips down the sides of my neck and rested his palms on my shoulders.
“I’m not going to tell you again unless you really need the reminder,” he said quietly, and shook his head. “No, I’m just going to put up. I’m here, Everleigh and I’m not going anywhere. Whatever happens, it’s not just you going through it. We are going through it. Together. Always. I’m not giving up on us for anything. You’re not disposable to me.” His arms slid around my shoulders and I fit myself against his chest as the tears welled and spilled, as if my damn face had suddenly become a running faucet.
I clung to him in the pool and let his warmth comfort me, and as much as I wanted to hide behind my walls, as much as I wanted to duck behind my shield of experience and hold my doubt tight and close to my chest, I was weak because I believed him.
“It’ll be okay,” he breathed into my hair.
“Don’t make promises that are so hard to keep,” I mumbled, as my last moment of misery passed like a leaf riding the surface of a stream.
He chuckled and sighed, holding me tighter and said, “You have every reason to be bitter, but you aren’t. Every reason to tell me I’m full of shit, but you don’t. You’re something special, babe. I don’t know how I made it this far without you. I feel like with every act of trust you put into me, you save a part of my soul. Wash away some of the dirt.”
I pushed back from him and frowned. “You’re probably the best man I’ve ever met,” I told him honestly, and he laughed at that.
“Should meet some of my brothers, they’re by far better men than me.”
I found that extremely hard to believe.
19
Everleigh…
Four days later I stood under the warm shower spray, aching and exhausted. We’d just finished cleaning out the loft the day before, and I’d spent the first bit of the morning dusting and sweeping it out. I’d felt gritty and covered in dust, so while Narcos was bumping and throwing things from the pile in the back yard into the back of the old truck, to make a final scrap run, I was trying to clean up myself instead of the old cabin.
We’d worked hard the last several days, making one trip into town to the second-hand store to donate what we could. The little shop had been full of treasures for me, and Narcos had let me splurge on his dime, buying me two dresses, a blouse, and three different skirts without a single word of complaint. He’d even bought me the big, floppy straw hat with the dusty fake flowers that I had been eyeing, telling the clerk to bring it down and add it to the pile.
I hadn’t wanted it to wear, but rather, I had a vision for it, one I set to work on while we did our washing at Nora and Mitch’s house. I’d given Nora her gift of honey and Narcos had gone out to help Mitch with a project. I was at ease enough with Nora that I told her my plans for the hat, and she’d beamed and said she had just the thing. She’d given me the materials out of her sewing stash and wouldn’t hear of taking payment.
It was a project I worked on in the evenings until I was too tired to keep my eyes open and Narcos pulled me away from it gently, into his arms so I could fall asleep against his chest.
That was, honestly, becoming the best part of my day, and I was stressed that his brothers would be here soon, and I would have to do without that comfort.
I stuck my face into the spray and thought for a second that I heard something, but figured that it was just Narcos, coming in to use the bathroom. When I heard a stream of water hitting water, I smiled to myself and thought, Couples achievement unlocked. It was a milestone, albeit one that, once you’d had sex with another person, was kind of silly.
He knew not to flush when the shower was running; I’d accidentally found it out the hard way when I’d used the toilet while he was in the shower. I thought it’d been a myth, but apparently, old plumbing –
He flushed and I shrieked and cried out “Hot!”
The shower curtain whisked back along the rod and I was faced by one stern and angry-looking prosecutor.
“You can talk?”
I screamed and grabbed for the curtain, trying to hide behind it‒
But he wasn’t looking at my body. His dark eyes were drilling into mine‒
And my throat was seizing shut, tighter than a Venus fly trap, trapping my words inside‒
All that was coming out when I tried to speak were frightened screams.
He reached out and took my wrist in a firm grip and kept going on about me talking and I just kept screaming, not knowing what to do, the panic taking over, sucking me under, I was drowning in fear and adrenaline ‒
And suddenly he was just… gone…
And in his place was Narcos, and I burst into tears.
“Hey, hey, hey; it’s okay, I’ve got you, babe. Shh, shh, shh.”
I held onto him, rattled to the point I couldn’t even get words out to him if I tried. I bit my bottom lip until I could taste the slightest bit of copper, and then eased off with my teeth. Sometimes, a little bit of pain helped ground me, helped bring me out of the frenzied loop of panic that shuts me down, but this time – it wasn’t working.
What was working was the solidness of Narcos’ arms around me, the softness of his tee beneath my cheek, the hardness of his body covering mine as voices rose, out in the rest of the cabin. He reached over and shut off the water, and lowered me to kneel in the tub, while the voices outside grew louder before ceasing altogether.
I swallowed hard, and held myself tight to Narcos’ chest as he reached up and pulled the beach towel off the rack and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“Easy, babe. You’re okay. You’re solid. I don’t know what the fuck Yale’s problem is.”
I swallowed again and looked up at him, my eyes wide, and he looked down at me. “Yale would be the guy that busted in on you.”
I frowned and then it clicked: The prosecutor is part of his real MC?
“You got clothes in here?” he asked, as I knelt in the bottom of the tub in just a beach towel, my hair sopping wet and his tee turning from light to dark grey as it soaked up water.
My brain finally caught up to what was happening as it broke free from my fright, and I shook my head violently, as much to say ‘no, I didn’t have any clothes in here’ as it was to try and clear it.
“Okay, wait here, I’ll get something for you.”
It would be easy, I’d laid everything out on the bed. He smoothed his hands over the towel, along my back, arms, and shoulders, drying me as much as soothing me, and stood up from where he sat on the edge of the tub. He helped me to my feet and shut the seat and lid of the john and had me sit, wrapped like a child in the oversized towel.
“Be right back with some things, you hang tight.” He squeezed out the gap he cracked in the bathroom door in a bid to preserve my modesty, but I saw no less than two unfamiliar faces look my direction, the third belonging to Driller.
I hated the looks of pity; I hated being pitied, even though I could agree I had my moments where I was pitiful. I felt my cheeks burn with humiliation as their voices, too muffled to understand, came through the door. I knew they were talking about me, of course they were talking about me. How could they not?
They probably thought I was nuts. Too damn nuts to testify… Oh, God… what if I’d just ruined everything? What if I screwed everything up so badly just then that they wouldn’t let me help, they wouldn’t let me say what I knew, and everything fell apart, and King and the rest of the Knights got away with killing that man, with trying to kill me?
What if…
The door opened back up and I jumped, but it was just Narcos. He set my clothes on the edge of the sink and knelt in front of me, looking up at me, heaving a sigh.
“What can I do?” he asked.
I shook my head. Nothing, he couldn’t d
o anything.
I couldn’t either. I just needed to ride it out, to feel the awful feelings and wait until I was a bit calmer.
“Okay, you take your time. You get dressed, and you come out, but only when you’re ready. Okay?” I nodded and he thought about it a second and said, “If you need me to come back in here for anything, you knock three times on the door, okay?”
I nodded emphatically and grasped onto the kindness with both hands, holding it to my chest.
“I mean it. Take your time, take as long as you need,” he said, and knelt up, kissing my forehead gently before he stood. I closed my eyes, the press of his lips against my skin doing wonders to calm me, but at the same time, all too brief. He stood up completely and went to the door. I made like I was knocking three times in the air, my expression solemn and he nodded.
“Knock three times if you need me,” he said, and I nodded, and then I was alone.
I closed my eyes, let myself have a brief, quiet cry, and then got up to fix myself and get my shit together, feeling a bit stronger, a helpless anger replacing the anxiety.
I looked at myself in the mirror.
Other than being a touch pale from the encounter ‒ and looking like a complete drowned rat ‒ I didn’t look much different on the outside.
I hated that. I felt like my anxiety had completely changed my landscape on the inside and that there should be some sort of reflection of something so jarring on the outside, but there wasn’t. There never was.
I set my clothes aside on the john, dried myself, wrapped my hair in the towel and washed my face.
I stared for a long time at myself, looking scrubbed and clean, and had to sigh. Sometimes, I really wished my outside matched my inside. If it did, then people might understand.
Sometimes, I really hated my life, my existence. I felt like a magnet for abuse and I was so fucking tired of it. So tired. I stared at my hands, at the shiny pink scars, front and back, through the palms and out the backs of my hands, and closed my eyes.
I was tired of it, and it was time for me to stop doing the same thing over and over again, which was live passively through it, bouncing from one bit of bad to another like a pinball in a machine, going from bad to worse and back again.
The worst had pretty much already been done to me, hadn’t it? There wasn’t much worse to go to from here, except maybe death, and I wasn’t keen on dying. I was a live-er, not a die-er and I wasn’t about to go down without a fight. I just needed to convince the men out there that I had some fight in me and that I wouldn’t crumble.
Good luck with that, Everleigh.
20
Narcos…
Well, so much for that, I thought to myself as soon as I stepped out the bathroom to the spectrum of looks ranging from cool and appraising to downright tempestuous from my brothers.
Driller looked, I don’t know, resigned? Golden looked amused, Skids gave me a cool, detached cop-face, and Yale? Yale looked pissed.
“Are you, seriously, fucking my witness?” he demanded, and I knew shit wasn’t right with him. I don’t think I’d ever seen him lose his shit so completely. He was always a man in control, but something was going on back home that had his fuse fucking lit. It’d been burning for a while, considering how he’d snapped off on Everleigh just for talking.
“Think she’s going to be your witness if you treat her that way?” Driller asked, and scowled.
Yeah. He knew; he had my back; we were at least cool. Best friends for-fucking-ever.
“You knew about this?” Yale demanded.
“Come off it,” Golden said, and rolled his eyes.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, Pres,” I greeted Skids.
Skids shrugged laconically.
“Shit’s real deep. What kind of leader would I be if I weren’t here?”
I walked over to the table and pulled out a chair. “How about you stop seething for thirty fucking seconds and catch me up; you fuckers know I’ve been livin’ dark out here. And I ain’t no mushroom, so don’t even think about feeding me some shit, either.”
The guys all drifted over and sat. Six seats, one left for Everleigh. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about her, but I refused to make shit any worse than it already was, by looking at the door she was behind too much.
“The defense has come out swinging,” Yale said with a harsh sigh. “Trying to force my hand, speed everything along. I’m assuming it's because they know Everleigh can talk – ”
“She can talk, but she can’t,” I said, unhappily.
“She can, I just heard her.” Yale scowled at me.
I shook my head. “She probably thought you were me,” I said, shifting slightly.
“Again, I ask, how long have you been fucking my witness?” Yale demanded starkly, his eyes stormy.
“If it’s good enough for Youngblood…” Golden said, and it was gentle for him. He gave Yale a pointed look.
“That was different,” Yale said defensively, and Driller arched a brow.
“How so?” my best friend demanded.
“Knock it off, the lot of you,” Skids growled. “This isn’t getting us anywhere productive.”
“She’s capable of speaking, but only under certain circumstances,” I said with a sigh.
“Those circumstances being?” Yale crossed his arms, and shit had to be rough, had to be getting to him, because even though he could be a dick, he wasn’t usually this big of a pain in the ass.
“Calm, secure; she’s got to feel safe and completely at ease,” I said.
“Which she’s not going to be, in front of King or a courtroom full of people,” Driller said unhappily. “She hasn’t said a damn word in front of me, that’s for sure.”
The bathroom door opened and we all turned. It took several moments, but finally, Everleigh peeked around the corner. It was so childlike and innocent and it damn near broke your heart, the expression on her face. It was like she was checking to see who was mad and how mad they were at her, like she was expecting to be yelled or screamed at, or worse, that someone was apt to tow her out from around that wall and beat the living daylights out of her.
“You’re safe, babe. Coast is clear, I promise.”
She bit her lips together and looked miserable anyway. It was as if someone had rubbed off some of her sparkle and I hated it.
She stepped out carefully, wearing a white, fitted tank top with those thin straps and one of her gypsy skirts that brushed the tops of her feet. The skirt was a light cream at the top and got progressively darker in brown toward the bottom, the different bands of the skirt set with these tiny round and diamond shaped mirrors that sparkled and flashed in the sun coming through the windows.
She was lovely and I held out a hand to her to try and entice her to come nearer.
She hesitated, hanging back, her shyness full force despite the fact that only two of my brothers at the table were unknown to her.
“It’s okay. I apologize. It’s no excuse, but I have been a bit frayed; this case is very complicated.” Yale at least tried.
She nodded carefully, forgiving as ever, but still wary as she padded nearer. She took my hand and I decided, Fuck it. The cat was already out of the bag. I pulled her down into my lap. She sat atop my thigh, and with a hard swallow, put her arms around my shoulders to steady herself.
“Look at me,” I murmured and she met my eyes with her own. “Just take your time, and talk to me… you okay?”
She swallowed hard and opened her mouth, but closed it as she glanced down the table at the expectant faces there.
I stopped her.
“Don’t look at them, baby. Look at me.”
Her eyes snapped back to mine and I tried to put everything she needed into my gaze.
“Just one word, babe. How are you doing? Good? Bad? Scared? Sad? Just one word, tell me what’s up.”
She swallowed, determination flooding her expression as her jaw worked, once, twice, then… “S-s-scared,” she whispered
.
I smiled and she flushed beet-red, and I nodded.
“It’s okay to be scared, brave girl.”
She shook her head and I tucked the hair she’d used as a curtain to shield her face from the rest of the table behind her ear.
“It’s the very definition of bravery to be scared as shit to do something, but going ahead and doing it anyway,” Skids said. “For us, it was one word; for you, it was a whole lot more. You did good.”
“I’ll try to keep it to ‘yes’ or ‘no’, okay?” Yale said, and though he was tense, his tone had gained more than a few measures of control. Everleigh nodded and he asked, “Does King know that you are capable of speaking?”
Everleigh nodded.
“You’ve spoken to him before?”
She nodded again and I caught her eyes as she bowed her head in something like shame.
“I think she trusted him, once. They were in a relationship.”
“You know what happened?” Golden asked.
Everleigh bit her lip and took a deep breath and our eyes met. I nodded slowly and said, “He started using more, drinking more. The real him started to come out, and I think, ultimately, nailing her to a tree probably did some irreparable damage to that relationship.”
Everleigh nodded emphatically.
“Yeah, I suppose that would,” Skids said, drawing a deep breath and huffing it out. He looked Ev in the eye and said, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
She nodded solemnly and I asked, “So what’s this mean, in the grand scheme of things?”
Yale sighed and said, “It means, she’s going to have to get up and testify, otherwise she’s pretty much a useless witness.”
Everleigh’s jewel-bright eyes widened and she looked stricken.
“Do you think you can do it?” Yale asked point-blank and she took a deep breath and we could all see she thought about it, and I mean really thought about it.
“I’ll be right there in the courtroom, babe. We can practice as much as possible between now and the court date.”
She nodded but looked apprehensive. But she was willing to try. As hard as it was for her, she was going to try. She was brave as hell for it, too.