by A. J. Downey
“Nope, still under construction. Got a bunch of earth moving equipment out there, foundations poured on a couple buildings, but that’s about it.”
“I’m down for a little sabotage tonight, how about you?” Reaver asked Trig.
“Seems to me, Rush ain’t got much time, so he’d probably be best suited for this one. Sure he’s going to want to be back before Bailey wakes up.”
I nodded, “Shit, I’ll go with you,” Revelator said.
“Cool,” Data said. “Because an hour away there’s another development, partially finished, that could use Lucky’s attention. Again, no collateral damage, but it’s probably right at the tipping point for going into the downhill slide into completion.”
“Dude, if you can pull him off of Moira that’d be great.” Reaver said, grinning. Trigger laughed and shook his head.
“Only thing Lucky likes more than pussy is blowing shit up, shouldn’t be hard. I’ll go get him.” Trig killed the can of beer in his hand and crushed it.
“Guess it’s you and me, Rev.”
“And me,” Thirteen said, getting up from where he was laying the length of one of the benches.
“Where the fuck your ol’ ladies at, anyways?” I asked.
“Planning something for your girlfriend to take her mind off her troubles.”
“Oh, fuck…” I muttered.
“Yeah, buddy! Welcome to our world,” Revelator said clapping me on the back. I laughed.
“Come on, let’s go before any of ‘em get wise that we’re up to something.”
“Good idea. I’ve got two kids, Red would kill me if she knew I was up to anything that’d pull me away from family.”
Thirteen was nodding, “No kids, but Dani’s still got troubles sleeping.”
We didn’t say anything to that, what was there to say? You don’t live in hell for years and come out unscathed. Dani did pretty good, but she was fragile from her time with the Suicide Cunts. I was pretty sure that the shit going on with Bailey was probably bringing up quite a bit for her, too.
“Best take a cage, not the bikes for this one.” Revelator suggested.
Thirteen and I nodded and I said, “Just let me finish my beer.”
We drove out in my truck, about ten pounds of sugar in a plastic container in the back of it. Sunshine was going to be pissed we raided her kitchen, but fuck it. This was for fun and a damn good cause.
We were laughing and joking the whole way there, Thirteen sitting shotgun while Rev sat in the bed keeping the sugar from spilling and talking to us through the back sliding window.
“They got any welding shit left out, I’m calling dibs.” Thirteen said and Revelator came right back with, “Man, I am not hauling all that shit back to the truck. You can fuck that noise.”
We laughed, and pulled off to the side of the road about two minutes from the site. We got out of the truck and moved into the trees surrounding the place so we could scope it out. There was a temporary construction fence put up around the place which when we got around to the back side of it, we had no trouble untwisting the wires that held the chain link to one of the fence posts to let ourselves in.
It was dark and only a sliver of moon was out so we had to bumble around a bit. We passed a flask between us, sippin’ on some whiskey in it so if we did get snatched up, we might be able to get by with a misdemeanor drunk and disorderly or a simple trespass charge.
We were laughing and fuckin’ cuttin’ up trying to be quiet while still getting the job done. There was a backhoe and a bulldozer nearby that we liberally dosed with sugar to the gas tanks when Rev asked, “You sure this is even going to work? I mean, I know it’d work on a car but don’t these things run on diesel?”
“Yes, it’ll work, dumbass! I’m a mechanic, this’ll fuck with the engine just like any car or truck.” We did as much damage as we could to the site, but Data had been right. There wasn’t much to fuck with at this one. We got the fuck out of there before anyone happened along and went back to the club.
When we walked through the front door, Dragon leaned back in his chair and asked, “Have fun?”
We all busted up laughing and I said, “See you guys, I’m goin’ back to Bailey.”
“Night, man, thanks for the trip, it was a riot.”
Fun was over when I walked out the back door. Bailey was curled on one of the swinging benches, staring into the fire, expression somber.
No one else was out here, and I paused, watching the play of firelight against her pale skin. Her hair was loose and flowing around her face and she looked beautiful. Like some kind of angel sitting there in her satin night things. I went over to her and dropped onto the bench beside her.
“I woke up and you were gone,” she said softly.
“Kind of hard to be two places at once,” I said back and waited for her to flip out on me. I was surprised when she didn’t. Instead she just kind of slouched over, laying her head against my shoulder, twining her arms around my bicep.
“Not gonna yell at me?” I asked with a wry smile.
“Not sure what kind of women you’re used to dating, but you’re not on a lead, Rush. You don’t have to tell me where you go or everything you do. I get it. Some of it you can’t.”
“Still bothers you though, I can hear it in your voice.”
“Well, yeah… I wake up in the middle of the night and my boyfriend is just gone, doing god knows what… just… just promise that if you ever want to cheat, that you’d tell me first before actually doing anything.”
I put my arms around her then and she tipped on her side, laying her head in my lap. She looked fragile, all curled up on herself like that, staring into the flames.
“I’ll never cheat, Bailey. That’s one thing you never have to worry about from me. I know that kind of pain, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody else.”
“He used to, you know? A lot. Mom would just make excuses and hide it. I could tell it hurt her, but she just let him. Saving face was more important. I think it was one of the reasons she hated Aunt Tillie.”
“What the fuck did you just say?”
Shit.
Bailey sat up swiftly, Dray marching up the grass from the back door. Bailey was shaking her head.
“Dray, she was jealous. She always hated the fact that Dragon was faithful to your mother. That what they shared was real. She felt like your mother rubbed it in her face that she was free and that my mom was trapped in this loveless marriage with a man who couldn’t even be faithful to her. My mom may have loved my dad, but I don’t think my dad ever really appreciated or loved my mother… It just wasn’t who he was.”
Dray turned one of the lounge chairs around and dropped into it, facing Bailey. Bailey wiped at a tear and said, “How did we all just get so fucked up?”
Dray snorted, “I don’t know, Bales. I wasn’t really there. Not for my mom’s lack of trying.”
“I know, my mom has been really out of character lately. I don’t know if it’s because of Dad’s heart attack or what…”
Dray heaved a heavy sigh and said, “Bales, it’s probably just all of it. You know that feeling you’ve got in the center of your chest like the whole world is flying the fuck apart and you’re just doing everything you can to hold it together,” he put his hands together like he was trying to hold something, spaces between his fingers. “But no matter how you try to hold on, shit just keeps escaping through your fingers and there’s not a damn thing you can do except pretend you’ve got a handle on it, like everything is fine?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?” she asked.
“I may be younger than you by numbers, but I’m way older by experience,” he said. “It was the same fuckin’ thing for me when I was sixteen, watchin’ my mom get killed. I still don’t know why I’m alive, Bales. I’ll never know why I didn’t get hit… I just know that we’ve got one life and we can’t spend it worrying about what this guy or that lady thinks about how we’re living it. My mom knew that… Your mom is just now
starting to catch on.”
He leaned back heavily in his chair and stared his cousin down. She leaned back heavily in her seat, and were my feet not planted firmly on the ground, it probably would have set us to swinging. She dragged her eyes back up to Dray’s and said, “What if I can’t be like you, or Aunt Tillie?” She sniffed and took me by the hand, and I think, whispered her greatest fear, “What if this life you lead isn’t for me?”
Dray smirked and shook his head, “You’re listening, but you aren’t hearing me, Bailey. You aren’t supposed to live my life, or my mom’s life. You’re supposed to live your life.”
I laced my fingers through hers and brought the back of her hand to my lips, pressing them against it softly. She looked at me and I murmured against it, “Baby, that’s the thing about living this life. Our life is what we make it. Nobody else gets a say in how we do things, or where we go, or what we do. That’s on us.”
She laid back down, her head in my lap and stared past her cousin at the flickering firelight. We let her. I set us to gently rocking and we all just sat there, not saying another word. Sometimes you sit with people in your life and don’t have to say anything. Sometimes, you get up from those times, and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had. It was like that for us that night, and when the fire burned too low to really see by, I picked Bailey up, and Dray held doors for us while I took my woman back to bed where we both belonged.
Chapter 32
Bailey
“Well, it ain’t pretty, but it’s totally doable,” Shelly said, sitting back in her chair.
I sighed and pressed my fingertips into my eyes, rubbing. “I’m really starting to hate Blue Hills, which is miserable because I’ve always loved that place. I was always way more invested in it than any other person in my family, including my dad.” I sighed and turned my head to stare out Shelly’s office window. We’d just finished poring over the financials to see if I had enough to refund the money owed on incomplete contracts with the owners of the horses that had been housed at Blue Hills. Not all of them were as appreciative of the bait and switch to keep their animals safe during the crisis, either. A few of them threatening to sue until Marion Cranston stepped up and threatened to take offense.
That shut them up in an impressively short amount of time. God forbid anyone offend Mrs. Marion Cranston. Their reputation would take years to recover. I was beginning to severely doubt that my family name ever would.
“So please tell me you’re saying that we can do it, without selling the farm. Because I don’t want to have to sell it only for it to end up with the GDG anyway.”
Shelly laughed a little and said, “Don’t you worry, I took that into account. No, when I say it’s doable I mean it’s totally doable but it ain’t pretty. It would literally leave you down to practically nothing in the business accounts you have access to, and your personal accounts to make it happen. The good news is-”
I stopped her, throwing up my hands and saying, “Ah, finally, there’s some good news in here somewhere!”
She snorted and repeated herself, “The good news is, that once all the legal bullshit is dispensed with, you’ll have enough for the renovations you want to make and to get Blue Hills up and running the way you want it.”
“Yeah, that is good news, if it weren’t for the fact that the legal battles are likely going to take years to complete.”
“Not with what Data and I dug up,” she sang out.
I let out an explosive sigh, “Lawyers, they get paid to move things along at the speed of snail.”
Shelly laughed, “Won’t argue with you there.” She let out a gusty sigh of her own and said, “I know it’s a lot of shit that’s come down in a real short amount of time, and it feels like the whole world is fucking you raw, but this is it, I promise.”
“God, so is this what the bottom feels like?”
“Yep, but I’m here to tell you, when you’ve hit bottom you’ve only got one direction left to go.”
I smiled and nodded at Reaver’s cousin, “It’s just tough to stay positive right now.”
“I totally get it, trust me.”
A knock fell at Shelly’s front door and she lit up, “Who’s that?” I asked as she pushed herself up out of her chair.
“That,” she said, “Is plan ‘B.’”
“Plan B?” I echoed, confused and got up to follow her. She went out to the kitchen and opened up the door.
“Hi!” Ashton and Hayden called in unison.
“Shhh! Harmony is down for a nap,” Shelly said, laughing.
“Oh, sorry!” Hayden whispered back.
“Dining room table,” Shelly said. “More room to talk.”
We went to the dining room table and sat. It seated six, so we all just sort of gathered around the middle. Shelly went back to her office and brought out her laptop.
“Okay, I called this little meeting because I’ve been doing some research and crunching the numbers and Ashton, I think I have a deal for you…”
An hour later we sat around the table in silence, Ashton saying “Let me get this straight, you want me to buy into a horse farm.”
I kept staring at Ashton and wondering why we were even having this conversation, I mean Hayden Michaels I understood because her family had money but Ashton Howard?
“What I’m proposing isn’t so much a buy-in, as it is buying Bailey’s brother out. The cost for renovations can be paid back in full as soon as the money comes up, and that would leave just interest on the loan which could be worked out over a matter of the first five years. All of the facilities are in place for the most part, all you need is lodging for guests and to rebuild the house, right?”
“And horses… and probably the first year’s operating costs –”
“Which Rush told me he already has covered,” Shelly said.
“Wait, what?”
“He didn’t tell you about that part?” Shelly asked.
I pushed back from the table, “No… no he didn’t.”
“While Mel’s been on bedrest from having Chandler, she finally got around to uploading all the pictures she took of his furniture to a website so he could sell it. It’s been really well-received. He’s got way more than what is at the club,” Hayden said.
“The way it’s going,” Shelly said, “he says he can totally start funding your dream. That you guys would just need a little extra help getting it going sooner rather than later.”
“And you have that kind of money?” I asked Ashton. She smiled and nodded.
“What can I say? Shelly is really good with money. The twelve million I received when my ex-husband died has grown and what it would take to get your retreat going isn’t more than five hundred thousand or so.”
“That’s kind of a drop in the bucket for Ashton because I’m just that awesome.”
“So, what do you say?” Hayden asked. “Think you and Ashton could partner up for a bit?”
“I still don’t think I understand,” I said. “What’s in it for you?”
Ashton reached across the table and covered one of my hands with both of hers, “I get to watch someone’s dreams come true, help one of the club’s family, and help another one of the club do so much more with himself than work on cars. What do you mean what’s in it for me?”
“People just don’t work like that,” I said helplessly, tears springing to my eyes, I was just so overwhelmed by what they were saying, what they were proposing.
The girls laughed and Hayden leaned forward and said, “That’s just it, we’ve been trying to tell you all this time, that’s exactly how our people do.”
“But you don’t even know me!”
“We know Dragon and Dray, and we know Rush. Rush wouldn’t love you if you weren’t quality people, honey. It just wouldn’t happen,” Shelly said. Hayden got up and went into the kitchen and brought back some paper towels, handing them to me.
I laughed and dabbed at my eyes and blew my nose, “This is all happe
ning so fast.”
“Tends to be how things work around these guys,” Hayden said smiling.
“Listen, real friends, people who genuinely love and care about you, they do everything in their power to make your life easier, not harder. That’s the way things are supposed to work, Bailey… that’s how you can tell when things are right. When things are real.” Ashton said.
“Do you need a decision right now?” I asked and Ashton smiled, lighting up her strange golden eyes.
“No, honey. There’s no expiration date on it either, you take your time. I was afraid that this may have been too early to really discuss, but it’s there if you want it.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Let me get us some lemonade,” Hayden said and I nodded. I wanted to see Rush, to talk to him and get his take on things. To understand that yes, this really was for real…
Chapter 33
Rush
I was working on the damn front door I’d been building for Bailey before her fucking house went up. It felt good to be in my shop, but I was nervous today. Today was the day she’d gone to Shelly’s, and the girls were going to tell her the plan I’d hatched to get her dream up and running sooner rather than later.
I decided I’d had enough of the garage now that I’d had a taste of something I’d meant to be doing all along. As much as I didn’t want to turn my hobby of making things out of wood into a job, I didn’t mind selling a bunch of shit I had stored here and out at Point Nowhere. It was just going to end up damaged if I didn’t, and if selling it put me and Bailey closer to trying out a life together, then I was all for it. I think it was time for something new for the both of us.
I looked up from what I was doing and had to smile a little, “How long you been there?” I asked her. She was sitting on one of the high stools at the table in the corner of my shop I reserved for visitors.
“A while. I think I like watching you work,” she said. “Something both captivating and soothing about it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She seemed off. A little sad, a lot reserved, and I worried about it. I couldn’t fix the problem without knowing what it was, but I didn’t think it was right to just come out and ask. Not this time. While it would have been fun under any other circumstances to rile her up and watch her go, I didn’t think I’d get that particular reaction this time. It finally hit me what looked wrong about her. It was her eyelashes. They were sort of stuck together and I asked her, “You been crying?”