Never Coming Down

by Deja Voss

  “Move,” I tell her.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to talk to him. I need to set things straight.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she asks. “I mean, what if Arthur is following you?”

  “Well you’re right about one thing, Olive. If he follows me up that mountain, he’s gonna be in way over his head. Are you gonna be ok here by yourself?”

  “Tank and Red should be back in a little bit. They ran out to get me breakfast.”

  “Well isn’t that nice.”

  “It is. It’s really nice, actually.”

  I give her a warm hug before heading to the door.

  “Here goes nothing,” I say with a shrug.

  Gavin

  I’ve ignored at least twelve calls from Olive. Tank and Red are down at the bar with her so I’m not really worried that something is happening there that needs my immediate attention.

  I’m sure Sloan’s clued her in by now that something is going down, and I don’t feel like having to hear her side of the story. I’m pissed off, I feel betrayed and so confused about what these past few days have meant. Did she ever even really care about me or was she just looking for a way to use me for information? What did she serve to gain from this? It’s not like she lives in a nice house or drives a nice car. Olive told me she’s up to her neck in debt. It can’t be a financial thing.

  It just doesn’t make sense. I perused the folder Goob so kindly gave me a few times, and the more I drink, the less I even begin to understand what happened here. The only thing that is going through my head is that she’s a police informant of some sort.

  “Honey, you can’t be in here,” I hear Trixie say as the door to the clubhouse swings shut. “It’s not a good idea.”

  “I don’t care. I need to talk to him.”

  I hear the two of them murmuring back and forth quietly and the door swings open again.

  “I sent her outside,” Trixie says to me. “Figured it’s best to keep her out of everyone’s crosshairs today.”

  The hair on my arms stand up. She really shouldn’t be up here, especially with what I know now, with what the club knows now. She’s got a set of balls on her if she thinks she can just storm through the door and act like nothing has happened.

  “What should I do?” I ask her. I really don’t know how I’m supposed to handle this situation, and I trust Trixie’s judgement.

  “I don’t know, Gav.” She shrugs. “You want answers?”

  “I don’t know.” I really don’t know. It’s like she’s played me enough already. How can I trust anything that comes out of her mouth? What if she’s just here digging around for more information?

  “You think she’s wearing a wire?” Trixie asks. “Or some sort of secret camera?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I should probably just go see what she wants so I can get her out of here.”

  I stand up from the barstool and make my way outside. Sloan is pacing the gravel driveway, her hair wild and eyes red and puffy.

  Esther and Trixie follow hot on my heels, hovering at the doorway, staring her down.

  “Gavin,” she says, running towards me, throwing herself at me, wrapping her arms around me.

  “Stop,” I say, pulling away.

  “Please,” she begs. “You need to hear me out. I’m in a lot of trouble. I need your help.”

  “Well why don’t you just go running to your good old cop friends, then? Rumor has it you’re a top informant. I’m sure they’ll know how to help you out.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, gritting her teeth. “You need to listen to me.”

  “Are you wearing a wire?”

  She looks at me like I’m crazy.

  “All this time I thought you were here because of me. Because you cared about me and wanted to be with me. To find out you’re just doing all this to try and hurt my family and my club is really low, Sloan. You know how we deal with narks up here on the mountain?”

  “I didn’t want to have to do this with you,” she sighs. “If anything, I was trying to protect you, but I’m not sure I can make you understand. I’m going to go. Don’t take this out on Ollie, it has nothing to do with her. She told me to be honest with you about my past, but everything was just moving so quickly between us and it felt so fucking good to not think about that part of my life when I was with you.”

  “Just tell me what happened. Tell me what happened last night.” Nothing is adding up here. I didn’t think I wanted answers. I thought maybe by not knowing what was going on I could keep her safe from the anger I’m feeling, keep her safe from how us Mountain Misfits react to being handed over to the cops, but now I want to know, no matter what. I’m not going to let her walk away without telling me what is actually going on.

  “Last night, the police were following me. A long time before I met you I dated a man who ended up being a drug trafficker. He’s been in prison for a while now, but apparently he escaped yesterday and they have reason to believe that he was coming for me.”

  “Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on? You know I would do whatever it took to keep you safe.”

  “I didn’t realize that’s why they were trying to get me to talk to them. I thought maybe it was something else. They told me I wasn’t safe and I needed to go home and talk to them.”

  “So you thought that I was going to hurt you? You thought they were protecting you from ME?” I’m offended and I’m enraged.

  “I don’t know,” she says softly, avoiding my eye contact.

  “You thought I was going to hurt you? What have I ever done to you, Sloan?”

  “Nothing.”

  This is the part where I realize that people like her and people like me don’t go together for a reason. Even worse than the thought that she might be working with the police is the thought that she doesn’t trust me or thinks that I would ever consider hurting her. I shake my head and turn to walk away. She reaches out her hand and grabs my shoulder.

  “Listen to me,” she pleads. “It’s not like that. These guys saved my life when I was actually in a bad situation. I had no reason to doubt them, but I also had no reason to ever doubt you either. No reason, Gavin.”

  “I just don’t get it, Sloan. Why didn’t you tell me the truth from the beginning? Why did it have to come to this point? Don’t you think if you were even kind of serious about this you’d give me total honesty from day one?”

  Sloan

  My world is crashing down around me. It’s the worst-case scenario I could imagine. Not only does he think I’m a petty nark, but he thinks I don’t trust him, that I think he could hurt me. Even though I know who he is, I know what he does, I would’ve never expected him to put his hands on me, never expected him to put me through anything like Arthur did.

  Still, my defenses are up high, and my only coping mechanism right now is rage. The only way I can get my point across is to lay it all down for him and show him exactly where I’m coming from. I take a deep breath, looking right into those dark eyes. Those dark eyes that look completely empty, completely void of any compassion for what I’m about to say.

  I’m going to say it anyway.

  “Why didn’t I give you total honesty from day one? Let’s see. Do you want to hear about how I spent my twenties with a man who I basically sold my soul to? He took away everything that I had, but gave me all sorts of nice things. He even paid for me to go to school. In serving as his whore, I was regularly subjected to all sorts of physical and verbal abuse, but I didn’t care because I was too afraid that if I tried to leave him, he’d kill someone, like my sixty-year-old boss at the nursing home who ‘looked at me like we were fucking.’ Maybe even Olive, who was a ‘bad influence’ on me. I didn’t care if he killed me because I was already dead inside.”

  Now that I’ve started, I don’t want to stop. The knife that’s been lodged in my thigh for all these years has been ripped out, and I’m going to blee
d until there’s nothing left to give.

  “Hmmm... what else can I offer you if we’re doing total honesty? This,” I say, lifting up the sleeve of my shirt, showing him my arm. “This was what did me in for good. I’m lucky I can even move my fingers on this hand. This is what got him locked up. The police were at the hospital, telling me they were going to arrest us, telling me all I had to do was roll over and be a good girl and all this would go away. Sure, I’d spoken with them in the past, but I never thought I’d actually go through with it. I trusted him so much that I figured he would make it all go away before it was even an issue, that somehow we’d both come out unscathed, but he trusted me so much that he didn’t even realize there was an issue to begin with.”

  He grabs my arm, tracing the deep scar barely concealed by the muddy floral tattoo and I jerk away from him, embittered by his touch.

  “I rolled over. I narked. And I’ve spent the past five years trying to get out from under that dark cloud. Buried myself in a career that I don’t even one hundred percent know if I want. Isolated myself from the world. Hated myself. Then you came along and I started feeling like I’m not that person anymore. But in your eyes, in the eyes of the club, in the eyes of your family, I always will be.”

  “Sloan, come on,” he growls. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I would honestly hear everything you just told me and blame you for your actions? He was hurting you!”

  “Exactly. He hurt me. He broke me. I’m damaged fucking goods. Maybe you would’ve heard all that and been sympathetic for me, but do you really think you would’ve wanted to spend the rest of your life constantly worrying that you might trigger me or upset me to the point that I run to the police and do the same thing to you? I just wanted a clean slate.”

  I thought there would be tears by this point, but now I’m just mad. Mad at myself for even going down this path. Mad at him for taking me here. I’m mad that he doesn’t just wrap me in his arms and tell me everything is going to be ok.

  “You can’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t have done, Sloan. As much as I don’t know the first thing about you, you obviously don’t know anything about me.”

  “Gavin,” I say, reaching out for him. I’ve never seen him this way before. He doesn’t look angry and he doesn’t look sad. He is expressionless. His stoic eyes look chiseled in stone and it feels like he’s staring right through me.

  “You need to get out of here,” he says, his voice stern. He turns his back to me, walking away slowly.

  Esther reaches out and grabs his arm. “Gavin,” she pleads, “don’t do this. The poor girl just dumped her heart out to you.”

  “Yeah, well, I handed her mine from day one. If she couldn’t tell what kind of person I was by that, it’s not worth my time. I guess Dad was right. She is nothing but trouble.”

  She shakes her head sadly, squeezing his hand, and he makes his way back into the clubhouse. I stand paralyzed. I just want someone to say something to me, anything that will make me feel even remotely better.

  “You gotta go,” Esther says. “You don’t belong here, Sloan.”

  “What happened to girls like us stick together?”

  “You’re not like us. I’m sorry you had some tough breaks. Nobody deserves to go through what you’ve been through. But girls like me don’t use our pain to hurt other people. My brother might be rough around the edges, but he would’ve done anything in the world for you, no matter how shitty your past was. You really hurt his feelings. I thought you were different than the rest of the folks down there, Sloan. I thought you were better than making wild assumptions about who we are and what we do. You’re no better than the rest.”

  There’s nothing I can do but walk away.

  I can feel this huge mountain closing in around me. It doesn’t matter where I turn, which way I go, I’m the outcast here, the misfit. Nobody is going to take my side.

  Even though the sun is shining, I feel like a dark cloud is permanently affixed over my head. I realize that Arthur got exactly what he wanted for me all this time.

  He has his freedom, doing who knows what somewhere in South America, probably living the life of his dreams, and I’m stuck in a cage, forever trapped by my past mistakes, unable to escape from that person he turned me into. The wash of colors that have taken over the leaves on the trees over the past week normally make me feel exhilarated, but I just want them to hurry up and fall. Hurry up and fall so life can go back to sad and gray, and I don’t have to think about how beautiful things might have been.

  Chapter 30

  Sloan:

  “You look like death warmed over,” Carol says to me as I walk into the lobby of the emergency room. “What happened to you?”

  It’s been a lot of sleepless nights with my couch drug up against the door of my apartment. A lot of pacing around waiting for something to happen. A lot of trying to hold my shit together and showing up to work with a smile on my face and a skip in my step. Gallons of coffee and stale doughnuts and anything to take the edge off of how I feel. I even splurged on a couple of bottles of cheap vodka to try and numb whatever this feeling is inside of me, but the reality is, I am already numb. I’m just going through the motions.

  Apparently today was the day when everything hits me all at once and I can’t hold it in any longer. Everything in my life is just plain sad. Even this place, this place that I once wanted to revolve my life around just looks sad, gray, dismal. Where I used to see my role at giving people another chance at living, I feel like there’s just no point anymore.

  “Somebody dropped this off for you this morning,” she says, handing me my uncharged cellphone. “Not sure who; I wasn’t working yet when they stopped by.”

  I shrug and slip it in my pocket. I don’t want to talk to anyone anyway. Nobody who I care about wants to talk to me, either.

  “Sloan, what is your malfunction today?” she snaps.

  I feel like now is when I’m supposed to cry.

  But I don’t. I just stare at her like she’s an alien or something and I can’t comprehend the words coming out of her mouth.

  “There’s lasagna in the breakroom,” she says, trying to be kind.

  “Oh fuck off,” I yell, turning and running down the hall. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at pasta the same way again. I know I’m being completely irrational right now, but I am overwhelmed.

  “What? Did you just find out you’re allergic to gluten or something?” she calls after me. “Sloan! Come back here, honey. You need to talk to me.”

  I pull the stack of papers out of the office with the patients whose rehab plans I need to check in on for the afternoon. Mr. Patrick Hoffman. The ladder guy. Fell down and broke his hip and punctured his lung. I’m assuming he’s heavily sedated right now, according to his file. He sounds like the perfect patient for me to spend some time with today.

  I knock softly before stepping into his room. He’s an older gentleman, and his gray-haired wife sits next to his sleeping body, her hand on top of his.

  Ugh, I think. I don’t have the stomach for classic love stories right now.

  “Mrs. Hoffman?” I ask.

  “Are you the nice doctor who helped my husband yesterday?” She’s smiling at me, her thin lips stretched across perfectly white dentures.

  “Hold on a minute,” I say, staring up at the TV on the wall. The local news is on. Across the bottom of the screen reads “State Prison Escapee Apprehended in Tijuana.”

  I only catch bits and pieces, my mind racing so fast. I watch the photos of a man I barely recognize in handcuffs, the smiling faces of the Policia Federal standing outside of some shady-looking nightclub, words like extradition and evading sentences, drug trafficking, and Arthur Fenton.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I say to the woman. “I’ll be right back.”

  I should be joyful. I should feel relieved, but I feel nothing at all. Once again, Arthur has ruined my life, and this time he didn’t even have to lay a finger on me. He took
away everything important to me, took away everything good, and dragged me right back to where I belong. He might be behind bars, but I will always be trapped in this hell he helped me create for myself.

  Chapter 31

  Gavin

  “Well look who decided to grace us with his presence,” Brooks laughs, patting me on the shoulder. “Holy shit, you even showered.”

  “I’m just here to drop off liquor,” I say, slamming the box on the bar top.

  “Easy there, chief,” Olive shouts. “The fuck am I going to do with a box of broken glass?”

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” I snap at her. Just the sight of her makes my skin crawl. I have purposely avoided the bar for the last month because I honestly couldn’t stand to see her face. It’s just a reminder of how bad I’m hurting. I’ve managed to get my work done during hours we were closed, but today I had to face the music.

  I’ve spent the last month hiding in the basement. The farmhouse is too painful right now, and I don’t even care if I finish it. Sloan cut me to the core, made me realize that no matter what I do to make right by my life, I’ll just be another thug. Might as well let myself be just as miserable as the rest of my family.

  “Get in the office, right now,” she barks. She’s scowling at me as she turns and storms into the back room.

  “You’re in trouble now,” Brooks says jokingly. I shoot him the classic Boden ‘shut the fuck up or I’m going to kill you’ look that I’ve mastered so well thanks to my father.

  She slams the office door shut behind me, her cool blue eyes staring daggers right through me.

  “What’s your problem?” she asks, scowling at me.

  “Nothing, what’s your problem?” I say.

  “I can’t do this by myself. You’ve been straight-up absent for the last month while I’ve tried my hardest to keep shit together here. I don’t get paid enough for this shit. Especially if you’re going to walk in the door and just start being an asshole to me and our customers.”