by Wild, Nikki
But we weren't married four months before he got hurt. And it was like Mama all over again. The doctors gave him prescription heroin, the company gave him a worker's comp settlement, and the government gave him disability checks. When the settlement check was gone, it was just the disability. But the pain pills stayed. And it was just me, earning for two. And unlike Mama, Jase wasn't nice when he was flying. He was even meaner when he wasn't. It got bad enough that I would sit in my car after work, parked outside the house, for hours before going inside. He never hit me, but his words...
Fat bitch, ugly bitch, lazy bitch. Whore, slut, cheating cunt.
He looked through my phone every single night. He thought I was sleeping with Johnny, with Slick, with Dirk, with our customers. I couldn't have friends, because I didn't want him to have more people to accuse me of sleeping with. And he'd threaten me, all the time. He'd back me into the corner, fist raised, two inches from giving me a black eye, screaming the whole time. He'd grab my hair and pull, only just enough to make it hurt. Sometimes, he used the good kitchen knife, against my neck. And once, he used the gun.
Why'd I stay? Well, I didn't. We had four good months, and I endured two and a half years of torture, and then I left his ass. Sure, it took me too long. But I did leave, and I didn't look back. Jase was the one left looking back. He cleaned up, quit the pills. But he didn't get nice again. He just got meaner.
He wouldn't sign the divorce papers. He spent every day and every night making my life hell. Stalking me. At work, at home. He wouldn't be satisfied until I checked into the state mental hospital. The police didn't do shit. Dirk could keep him out of the club, and he did, but I didn't have a Dirk waiting for me at home.
More excuses. This time, I guess, I'm trying to justify what I was doing to Cross. A boy – a man now – who'd never been anything but good to me. Who'd shown me what love should be like, so that when Jase turned his corner, I knew it wasn't love anymore. And I was going to repay him with betrayal. Lies and betrayal. I'd come waltzing back into his life, promising him that sweet love we'd once had, but it was nothing but rotgut moonshine.
Maybe he won't even want me, I thought, torn between hope and dismay at the thought. As much as I was over him, and knew he was over me, it was hard to believe wouldn't want anything to do with me. But if he did deny me, I could take the money and run. Not all the money, but the half I already had. Enough to leave Helena, and hopefully get away from Jase.
At any rate, I had ten hours to mull it all over and worry about who I'd be once this was all over. If I could live with myself, really live with myself. If Cross still felt anything for me, and what it would mean if he did, and I used it like a weapon against him.
Closing my eyes, I remembered my mother, slipping me that pill when we left Cutter. I'd never taken another pill. But right then, I wanted one – real fucking bad. I knew why Mama used, I knew why Jase used. I knew how it took everything away, made the whole world soft and sweet and simple. I was just stronger than them, didn't need to make the world that way. But maybe the new Bex Carter wasn't so strong. Maybe she was bound and determined to destroy herself, just like her mama before her.
Dutch
“I think you’re being sloppy,” Sylvia said, turning the razor around in her fingers, careful to keep the blade away from her skin. She was dressed in one of those long, black dresses, sleeves sweeping out like bells, ethereal and stark against her white skin. Her lips, plump and red, puckered as she watched Dutch watching her.
“And I think you’re treadin’ where a lady ain’t s’posed to tread,” Dutch snapped. His eyes were red as stop signs, flicking from the pile of powder on the table to Sylvia’s own pale blue eyes.
“If it wasn’t for this lady, you’d be pinching pennies in your retirement,” Sylvia hissed back.
“Watch your mouth,” Dutch growled, matching her eye for eye now, his temper rising to her challenge. “You been takin’ a lot of liberties with those purty lips of yours. I have half a mind to rip them right off your face.”
“Then who’d be kissing you below the belt, baby?” Sylvia cooed, eyes narrowed but voice going soft. She lowered the razor to the brown powder on the desk, idly cutting it into smaller piles. Dutch watched, fuming but silent. If that damn woman wasn’t so…magnetic…he’d have her hog-tied and thrown in the river for her attitude. But he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of her. Something in Sylvia’s eyes just called to him. Made a man feel lucky. Made a man feel blessed.
Or made a man feel like proving himself. Like shoving the whole damn world into her arms and daring her to find fault with it. Made a man feel like killing himself to hear her say she loved him. To hear her say she was his.
Dutch had been avoiding women like this, women he could love, for the better part of forty-five years. He figured you got one, every lifetime. He just ran into his a little later in life.
“I’m just saying,” Sylvia went on, daring a glance at him, “you can’t be too careful. We know Cross will be a problem. What makes you so sure Blade won’t be just as bad?”
“Because I know my men,” he said. “Don’t you underestimate me. I know my men. Blade may be smart as a whip, but he’s a follower through and through. Once I get the boys on my side, he’ll sway that way, too.”
“The boys,” Sylvia mused, lips pursed. She took one of the small piles and divided it further, until she had a series of sloppy lines before her. Dutch’s fingers curled against his palm. It was 2am, and he wanted to sleep.
“Yeah,” he growled, eying the lines, her long, red nails, elegant fingers sliding the razor through them, tightening them up, making them straight. “The boys.”
“Which boys?” Sylvia asked, looking down at the table, at her work.
“Why you always gotta act like we ain’t been over this a hundred, two hundred times? It’s late, woman. Let’s get steady and get to bed.”
The meth wouldn’t let him sleep. That’s what the smack was for. Something to balance him out. Would Sylvia sleep at his side? He didn’t rightly know. She’d certainly lay at his side, and wake him up in the sweetest of ways, but he wasn’t sure the woman ever actually slept. The way she was, almost inhuman, made him think that maybe she didn’t need to sleep. Maybe she just shut down for a little while, like a robot.
He’d never seen or heard her dream.
“Because,” Sylvia sighed. “We’ve talked about it plenty. But I haven’t seen you do anything about it.”
“I got that bitch up here,” Dutch pointed out.
“Sure,” Sylvia said. “That’s one thing. It’s not enough. How long are we gonna wait to take what should be ours, Dutch? It’s been long enough.”
Dutch grumbled, rubbing his eyes, his body sick and sore and wanting the fix that Sylvia was preparing.
“I’ll work on it,” he grunted. “Tomorrow. I’ll start talkin’ to some boys tomorrow.”
She smiled, then. A smile that could chill you to the bone, or get your bone hard as shit. Her tongue slid slowly across her lips, her eyes always smoky and narrow, like a cat. She was temperamental as a cat, too. Which made owning her body all the more rewarding. Suddenly, Dutch felt like that fix could wait, after all. She read his mind, rose from the table, swayed back to the bed and crawled onto it, on her hands and knees, hitching her long dress up in the process.
“I love the way you talk business, baby,” she cooed. “You know that, right? I just love hearing you take charge…”
“Yeah,” Dutch grit out, rising to meet her at the bed, undoing his zipper on the way. “I know, baby. I fuckin’ know.”
Bex
Somewhere between Branson and Kansas City, I fell asleep. And for the first time in years, I dreamed of Cross.
I was 14. Maybe 15. A freshman, at least, while Cross was barely qualifying as a junior. By then, he was skipping more days than he attended, and spending his nights fighting for money. He considered it training for his future in the Dead Crusaders, and a halfway decent way to make some extra cash. Enough t
o buy his own bike by the end of October. A rusty old Yamaha with two wheels that turned and an engine that purred.
He was picking me up after school. I didn’t know where he’d been all day, and I didn’t exactly ask, either. Those days, he was more than itching to become a Prospect, and spent a lot of time at the clubhouse. I did too, for that matter, but in a different way. Cross spent his time there to drink and act tough with the guys. I went there because it’s where my father and mother spent their time, where the other club kids hung out. And it was where Cross was.
Even all the way back then, I guess, I was a sucker for him.
But that day, we had plans outside the clubhouse. I ran down the high school steps two at a time, old backpack slamming against my lower back. I wasn’t running from excitement. I was running from them.
“Club whore trash!”
“When ya gonna start strippin’ for tips, Carter? Wanna start now?”
“Bex Carter gives great head!”
A half-full soda can flew past my face, sticky droplets landing in my hair. They didn’t let up, not even when I was off school grounds, running down the sidewalk towards Cross. He was leaning against his bike, smoking a cigarette, looking bored. Until he saw me running. Until he saw the look on my face. Until he saw the kids who were chasing me, and heard what they were saying.
Those kids were rich, their lives were clean, and they were as cruel as could be. They never let me forget that I wasn’t like them, that I’d never be like them. That my blood was a different color than theirs. They were high-class, and I was trash.
“Skank!”
“Dick-lover!”
“Ugly-ass, slutty-ass, grease ball!”
“Biker trash!”
Yeah, they were cruel. But they were also stupid. Because they should have realized the big guy with the bike wasn’t just standing around for kicks. It didn’t matter that Cross was twice their size. He stubbed his cigarette out on the ground and walked towards me, his hands in fists, his face steady as a rock, eyes flashing like blue fire.
I spun around as he passed me, and would have burst out laughing it wasn’t for the fact that I needed to catch my breath. The way those kids stopped mid-stride, like cartoon characters realizing they’d run straight off the cliff. The way their faces contorted, from awful glee to abject horror. The girls – two of them – actually started screeching, and ran for the trees. The boys, though, they were still trying to act tough. After all, there were three of them, and only one of him.
You could almost pity them.
The minute Cross was in reaching distance, he had two of their heads in his massive hands, knocking them together, their bodies going shock still before giving out, one crumpling straight on his knees and the other swaying backwards onto his ass. The third boy was catching flies in his mouth, too dumb to run before Cross could punch him in the gut.
“Fuckin’ rich-ass, snotty-ass, weak-ass little bitches,” Cross spat. He could have destroyed them. He could have kept going until they were jelly on the sidewalk. But he didn’t need to, and he had too much pride to waste his time and energy on them. Already, the boy who’d fallen on his ass was shedding tears, and the gut-punched boy was fetal on the pavement. Cross crouched down, still towering over them, his shadow spreading over them like a shroud.
“You little pissants know what’ll happen to you if I ever see you near Bex Carter again? If she ever tells me you were causing her trouble? If ever even feel like you have a nasty look on your face when you see her passing by?”
The boys didn’t respond.
“You’ll be pissin’ out of catheters and shittin’ into plastic bags,” he said, answering his own question. “And that’s just what I’ll do to the lower half of you. As for your faces…”
He reached forward, causing the boys to shrink and shrivel and try to crawl away. But he just grabbed one of their noses and pretended to steal it, the way you do with a baby.
“Well, you get the picture, right?”
“F-fu-fuck you, man!” One of the boys spat. I could see the way the other boys looked at him, like they wished he was dead for putting them all at risk. “I’m callin’ the c-c-cops!”
“Good,” Cross spat. “I got friends in juvie. And out of juvie too, if you catch my drift.”
“You’re gonna get kicked out of school, you fuckin’ biker trash,” the brave kid kept going, his friends two inches from killing him themselves.
“You gonna tell your mommy and daddy? Go ahead. Tell ‘em Cross DuFrane served you your own ass on a platter. And tell them he’ll do it again unless they teach you how to talk to a girl. You ought to consider yourselves lucky if Bex Carter graces you with a fuckin’ smile. Now get the fuck out of here, before I lose what patience I have left.”
The mouthy kid looked like he was about to say something else, but one of his friends clapped his mouth shut while the other yanked him up by his arm. They took off running. The girls, who’d been hiding behind the trees but watching the whole thing with their jaws open, watched them run, then looked at Cross again.
That was the best, to be honest. The way they looked at him, and then at me. With his blue eyes and his shaved head and his stubble and his leather jacket, he was a teenage dream, and he was throwing his arm around my shoulders, and pulling me onto the back of his bike. I gave them a triumphant smile as we blazed past them on the street.
We went straight to my favorite place in the whole wide world: Michelangelo’s. Home of the best eggplant parm this side of the Missouri river. Cross helped me off his bike and held the door open for me. One minute he was beating the shit out of bullies, and the next he was the perfect gentleman. Even paid for our take out with his fighting money.
“You know they’re just jealous little assholes,” he said while we waited.
“Jealous?” I crinkled my nose. “Of what? They have everything…”
“The girls are jealous they don’t look like you, and the boys are jealous that their girlfriends don’t look like you,” Cross said with a shrug, as matter-of-fact as a weatherman. I blushed hard enough to rival a fire hydrant.
“Shut up,” I said, pushing him on the shoulder. I’d known Cross since almost before I was born. We were best friends. If he thought I was pretty, it was just because we were friends, and friends always think the best of their friends.
“You don’t believe me?” Cross said, and suddenly grabbed my shoulders. He pulled me, squirming and giggling, towards a table, where he grabbed a napkin dispenser, using its reflective side as a mirror. “Look at yourself, girl. Those eyes? Shit. Those freckles? Double shit. Cute as fuck.”
“I have a pimple,” I murmured, drawing my eyes down, unable to hide my smile.
“Everyone has pimples,” Cross said, putting down the napkin dispenser and going back to the counter as our order number was called. “Even your pimples are cute. C’mon. We’ll be late for the movie.”
We snuck the eggplant parm and garlic knots into the movie theater on 3rd, an old dump that showed two-dollar movies on Wednesdays. They played old releases, so Cross and I were always living two years behind the rest of the world when it came to movies.
By the time we were halfway through The Others, I was too freaked out to think about my high school tormentors. We snuck into Legally Blonde afterwards and I pretended I didn’t love it. I suspect Cross was pretending, too. Cross got us popcorn and bought tickets to O Brother, Where Art Thou; we didn’t bother pretending not to love that one.
By the time we got to the late night showing of Donnie Darko, my eyes were too tired to stay open, my head too heavy to keep lifted. I fell asleep on his shoulder, woke up with his arm wrapped around my shoulder. I pretended I was asleep a little while longer, just so I could keep feeling his arm around me.
By the time I woke up, the memory fresh in my mind, playing like one of those movies we’d watched in the darkness of the theater, we were only three hours from Cutter, and I was sicker than ever. Cross always stood up for me. H
e’d always been my savior.
And here I was, on my way to be his Judas.
Cross
I spotted my pops smoking a cigarette outside the clubhouse, a renovated two-story shotgun that had been in the Dead Crusader's possession since the club's inception sixty years ago. I was headed to the bar across the street, stopping by the club first to check in with Blade. There was plenty of free drink in the clubhouse, but a lot of our guys liked to take it across the street, where the owner was friendly to us, just for a change of scenery once in a while. I'd heard through the grapevine that tonight would be one of those nights.
When my pops opened his mouth to smile at me, smoke drifted out from his missing tooth, a casualty of some beat down or another. Old man had taken his share of hits in his time as Sergeant-at-Arms. Sometimes, it felt like lookin' at him was like lookin' at my own future. But I could hope to preserve my pretty face a little better.
I'd sure done well protecting it that day. That guy who stiffed us on the hard-core movies we sold him? He learned not to ever – ever – try that shit again. He did a whole lot of bitching and moaning about how it was just a mistake, but it wasn't my job to play judge and jury. When I was working for the club, I was just a pair of fists.
But now that my job was done, I wondered for the millionth time why we still dealt in physical goods when it came to the porn. Sure, our shit was hard-core. Real hard-core. Almost too damn hard-core for me, sometimes. Girls with snot runnin' down their noses, mixin' with blood, cryin'. Make-up done to look like they'd been beaten damn good beforehand.
We treated those girls well, by the way. It was all an act, and they were freaks, all of 'em, loved it. Anyway, it wasn't my taste, but I knew there was a market for it online. And we wouldn't have to deal with bullshit middlemen. We could set up our own website, get our own traffic going. There was the dark web, if we wanted to fly under the radar. I'd read all about it. But it wasn't my job to make those kinds of suggestions. Not yet, anyway. I was still too green. But someday...