by Jessie Cooke
“To who?”
“You know to who.”
“Just dance with me one time, Macy. Then if you want to walk away, I won’t say a word. Please. It’s been eight years. Don’t I deserve one dance?” She felt like she couldn’t breathe. He was still two feet away, but he was sucking all the oxygen out of the room.
“You deserve a dance?” she heard herself say. She was surprised, but suddenly it was like she was listening to someone else’s words and the tears that began to stream down her face also had a mind of their own. Something in her snapped. She’d promised herself even before Cody got out that she was going to leave the past alone. But suddenly the lid was off and it came pouring out. “What about what I deserve, Cody? What about how I felt when you went away and left me alone? You promised me I’d never be alone and then you left me.”
“Macy…please don’t cry.” His look went from seductive to almost panicky. She reached up and wiped the tears off her face as he whispered, “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I never wanted to leave you.”
“I was so lost, Cody. You know how much I hate to be alone. You know how much that scares me. You were the only bright spot in this miserable life and then suddenly you were gone. I didn’t go looking for things to happen with Jimmy. We were always friends, you know that. He was as crushed as I was when you went away. We were just kids, damn it! We were kids that didn’t fucking have anyone else. Of course, we turned to each other. But most especially when I needed him, he was there and you weren’t! You can’t expect to walk out of prison and act like no time has passed between us!” He took a step toward her and put his hand up to touch her. She cringed, not because she didn’t want him to touch her, but because her body was aching for it. He saw the way she sunk back into the bar and he stopped.
“I’m sorry, Macy. I won’t touch you again.”
“Cody…” She couldn’t say it. She’d just told him he couldn’t come back and act like things were the same, and she was just about to say something stupid like “I want you too”…or worse yet, “I love you.” She got in control of her thoughts before they came out of her mouth, thankfully, and she said, “I know that you weren’t yourself when you went after those guys. I know how much losing Keller hurt you. I don’t hold that against you any longer. But at the time I was just a miserable, confused kid and now…”
“Now, you’re with Jimmy.”
She nodded. “Yeah. He’s been there for me through more than you could imagine, Cody. I can’t just walk away and break his heart. What happened between us the other night should have never happened…”
“And what the fuck was that exactly?” They both looked up just as the song on the jukebox ended and Jimmy’s voice wafted across the floor.
“Jimmy…”
“Don’t make up a lie, Mace. I already know the truth.”
“Jimmy, I’m not sure what you think you know, but…”
“But what, Macy? Are you going to lie to me? Are you going to tell me that it didn’t happen?” He looked at Cody and said, “You know I’m not normally a cock-blocker, but I had to interrupt this private little party to let your girlfriend know she’s not welcome in my house any longer. I’m finished with your leftovers, Cody. I want a meal of my own for a change.”
Cody didn’t say anything, and Macy wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing. The look in his hazel eyes was intense as Jimmy stared him down. She didn’t want this to happen. She didn’t want to be the cause of one or both of them getting hurt. “Jimmy, let’s go home and talk, okay?”
Jimmy chuckled. “What a fucking fool I am. That little skank…what’s her name? Lucy? She told me you fucked him at the bar the other night. She was drunk and trying to fuck me like she has been for years and I blew her off. I came in here to tell you, and look what I find. I should have let her blow me instead, shouldn’t I have, Cody? Since I’m sure you got an exceptionally good blow job from my woman after you got rid of me that night at the bar. You motherfucker!”
Got rid of him? Macy hadn’t thought of that before. Cody set that all up…but she’d gone through with it. She couldn’t blame him for her lack of self-control. She looked at him. He was still not saying anything, just staring at Jimmy, waiting to see what he’d say next. Macy wanted Jimmy to stop talking. In a shaky voice she said, “Please don’t do this. I’m so sorry. I just lost my head. Please, let’s go home, Jimmy….”
“Home? You mean my home? The house that Dax lets me live in…because I’ve done nothing for the past eight fucking years other than work my ass off to prove myself around here?” He looked back at Cody and then once again his eyes burned into her face. “You don’t even have a clue the kind of shit I did to go from being a whore’s illegitimate kid to someone that Dax trusted and valued enough that I was rewarded with a permanent spot on this ranch. I was given a home, a place where I could put down roots and make something of myself so that eventually people would forget where I came from. If anyone should have known how important that was to me, Macy…it should have been you. But you’ve always had Daddy to defend your honor when people talked shit about you. I’ve never had anyone’s respect until now. You know that Dax doesn’t hand out responsibility lightly. He trusts me. The guys trust me. I’m going places with this club, Macy…”
“Jimmy, I know…”
“You don’t know shit, so shut the fuck up!”
“Hey…” It was the first word Cody said since Jimmy came in, and it was low and threatening.
Jimmy smirked. “Aw, that’s sweet how you jump to her defense,” he said to Cody. “Especially after what she did to you.”
Macy felt like she was going to hyperventilate, or throw up. “Jimmy, please don’t do this.” He was about to tell Cody something that she should have told him herself, years before. She still planned on telling him someday…but he just got home. It wasn’t something that should just be blurted out.
Jimmy wasn’t looking at her any longer. It was as if she’d disappeared and all his focus was on Cody. “You should know who you’re defending, Cody. That apple didn’t fall far from her slut of a mother’s tree…”
“You need to watch your mouth.”
“Or what, Cody? You’ll punch me again? I’m not afraid of you. Besides, after you know the truth about the love of your life here, I’m sure you’ll join me in calling her a name or two.”
“You need to just get the fuck out,” Cody told him.
“I’ll go, as soon as you know that you’re defending a woman that killed your own flesh and blood.”
Cody’s face went pale and he looked at Macy. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t look at him directly. He was going to hate her, especially finding out like this. Cody looked back at Jimmy and said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“She killed your kid.”
“Stop talking in fucking circles, Jimmy.”
“I’m not talking in circles; you’re just not putting it together. She was pregnant when you got locked up. She had an abortion, without ever telling you.” Macy slid down to the floor and pulled her knees up to her chest. Her stomach hurt. Her head was pounding and she couldn’t breathe. The room was spinning and she almost wished that she could pass out and miss the rest of whatever Jimmy had planned.
“She went to some butcher in town. I don’t know if it’s true what they say and those babies can’t feel a thing…but let’s hope not. This guy fucked her insides all up—imagine what he did to the part that belonged to you.”
“Shut up, Jimmy!” Macy screamed. “Just shut the fuck up!”
He ignored her and went on. “I was the one that sat with her at the hospital while they fixed the damage he’d done. I was the one who spent weeks, waking up in the middle of the night to check on her when she was sick or sitting in the corner crying like a lunatic. I was the one that was there for all of that. I was with her when she was told she’d never be able to get pregnant again. I was the only one that was there…and
even when it was all over and she wasn’t sick any longer I was still there. I knew if I chose her that I’d never be able to have a kid of my own and I chose her anyways. And then you waltz in here and suddenly it’s eight fucking years ago all over again and nothing I’ve done for her or for you means anything. You can fucking have her now. I don’t care anymore. But I thought it was high time you also had the truth.” He looked at Macy like he hated her and said, “We both know now that she probably wasn’t ever going to give it to you.”
Cody was looking from Jimmy to Macy like he had no idea what to believe. His face was as pale as a sheet. Macy was still curled up in a ball on the floor, hating herself all over again for what she’d done back then. It had taken her years to heal emotionally and it had taken Jimmy five minutes to rip that wound wide open again. She felt like she was bleeding out, and she wished she could just lie right there on that wooden floor until all her blood was gone, and die. The room spun faster and faster and she couldn’t catch her breath and finally she gave into the darkness and for a few seconds as she floated away, nothing mattered—she was free.
13
Macy woke up in a fog. Her mouth was dry and she felt like she couldn’t shake the cobwebs from her head. There was something there, pulling at her subconscious, something she was supposed to remember…and that’s when it suddenly came back to her. She sat up straight and called out for Jimmy, right before her eyes landed on Cody’s face. He was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room staring at her.
“Jimmy’s not here,” he said in a quiet, toneless voice.
“Cody, where…?” She looked around the room. She was in one of the bedrooms at the clubhouse. She was in Cody’s room. Panic began to set in. “Where is Jimmy?”
Cody’s face registered hurt and anger. He stood up and went over next to the bed. “You think I did something to him, hurt him? Is that it, Macy? You think what I did all those years ago when I was broken defines who I am? Who I’ve become?”
She didn’t answer his question because that was exactly what she feared. She remembered the look on his face when Jimmy told him about the baby. But, she was the one he should want to hurt, not Jimmy. “Where is he, Cody?”
He laughed. It was a frightening, hateful laugh. “You’re worried about him. I’m the one that got fucked over by both of you, and he’s the one you’re worried about. It figures. He went home, Macy. He left you passed out on the floor of the clubhouse, and told me he was finished dealing with you and your histrionics. That’s the way he put it, ‘histrionics.’ He said that you could be my problem now. To be honest, I thought about just calling Tank and being done with it.”
Macy’s emotions were all over the place. She’d woken up confused, then she’d been frightened and now she was just pissed off, mostly at herself. She threw back the sheet that was covering her and realized she was only wearing her bra and panties. “Where are my clothes?”
Cody sighed. “Stay in bed, Macy, you look like shit. I’ll get you some water…”
“No!” She threw her legs over the side of the bed. A wave of dizziness came over her but she tried not to let Cody see it. Concentrating hard on controlling her breathing she said, “Give me my clothes or I’ll walk out of here just like this. I don’t need anyone to ‘deal with my histrionics.’ You and Jimmy can both go fuck yourselves!” She stood up and that’s when the dizziness and nausea both hit her at once. A sharp pain stabbed her in the stomach and a little cry escaped her lips. Cody was at her side in an instant, holding onto her arm and guiding her back down onto the bed. She pulled her arm away as soon as her butt hit the mattress. “Don’t touch me!”
He stepped back and folded his arms. “What are you pissed off at me about, exactly? Like I said, I’m the fucking injured party here. You and Jimmy both fucked me over.”
She was fighting through the gray spots in her vision. She wanted to curl back up in a ball, but there was no way she was doing that again. Cody and Jimmy had both taken that as a sign of weakness, and she didn’t want either of them to think that she was weak. Instead she mustered all her strength and said:
“What am I pissed off at you about? Let me see…where to begin?” He continued to stand there like he was waiting. She sat fighting the nausea until she couldn’t do it any longer. She stood up again, and once more the dizziness threatened to knock her down. “I’m going to throw up.”
“Lie back down.”
“I need to throw up!”
“Lie down! I’ll get something for you.” He was ridiculously strong. He didn’t wait for her to lie down on her own, he picked her up like a child and laid her back down on the bed. “Stay there.” At that point she didn’t feel like she physically had any choice. If she moved, she was going to vomit all over his bed. Cody went over to the dresser and picked up a ceramic bowl that was filled with things he took out of his pockets at night, and dumped it out. He brought it back over and set it on the bed next to her. Then he went into the bathroom and came back with a towel and a glass of water. He put the towel on the bed and set the water on the nightstand within her reach. She thought about what she must look like…how pathetic he must think she is…and she closed her eyes. Like a child she hoped that if she couldn’t see him, he wasn’t looking at her. Some time passed and so did the nausea. She didn’t have to throw up in the little bowl, thank God. She was almost back to sleep when she heard him say, “Why, Macy?”
She wanted to pretend that she was already asleep and didn’t hear him, but she knew it was probably better to just get this conversation over with as soon as possible. “I was sixteen,” she said, before she opened her eyes. That wasn’t an excuse, she knew, but it was a huge part of the explanation. Her sixteen-year-old self did not have the capacity to be making adult decisions on her own. But she hadn’t had a choice. He wasn’t there…When she opened her eyes at last, Cody was back in his chair, watching her. “You were gone. My mother was dead, not that she would have been any help alive, I’m sure. My father...well, he doesn’t know how to handle his own shit, how was I going to expect him to help me handle mine? I had to make a decision that would affect the rest of my life alone, so I did the best I could at that moment in time.”
“You had choices, Macy. I wasn’t unreachable. I was in county jail a few miles away for the first year. You could have come to see me. You could have written…”
“Everyone was saying you’d be locked up for at least fifteen years. When you’re sixteen years old, Cody, that’s a lifetime. All I could think of was raising a kid here on this ranch as a single mother. If it was a boy, he’d be a biker and someday end up in prison, just like you. If it was a girl, she’d be a whore like my mother. I thought I was different all this time, but Jimmy’s right, I’m no better than she was. But I couldn’t do that to some kid. I hated growing up the way we did. I couldn’t bring another life into this mess. I convinced myself it was the right thing to do.”
“I just don’t get it. How could going to a butcher and having them kill our baby and maim you for life be the ‘best thing’? If you’d had the baby, it would be just about eight years old and we could have raised it together. I was never part of this club, Macy. You think I wouldn’t have had more motivation to change my life if I’d known that I was going to be a father?”
“If you think I don’t regret my decision…if you think I haven’t lost years of sleep over it…you’re dead wrong. But at the time, Cody, yes, I thought it was the best thing. I had no way of knowing you’d be out in eight years, and you made a lot of promises to me, before you got locked up, that you didn’t keep.”
“So glad Jimmy was there for you,” he said, sarcastically.
Fine, if he wanted to know the truth, she’d tell him all of it, “After I…after the abortion I went home and got in bed. When I woke up the next day, the bed was saturated with blood and I was so weak. I thought I was going to die and I thought about my mother. I wasn’t afraid of dying. I’d felt like dying the minute you were taken away from me a
nd every moment after up to that point. I was sure it would be a better option than living without you. After I had the abortion there was just one more reason to not want to wake up ever again. But you know that it wasn’t my mother dying that haunted me, it was her dying alone. It was her dying without any love or respect from anyone that killed me inside. For years after she died I would lie awake at night and wonder what she was thinking as she took her last breaths. Did she know that I would be the only one that cried, and that my tears would be more for me than they were for her? I tried to make a list in my head as I lay there and bled out, of all the people who would give a shit when they carried me out in a body bag. It was a short list. My dad, and Jimmy.”
“You don’t think I would have cared?”
“I told you, Cody, I was a scared, confused kid. I still had it in my head at that point that you had abandoned me. I couldn’t think past that to understand the kind of grief and pain you must have been feeling when you…that night. I felt abandoned and alone. If not for the pain in my belly I may have just closed my eyes and died. But I started cramping and the pain was unlike anything I’d ever felt. If I could have moved I would have found one of my father’s guns and put it in my mouth and pulled the trigger. But I was in so much pain that I couldn’t move. I called Jimmy then and the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital.”
“And Jimmy was there.”
“Yes, Cody! Jimmy was there. You say it like it’s a bad thing. Do you hate me so much that you’d rather I was alone?” He didn’t answer her, so she went on. “He had handled everything. He said when he got to the house I was delirious and rambling, but the paper they’d given me at the clinic was still on my nightstand and he figured out what I’d done. He took me to the hospital and he told them I was his wife and we were eighteen. I don’t know to this day where he got the money, but he paid cash for everything so that they wouldn’t call my dad. He used a different name so that there wouldn’t be any record of any of it. He sat there in that hospital for three days, making all my decisions and making sure I wasn’t alone. Every time I opened my eyes he was there. He even gave them blood because I had so many transfusions that our little hospital blood bank ran out of my type. He held my hand while they told me that my insides were ruined and I’d never be able to get pregnant and carry a baby to term.”