by Debra Kayn
What the hell was he doing here?
Chapter 27
Silence filled the house. Gracie tore off a foot of aluminum foil and wrapped the untouched plate of food she'd left out for Rich, setting it in the fridge. She couldn't force him to eat.
She wasn't his mother. If he wanted to skip dinner, more power to him.
She left the kitchen, peeking into the living room. Rich wasn't upstairs or downstairs. Maybe he'd left the house.
After Wayne and Chuck gave Rich the instructions on how to earn enough money to leave St. John's yesterday, she'd stayed in her room, only coming out to fix a quick dinner of chicken strips and fries. At the time, the guest bedroom door remained shut. Now it was open.
As much as she wanted to say she didn't care if he left after he exited her bed to drink secretly—after stealing from Vavoom's—she cared.
She walked down the hallway to the door leading to the garage and found the locks undone. He hadn't left.
Opening the door, she searched the garage and for a few seconds thought the room was empty and planned to go call Wayne. Then, she found Rich sitting in her car.
The doors closed.
The windows up.
His head rested on the headrest.
His eyes closed.
Her next breath escaped her, and she concentrated on listening over her rapid heartbeat to tell if the car engine ran or not. He'd shut himself off from the world.
She inhaled swiftly in relief at the silence in the garage and stepped down onto the concrete and approached the passenger side of the car. Lifting the door handle, she slid into the seat and closed herself in with Rich.
If he was aware of her company, he never moved a muscle or spoke. She understood solitude, but she hoped her recovery time after the abduction wasn't as ungrateful. He needed to see and accept all the help Notus gave him since his return.
While she had a hard time understanding the biker's treatment toward him—and she couldn't since she hadn't grown up with Rich, she believed the club wanted the best for him.
"I put your dinner in the fridge. If you get hungry later, you can microwave it." She looked at him when she got no response.
He probably wanted a drink.
She looked out the windshield of the car at the garage wall. Getting drunk and forgetting she had sex with Rich sounded good to her.
It wasn't the right time to be around him. She wouldn't enable him when it was obvious he had a problem. Owning a bar, she'd had plenty of opportunities to witness alcoholics. Men who came every day and had to be cut off and sent home. It wasn't her place to judge them, and they paid for a service.
Rich had no money. No way to leave St. John's. Reuniting with Notus aside, Rich needed to gain control over his drinking to move forward with his life if nothing else.
"Do you need some Tylenol?" She looked around the car, wondering if Rich realized she had a full tank of gas and in her little car, it would get him far away from St. John's if he decided to steal her vehicle. "I could go to the store and buy you some 7-up if you're feeling sick to your stomach."
"Stop doing shit for me." He kept his eyes closed. "I don't want or need anything from you."
She glared. Over being shocked by his behavior, she pushed past being hurt to anger. "That's an asshole comment after you had sex with me. Notus is doing all this because they love you and care if you live or die."
She opened the door feeling better about bringing the fact that they had sex out in the open instead of never speaking about it again and stepped out of the vehicle.
"Gracie?"
She ducked her head into the car and looked at him. "What?"
"I know they care." His intense gaze, more painfilled than angry, wounded her. "I've never doubted that."
Misplaced hope filled her over his admission. She swallowed, quietly closed the door, and left the garage. He hadn't mentioned anything about having sex with her and yet he acknowledged his connection to the Notus members.
If she hadn't gotten to know Wayne, Chuck, Thad, Glen over the last four years, she'd be jealous. But, Rich had made a step in the right direction.
In her room, she took out her phone and texted Wayne.
Gracie: Rich admitted you guys cared about him.
Then, she texted her sister.
Gracie: I'm a slut.
Her phone beeped two seconds later.
Clara: You are not.
Gracie: He probably thinks I'm desperate.
Clara: What has he said?
Gracie: Nothing.
Clara: Talk to him.
Gracie: No.
Clara: Why not?
Gracie: He's addicted to alcohol and who knows what else.
Clara: Sad disease.
Gracie: Yeah.
Many people had addictions. She plopped down on the bed. Drugs, eating, gambling, relationships, and even exercise. There was a fine line between healthy and unhealthy.
Clara: So...are you wanting to have sex with him again?
Gracie: I don't know.
Clara: Sis.
Gracie: I'd be open to it.
Clara: Be careful.
Gracie: Nevermind. I only had one condom.
Clara: I'll have Wayne bring some over.
Gracie: No.
Clara: Oh! Check the nightstand in the guest room.
Gracie: Yours?
Clara: Yes.
Gracie. Ew.
Clara: LOL
Her phone beeped. Gracie rolled over to her stomach and propped herself on her elbows. Another text arrived.
Wayne: K
She laughed silently. Wayne's texts were always short and ninety percent of the time, she had no idea what he'd typed. His dyslexia made her decipher the simplest words.
Clara: Wayne says thanks for the message.
Gracie: Yeah, I figured. Are you sitting with him?
Clara: In bed.
Gracie: Stop it! I'll let you go.
Clara: Love you. Sweet dreams.
Gracie: Sweet dreams. I Love you, too.
She tossed the phone beside her and propped her chin on her crossed arms. Every town had an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting. Maybe the best way to help Rich was to let him talk or listen to what others with drinking problems have gone through.
As soon as the idea came to her, she pushed it away. He didn't even want to be here or talk to the other Notus members. She assumed he wouldn't be willing to talk to a third party.
Another idea hit her. She grabbed her phone and pushed off the bed, calling Wayne. He answered on the second ring.
"Yeah?"
She stepped around the bed, far away from the door. "Rich needs everyone around him."
"We are around him."
"No, I mean, he needs to see everyone acting normal, not just here to interrogate him. You're giving him space and all he's doing is using that time to gather and strengthen his will to keep his distance from you. Don't give him time to think about leaving. Tomorrow's Sunday, I'll host a party here." She paced the room. "No drinking, but it'll be fun. It'll be fun despite him not wanting to join the fun."
"You're not making sense."
"Just tell everyone to come to my house tomorrow afternoon, that way you'll be home early enough it won't be hard to get up for work on Monday." The more she talked, the more excited she became. "Tell Clara, I'll call her in the morning. We'll have Vavoom's provide all the food, and I'll call the other women. Oh, and I want Mr. and Mrs. B here."
"Jesus," mumbled Wayne. "This is a mistake."
"Please, do this for me." She inhaled deeply, never having used her status as his wife's sister to get her way with Wayne before. She refused to feel guilty. Someone needed to keep Rich from leaving. "I'll handle everything and make sure Rich doesn't say anything rude or to hurt Thad's parents. This will be good for everyone."
"Gracie..."
"Okay, talk to you tomorrow. Bye." She disconnected the call before Wayne could tell her there was no way in hell he was going to have
Notus come over for an afternoon party to play nice with Rich.
That wasn't the purpose of having everyone around Rich. She wanted to show him what he could have if he stayed in St. John's. She knew from experience that when you couldn't see past the pain, humiliation, and depression, love won.
Chapter 28
The monotonous hum of the running vacuum filtered upstairs. Rich set the last piece of sheetrock against the wall in the guest bedroom. Apparently, Gracie was afraid of the HOA, whatever that was, fining her for having building material stacked in the driveway.
He couldn't store it in the garage because the tight corner from the hallway to the staircase wasn't big enough to turn an eight foot by four-foot piece of sheetrock without taking out the wall to the kitchen. Used to living in a pole barn converted into a motorcycle club ten miles from civilization, he had no knowledge of how a gated community worked.
When he'd lived in St. John's, there was no such thing as shutting neighborhoods off from each other and rules about what you could and couldn't do on the outside of a house. If he owned the damn house, he'd do what he wanted and the hell with anyone.
He only planned on fixing the room, getting enough cash to hightail it out of St. John's, and then he'd figure out what to do to keep a roof over his head.
Maybe he'd head north where the weather would force him off his Harley five months of the year. He could drink away his days and shut himself off from society. The hell with joining another club. He could find some other way to bring in some cash.
He sorted through the toolbox Glen dropped off earlier and picked out a hammer and screwdriver to take out the headless nails holding the molding up around the door. His hands shook as he worked. There was nothing to stop the tremors that weakened him except to pick up a bottle.
Tossing the second extracted nail in an empty bucket, he gritted his teeth against the frustration of knowing he could work faster if his body cooperated.
The familiar rumble of motorcycles overrode the heavy breathing coming from him. He gritted his teeth and looked at the ten pieces of sheetrock stacked against the wall. He'd been in a hurry and never noticed he'd trapped the open door behind the supplies and would have to move every damn piece if he wanted privacy.
He was fine repairing the room, but he didn't want Notus members checking up on the progress. They better not come upstairs and want to check on him every fucking hour.
Loud voices leaked upstairs. He paused and picked out all the men's voices. Every member of Notus talked downstairs.
High, female voices soon took over the conversation. His gut tightened, and in his frustration, the screwdriver slipped in his hand, and he scarred the wood.
"Fuck," he muttered, lining the head of the tool back against the nail, and tapped the screwdriver with the hammer.
A woman appeared in the hallway in front of him. He kept working but not before he got a glimpse of a child in her arms.
"Oh. Sorry. I came up to change her diaper," said the woman.
She must belong with Thad. He glanced at her again. They'd had a child. A girl, who carried her Aunt Thalia's name.
"I, um, usually change her in here but I'll find somewhere else." The woman backed away, whispering to the squirming child and tried Gracie's bedroom doorknob and slipped inside.
He ripped out the nail and found himself sweating. It was hard enough trying to avoid Gracie since having sex with her, adding more people in the house only made the fact that he didn't belong here harder to face.
"Lena?" yelled Thad from downstairs.
"Up here," shouted Lena back. "I'm changing Avi."
Rich slipped the flat blade screwdriver behind the molding and pried the top quarter away from the wall. It took all his concentration not to bust the long, thin piece of wood and rush the job.
"Gracie wants her sweatshirt off the bed," said Thad.
"I'll bring it down with me." Lena quieted her voice and talked with the baby. "Was that your daddy? Did you hear him, sweet baby?"
Caught up in someone else's conversation, he still stood in the doorway when Lena came out of the bedroom and caught him staring. She smiled and walked past him, bouncing the kid on her hip while holding a diaper bag and swinging a sweatshirt in her free hand.
"Where's Chuck?" asked Gracie, downstairs.
"Outside with Mr. B. having a cigar."
Hearing Glen's answer, Rich stepped over the Skilsaw and looked out the window. The hanging roofline over the front of the house blocked him from seeing who stood outside the front door. While the appearance of his friends shocked him at first at how they'd aged, he probably wouldn't even recognize Thalia's dad. He seemed old when he'd been a kid. Mr. B. had to be pushing seventy.
He returned to the door and squatted, working on the lower half of the molding. Movement passed in the hallway. He ignored everyone and gave a second thought to physically moving the sheetrock to the other wall so he could shut the damn door.
"Just starting?" asked Glen, hovering in the doorway.
He kept working to get the screwdriver behind the molding without breaking the wood. "You delivered the shit. No use wasting time."
"I'll pick up the paint whenever Gracie gives me an idea of what color she wants. She said something about changing it." Glen paused. "You know how women are."
No, he didn't. He'd never put much effort into caring what women wanted after he'd lost Thalia. He fucked those that offered and sent them away. Most of those women, he couldn't remember because he'd been three sheets to the wind.
At the end of the hallway, a toilet flushed. Rich pried the strip of molding off the wall and caught the top, lowering the wood to the floor and laying it next to the pile of sheetrock. When he stepped back to the door to work on the upper molding, a woman had joined Glen. For a second, he thought maybe Glen had had a kid early on until the woman kissed and leaned against his old friend's side.
The age difference came as a surprise. He couldn't remember Glen liking younger girls.
The next time he looked up, Glen was alone. Rich said, "She must keep you young."
Glen leaned against the doorframe and grunted. "She's lived a longer life than me."
He pounded the screwdriver tip against the side of the nail. The last thing he wanted to know was the history behind Glen and his woman. They were together. That's all that mattered.
"Don't wear yourself out." Glen knocked on the doorframe and walked away.
Left alone, he inhaled through a tight chest. Hit by laughter coming from downstairs, he ignored the trickle of sweat running down the side of his face. Later, when Gracie shut herself in her room, and everyone had left, he'd go look and see if they left any beer behind. All he needed was enough to relax him, and he'd be able to work faster.
The next half hour, he was able to remove the molding around three sides of the door and along the bottom of one wall. He moved the lamp and nightstand, and then moved to the end of the bed and pulled it away from the second wall far enough he could get behind the headboard.
There were spots of light tan paint at the edge of the molding near the floor. He used his thumbnail to scrape off the color. For such a new house, he was surprised Gracie had already redone the room once before.
"It used to be tan, but Wayne and the guys repainted and put new carpet in the room after Roy Jenkin's broke into the house and urinated on the floor," said Gracie behind him.
He stood and looked at her. Feeling sick at the mention of a name that had ruined Thalia's life and had tried to kill Gracie.
She shrugged. "We're all going to eat if you want to come downstairs and have some food. Camille, one of the part-time waitresses at Vavoom's, brought over burgers and potato salad from the bar."
Gracie appeared more relaxed having others in the house with her. The University of Portland sweatshirt she wore hid the curves he'd enjoyed the other night, and she kept her fingers hooked in the front pockets of her jeans.
His gut tightened. "Where's your purse?"
She cocked her hip and tilted her head. "Downstairs in the kitchen."
He'd never once seen her move around the house without her purse hung across her body. Even in the early hours of the morning when she stumbled out of her room in her pajamas to start the coffee maker, she wore her purse. She'd even stayed highly aware of the placement of her pistol on the nightstand when they'd had sex.
It irritated him that she felt comfortable around the Notus MC members and all the women involved with the men, but not him.
She moistened her lips. "Anyway, I just wanted to see if you wanted to—"
"I don't." He turned away from her and nudged the molding on the wall with the toe of his boot.
"Okay, well if you change your mind..." Her footsteps retreated.
Beyond the walls, a crowd laughed, talked, and gathered. He thrust his hands through his hair. An assembly of what he viewed as a family. People brought together from all directions in life who chose to be in each other's lives because they loved one another.
His own family growing up only consisted of him and his mom. He squatted and worked on removing the nails out of the molding. From as early as he could remember, his mom was an alcoholic. Coke and whiskey.
He'd called it a good day when his mom waited until lunch to drop those two ice cubes into the glass. Like a fire alarm, those two clinks signaled him to get out of the house. She never physically harmed him when drinking. She'd neglected him.
Most of the time, when the drinks started, he'd leave the house and hang out with Wayne, Thad, Glen, and Chuck.
For years, it'd been the five boys. They went to school together, played sports, and spent their free time together at each other's houses.
The only time he'd split his attention was when he'd noticed Thalia had gone from a pain in the ass little girl to a beautiful young woman. He'd practically moved into Mr. and Mrs. B's house to be with Thalia more.
The Bowers household was where he'd learned to respect women. Mr. B made sure he was out of Thalia's bedroom by nine o'clock every night—though he and Thalia had found ways around the curfew. Mrs. B had taught him how to appreciate the differences between him and Thalia.