WITHOUT SHAME: Babylon MC Book 4

by James, Victoria L.

  “I’ll believe your promise the day you fulfill it.”

  “So stubborn.” Eric shook his head, exhaled slowly and pushed inside the room.

  Jon Taylor lay paralyzed in the middle of a plush hospital bed with so many wires and tubes coming out of his body and mouth that he looked like the latest experiment in town.

  “Clint got him good,” I said without thought.

  “Hurry up,” Eric ordered, his voice so calm it could barely be heard, but his command was still noted. I looked up at him in warning as I stalked closer to the bed.

  News on the street at one point had been that Jon might not make it.

  The latest update had told us he was making a better recovery than anyone expected.

  I couldn’t be having that. I wanted this fucker to serve a lifetime trapped inside his own mind, not being able to take a piss for himself.

  “Fucker’s come to visit you, brother,” I whispered, leaning in close to his ear. “Rise and shine.”

  Jon didn’t move because he couldn’t do much of anything but let his eyes open and shut. The bastard couldn’t even take proper breaths for himself.

  “Rumor has it that you can hear every damn thing I say to you, so here goes. I’m here to offer you a way out. Your life is never going to be the same again. You’re never going to walk. You’re barely going to be able to even talk. And that once loving wife you had is gone now, Jon. She’s on the other side, resting with your maker beyond the pearly gates of Heaven. A place you definitely won’t be allowed into after all the cruel, vindictive, nasty ass shit you put me and a thousand other prisoners through at Huntsville.” I pressed a finger to his neck and then let my others tiptoe over his skin, watching as his eyelashes began to flicker wildly. “Every time you took a weapon to my knees in those showers for no good reason, every time you let those bastards corner me and gang-beat the living shit out of me, every meal you made me skip, every week you put me in solitary, every time you laughed when I had a blade stuck in my skin… it’s all come back to you as this, Jonny. This is your penance. Your payment. And call me a sick and twisted bastard, but I’ve never been so happy for karma to do her thing.”

  I glanced up at Eric who was watching with a small smirk of satisfaction on his face.

  “But you took Harry away from us. It was your hand that stole his last breath. And I think that you’re recovering just a little too well considering your crime. Your wife is dead because of you. Did you know that? I killed her. Stuck a bullet in the back of her head. She fell like a lamb at slaughter, but not before I made her shake first. Her death is all your fault, Jon. You gave her that. But you don’t care about innocent people dying at your hands, do you? Too many people are dead inside their heads because of all the shit you put them through. That’s the worse torture; don’t you think? Knowing you’ll never be the same person you once were because some evil bastard stepped into your life and decided to fuck it up. You deserve to die, too, but I think death is too easy for you, Taylor. So let’s give you what you gave so many men in prison. Let’s make it an eternity of torture trapped inside a body that can no longer be used to taunt the ones unfortunate enough to be beneath you.”

  Eric began to move then, just as Jon Taylor’s eyes flew open and he tried to make his broken body work so he could get away.

  Once Eric was by the bed, he reached for the catheter that was hanging by Jon’s bed full of orange piss, and he twisted the tubes to block them.

  I started to pick at a couple of pads from Jon’s chest before I pulled his oxygen mask away from his face and let it rest on the top of his head. “Let’s deprive that brain of a bit more oxygen, shall we?”

  There was something fascinating about watching a man go wild with only his eyes.

  I imagined a feral animal that looked like Jon’s youth, scratching at the walls of his mind, punching, and kicking and screaming to be unleashed so it could get to me, all of it being silenced by my confident grin and his complete and utter helplessness.

  “Rest in Hell,” I told him with a pat to his cheek, and then Eric and I walked out of the room, knowing our time was almost up.

  * * *

  We made it back outside with little fuss, just Gilly rushing behind us to make sure we were in the clear. When we got to the fresh air, she exhaled like she hadn’t taken a breath the whole time we’d been in there.

  “You’ll need to go to him soon,” I told her. “Don’t let him die. I want him to suffer.”

  “Get out of here,” she practically hissed, looking back over her shoulder.

  “We’ll be back,” Eric told her. “To see Clint, yeah?”

  She nodded furiously. “I’ll get in touch with Howard as soon as he’s ready to talk. I need to get the prison guards away, though. He’s in a bad way, so they aren’t too concerned with him escaping anytime soon. It’s more who gets in.”

  “We can crawl through vents if that helps.” I smirked.

  Her eyes met mine with nothing but seriousness. “It might be the only way. Now go.”

  “Lead the way,” Eric said, gesturing to our bikes.

  “You sure you wanna stick with me?”

  Eric smirked. “Partner in crime, remember?”

  “I remember. I just don’t understand it. All those years gone, and now you’re willing to take the fall for me.”

  “If we’re together every time you do something fucking crazy, there’s only one of us that needs to go down for it.”

  I scowled every time he’d said that to me since the first time he caught me running away from my responsibilities to go make someone bleed. “Nobody back at The Hut would believe this shit. You know they all think you’re a snake since you came back.”

  “My actions will show everyone who I am in time.”

  “Like I said, I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Now lead the goddamn way, king.”

  And I did. I led the way, taking us far out of town to an underground boxing ring where I could spend an hour or two with a man who wasn’t going to ask me how I was holding up. He wasn’t going to look at me with pity. He wasn’t going to ask me if I was doing the right thing. He wasn’t going to judge or tell me to stay on track. We didn’t talk about the past. We didn’t talk about why he left or what shit he was still keeping from me. We didn’t discuss anything. We were cold together. Angry.

  We were a reflection of one another, going round for round and taking pound for pound.

  Eric was a machine as much as I was.

  He knew the life of the king. He knew that sometimes, especially when grief struck, the only thing to beat the numbness was relentless violence.

  He allowed me that.

  I took everything he had to offer.

  I beat on him, and he beat on me for two hours in a dark and dingy warehouse filled with battered rings and dodgy ropes. I let the sweat pour down my back and over my eyes, all of my aggression hitting the target over and over and over and over.

  I had to hand it to the old man; he sure knew how to fucking fight, which was a good job, because as soon as we were out of that warehouse, we had another job to do—a job that would take us into the middle of the night and involve more blood.

  There was a long list of people who had to pay for Harry’s death.

  We had a lot of names to strike out.

  Chapter Three

  AYDA

  Some nights I would collapse in the middle of the bed I used to share with Drew, my arms and legs spread out wide as the air conditioner blew cold air into the room and chilled every inch of skin it touched. With my eyes on the ceiling fan, I would wait, listening endlessly for the sound of his bike so I knew he was home and still alive. Other nights, I would escape to the bedroom that he gave to me and drown myself in reruns of classic television shows and movies or play video games until sleep took over and I woke up driving a character into a wall. Nights like tonight, however, I got up, slid into my truck and just took off. />
  I drove the river of asphalt out of town and headed to Corsicana, then hit Interstate 45 and kept going north until the Dallas skyline crept up, cut through the darkness and winked at me. I would drive the loop, circle back and head to Babylon feeling emptier than I did when I started out. It was a growing trend that never really changed.

  I don’t know why I chose to do this. I don’t even know what the city held for me on these nights when it called, but my windows were down, my music was turned up, and my foot was on the gas. I didn’t so much as look in my mirrors to see if anyone was following me. As I hit I45, I turned the volume up on the radio and started singing as loudly as I could.

  I sang until my voice broke, my throat burned, and a smile curled the corners of my lips.

  It was Harry I thought about tonight while singing. Harry and grief. Grief and Drew. He’d said to me earlier that this was just grief. He’d also asked me to wait for him.

  “He doesn’t know,” I finally said aloud, running my free hand through my hair before slapping at the power button on my radio. I was now on my way back to Babylon, the lights of the city in my rear view as I leaned an elbow on the window. “Harry, he just doesn’t know how deep my love runs, does he? Wait for him. Is that really a question? Like I could do anything else.”

  I sighed and waited, conjuring Harry’s voice in my mind as though he were answering me. These days he was the only person I could talk to about anything.

  “I don’t know how to help him,” I said. A stray tear fell from my eye, and I swiped it away in anger. “I can’t lose him but admitting that I could makes me feel like I’m giving up on him, and I’m not capable of that either so it’s this endless cycle. Round and around I go. What do I do? How do I get through that thick, stubborn skull of his and make him see that he’s not alone? He’s never been alone. How do I take some of this burden away from him?”

  I rode deeper into the night in silence; my mind mulling over Harry’s responses until I finally took my exit and headed down the highway to Corsicana, narrowing my eyes as the two tail lights ahead of me broke apart and weaved back together again. I knew what that meant. They were bikes. It wasn’t always distinguishable in the dark like this, especially when they were rolling side by side like the pair ahead of me, but the small weave from left to right to avoid potholes or roadkill was a dead giveaway.

  My foot pressed on the gas, and the growl of the big engine shot me forward with a little more power. I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that every bike on the road would be one of our guys. I wasn’t stupid enough to speed up to anyone I thought would kill me on sight, either, so I wasn’t really confident about what I was doing until I was close enough to see the license plates and know for certain who it was.

  My instincts were dead on. I knew Drew’s license plate number almost by heart, and I found myself staring at it now as it coasted casually toward Babylon next to the bike that I knew belonged to Eric Tucker.

  “Where have you two been?” I asked no one in particular, rearranging myself in my seat. I stayed a safe distance behind them. They didn’t interact, and they didn’t look at one another, they just rode side by side, indistinguishable. We’d only traveled about two miles when they slowed and waved me around them.

  It was three in the morning. I was out on my own, and there was no hiding that from Drew now. The moment he saw the Hounds on my back window he would realize it was me. If I didn’t go around, he would probably pull a gun assuming I was following them for a more nefarious reason. It didn’t seem like I had much choice at all. With a deep breath, I stepped on the gas and went around them. The double take would have been comical if it hadn’t been Drew.

  Then again, there was the undeniable fact that this little situation radiated absolute hypocrisy, and suddenly I didn’t feel too terrible about it all. I was just taking a ride to clear my head. It wasn’t like I was out looking for trouble.

  So I waved.

  At Drew.

  And then I stepped on the gas.

  I didn’t miss the second double take he did, nor did I miss the narrowing of his eyes and the instant tensing of his jaw as he stared at my rearview mirror. With one quick glance at Eric, I knew they’d had a silent exchange, and that’s when they revved the engines on their bikes, flanked me on either side like they were escorting the POTUS home, and rode my ass the entire way back.

  This really wasn’t going to end well for me. I was more than aware of that. I talked myself in and out of taking Drew and his father on a wild ride around town, but as much as the thought amused me, my survival instincts screamed that home was better.

  By the time I pulled into the yard, I’d mourned my future night trips, considered whether rage was an emotion that would satisfy my need to see something behind those eyes, and given myself a dozen pep talks that I knew were pointless. Drew never said anything I expected him to, even on the best of days. He never reacted the way I assumed he would either because he never did anything the same way twice. I hadn’t gone out to piss him off. I hadn’t gone out to find him either. I also hadn’t really considered the danger I’d be in if another MC just happened across me while I was out there alone.

  I’d gone for me, and that just sounded selfish now.

  I pulled into my usual spot and sat with the engine running, my head on the steering wheel as I waited for something to happen.

  It didn’t.

  Not the way I imagined it might.

  Instead, I heard the heavy juddering of his Harley’s engine, and when I looked out through my window, I saw him on his bike. He was all dark leather and dark eyes on a sad face that he was trying to hide, but the tension was there in his arms, even if his face wasn’t giving much away as he stared at me and left his engine running.

  Come and talk to me, I willed silently, studying his handsome features and drinking him in.

  God, I missed him.

  I missed his smile.

  I missed his sarcasm and his dominating need to protect me.

  I missed the way he would take control or look at me like he could hardly believe I was real.

  I missed his snark, and I even missed him fucking me. Not just sex, even though I missed that and making love to him. I just missed the way he looked at me when he realized I wasn’t as breakable as he’d made me out to be in his head before he threw me around, pounding into me until I screamed his name over and over again.

  I missed his touch.

  I missed him—all of him. Every last scar and shadow that fell over him.

  I could survive this if he would just... include me.

  Knowing he wouldn’t be the first to move, I took matters into my own hands, pressed my palm against the window and nodded… like I agreed with him. I was reminding him that I wasn’t going anywhere because, damn it, I would wait for him forever.

  Drew glanced down at the bike between his legs. The ticking of his jaw said so much, yet not enough. When he snapped his head up to look at me again, I saw the grief begin to surface. No amount of tension in his face could hide that, but it didn’t stop him from trying. He gave me a small nod—one that probably meant something different to me than it did to him—and he cut the engine, climbed off his bike, and opened the door of my truck without saying a word. All he offered was his heavy sigh and his hand for me to take.

  I turned off my truck and slipped my hand into his, my heart rate spiking at the tiny point of contact between us. I pulled the keys from the ignition and hopped out, dropping to my feet in front of him, so I was staring at his broad chest.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. Dallas. I promise,” I answered his unspoken questions softly. I wasn’t even sure what I was saying would make sense to him, but I didn’t look at his face to see if there was understanding. I stared at his Adam’s apple and watched it slide gracefully under the flesh of his throat as I waited.

  His thumb found my engagement ring, and he ran it over the sunshine yellow diamond a few times before he unleashed his rough and raw voice on me
—a voice I barely recognized—one that sounded like war and torture and everything pained in this world.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. Somewhere North. Did things that felt good for a while. Glad you’re safe,” he managed to push out, his voice smoky. He kissed my engagement ring, pressing it to his mouth and closing his eyes as though it was pure agony to feel against his skin.

  I waited for four of my rapid heartbeats to pass before I pushed the hand he’d kissed to his chest, covering his heart. I still didn’t look up and meet his eyes. Instead, my eyes moved to where our joined hands lay over his body, and I took the deepest breath I could.

  “One day, when you need it the most, ask me how much I love you, Drew.” I glanced up through my eyelashes and swallowed.

  “I know,” he whispered, exhaling heavily and keeping his focus on anything but my face. “I know.”

  Drew swallowed and turned his head to the direction of The Hut. That’s when I saw more signs of violence, the streaks of brownish red. A slightly swollen left eye, too, and what looked like the scratch of a nail down the exposed part of his neck.

  He wore his shame as much as he wore his wounds. Nobody else may have been able to see it, but I could.

  When he turned back to me, he didn’t say anything. For the first time in a long time, his sad eyes met mine and searched them.

  “Take a shower with me,” he demanded softly.

  I nodded, my head bobbing with absolute certainty. There was nothing more I wanted then than to get in the shower with him. I longed for the physical contact.

  I stepped aside and pushed my truck door closed before taking the lead and heading toward The Hut. Each footstep I took led Drew forward until the darkness of the bar and smell of beer closed in around us.

  There weren't many people left in the bar now, but those who were there seemed to understand that a distraction wasn’t welcome right now. Instead, they blended into their surroundings and the women who were wrapped around them, leaving us alone to move through the room without interruption. I locked our bedroom door once we were inside, something I didn’t do very often.