by Brook Wilder
It helped then, to make him feel useful with movement in his hands and a goal in mind. It helped take him away from the truth that he was simply sitting there waiting for information. Moose was the one doing all the work right now just like Link had been the one doing work before. He said that leadership was about not having to do things yourself, about having people who willingly did things for you. But it made Chance feel useless and antsy. He wanted to be out in the fray, helping his friends. He wanted to protect his men, not throw them into harm’s way or expect so much of them. But it was what leadership meant, he’d been elected to this position and he was going to do everything in his power to make sure he did his job right.
So he started by rolling up a cigarette and lighting it. The taste of the tobacco and the smell of the smoke in there was a small victory but one he was proud of nonetheless. It was a start. One thing checked off the box. Now all he had to do was figure out what to do when he finished it.
He didn’t have to wait long, Moose returned a few minutes later, just as Chance was putting out what was left of the cigarette under the heel of his boot. He wedged it into the asphalt as Moose pulled up with another rider to his back. This seemed like a good sign, he got the girl to go with him, it didn’t take too long. But as soon as Moose pulled up and killed the engine on the bike, Chance saw that something was very, very wrong.
The woman was slumped against Moose’s back. It looked like she might have been asleep except for the subtle movements to hold onto him, gripping as tightly as she could, to his waist. Chance stepped closer and saw, even in the dim light of the parking lot, that bruises were beginning to pepper over her arms. Her face was hidden by the visor of the helmet but he turned to look at Moose and saw his own face was incredibly pale. He watched the muscles in Moose’s neck and jaw flex with stress as he moved to help the girl off the bike.
She was as pliable as a doll, falling into Moose’s arms in a slump.
“What the hell happened?” Chance asked, taking one of the girl’s arms to help move her inside. He was afraid to touch anywhere on her body. Every inch of skin looked like it was in pain.
“I’ll explain when we get her inside and get her some water,” Moose said with more command in his voice than Chance had ever heard. He was scared. And Moose rarely got scared. Chance felt his own chest constrict a bit at the idea. If Moose was scared then something had to be wrong.
Together they helped move her inside. By the end of it they were virtually carrying her the rest of the way, her legs giving out to nothing but uselessness. Ben’s face was waiting inside to make a comment but turned to a confused frown when he saw the pair of them and the girl in between.
“Christ,” he whispered out and got up. He cleared off a table of salt and pepper shakers and random utensils, not bothering to ask the bartender if he cared.
They set her down on the table and Chance got his first real look at the state of her body. There were bruises everywhere. Most of them were oblong spots of marks, peppering her skin like deep purple ponds. Others were in the unfortunate shape of human fingers in a tight grip. It didn’t take a genius to figure out this had been done to her with purpose. Her face was swelling in spots, her lip bleeding, a small gash opened above her eye. Bruises were there as well with marks of dry blood caked.
“Call Link and my mother,” Chance ordered to Ben who had managed to curb his attitude from before and nodded, moving to use the phone behind the bar.
She was barely awake, Chance wasn’t even sure if she knew where she was.
“Cindy,” Moose said carefully, quietly into her ear. She stirred just a bit but it was barely enough. “Fuck.”
“What happened?” Chance said, grabbing Moose’s arm and holding him there to bring his attention in.
“They’re on their way,” Ben said, coming over to take his own look at the girl.
“I found her like this,” Moose said. “I got her out of there but that Black Death asshole beat the crap out of her. Someone leaked our plan to them. He totally wrecked her.”
Chance looked back at the girl. The guilt was coming over him in waves. So girl was hurt because of a plan he outlined. She was innocent, as innocent as an old lady in the Black Death could be but now she was a mess. He tried to look her over, see if there was anywhere he could tend to, any blood to clean up, but the cuts were still bleeding a little too freely. He felt a sense of pure helplessness.
Moose got a pitch over water and a bag full of ice from the bartender but stood there, confused about where he should put it first, which part of her was more wounded, in need of more attention. Several parts of her face were swelling and her nose might have been broken. It was impossible to tell with the amount of damage what was and what wasn’t actual wounds or just collateral damage. They settled for placing the bag of ice over one of her eyes that seemed to be swelling up more than the others. They dipped a handful of napkins into the water, not trusting the cleanliness of any of the bar rags, and began to dab her wounds in places. She let out small whimpers of pain but Moose insisted on continuing, though he looked positively miserable doing it.
“Oh good Lord,” Link said when they entered the bar in a flurry. The entire group was there, Link, Kat, Scout, and Hannah.
She didn’t have time to trade awkward eye contact with Chance again, moving forward in an instant at the sight of the girl on the table, moaning in pain. Scout followed soon after. They both, silently, all but pushed the men out of the way.
“We need soap,” Hannah said. “We need to clean these out. None of them are too deep but we have no idea what did this to her.”
The chilling thought crossed through his mind that she had been beaten with more than just fists, hurt with more than just human hands. He’d heard stories, and he knew how his father had been. He’d been an evil, vicious man to his mother. Everything could be an instrument for pain if he wanted it to be.
Chance looked at Hannah. She was concentrated on the task at hand, staring with intensity as she did her work. This could be her if the Black Death got their hands on her. This could be her or worse, as they sold her out to any man who would pay the right price. He wasn’t going to let that happen. He knew that much already, but now it was serious. This girl was near death, and Chance wasn’t going to let there be a day Hannah was the one in need of rags of water and ice.
***
Hannah hadn’t been incredibly excited at the idea of seeing Chance when Link came into the guest room and told her to put her shoes on because they were going to meet up with some of the others. All he said was there was something urgent but they didn’t know what. When she walked into the room and saw that girl, she felt an immediate need to help. It was something ingrained in all women of the world, she thought. They saw a woman in pain and wanted to move in to help. There was a sisterly bond. And that woman was hurt bad.
Scout was moving up beside her. This was a girl who had been beaten. She’d seen this before. They’d looked at domestic cases in class before and this was a perfect example right out of a text book. The bruises on her skin were in familiar shapes, human fingers, gripping tightly, welts in the shape of fists. Her eyes were swelling from trauma and she had to be in a tremendous amount of pain. Hannah almost wanted to cry when she saw her. It was awful and unfair.
She and Scout set to work without a word. She didn’t need to know what happened; she didn’t need to know why she was staring at the beaten body of this young woman. Chance had been out of the house almost the entire week, making plans and doing things without talking to her. So far her brother hadn’t ended up dead in a ditch somewhere so she was willing to let it go, it was easier than dancing awkwardly around each other. But now she felt shivers.
What had he been doing? And what had he done?
“Nothing is too serious,” Hannah said. “From what I can see anyway.”
“Nothing needs stitches,” Scout agreed. “Anything broken?”
Hannah had been performing pressure tests across the
girls arms and legs to see if anything was particularly more tender than a bruise would suggest. So far she’d found nothing, which she was grateful for. She didn’t know how to bandage up and splint a broken bone and if it wasn’t done right the girl could get an infection. She desperately didn’t want to make any of it worse.
After a while the girl was cleaned up and looking a little better. She was still in a state of pain, and swelling, and the bruises didn’t magically disappear, but the blood was cleaned off and the cuts covered with bandages. She still looked awful.
“I’m going to take a minute,” Hannah said, getting up.
Her hands were stained pink from all the blood that had passed over them as she cleaned off the woman. She went to the bathroom, out the faucet on hot, and scrubbed to the point where she thought her skin might come off. The pink stain was gone but a sheen of red irritation remained in its place. She could handle that.
She heard the door open and close behind her. In the mirror she looked to see Chance standing behind her, looking smaller than she’d ever really seen him before. His hands were shoved into his pockets and his shoulders were slouched. He was worrying on his lip and occasionally looking up at her. But mostly he was just frowning at the ground.
“This is the women’s room.” She didn’t know what else to say. It was the last place she expected to see him and he was the last person she really expected to see anywhere. He didn’t react. He didn’t look up. He just blinked and thought some more.
“Can we talk?”
“Well I’m kind of a captive audience in here, aren’t I?”
She moved to pull down some towels to dry of her hands, numb from the heat and the force of her scrubbing. He stepped out of her way to get to the trash can. She moved back to look at him, crossing her arms and sighing.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“A lot,” Chance said. “We know that. But right now we need to talk about that out there.”
“What about it?”
“That’s what’s waiting for you if the Black Death get their hands on you,” he said. “Moose found her like that, beaten because someone leaked our plan and she was left out as a message. I won’t let that happen, I won’t let you be the next girl I’m giving first aid help to on a table.”
“I don’t want to be that girl either,” she said, quietly.
“You know what I’m saying though,” he said. “You understand what I mean.”
She did. She’d been so afraid of it all but she did know. She’d been both craving it and running from it. She wanted to know she was more to him than a notch in a bedpost but was also so scared of what that would mean. She’d never felt so strongly about someone or been so serious before. It was uncharted territory in several ways.
“I do,” she whispered.
And finally, for the first time in days, their eyes truly met. They were saying a lot with absolutely no words. And what they were saying was so much more beautiful than Hannah could have imagined. There was a gap bridged entirely in their looks, they were trading feelings in the middle of a shitty bar bathroom. It wasn’t at all how she expected her own fairy tale to go but she wasn’t about to complain.
Chapter 16
They went back to Kat’s house. They’d essentially forced a shutdown of the bar with the bleeding woman on the table and Moose insisted that he be the one to watch over her. They wanted to find her somewhere better than the table of a bar but no one wanted to move her. Her bones all seemed intact, but the last thing needed was to discover some awful break that only showed its head when they tried to carry her out. Besides, Kat wasn’t sure the girl didn’t have internal bleeding and until they knew she wanted to keep her as still as possible. So she was left to rest on the tabletop, Moose stayed by her side with more anxiety than Chance had ever seen him exhibit in his life, and he and Hannah decided to head out and back to the house. At some point in all of this, Ben disappeared and Chance was sure that wasn’t exactly a good sign but he wasn’t going to worry about it now. He had Hannah so close to him again for the first time in days, he didn’t want to waste it chasing Ben Andrews through the town.
They silently got on the back of his bike. It was fascinating how much things had changed over the course of a few weeks. Once she’d been reluctantly putting herself on the back of this thing to escape from the possibility of gang rape. Now she was getting on the back of it willingly, clipping on the helmet like it was second nature. Her arms came up to settle themselves on his shoulders like they’d always been there. It was like they were a perfect fit.
Chance knew that was sentimental and romantic and if the guys heard him talking like that they’d never let him hear the end of it but he meant every word of it as he thought it to himself. She fit so well on the back of his bike, her hands clasped so well to the peak of his shoulders. Her body warmth mingled perfectly with his own at his back. He’d had women on this bike before, girls he was drunkenly taking home from bars and even the occasional girlfriend when he let things get serious. But none of them felt like this. She was intoxicating and perfect and he never wanted her to not be the woman on the back of his bike.
When he started it up and they rode out and into the streets, the soft spring wind coming up to greet them. It kissed at Chance’s cheeks and ruffled through his hair like the world’s softest comb. He was an advocate for safety but he also didn’t mind the feel of the wind all around him with the helmet not there to block it out. He’d take what he could get while he could get it. The sun was very nearly down and it was casting pink and orange light across the town to dazzling effect. He watched the road, but caught every glimpse of it he could because sunsets lasted for seconds, always changing as the light moved around and altered its course.
Everything about this moment felt so perfect. It was the two of them, she was relaxed behind him. Once or twice he was sure he heard her sighing to herself. She was wrapped around him with such care and trust and all the tension of the past few days had been gone in an instant, lost to the winds whipping around them as they bobbed and weaved down the road.
Why had he waited so long for this? It was amazing and perfect and he’d been a coward to not recognize she was just as nervous and scared as he was and they could have been nervous and scared together. They could have talked this out not in some public shithole bathroom while a girl was bruised and bleeding on a table just outside. They could have held each other, touching and connecting physically that had so much more to offer than orgasms and pleasure. He never thought he’d find something like this.
And he would kill the first man who tried to threaten it. What happened to that girl would not happen to Hannah, he’d make sure of that. He knew she could handle herself but he would keep her safe for as long as she would let him.
***
They settled for making some coffee because it had been a bit of a trying evening and they both knew it was probably going to be far from over.
“Here I thought all-nighters were just a college thing,” Hannah chuckled into her steaming mug of coffee.
“I can’t tell you how many nights I lost sleep over crap like this. Waiting to hear about deals, waiting for intel, all of it,” he said, taking a sip of his own drink. “It’s a 24 hour job that I don’t get paid for.”
Hannah sighed. She had never imagined she’d have something like this with Chance but she also recognized it as exactly what she’d been hoping for. Domesticity didn’t seem quite his style and she didn’t want to force something on him that wasn’t natural to him. She didn’t want to be one of those girls that clipped a guy of his wings and forced him to settle down in a place he wasn’t ready for yet. But here they were, wrapped up together on the couch, drinking coffee in his mom’s living room.
“Do you miss school?” he asked and she could hear all the guilt swirling around in his tone.
“I do,” she said because she didn’t want to not be honest for his benefit. “But I’m also on a bit of an adventure here.”
&
nbsp; “An adventure that could get you killed.”
“I could get killed crossing the street to go to Starbucks. I’m getting so much more out of this danger than a Venti latte.”
She felt him smile into her hair even though he didn’t say anything. All her stress was gone. It had evaporated, left to go bother someone else. She was in his arms and that was all she’d needed. She didn’t need to read relationship blogs or ask Kat for advice or consult some tarot cards. She just needed to be near him and it all suddenly made sense. That was certainly something new, but not unwelcome.
The reprieve of their quiet was interrupted, however, when Moose was all but bursting through the door.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said, breathless, huffy, and red in the face.
Hannah didn’t have a moment to feel embarrassed about being caught cuddled up in Chance’s arms, Moose looked like he was ready to pass out. She went into the kitchen to get him water from the tap while Chance told him to calm down and got him to sit in the love seat. Hannah returned with the water and Moose guzzled it.