by Lena Pierce
“How’d the night go?” Jackson asks.
“Fine, sir,” I say. “She’s sleeping right now.”
“Fine …” He lets out a warbling noise, half a cackle and half something I don’t know. “That’s one word for it, isn’t it? Fine, Dirk, fine! The Broken Sinners tried to kill my sister! Don’t get me wrong, now, I love her, and all that, and … ah, who gives a damn about the charade? If the Broken Sinners kill Meghan, I look like a complete asshole! I become the laughingstock of the whole goddamn town. How long do you think the officers will follow a laughingstock, Dirk?”
“I’m not sure, sir.” It occurs to me that one of the reasons Jackson is always offloading on me is because I don’t contradict him.
“You don’t need to know, because I know. Yeah, I know, all right! And it’s not very long! I need you to bring Meghan back here. We’ll keep her here, in the dormitory wing, until this business with the Broken Sinners is taken care of.”
I think of Meghan in one of the clubhouse’s rooms, a stone’s throw away from the bikers. Maybe they’ll steer clear since she’s the boss’s sister, but they get drunk, crazy drunk, and then what? I shouldn’t care about that, ’cause she ain’t my old lady and it ought to mean nothing to me. But I do care, care a whole lot, and I just can’t kill the feeling even if I don’t understand it.
“Dirk?” Jackson breaks in. “Dirk? Goddamn, you there?”
“Sorry, boss, I think the line went for a sec.”
“Well, you have your orders. Bring her back here in one piece and you’ll get that bonus we talked about.”
“Sir.”
I hang up the phone and go into the bedroom. The way she’s lying highlights her ass perfectly, the roundness of it. I remember the way it went pink last night when I spanked it, the way she moaned like she didn’t want to like it but couldn’t help herself. I remember the way she arched her back for me, showing off her perfect tits, and the way she stared up at me with my cock in her mouth. I need to harden myself, to make myself cold to her complaints, to see her as somebody to fuck every once in a while, but that’s all. All this feeling shit … this bullshit, getting into my head. None of it means anything.
I take a second, just like I did overseas, to center myself. I take a deep breath in, drawing in all of my feelings and the chaos, and then let it all out as I exhale. When the ritual is done, I tell myself I’m the same cold Dirk now. And yet when she opens her eyes, stretches her arms, and asks me if it’s morning already, I’m not so sure.
“Yeah, it’s morning,” I tell her.
She looks sideways at me, like she’s surprised by my tone, like she expected me to be loving after what we did last night. I don’t know why. It’s not like what we did last night was at all loving. It was hard fucking, and that’s all it was. I look at her legs, tucked beneath her, and remind myself that the only damn thing I care about her for is right fuckin’ there. None of this self-doubt shit.
“Okay …” She sits up and stretches. “Any chance for breakfast?”
“Not yet.”
“So what happens now?”
“I’m taking you to the club. Your brother wants you someplace safe, and that’s where he’s chosen. So get dressed. There’s a fresh toothbrush in the bathroom if you wanna brush. And then get back out here so we can get going.”
I plant myself on the chair next to the door and wait for her to get ready. She leaves the bathroom door open so I can see her splashing water on her face and brushing her teeth. She looks strangely beautiful as she goes about the morning routine. For a second, I imagine that I’m her boyfriend, not her captor, and that I’m waiting for her to get ready for a date. She’ll turn to me and giggle when she sees how impatient I’m getting, and it’ll be a moment, just one, but then more and more moments’ll get added onto it, until we have something real. I shake my head; fuck’s sake, gotta stop letting my mind stray to that shit. Ghost and his wife and kid. It’s got me all messed up.
“You done?” I snap, to hurry her along.
She washes her mouth out and spits. “Yes, I’m done. But I’m not going to the clubhouse.”
I stand up, smiling humorlessly. “You’re going to the clubhouse,” I tell her.
“No.” She plants her feet and folds her arms. “I’m not.”
“Don’t pull this toddler shit with me, Meghan. You’re going to the goddamn clubhouse.”
“I lived there for a while when I was a teenager—when I was going through my wild stage—and I hated it. The men are nice enough when they come by the store, but when they’re on their own turf they get really, really confident and turn into freaks. And then there’s the constant threat of one of the guys getting too drunk and doing something terrible—to me. That almost happened once, you know, and I don’t want it to happen again!”
“You’ll be under my protection,” I say, waving a hand. “Nothing like that will happen.”
“Under your protection,” she repeats, biting her lip. “Is that better, Dirk?”
“What’re you saying?” I take a step forward so that I’m standing over her.
“Last night …”
“What about last night? You can lie to me about lots of shit, Meghan, but not last night.”
She lowers her gaze. “Maybe you’re right,” she says quietly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not going back there.”
“You are.”
She throws her hands up, dancing away from me toward the bathroom. “I’ve got too much to do!” she exclaims. “I have to call the insurance company about the store, and who even knows if this sort of thing is covered. And then I have to go and check on Sissy. I need to find a place to stay. My apartment burned up with my store, remember! I have a little money saved, so maybe I’ll find a cheap place for the time being until the insurance comes in …”
I let out a booming laugh. “It’s really cute see how much you get into this make-believe stuff, Meghan, really, but none of that is gonna be happening anytime soon. Right now you’re coming outside and getting on my bike and I’m taking you to your brother.”
“He doesn’t even care about me!” she breaks out, backing into the bathroom as I stalk toward her. “All he cares about is looking tough! It’s all he ever cared about, since he was a little kid! Looking tough in front of Dad and then looking tough in front of the club! How can you follow a man like that?”
We end up at the opposite end of the motel room, with Meghan backed against the sink and me standing a mere inch from her, so close I can smell the mint on her breath and the sweat from last night. Her eyes widen as she leans over the sink, away from me. “I thought you’d be different this morning,” she whispers. “I thought you’d be … nicer.”
Part of me, a part I have to ignore, wants to reach out and touch her shoulder and tell her I can be nicer. But I kill it, stone-dead, and force out another laugh. “Life ain’t a fairytale, Meghan. Here’s the situation. You come outside and get on the back of my bike or I tie you to it.”
She stares into my eyes for a few moments and then deflates, letting out a shaky breath. “I really believe you would, too,” she says in disgust. “Fine, then. Keep me prisoner if it makes you feel big and tough.”
I ignore the insult and grab her by the wrist, dragging her toward the exit. I have to be cold. I have to be uncaring. I have to take what I want and leave the rest behind.
I have to remember who I am.
Chapter Ten
Meghan
I clutch onto Dirk and lay my head against his jacket, wishing I could fling myself off the bike without causing harm. I remember the clubhouse. I remember what it’s like there, with the partying and the club girls and the bullshit macho displays. As Dirk races forward, my mind races back, throwing me into the past, to the day I learned that there’s nothing special about being a club girl.
***
I used to look up to the club girls when I was about fifteen years old. They weren’t much older: eighteen, nineteen, sometimes
twenty. But back then they seemed much, much older. They were giantesses who could own a man’s attention just by flashing the right pieces of their body, just by saying the right words. These big powerful men were made powerless when they worked their magic on them.
I was staying in the clubhouse, in a room at the back I shared with a girl called Maxine. She was called Maxine, really, on her driver’s license, but in the clubhouse she was called Starlet. Every morning she’d wake up and paint stars around her left eye, gold and flaring, little flecks of glitter cascading down her face to show that the stars were real; they were hot.
“You have to be careful with this life, doll,” she’d say, sitting in what we called the makeup chair and transforming her face. “It can hurt you if you let it, but you’ve got to lock those feelings away. Just find a box and lock them up and—poof—then everything is easy. You’re free to enjoy yourself, to enjoy your life. Because why worry, you know? Why pay it any mind?”
“But would you do anything they asked you?” I was a virgin and infinitely fascinated in that aspect of her life. I saw the other part: the charming at parties and the attention. But the other thing, the private, dark thing, I never saw.
“You don’t want to hear about this. You’re just a kid.”
“I’m sixteen in seven months!” I protested.
She scoffed, dusted the last pieces of makeup, and then folded up her box. “Like I said, just a kid. Come on. If you really want to be a woman, let me show you how.”
So I sat nervously in the makeup chair and let Maxine transform me, too. She turned me from a soft-faced, acne-laced teenager into a woman with an unblemished complexion. “What do you think?” she said, putting her arm around me. “Are you ready for a man?”
It was wrong of her to ask me that. I think she knew it was wrong, deep down, but Maxine was really messed up. I later learned, through an associate at the store, that she had been addicted to cocaine the whole time I was there, and that she had once had a baby but it had died in its crib. Maxine was a figure of tragedy, a heroine without a hero, but I did not know that at the time. She was just the cool older girl with the dazzling face.
“Um, I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t want to seem like a dork, but those big bikers were scary. I had already noticed their eyes, always peering.
“Don’t be such a chicken all the time,” she chided. “Just follow me tonight. I’ll hook you up.”
I cannot remember if Dirk was in the club yet, but I know that Jackson was. He sat in the corner with the then-boss, sucking up and laughing at his jokes. Maxine led us to another corner where two men sat. One was a giant called Little Billy who was covered in spider tattoos and sat hunched over in a tank top, nursing a whisky that looked ridiculously tiny in his giant’s grip. The other was a slender, sinewy man called Locke who wore a full beard but was bald on top. Instead of hair, his shaved head was covered in tattooed fire.
“Locke, this is the girl I was telling you about,” Maxine said. But she was no longer Maxine. She was Starlet. She had changed the way she spoke, the way she stood, calculating everything to best grab the men’s attention.
Locke held out his hand to me. “Nice to meet you, Rose.”
Rose. I shot a glance at Maxine. She rolled her eyes with me: Just go with it!
I was young and I didn’t want to be a loser. I was almost a woman anyway. I was sick and tired of people telling me I was too young for this, too young for that, that I had to wait for everything. Everything seemed just beyond my grasp and yet another lifetime away.
“Nice to meet you.” I took his hand. It was calloused and rough and slightly damp.
He grinned, holding on longer than was necessary, and ran his finger along my knuckles. “Don’t be nervous, little bird,” he said. “Locke’ll take care of you.”
Maxine disappeared and returned an instant later with a tray of drinks. I don’t know how many drinks were on that tray, only that it was far more than I had ever seen one person carrying. There was wine and whisky and beer and even two cocktails, which I guess Maxine had to charm one of the pledges to make especially for her. She handed me a cocktail and a glass of wine and made a tipping motion with her head, meaning I should drink up. I was nervous now. A large part of me wanted to leave. But I reasoned that was just the childish part of me, and if I got drunk maybe it would go away.
I drank the wine as teenagers drink, far too quickly and far too desperately.
Then the night moved in a timeless whirlwind. Maxine and Little Billy had broken off and Maxine was licking his earlobe and touching his thigh. Locke was sitting very close to me, so close I could smell barbecue chicken on his wheezing breath. “Don’t tell me your age,” he whispered in my ear. “I don’t want to know. You look plenty old enough to me.”
The alcohol had gone to my head so that all I could manage was a short, inconsequential laugh. I was vaguely aware that I wanted to be someplace else but most of my energy was fixated on trying not to be sick. I honed my attention down to that one point, don’t vomit, so that everything else slipped by the wayside. Before I was able to react to it, Locke had taken me by the hand and was leading me to the dormitory wing. I looked to Maxine for support, but I did not see support in her face. There was only a grim sort of acceptance. She nodded shortly at me and then went back to chewing on Billy’s ear.
In the room, Locke approached me, stroking his wild man’s beard. “I guess you don’t know what to do next, eh?” He was breathing heavily and his eyes were as wide as saucers. “Inexperienced as you are.”
“I …” I looked over his shoulder, at the door. Why had I come in here with him? It seemed supremely foolish now. “I don’t know,” I muttered.
“I’ll show you,” he said, advancing.
I darted my hand out before I could think it through. He took the slap with surprise, his head snapping aside, and then he turned to me with a face of complete rage. I froze. Then I wept. I broke down into trembling, shaking tears that rocked my whole body. I wept loudly and like a child, throwing myself into it. Suddenly I missed our apartment, because at least if it was lonely it was private.
Locke cursed and took a step back. After a long second, he nodded at the door. “Get the fuck out of my sight.”
I sprinted back into the bar, right up to Jackson. “I need to go,” I told him.
“Go, then.” He turned back to the group he was standing with.
“I’m drunk,” I whispered. “I just … can’t you come with me?”
He shook his head. “You can wait until I leave, or you can leave.”
“How long?”
“An hour, two, three … I don’t know.”
I marched to the corner of the room where we had been sitting and just started drinking, taking leftover beers from the tables and shots from the counter. The night passed. I think men tried to speak with me but in my drunken state I just started to weep whenever things got too heavy, and the guys left me alone. More, I think, out of wariness for their surroundings than respect. I remember the anger on Locke’s face. I’m not sure if the rest of them would have just told me to leave.
A long time later I found myself in the dormitory wing, looking for Maxine. I don’t know what I wanted her for, only that it was very important. I went to our room and pushed the door open. There she was, hunched over, with her mouth on Locke’s lap and Little Billy thrusting away behind her. She was half asleep, drunker than hell, but they just kept right on.
I screamed to try and stop it, but then Maxine sprung into life and ran at me, half naked, trying to scratch my eyes out. “You little stuck-up bitch!” she cried.
Later, when Jackson was the boss, Little Billy and Locke and Maxine went away. We never talked about it and, if I ever tried to mention it, he swore at me.
I like to think it angers him because it reminds him of what could have happened to his sister. But probably he just doesn’t want to remember a time when he wasn’t in charge.
***
Now he�
��s taking me back to that place and there’s nothing I can do.
I wonder to myself if Dirk is like Locke or Little Billy and somehow, I doubt it. I have no basis for that, because I’ve only known him a very short while, but there was something about last night. The sex; it takes an effort to admit what we did even to myself. It was rough and wild but unless I was imagining it, there was some small degree of affection there too. It was like he wanted it rough but not so rough that he caused me real harm. Or maybe I just want there to be something there because … because what? Because I want him to like me? Why?
These questions fall away when we stop outside the clubhouse. A pit grows in my belly as Dirk gets me off the bike—with force, but not unkindly—and takes me into the dormitory wing. I look sadly down the hallway at my and Maxine’s old room, and then Dirk bundles me into a single bedroom and steps in behind me. The room is clean and not too small, with an en-suite and even a microwave on the desk. The bed is right next to the window, but the window has bars on it. He locks the door. It’s not just a normal door lock. It’s a padlock.