by Ivory Quinn
“It’ll fade when she’s apprehended.” Noelle shrugged. “I need to do this, Blue. It feels like the edges of my old life have frayed where Gabriel’s death severed them. I need to tie up all the loose ends before I can walk away and this is one of those loose ends. I have to set things right.”
“It sounds almost like you’ve got a list.” He remarked, holding the door open for her.
“I have.” She refused to be embarrassed about it. “I’m taking my life back, Blue. That’s not a passive thing. I can’t just sit back and let it be dished out any more.”
“Them’s fightin’ words.” He chuckled, laying an arm around her shoulders. “Glad to see you getting back on your feet, Little Monkey.”
***
“You can’t be fucking serious!” Jax was gaping at her as the rest of the band tried to silently process what she’d just said. They’d eaten dinner and moved into the living room to talk. “You want to drag Gabriel’s dirty laundry through the papers?”
“That’s not what it’s about, Jax.” Frustrated, she pushed her hair out of her face. “He’s gone. It can’t hurt him any more. She needs to be brought to justice.”
“He’s had his justice!” Jax protested, enraged at the very thought. “Don’t you think he rubbed her face in it enough when he survived everything she dished out to him and became a fucking megastar?”
“No I don’t.” She replied quietly. “It’s not just about Gabriel any more, Jax. She’s indirectly responsible for hurting all of us. If Gabriel had received any kind of justice, do you think he would have become the kind of man that would kill himself?”
“How can you even ask that?” Jax reeled. “You know better than anyone that there’s no magic formula to fix being fucked up. If you’re going after her, you might as well go after the rest of us too. We didn’t force him to get help. You should go after his parents for letting it happen and not giving a shit. You should go after Pastor James for not forcing him into therapy.”
“That’s not the same and you know it!” Angry now, she was nose to nose with him. “I get that he was private. I get that you don’t want to tarnish his memory. But you’re too late, Jax! The whole damn world knows he had a play room in his house.”
“So let them think he’s a freaky badass. Don’t make him out to be some messed up head case.”
“And what about me?” She refused to back down. “Even if you won’t do it for you, why won’t you let me seek justice for me? He wasn’t the only victim of the damage she caused.”
“So now we get to the crux of it.” He snarled. “This is all about you, yet again. Princess, we’ve tolerated your need for counselling and grieving, but at some stage you just need to fucking get over it.” His words couldn’t have been more painful if he’d accompanied them with a right hook, but he wasn’t done. “I get that you think you’re a victim in all of this, but the truth is that you let yourself get taken into that play room and you let him do what he did. Yeah, he took it too far that one time, but that doesn’t make you some sort of battered wife, so get off your selfish fucking high horse and let it slide.”
She’d slapped him before she even realised her hand was moving. “How dare you?” She gasped, her throat choking with rage and sadness. “Is that what you really think?” The look in his eyes said it all and he didn’t need to answer. Unable to face the others, she turned and fled the room.
“I can’t believe you said that.” Raze stared at Jax angrily. “That’s not really what you think, is it?”
“I don’t know what to fucking think!” Jax roared, pacing around like a caged lion. “What I know is that we’ve held her hand and babied her through this for six fucking months and then she wants to repay us by dragging our brother’s name through the mud.”
“She’s not dragging his name through the mud.” Luke said gravely, his quiet voice in sharp contrast to Jax’s anger. “For all the length of this crazy ride, we’ve been in the news for all the wrong reasons. All those groupies we fucked and all those kids that killed themselves...she’s right. This is his one last chance to do something noble. Don’t you think it’s time we used our fame and fortune to make a stand against something really dark and twisted? Look at the power we have in our hands, Jax. Would it kill us to be ambassadors against child abuse?”
“Luke’s right.” Keys agreed unexpectedly. “This isn’t about her. It isn’t about us. It’s not even really about Gabriel. Who knows how many other kids she’s abused since he escaped? If we can save even one, it’s worth it. We should have done it years ago.”
“Whatever.” Raze got to his feet. “You need to get your head around the fact that you might have just lost the best thing that ever fucking happened to us.” Shaking his head, he went after Noelle.
He found her in the front hall, in tears and on the phone to Blue, begging him to come and pick her up. Taking the phone from her hand, he held the receiver to his ear. “I’ve got her, Blue.” He said calmly. “I’ll make sure she’s okay and bring her back to the manor. Don’t worry about coming out.” He listened as Blue said angry words, a blush creeping up his neck. “I know. He’s a total fucking idiot. I’ll take it out of his hide later.” He glanced at Noelle. “What do you say, Noelle? Do you trust me to get you to the manor safely?” She looked up at his kind eyes and nodded reluctantly. He didn’t seem to hold the same low opinion of her as Jax. “She’s nodding, Blue. I’ll bring her back in a bit.” He hung up and snagged his keys from the dish by the door. “Come on, Baby Girl. Let’s go get some ice cream.”
Unwilling to risk an impromptu media feeding frenzy, Raze went through a drive-thru and bought a couple of cartons of soft-serve ice cream, parking in a quiet country lane a few miles away. The layby he’d chosen had a view out over some fields and they sat in silence for a few moments, eating and trying to decide what to say.
“He didn’t mean it.” Raze eventually broached the subject. “That’s not what he thinks at all.”
“It’s exactly what he thinks.” She disagreed dully. Her face was still pale and she pushed her ice cream around listlessly with the useless plastic spoon. “I can’t say I blame him. There are times when I find myself wondering how the hell I let myself walk into that room. I’m only just now starting to understand it and I was there.”
“Gabe was good at manipulating people.” Raze turned slightly in his seat to look at her. “From the outside looking in, you’d think he led a charmed life, but he very carefully organised it that way. He made his own luck. There was something in him that knew just what buttons to push in the people around him to make what he wanted happen.” His spoon snapped and she wordlessly handed him hers. She wasn’t really in the mood to eat. “You know, when my sister got out of her marriage, she said the one thing she heard again and again in the refuge was that it was like waking up from a deep sleep. She said that unless you’d experienced it, you’d never understand how deep in denial a person can be.”
“Your sister was in an abusive relationship?” She didn’t even know he had a sister and it finally caught her interest.
“Six years.” He shifted uncomfortably in the seat. “We had no idea. She stopped calling and visiting so much, but at the time things were really taking off with the band. We’d just released our third single and everything had changed. It never occurred to me to think it was anything other than the change in my lifestyle that stopped her from getting in touch.”
“He stopped her from speaking to you?” She thought back to Gabriel’s jealous rage over Jax and realised how easily that could happen. A few more months of the rows and silences and she’d have been tempted to stop visiting the guitarist for the sake of an easy life.
“Not in so many words.” He confirmed her thoughts.
“What happened?” She asked curiously. “How did she get out?”
“She had a miscarriage.” His gaze went distant as his eyes shone with unshed tears. “It was a total shock. She didn’t even know she’d been pregnant. He was away
at some business conference, so she called me to take her to the hospital out of desperation.” He swiped angrily at his head, rubbing his beanie back and forth. “She was thirteen weeks in. I asked if she wanted me to break the news to Jack and she totally freaked out. I don’t know all the details of what had happened the night before and I don’t ever want to know, but, in her eyes, whatever he had done was responsible for the miscarriage and there was no way she could deny something that massive to herself. There was no way the loss of a life could be swept under the carpet as something she’d caused to happen.”
“Wow.” Well that certainly put a lot of things into perspective. “Is she okay now?”
“She bounced back eventually. The women at the refuge were great to her. She got a lot of the counselling she needed from them and she made a couple of close friends there. They formed a sort of survivors’ club.”
“That’s good.” She smiled and leaned across into his warmth. “She’s lucky to have a brother like you.”
“She wasn’t lucky enough.” His face shut down into grim lines. “I should have killed him. I should have hunted him down and beaten him into pulp.”
“To what end?” She disagreed. “You’d have just got yourself landed in jail and messed up a promising career. You were more use to her as you were than you would have been beating him up.”
“I know that.” He sighed. “In theory I can even accept it, but there’s still that guilt there. You don’t ever lose it. You feel like you should protect the people you love and when something goes wrong you feel like you’ve failed them. That’s why you need to be sure about judging Jax – he’s lost his best friend and at the same time he’s feeling all this guilt because he didn’t protect you from him. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend part of it didn’t happen so you can deal with it just one thing at a time.”
“He said it with too much conviction for it to just be denial.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “It’s okay, Papa Bear. You don’t have to defend him. It’s actually easier if we have fundamental disagreements. It makes it easier to assess our relationship when it’s not all picture perfect.”
“What do you mean ‘assess your relationship’?” His spoon stopped halfway to his mouth and she froze too, unsure whether or not Jax had told his bandmates about the ultimatum he had given her. “Tell me, Baby Girl. What is it you have to assess?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you.” She said carefully. “I’m not sure that Jax would want it to be common knowledge.”
“Well given that he’s acting like a complete idiot right now and not thinking terribly straight, it might be better for all of us if we do know what’s going on, so we can pick up the pieces when it implodes.”
She hesitated, but then figured they’d find out sooner or later. The band were close and they shared everything. “He gave me a month to decide.” She admitted eventually. “Either I marry him or walk away. He’s not going to wait indefinitely for anything that’s less committed.”
Raze exploded with a few choice swear words and she jumped back into her own seat, startled. “He really is being an idiot!” He declared when he’d calmed down enough to string a sentence together. “The last thing you need right now is that kind of pressure hanging over you.”
“It’s okay.” She shrugged. “I get where he’s coming from. I was being unfair. I just don’t know what I want to do. If he doesn’t believe that what Gabriel and I had was wrong from the core, and if he can’t accept my sexual proclivities, then it’s not going to work out between us. I’d rather we both knew that now so that we could at least try and salvage some of our friendship.”
“You’ll never be able to salvage it.” He shook his head. “That idiot has been in love with you for months. We all saw it. Fuck!” He smacked the steering wheel. “What the hell was he thinking?”
“That he was sick and tired of being strung along?” She shrugged. “That it was worth taking the gamble to have it all?” She leaned back into his warmth again. “Raze, up until this afternoon I was confused, but leaning towards saying yes. I’m glad this came out now rather than six months down the line when it’s too late.”
“There shouldn’t ever be a too late!” He was angry but containing it and the air seemed to vibrate around him with the sheer force of his fury. “He should never have given you that ultimatum while you’re still getting back on your feet. You should have had the luxury of another six months to decide who you are before you decide where everyone else fits into your life.” He shook his head in disgust. “I should kick his arse.”
“Don’t.” She pleaded softly. “What’s done is done, Papa Bear. It’s too late to take it back. A wise man told me this morning that the best we can hope for is to live with things with grace. Let it go. However this pans out, I’ll still come and cook for you on Mondays. You can still come and see me when you need some Baby Bear love.”
At that, his face broke into a smile, despite his glowering mood. “Baby Bear?” He leaned down to kiss her but, since her head was resting on his shoulder, it ended up somewhere near her ear and she squirmed as it tickled. “It suits you.” He grinned, laying his head atop hers. “We should get you a Baby Bear T-shirt as well.”
“I’ll wear it with pride.” She smiled softly. He was such a sweetie. For all he was big, badass and scary on the outside, on the inside he was like a melting pot of caramel.
It was getting late by the time they arrived back at the manor and Noelle leaned up to kiss Raze’s cheek. “Thanks for talking me down, Papa Bear.”
“You’re welcome, Baby Bear.” He gave her that devastatingly gorgeous wink of his. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” She grabbed her bag from the foot well and smiled. “Don’t worry about walking me in. I’ll manage on my own and I just want to go to bed.”
“Okay, but I’ll stay here and watch. If you change your mind before you get to the door, get back on down here and I’ll take you home with me.”
“Thanks Papa Bear.” Grinning, she climbed out of the car and made her way up the steps, waving to him as she got inside the door. Blue had given her a pass so she didn’t have to wait to be let in, which she was grateful for since Chloe wasn’t at the front counter.
“Hey.” Blue came out onto the landing as she made her way up the stairs. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.” The hurt from Jax’s words still stung like a bitch, but she was putting her big girl panties on and learning how to live with grace. “I’m having an excellent lesson in perspective. How are you?” She stopped to look up at him. “You look on edge.”
“Just a little buzzed.” He grinned. “Coming down from a really intense scene. Still got the rush.”
“You were working tonight?” She let him pull her into his room.
“Yeah. It was a late booking but he’s a regular, so we fit him in.” His energy was barely contained as he cleared a pile of clothes from the chair for her to sit down. He almost bounced across the room to put them away and she hid a smile.
“Is this a euphoric buzz or a sexual buzz?” She asked curiously and he shrugged, entirely unselfconsciously.
“Both. I don’t bang guys. Not with my cock anyway. So yeah...that’s a little uncomfortable right now. But it’ll wear off.” He turned. “Unless you’d be the bestest best friend in the whole wide world and take the edge off it for me?”
“Define ‘taking the edge off’.” She hedged cautiously, wanting to help him down but not sure what he was asking.
“Let me fuck you. Wild jungle sex. Crazy, hanging out the windows, hot, sweaty, fun jungle sex.”
“You charmer, you.” Despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t stop herself from grinning.
“Is that a yes?” He asked hopefully and she burst out laughing.
“I’m not hanging out of any windows.”
“But you’ll go for the wild, crazy, hot, sweaty and fun jungle sex?” His face was so comical as he waited for her answer that she coul
dn’t stop laughing, even through her hesitation.
“I’m not sure...”
“Do you want me to get Cal in here to tell you the endorphin rush and exercise will be good for you?”
“There’s no way Cal would back you up!” She laughed even harder until he strode towards the door. “Where are you going?”
“To find Cal.”
“You wouldn’t!” Her jaw dropped and he paused, his hand on the door handle.
“Do you really want to test me?” She could see his darkness rolling beneath the surface. His eyes were almost black as he stalked back towards her.
“Not particularly.” She swallowed.
“So what’s holding you back?”
Jax. Jax was holding her back. Jax and her misplaced sense of loyalty. He’d been a great friend to her when she needed him, but deep in her heart she knew it could never work. She was too dark and too messed up to be his lover. Hanging onto her celibacy for a man that would never understand or accept her seemed foolish.
“Nothing.” She relaxed into the knowledge of what was to come. “I was being silly.”
“Then come here.” He commanded softly.
She stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re not the only top in the room, Sasquatch. Make me.”
“Oh!” His grin was fierce. “We’re playing like that, are we?” In three long strides, he swept her up and crushed his mouth to hers, devouring her with a savage hunger. She met his tongue with her own, determined to burn away the sadness of the day. It was more of a wrestling match than a kiss and he laughed as he pressed her into the nearest clear patch of wall, knocking a nearby picture to the floor. “Welcome back, Little Monkey.”
“If you haven’t got anything dirty to say, shut the fuck up and kiss me.” She laughed back, tilting her head as he grazed her neck with his teeth.
“What’s gotten into you?” He chuckled.
“Nothing yet.” She ground her hips into his, levering off the wall. “You’re wearing too many damn clothes.”