“Send some prospects down Gracy,” he’s shouting. “Have ’em drag. Run lights. Whatever. Draw the cops to the west side. We’re behind the gas station.” There’s a pause. “Guess there’s been a change of plans, boss man.”
Then they careen to a stop behind me on either side.
The Beretta only weighs seventeen ounces. That’s one of the reasons we bought it. So I could hold it level for as long as I needed to, even with my weak upper arms. It hasn’t even been a minute. Why are my hands shaking so bad? I’m not so weak as this.
I cup my palm, steady my aim. Mulvaney’s shoulders slump, and he lowers his hands on the roof of his car. It’s a piece of shit red Tercel. They don’t even make them anymore.
What am I doing?
Am I going to shoot him?
I could shoot him. I could make him turn around, and I could shoot him in the gut. He could grab his stomach and try to hold himself together, but come up with palms slick with blood.
I should shoot him.
It’s so quiet back here. Forty’s hung up the phone, so no one’s speaking now. The traffic on Gracy Avenue is muted. I can hear the gravel shift under Scrap’s boots. I don’t look at him, but I can feel him behind me, tall and calm.
Hot tears are dripping from my chin. When did they start again?
“I’m gonna touch your hand, Crista, okay? I ain’t gonna take the gun.” Scrap’s voice is low. Unhurried. And then his arms reach around me, and his hands cups mine, helping me hold the gun steady. His chest is firm against my back. When he speaks, it’s over my head.
“So what are we doin’ here, baby?”
“I— I—”
“You know this guy?” His head is lowered so he can speak into my ear, his breath hot on my neck. My palms are so sweaty, my grip slips, but his forearms are bracing me, his fingers keeping mine on the trigger. “Who is he to you?”
When I tell, it has the bitter flavor of a confession. “He was there.” My voice breaks, a jagged cry escaping. “He was there, too. With Inch Johnson.”
Behind us, Forty growls. Then, suddenly, there’s the roar of engines, and the crunch of tires and boots hitting the gravel—four or five men join us—but no one speaks.
Mulvaney’s chest shudders. “If you let me go, I won’t say shit to no one,” he cries over his shoulder.
“Shut the fuck up.” That’s Heavy, his voice booming from behind.
I start to sob, a low keening, and Scrap wraps me closer, an arm lowering to wind around my waist, cradling me to him. “What do you wanna to do here, baby? It’s your call.”
I don’t know. I want it to be over. I want it to have never happened. I want to be the kind of person who can kill a man. I want that so fucking bad.
I shake my head, and my mouth opens, but no words will come.
“You can let go,” he says.
“I can’t,” I cry, but my grip is weak, all of me is weak, and Scrap’s the only thing holding me up. “I can’t.” This time, it’s a ragged whimper.
“Baby, look around. You’re not alone.” And I do. To my left, Forty and Wall have their weapons raised. To my right, Heavy and Dizzy. “You can let go. I got you. We got you. Let’s go home, baby. Frances is waiting on us.”
He says it so quiet, there’s no way anyone but me can hear what I do in his voice. The fear. The sheer terror I’ve only heard a few times before. In my father’s voice when he cradled my head in that garage. In Mom’s voice when she screamed at the doctors that they were not going to let me die.
I didn’t get it. Not until this very second. I didn’t understand that Scrap Allenbach needs me. That even though I can’t begin to understand why, he loves me.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell him.
“All right, baby,” he says, and I know in my bones, it’s not a gun I hold in my hands. It’s his heart.
I let go, let Scrap take the gun. “Okay. It’s over. We can go. I’m parked across the road.”
There’s a flurry of motion as four men rush past us, and a shout from Mulvaney that’s muffled almost as soon as it starts. The last I see of him, Forty’s throwing his limp body into the back of his Jeep, blood staining his white T-shirt.
Scrap takes me by the hand and leads me back around the building. There’s a good dozen brothers converged out front, but no customers. Cue is having a word with a kid who looks like the manager.
We go back to the Audi, and Scrap opens the passenger door. I slide in. He loops around to the driver’s side door and slides in, pushing the seat all the way back. He stretches his legs as far forward as they can go, and rests his arm on the back of the seat.
We sit there together, facing the gas station while cars drive past on Gracy Avenue and slow to gawk at all the bikes parked out front. Not soon after, I realize I’m sobbing, and then after a while, the sobs turn to hiccups. Scrap waits next to me, quiet and still, filling the car with the smell of leather and sweat.
After what feels like a very long time, after all the bikes have pulled off, and a red Tercel with Wall behind the wheel pulls out from behind the gas station, Scrap clears his throat.
“You remember at the garage? When you asked me to tell you what I remember from back then?” he says.
“Yeah.” I sniff and wipe my face with my sleeve.
“I remember being in love with you.” He looks at me, his blue eyes overflowing. “I was in love with you, Crista Holt. I am in love with you, but I been in love with you forever. From all the way back when you’d sit out under Twitch and Shirl’s tree, readin’ books, and I’d wash my bike in the yard, tryin’ to see what you were reading. Like maybe if I read what you read, I’d know how to talk to you. Fuckin’ The Odyssey. A Tale of Two Cities.”
“That was freshman year.” My voice comes out ragged.
“Yeah, I know. You were too damn young. I felt like such a sick fuck. If Pig Iron had known what was goin’ through my mind, he would’ve killed me.” Scrap chuckles, like the memory isn’t a bad one.“Back then, I had the notion that somehow Dad and Ma had talked to God when they saw Him. Told Him he needed to make up somehow for all the shit, and then there you were.”
He shrugs, and then he inhales, deep.
“After we found you that day, they’d only let Pig Iron ride in the ambulance. We all followed behind. You were in surgery for hours. I sat in that waiting room, and I prayed so fucking hard. You weren’t a crush, Crista Holt. I been in love with you since I knew what love was.”
I didn’t think there were more tears in me, but they’re back, slowly rolling down my cheeks, my neck.
“It was the second night. Pig Iron came out. A few of us were in the waiting room. Most of the brothers were out lookin’ for Inch. Pig Iron said the doctor told him you wasn’t gonna make it. That if any of us wanted to say our goodbyes, we best do it.”
I didn’t know this part. I know the doctors said I wouldn’t make it, but goodbyes? No one had ever mentioned it.
“Bullet and I went back to where they had you in this little cubicle. There was a huge machine next to your bed, a nurse workin’ it, a mask covering your face. I don’t think you were breathin’ on your own. Deb was standin’ beside you, holdin’ your hand. She saw us, and she lost her shit.”
Mom has told me this part. A few times, when things got really hard, especially when I started leaning too heavy on the meds, Deb would lose her shit on me and scream, “I didn’t let those fuckers at Petty’s Mill General give up on you, and I ain’t letting you give up on yourself.”
“Deb told us we could shove our last words up our asses.” Scrap chuckles. “She told us to go be useful and kill the motherfucker who did this to her daughter.”
He pauses a moment and his face goes somber again. “I knew you were gonna die. There was so much blood, baby. I knew no one could make it. I went crazy.”
He reaches out and brushes a finger down my cheek, his blue eyes searing mine. “I thought you were gonna die, and if you were gone, nothing fucking mattere
d. So I went and killed Inch Johnson, and you lived. ‘Cause I gave up hope, I left you alone for ten years when it was my job to be there for you. How am I gonna forgive myself for that? How could I ask you to forgive me for that?”
His pain is raw and real in his voice. It hurts worse than my own, and I want so badly to take it from him. To carry it for him. But I can’t.
“I love you,” I say instead.
But it’s like a dam broke, and he keeps talking, way more words than I ever heard him string together before.
“Everyone wondered how I kept goin’ inside. After I got jumped, and I sent you away ‘cause I couldn’t bear you seein’ that shit after what you went through, the brothers were always watchin’ me like I was gonna lose it. But they didn’t understand.”
“What? What didn’t they understand?” My hand reaches for his face, and he nuzzles his cheek into my palm.
“Prison wasn’t hell. Those days when I thought you were gonna die? That was hell. But you lived. So I could live. Through anything.” His takes my hand and drops a kiss in the center.
I lean up and brush his lips with mine. “I love you,” I say again.
“Don’t ever fuckin’ try to shoot a man on Main Street again.”
“It’s Gracy Avenue. And I was out the back.”
“Don’t be a smartass and buckle your seatbelt. We’re goin’ home.”
Scrap puts the truck into gear, but before we pull out of the parking lot, Boom and Wash come flying down the street, whooping into the wind, all four of Petty’s Mills cop cars giving chase at full speed, sirens blaring.
“Harper’s gonna have a busy night,” I say.
“Serves her right.” Scrap turns the opposite direction of the chase and heads south.
I sink back in the seat, and I let Scrap’s strength and calm soothe me as I breathe it in.
I haven’t loved Scrap since I knew what love was. I don’t know when I started to love him, but I know I’ll never stop. He’s sitting next to me, and yet, it doesn’t feel like that.
It feels like I’ve finally found my heart, and to my surprise, it’s been living outside my body, beating strong and steady this whole time. Whatever parts of me are missing—and will always be missing—don’t hurt so bad ‘cause Scrap Allenbach is taking me home. I’m not alone, and neither is he, and for once, everything is right with the world.
◆◆◆
The walk up the mountain almost kills me.
When Heavy pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to see things through to the end, I didn’t think twice. I said yes. It takes about two miles straight up through the bush before I start thinking closure is over-fuckin’-rated.
Forty and Dad are carrying game bags slung over their shoulders containing the remains of Donny Mulvaney. When we start up the barely-there trail, Dad hands me a sapling in a burlap sack to hump up to the dump site. About fifteen minutes in, when I stumble over a fallen log, Scrap takes the sapling off my hands. I feel guilty ‘cause he’s outfitted with camping shit, too, but I can’t lie. I’m worried I won’t make it all the way to the top.
I’m not used to the outdoors. I’m not used to walking for more than a few minutes. The thing about a life with perimeters is you can’t go too far in any direction. In retrospect, maybe the direction I should’ve gone first when I decided to bust out of my cage wasn’t straight vertical.
I’m puffing and wheezing after an hour, and an hour after that, Dad and Forty stop waiting for me to catch up. Scrap stays with me, patient as always. He hardly breaks a sweat.
About three hours in, we take a break. There’s a flat rock about waist height, cut at an incline, and I basically collapse on it, arms flung wide. Scrap has to nudge my arm over to make room to sit.
“How you holdin’ up?” He brings his knees to his chest and stares down the mountain. I bet it’s a hell of a view, but I can’t bring myself to sit back up, so I stare at the impossibly clear, blue sky, framed by the slow sweeping tops of tall pines. A hawk is circling so high up he winks in and out of view. It’s like the world is so big my eyes don’t know how to see it all.
“I’ll make it,” I say. Scrap passes me a canteen. We lapse into silence.
After a while, I turn my head away from the sky to look at him. His face is calm, like always, but there’s something in his eyes. A reverence. He’s gazing down at me. A half-smile tugs at his lips.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” he says.
I nod.
“Best keep going.” He stands, and offers me a hand. It takes me considerably longer to haul my ass up, but I do. The rest of the hike passes quickly.
When we get to a clearing with three newly planted trees, we come on Forty with a shovel, knee deep in a hole.
“Feels like I was just here,” he jokes.
“Those the Rebel Raiders that went after Fay-Lee and Roosevelt at Twiggy’s?” Scrap asks, waving at the three little saplings.
Forty nods. “And Ike Kobald. We should water them since we’re up here. A little help?”
Scrap peels his shirt off, grabs another shovel, and gets to work. Dad spells him after a while, and I’m glad no one asks me. It takes me most of the time they spend digging to catch my breath.
Scrap told me on the way here how it would go. Steel Bones has a tradition of burying its bodies up in the Shady Mountains, planting a tree on top of the burned corpse. It’s poetic, but practical, too. Wildlife doesn’t dig up bones covered by trees.
As the men finish the hole and wander off to store the shovels wherever they keep them, I’m left alone with the game bags. It’s strange, knowing it’s over. And that it doesn’t change much of anything.
This is the farthest I’ve come since that day when I was sixteen, but Donny Mulvaney being dead doesn’t really have much to do with it. If I trace my steps back, farther and farther and farther, I started this hike long before he disappeared into Forty’s Jeep that day at the gas station and never showed up for work again.
Before I decided to go dancing with Fay-Lee and Nevaeh. Before I let Scrap ride me home.
If I let myself think about it—and I never do, but maybe I will this once—this hike began at Petty’s Mill General Hospital. They’d taken out my catheter, and I had to pee. For once, Mom wasn’t there. I think she was getting a Coke from the machine. I was alone. I used the remote to raise the back of the bed all the way, and then I used my hands to maneuver my legs over the side. I couldn’t use my stomach muscles at all at that point.
I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was so doped up in those days. I think I kind of counted three in my head and then willed my abdominals to help me stand. There was a horrible, stabbing pain, and I sort of slid off the side of the bed onto the floor like I was made of rubber. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t reach the remote to hit the help button. So for a few minutes, I laid on the nasty hospital floor, my cheek pressed to the cold tile.
It hurt, and I was scared, and I knew in a minute or ten the horror of what happened would rise up yet again, flapping and pecking at my mind like crows, but then? In that moment? I was so fucking happy. I was alive.
When Forty and Dad come back, they dump Mulvaney in the hole and light him up with gasoline. I stay back, next to Scrap.
For a second, I’m afraid the smell will send me over the edge, but I stay in control. It helps that Scrap’s beside me. After the flames ebb, we say our goodbyes and head off on our own.
It was Scrap’s idea to split from Dad and Forty on the way back down the mountain. He wants to take a detour to a place he used to go with his father when he was a kid. They used to hunt on this mountain, and this was a place they’d go to fly fish. Scrap says there’s a pool, and a rapid that runs over an incline just steep enough that it could be called a waterfall. He talks about it like Narnia or something, so I said we could go. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?
As we take off down the mountain, I kind of wish I hadn’t. It’s like now that the weight of what we needed to do is gone, all my aches and
pains have decided to pipe up. Scrap has perked up since the grisly shit is behind us, and he’s stoked there’s only a three-hour hike left before we get to his camping spot.
I’m not gonna make it. I’m faking like I have to pee all the time so I can sit for a minute and catch my breath. My boots have rubbed my heels raw, and I reek of smoke and sweat. I’m trying so hard to keep up with Scrap’s long legs, my jeans have chafed the inside of my thighs bright red.
“You good back there?” Scrap’s waiting for me at a treefall. He’s hauling all our gear. I should feel guilty, but all I feel is cranky. Now that the catharsis is over, this royally sucks.
“How much further?”
He checks his GPS. “It’s real close.”
Close is relative. I’m almost in tears by the time I hear the water, and Scrap lifts his arms wide and spins in a slow circle, grinning with both sides of his mouth cocked up.
“What do you think? Ain’t it gorgeous.”
I sink to my butt on a dirt patch next to the river. I guess you’d call it a river. It’s narrow, but deep, and if you’re generous, there is a waterfall spilling over into a blue pool. There are smooth, round rocks on the banks, and a few yards past where we’ve stopped, the river bends out of sight among the huge pines.
Okay, it is beautiful. “It’ll do, I guess.”
Scrap drops a kiss on the top of my head. “You stay there. I’m gonna set up camp.”
No problem with that. I couldn’t get off my ass if I wanted to. Since I’ve taken the pressure off my feet, they’re pulsing and swollen.
Scrap bustles around, laying out a tarp, pitching the tent. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s like a kid. He builds a fire, but he doesn’t light it yet. It’s getting to be late in the afternoon, and a breeze is picking up, but it’s not cool.
I like just watching him work. He’s got his shirt off, and you can see his muscles flex as he moves. He does each chore like he’s been doing it for years, navigates the stones and the sticks like he’s never been locked away.
My heart aches, and an unbearable weight settles on my shoulders.
“I’m so sorry.”
Scrap: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 17