BEND ME: A Dark Romance

by Leah Wilde

  “I dunno. I guess.” She sat up in her seat. She must have dozed off since everyone had moved around. “I really don’t know. I remember that he was tall, that he smelled like cheap liquor and cheaper cigarettes. Wait…he had tattoos.”

  She could almost feel the attention sharpen. It was like being caught in a spotlight. Eyes in every available hue turned in her direction and focused. She squirmed. Right now she did not want that attention.

  “Better than fingerprints,” Julius snorted. “What of?”

  “Catholic symbology stuff. Angels and the Virgin Mary.” She shrugged. Her ponytail suddenly felt too tight. With a careless gesture she tugged it free and let her hair tumble down. Her nails scratched listlessly over her scalp. The ache in her head was slowly turning into a migraine. She was so tired. “Pretty similar to what a lot of pious gangsters have.”

  “The Virgin, was she done in black and white, or colors?” Riley asked. He navigated his chair forward, stopping right in front of her.

  “Black and white,” she explained. Her hand swept over her drooping eyes. “All his tattoos were grayscale.”

  “Abel,” the men chorused.

  “Abel? Like Caine and Abel? Biblically? Really?” Kelly rolled her eyes, feeling a fresh wave of weary frustration. “That’s…wow. That’s so not awesome.”

  “Pretty sure some of his men have tattoos, but I don’t think he’d trust this kind of attack to one of his lesser guys. It was personal.” Charlie offered.

  “No shit,” Riley snorted. “He went after my fucking daughter. It’s personal. It’s—”

  His words were swallowed up in a coughing fit. It wasn’t the dry cough of someone who was getting over an illness, but the wet, hacking of a body trying to rid itself of something horrible. His shoulders shook, and the chair squeaked with every jerk of his body.

  “Gentlemen,” he croaked out, “I appreciate you coming over, but I’d like to speak with my daughter now.”

  It was an order, no matter how weakly stated, and everyone knew it. As a unit they got up and tossed their beers into the recycling bin. The clatter of glass on plastic echoed hollowly.

  One by one her father’s friends said their goodbyes. There were hugs, and kisses, and promises to keep her safe. She responded, but she didn’t really hear them. The effort to get through the evening had sunk well into her bones and taken away what little energy she had left.

  “You take extra good care of yourself, Kelly-girl.”

  “I’ll try, Uncle Charlie.”

  “Julius,” Riley said, “I’d like you to stick around.”

  Julius, who, like a good solider, was following all the others out the garage door, stopped in his tracks. He glanced over his shoulder, looking concerned. Suddenly she saw that the patch on his vest read Vice President. She frowned. That was what Charlie’s used to say. When had that switch happened? What had she missed?

  “Caesar and I could crash at Charlie’s, no big,” Julius offered. “Or even go back to our own place; it’s been a while since I actually slept in my own bed.”

  “This is your home, at least for now,” Riley said, shaking his bald head. “And I gotta lot to say, some of it concerns you.”

  “I didn’t move back in permanently, Riley. Just helping out.” Julius hesitated by the door to the garage. The light from outside cased a long shadow across the floor.

  It should have been a surprise that he was living here, but it wasn’t. Her father hadn’t called her when he got sick, he had turned to Julius. Why wouldn’t he? Julius was the son Riley Forster had always wanted. A dutiful son to follow in his boot steps. She had never been willing to be the kind of daughter he wanted. They were both stubborn.

  “You have been here two years; I don’t care if you are still paying mortgage at your other place. I’m not kicking you out tonight. So sit down, shut up.”

  “If you’re sure.” Julius dragged a hand down his face, clearly not wanting to argue. Kelly couldn’t blame him.

  Kelly wasn’t sure she was okay with it, but no one bothered to ask her. No one ever did.

  Chapter 3

  A minute later she heard the roar of five bikes come to life and haul off down the road. She wondered how many people it woke up, and who might call the police for the disturbance. She watched them from the window, driving off like modern day knights. Not the good ones you saw in movies, who rescued maidens and slayed dragons, but the historic enforcers to some little king’s law. She decided that no one was going to call the cops.

  The moment they were gone reality crashed down on her. Her neck hurt, and she was fairly sure she’d wrenched her shoulder flipping a very large man over it. She had snapped at her teen crush. Her father had cancer, lung cancer, and no one had told her. All of her things were in her apartment. And she still had no idea how she was going to pay for next semester.

  It was just too much to handle.

  Kelly felt Julius’s eyes on her but she didn’t bother looking. Him staying or going wasn’t going to change anything at all. She kept her eyes firmly on the cluttered living room table and wondered what was going to happen.

  “Dad…can I get you anything?” Kelly turned away from the window.

  It was Julius who answered. “Water. I got a bunch of bottles of it sitting out on the counter. He doesn’t like it cold anymore.”

  Kelly moved to the kitchen, thankful to have something for her hands to do. She popped open a bottle and brought it back to her father. He wheezed out a thanks before taking a long swig of it.

  “Riley, it’s late, or early, depending on how you want to figure it.” Julius stood up. A nearly asleep Caesar rolled down his legs and flopped to the floor, happy to stretch out over his favorite human’s feet.

  “You trying to send me to bed, boy?” Riley asked without any real malice.

  Julius’s lip quirked up into a grin. “Nope. Just pointing out the truth, old man.”

  Kelly took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Apparently it wasn’t just Kelly who was tired and frustrated. Julius dislodged his feet and took a few steps around the living room, gathering up some of the garbage and depositing it in a trash can.

  In the more discerning light of the indoors Kelly realized that while Julius had filled out, he had also lost weight. There was a gaunt line to his cheeks and dark circles beneath his eyes. She had taken care of animals who were in hospice care, and that was hard. She could only imagine that the twenty-four-hour job of taking care of her stubborn father wasn’t easy.

  “I know it’s late, and that I have no right to ask anything of you, but what are we going to do?” Kelly asked as she tore her eyes away from Julius.

  Riley’s gaze dropped to his barely empty bottle of water. “I have an idea, and no one is going to like it, but I think it’s for the best.”

  Kelly’s imagination put together twenty horrific scenarios in as many seconds. Most of them ended up with her in jail, but none of them were appealing. “Like what?”

  There was another long silence. It wasn’t like her dad to hesitate. None of this was like her dad and it was making her uncomfortable. She wasn’t seeing him as the king sitting on top of biker hill, but like a man who was struggling to hold things together. She didn’t like this.

  “Dad?” she asked when the silence continued on for too long.

  He locked eyes with her, his dark brown to her crystalline blue, and reached out to take her hands. She couldn’t remember the last time that he had touched her. His skin had that particular satin feel that came with old age. Where were the calluses that years of working on bikes had given him? She could feel every bone in his grip when his fingers tightened on hers.

  “Kelly, I love you. I hope you know that. I haven’t always been good to you, and I haven’t always taken care of you, but I love you.”

  Emotions formed a ball in her throat, one she couldn’t seem to swallow or speak around. Once again her vision was blurry with tears. She tried to blink them back, but they came anyway. All she
could do was nod.

  “I wanna fix that, I wanna make sure that you are taken care of.” There was something about the way that he said it that gave it weight. He wrapped his fingers over hers and brought them to his lips, planting a paternal kiss on them. “I don’t think Caine is gonna stop. He’s got a big problem with me, and now it is gonna extend to mine.”

  “Dad, what are you saying?” Her hands tried to pull away from his, but his grip tightened.

  “I’m saying that this could be a real easy fix.” He was dancing around the subject. The scenarios in her brain were beginning to feel more and more real.

  “Could be?” she prompted.

  “I just need you to trust me. You gotta know that all I want is to keep you safe.”

  “Okay. What do you need me to do?” She kept her voice level and even. She worried that if she spoke too much, she might just start to panic. What was he going to ask of her? Take on a new identity? Go live with another group of bikers? What could be so bad that he didn’t just tell her what she was going to do?

  He reached back with one hand, motioning Julius up. The younger man, who had been leaning against the little island that separated the kitchen from the living room, swung himself up and wandered over with more agility than she could have managed. The two men gripped wrists and then Riley tugged Julius closer. He took her hand and put it in Julius’s.

  It took both of them a full half minute to understand.

  “Dad, no!” Kelly called out, jerking her hand out of Julius’s. It seemed to burn.

  At the same time Julius said, “I can’t.”

  Caesar dashed between everyone in a delirious desire to understand what was going on.

  “Can’t?” her dad asked. “Or wont?”

  “Both. God, Julius, say something,” Kelly demanded. She hoped that Julius, who her father had always preferred, would be able to talk some sense into him.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea, Riley. No, I’m going to go out and say that this is a bad idea.”

  “Exactly,” Kelly said.

  “Why?” Riley demanded, summoning that old boom to his voice. He motioned a large hand in Kelly’s general direction. “He marries you, it gives you protection, it gives you stability, it gives you money. It gives you everything that you need.”

  “That’s not why you get married, Dad. At least not nowadays.” She crossed her arms firmly over her chest. This wasn’t fair, this was not fair at all. She would be lying if she said she had never thought of getting married to Julius. In her fantasies, however, he wanted to marry her too. It only took one look at the hard line of Julius’s jaw to see that he wanted none of this.

  “You got better reasons?” Riley demanded.

  “Yeah, I dunno, maybe love? That seems like a good one.”

  “Kelly, love doesn’t keep you safe.” He said it so softly, like one speaking to a child who just didn’t understand the way the world worked.

  “Riley, I love you like a father, man, you know that,” Julius stepped in. His voice was surprisingly calm despite the bit of red that was working along his throat. “But you know that I don’t intend on getting married to anyone.”

  “Yeah, so you’ve said. Well, I’m saying differently.”

  Julius shook his head. “I would do anything for you but—”

  “Then do this.”

  It was three in the morning, and Kelly was beyond tired, and scared. In a better time, she may have been able to argue more. She shook her head and started down the hallway towards what used to be her bedroom.

  “I am not talking about this right now.”

  “Then when, Kelly? I don’t have long.”

  It was a cheap shot, but she stopped walking. “That was mean. Completely uncalled for.”

  “Well, I don’t got time to play nice.”

  Kelly turned around. Her father looked like a faded memory of himself. She didn’t need a doctor, or him for that matter, to tell her that he didn’t have much longer left on this earth. She hated that.

  “Tell me why I should do this. Why you shouldn’t just keep me safe?”

  “Because that’s what I’ve been doing, and it isn’t enough. They don’t believe that you’ll be protected. This will make them believe.”

  “And what do I get out of it?” Kelly demanded.

  “What, your life isn’t enough?”

  “If I marry Julius, the life I had is over anyway.” Kelly threw her hands up. “I’ll have to come live here, school will be over…all of it.”

  “The hell you will,” Julius put it. “I’ll keep you safe, but I won’t make you give up everything.”

  “Oh, well, that’s magnanimous of you,” she sneered.

  “Kelly…” her father warned.

  “Dad…” she retorted.

  “I’ve never asked you for anything, Kelly. Not once.”

  “Funny,” she shot back. “I asked you for everything, but I never got any of it.”

  He laughed. It would have been a cheerful sound if he hadn’t started coughing again. He took another sip of water to ease it, not that it did much. “How the hell did I help make you? God, Kelly, you are smarter than me by far, all that knowledge up in your head. I’ve known that, I’ve always known that, but now you got all this fire. I don’t know where it came from, but I know you are a good girl, a smart girl. Fuck, I am proud of you.”

  She didn’t know what to think of his words, or how to respond to them. It might have come easily or naturally to another girl who had spent years being close to her father. Kelly wasn’t one of them. Kelly was struck mute by her father’s openness.

  “Thanks.” Kelly meant it.

  He gripped her fingers, and this time she didn’t pull away. “But I know how this business works, and I am telling you this is the only way.”

  “Why? Why is this the only way? I mean, can’t I just go live somewhere else? I could just—”

  “Just what?” he demanded. “Run away again?”

  It was another cheap shot, and Kelly hadn’t been entirely prepared for how much bitterness her father could put into five words. What little kindness he had garnered from her just a minute ago evaporated.

  “That’s so not fair.”

  “Kelly,” her father said, “I never said that it was. If you go gallivanting across the country, do you think that they won’t find you? They managed to find you hours away at college, when we hadn’t even spoken to one another in months. Running away is not the answer here.”

  “But this is?” Julius asked. “I’m sorry, Riley, I don’t understand.”

  “They went after her because they thought she was without protection. That she had no connections to us or the club. It wouldn’t be anything but attacking a dying man’s daughter. But you aren’t a dying man, Riley. You are young and strong and they know it. If she is with you, if she has your name protecting her, they will think twice.”

  It was a point that she couldn’t argue, even when she wasn’t sleep deprived. “You know what? Fine. Fine! No one but one of you was ever going to date the daughter of the criminal anyway, right?”

  She stormed off and fell into the first bed she could find. What hurt the most, she thought as the first wave of exhaustion swept over her, was that it was true.

  ###

  Julius Daniels watched the retreating back of the club president’s daughter and knew damn well that he was in for it. Her blonde ponytail danced with every angry movement and he couldn’t help but stare at it. He loved a woman with fire in her blood, and if Kelly Forster could simmer with it at the worst hours of the morning, he could only imagine what she would do with it

  He didn’t know where it all came from. When she’d been little she’d been this scrawny little nerd with glasses and knobby knees and braces who couldn’t put together five words. As a door slammed open and shut he decided he was going to have to reevaluate who Kelly was now.

  “You think she knows she went into your room?” Riley asked.

  Juli
us snorted. “You wanna be the one to tell her?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Me either, old man, me either.”

  There was a long silence as Julius wheeled Riley down the hall and into the master bedroom. They went through the actions of caregiver and care recipient as Julius got him ready for bed. Caesar bounced around the bedroom, happy to get in the way.

  “You mad at me?” Riley asked as he slid against the covers.

  “Nope. I’m pissed.”

  “Wanna be more specific?”