Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  He stared at her, his mouth a grim slash, his eyes blazing at her in the sparse light. He was too angry to hear her; it was obvious. She imagined his head so full of all the words she’d refused to let him speak, all the arguments he thought would make her see things his way, that there was no room for her.

  But she had to try. Something fluttering inside her demanded that she try.

  “You know, I always thought you’d be a good dad. From the day I saw you at Wal-Mart, standing there with sparkly purses hanging all over you, I thought that. But on the day you beat him, seeing for the first time the violence you were really capable of, and having you completely ignore me when I asked you not to go for him—that day, I saw that maybe you could turn out like him. If enough bad things happened. If I pushed you hard enough, or if our child did. I saw that there was a switch inside you, and if it flipped, you’d be gone and I’d be trapped with another angry stranger. You were gone that day, Mav. Just like my father. He was my daddy until my mom died the way she did. It was after that he turned into what he was.” Her voice broke as a burst of emotion flooded through her, and she cleared her throat and breathed deeply. “You were an angry stranger that day. You were gone. That’s how you left me alone.”

  She thought she’d said everything, but she wasn’t sure. She’d said all she knew to say, so she sat back into quiet. Maverick didn’t speak, either, but in the shaded moonlight, Jenny could see a million words warring behind his eyes.

  They were quiet for what seemed like hours before he asked, “Can I talk?” His voice was a low growl, like a warning.

  She nodded.

  He blew out a breath. “I’m trying as hard as I can not to tell you you’re wrong. But I don’t know what else to say. I’m not him, Jenny. I’m just fucking not, and I want to punch him because you think I am.”

  Did he see the irony in that? Rather than follow that rabbit hole, she said, “I don’t think you are, Mav.”

  “Then what did you just say? I don’t understand.”

  “I think you could be. If you don’t learn to listen.”

  He stared at her, his eyes jumping with emotion. After a beat, he shook his head. “I don’t know what you want. I listen.”

  “You listen to gather ammunition to advance your case. You listen so you can throw my words back at me. You listen so you can catch your chance to take over. You don’t listen to understand.”

  “God, that’s so fucking unfair. You think I’m an abusive son of a bitch like your old man. I beat him up because he was abusing you. He fucking punched you while you were eight months pregnant! I was supposed to let that just go?”

  “You were supposed to let me handle it!”

  “But you weren’t handling it!”

  “I was. I had!”

  “By letting him get away with it! He needed to pay!”

  Jenny opened her mouth to yell back at him that it had been over with her father that day, that she’d been free of him, until Maverick had stormed in and turned her father into one of her children and trapped her with him forever. He’d made her pay, too. And Kelsey.

  But she’d said it before. It didn’t matter to him. He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t hear it.

  This was hopeless—and comprehension flashed: she’d had real hope. That flutter in her chest—she’d hoped they could work this out and be together again. The family she’d wanted. The one Maverick had promised her. Tears welled up, and Jenny let them fall. “You’re not listening right now. You haven’t listened this whole time.”

  He let out another long breath and calmed again. “What do you want, Jenny? Tell me what you want me to do. I will do it. Just please say it straight out.”

  “I’ve been saying it straight out. I just laid my heart out, and all you hear is that I was a victim who needed to be saved. You always have to be the hero of the story. You’re not a hero, Mav. You’re a bully.”

  Before she could lose her nerve or get pulled into his web again, she stood up and went to the back door, as quickly as she could without running. Behind her, as he realized what she was doing, Maverick jumped up—the glider slammed into the wall behind it.

  “Jenny, no! Wait! Talk to me!”

  She pushed into the kitchen and slammed the door shut, turning both locks and hooking the chain.

  “Jenny! Don’t do this!” He slammed his fists into the door. “Don’t cut me out! Talk to me! Don’t fucking do this!” A heavy thump, and the door rattled hard, then another thump, and another. He was kicking now. “JENNY! NO! LET ME IN!! SHE’S MINE! MINE!”

  She’d never heard him yell before. She’d pushed him to an entirely new level of anger and violence. Just like her father. Folding over, Jenny wrapped her hands around herself and sobbed.

  “Mommy?” a tiny, frightened voice cut through the din of rage on the other side of the door. Jenny looked up. Kelsey stood there in her yellow shortie pajamas, her hair a nest of wild sleep, clutching Mrs. Fifi, her stuffed kitty. “Mommy, is it Stra-nger Da-nger?”

  Was it Stranger Danger? Yes, it was. An angry stranger, shouting and pounding, huffing and puffing, shaking everything down. Everything she’d feared. Since the day he’d beaten her father, Maverick had made her every fear come true.

  Jenny ran across the kitchen and picked her daughter up. Hugging her close, she said, “We’ll be okay, pixie. Let’s go to your room. We’ll close up snug in there, and I’ll call somebody to make the angry man go away. Okay?”

  Kelsey nodded, staring wide-eyed over Jenny’s shoulder. Jenny grabbed the cordless off its base and dialed 9-1-1 as she hurried to Kelsey’s room and closed the door.

  She hadn’t been much older than Kelsey when she’d seen her parents fight for the first, and the last, time. She hadn’t understood anything that had gone on that night.

  She’d hidden in her room then, too. This very room.

  The night her mother died.

  June 1974

  “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

  Jenny shrank back against the wall, letting the leaves of her mommy’s jungle plant cover her. Her daddy stormed into the dining room and grabbed her mommy by the hair. Her mommy screamed, and Jenny slammed her hands over her ears. But she could still hear everything.

  “Earl, no! It’s mine! It was Nana’s!”

  Her daddy snatched out of her mommy’s hands the fancy glass ball with the pretty trees and swirling snow in it. Sometimes, when Jenny was good, and if she promised to be still and quiet, Mommy would shake it carefully and let her hold it while it snowed inside.

  Daddy crashed it to the floor. It broke into a million pieces, and her mommy screamed.

  “You WHORE! If you want him, then get the fuck out and HAVE HIM. But you take NOTHING! IT’S MINE—MY SWEAT PAID FOR EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!” Daddy pushed Mommy hard, and she fell over a chair. He slammed the door where Mommy kept her fancy dishes, and the window in it broke. Glass rained down into the mess from the snowy glass ball.

  Jenny didn’t know what was happening, but she was scared. So scared she made wee. It ran down her leg and made a puddle at her feet. Oh, Daddy would spank her for the mess.

  “Baby!” Mommy was crawling toward her, through crackling glass, trying to stand up. “Baby, come here.”

  Afraid of everything, afraid of Daddy yelling like a monster and Mommy crying, afraid of having to touch her toes and take her punishment, Jenny bolted down the hall. Her bare feet, wet with wee, slipped on the wooden floor. As she slid into her bedroom, she saw Daddy shoving Mommy out the front door.

  “Jenny! Baby, Mommy loves you!”

  The door slammed shut, and Jenny slammed her own door and ran to hide under her bed.

  ~oOo~

  “Jenny. Twinkle, come out from under there. It’s okay.”

  She’d fallen asleep. Now Daddy was on his knees, peeking under the pink ruffle around her bed, holding his big hand out to her. He wasn’t yelling anymore.

  She took his hand, and he pulled her out. “Is Mommy
home?”

  At first, he made his mad eyes, but then he was sad instead. “No, Jenny. Mommy don’t love us anymore.”

  “But she said she did. When you pushed her, she said she loved me.”

  “I just told you—she don’t. She’s a bad lady and she don’t love you. Do I always tell you the truth?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Your mommy wants a different family. She don’t love us anymore. That’s the truth.”

  Her mommy didn’t love her? That made Jenny sad, and she cried.

  “Oh, Twinkle. Daddy loves you enough for ten mommies. We’ll be okay, you and me. We don’t ever need nobody else.”

  He hugged her tightly, and she felt a little better. But then—

  “What the fuck? You pissed yourself? Goddammit, Jennifer!”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to.” She was crying hard now, so hard her tummy felt funny and she couldn’t breathe. She was going to have to take her punishment now, and Daddy used the belt when he gave it. He used it hard when he was mad enough to say the baddest word.

  But then, his mad eyes went away, and he was sad again. “Shh, Jenny. Shhh. It’s okay. I’m not mad.” He picked her up and hugged her hard, and she felt all swallowed up and warm. Maybe it was okay that Mommy didn’t love her like she’d said she did.

  “Let’s get you in the bath and cleaned up, Twinkle. It’s past your bedtime.”

  ~oOo~

  When Jenny woke up the next morning, she went out to the kitchen like usual, but Mommy wasn’t there making breakfast, and Jenny remembered that Mommy didn’t love her.

  That made her sad, but her tummy made her hungry, and Daddy loved her, so she went to find him. Sometimes he made her peanut butter and honey sandwiches, so maybe he knew about breakfast, too.

  She went through the dining room. It looked like always, but there wasn’t a window in the dish door anymore. On the sofa in the living room, she found Daddy. All the curtains were closed, and it was almost dark like nighttime. There was a big bottle of the grownup soda between his legs. She’d sneaked a drink of that soda one time, but it wasn’t like Pepsi, and it burned bad.

  His head hung back on the sofa, like he’d fallen asleep. But he was awake. Jenny knew he was awake because he was crying.

  Jenny was afraid, but Daddy had made her feel better when she’d cried last night, so she went to make him feel better. “Daddy?”

  He jumped, and his head came up fast. “Jenny! Come here. Come here.”

  He set the bottle on the table and held out his hands, and she went to him. He sat her on his legs and hugged her to his chest. She liked to sit with him like this, because he smelled like his cigarettes and the green stuff he slapped on his face every morning after his shower, and because his voice was all rumbly when her ear was on his chest.

  This morning, he smelled like the yucky soda, too.

  “Twinkle, I have to tell you something. You need to be brave for Daddy. Okay?”

  She was afraid, but she nodded. She could be brave when his arms were around her.

  “Mommy died last night.”

  Jenny tried to understand. She thought about Petey, Mommy’s yellow bird who’d sung in the sunshine every day. They’d found him on the bottom of his cage one day, all quiet and stiff, and Mommy had cried and put him in the box from Jenny’s shiny black shoes for her Christmas dress. Then she’d dug a hole under the roses and put him in the ground.

  She’d said that Petey had died and gone to Birdie Heaven.

  “Did Mommy go to Mommy Heaven?”

  Daddy’s arms got tight and made her hurt, and he cried some more. When he was done, he said, “I’ll always tell you the truth, Jenny. I promise you. Your mommy ain’t going to Heaven. She’s not good enough for Heaven. She did a bad thing, and a lady got mad and killed her.”

  “The bad thing that made you mad, too?”

  His eyes were sad and mad all at once, and Jenny didn’t know how to feel. “Yeah. The same bad thing. She hurt a lot of people. But you and me, we love each other, and we’re gonna stick together. You and me. Okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy.” She snuggled deeper into his arms.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Maverick leaned against the concrete block wall and closed his eyes. He took slow, deep breaths and tried to calm the stormy seas that filled him up and crashed against the backs of his eyes.

  Everything was completely fucked to shit.

  Jenny had called fucking law on him, and now here he sat, in Tulsa Police lockup. She’d left her gun on the porch. He hadn’t even known that, but the cops sure had.

  It wasn’t her fault. People talked about ‘snapping,’ when somebody went off the rails and did something stupid and violent. Now he understood how apt a description that was. It was like he’d been stretched farther and farther, from the day he’d gotten stuffed into a squad car outside Jenny’s old man’s house four years ago, until tonight, watching her run away and lock him out of the same fucking house. He’d been stretched and stretched, everything inside him going taut and thin with the tension of it. And then he’d literally felt something let go in his head. Something had snapped.

  And he’d punched and kicked and yelled his throat sore. Jesus Christ. And gotten stuffed into a squad car yet again.

  She’d called him a bully, but that was bullshit. He’d never been violent with her; he’d barely ever even raised his voice to her before. He rarely yelled at anybody, ever, except to be heard over noise. No matter how angry he got, he wasn’t a yeller. Yelling was a weak man’s response to anger. Reason or action were the only strong responses to conflict.

  He still believed that. The man he’d been had lived that. What had happened at Jenny’s...he didn’t know who that man was.

  He opened his eyes and stared down at his hands. They were scarred and discolored, and his knuckles were oversized and gnarled from years of relentless abuse. He’d hardly felt the impacts of his punches on her door, but the knuckles of both hands were bloody and ragged. He could flex with only bearable pain, so he hadn’t broken anything. All surface damage. It was like they’d built up extra bone to protect themselves.

  His daughter had been in that house. Had he woken her? Probably—how could he not have? He’d woken the goddamn neighbor, who’d come out with his shotgun and held him there until the cops arrived.

  All Kelsey knew of him: stalking her school and trying to break into her house.

  He was going back inside. He didn’t even know what to expect—he’d served his full time, but for a few weeks, so there wasn’t any time he could finish. But he’d sure as shit violated the terms of his release. What did that mean for what came next?

  Could he do more time? Could he survive it?

  Didn’t matter. Life inside was death. Life outside without his family was death. What the fuck did it matter where his body dropped?

  ~oOo~

  At some point, the stress and despair overwhelmed his body’s processes, and he slept. A short series of sharp, metallic clangs brought him back. At first, waking on a jailhouse cot, so much like a prison bunk, he thought that his release had been a dream, and the world around him spun violently. He grabbed hold of the edge of his bunk until the vertiginous dread let him go.

  “Maverick. Get up, bud.”

  He knew that voice; it wasn’t from McAlester, and it used a name he hadn’t been called there. He opened his eyes and remembered—Tulsa lockup. Jenny had thrown him to the pigs. He sat up and faced Jim Novak, Chief of Tulsa PD. Longtime friend of Dane Nielsen, the Bulls’ VP, and thus of the Brazen Bulls MC.

  Seeing that friendly face and remembering how far up the Bulls’ allies went in Tulsa, Maverick felt a feeble tremor of hope. “Chief.”

  “Shit, Mav. Yours is not a face I want to see behind these bars.”

  “How fucked am I?”

  He shook his head. “Made some calls this morning, when I saw your goddamn name on my blotter. Jenny’s decided it was a misunderstanding. Your PO
is willing to let this go, after he promised to throw me under the bus if you cause more trouble. Dane’s on his way to pick you up. And the next time I see you, I want to be tossing back shots with you at the clubhouse. Right?”

  Maverick’s heart was beating so erratically that he could hardly form words—and in his reaction to the news that he’d be free, he saw that real hope still had a root inside him. He wanted to be free. “Yeah...yeah. Yeah, Chief. Thanks.”

  “It’s hard getting your land legs back under you, Mav. I know. I see it just about every damn day. Guys violating back to the house because they can’t make it work outside. Some of them are trying, but they can’t get decent work, or a decent place to rest their heads, or because their folks don’t want them, or they don’t have folks at all. Those end up violating to get by. Others just don’t know how to be free anymore, and they go looking to get sent up again. Mav, you got work. You got rest. You got folks. Don’t be one of those sad sacks who can’t remember how to be free.”

  Novak was right. The Bulls gave him work, rest, and family. As conflicted as he currently felt about that family, he loved his brothers, and he knew he was luckier than most ex-cons. Novak knew as well as he did that the club’s work carried a real risk that he’d go back inside for another reason entirely than not being able to make it work outside, but Maverick took the point the chief was making.

  The Bulls weren’t the family he needed most, but they were a family, and he was part of it. If he could get his head back in their game, maybe he could be okay, no matter what Jenny did.

  If nothing else, the club would help him make damn certain that he got to be his daughter’s father, no matter what Jenny wanted.

  “I hear ya, Chief.”

  “Good.” Novak unlocked the cell. “Get on out here and collect your shit. Dane should be here any minute.”

  ~oOo~

  It wasn’t Dane waiting for him; it was Delaney. The club president stood at the desk, his arms crossed over his chest, his face impassive, as Maverick took the envelope with his wallet, watch, and keys and signed the clipboard. When he went through the door to the lobby side, Delaney said nothing, showed no expression. He simply watched Maverick approach.