His Forbidden Bride: 50 Loving States, West Virginia

by Theodora Taylor

  I don’t have the heart to break down all the scientific evidence against the existence of psychic powers. Or to tell her the glow is due to the fact that I’ve spent the last four weeks getting sexed beyond my wildest dreams by the sweetest, hottest, most understanding man I’ve ever known.

  No wonder I’m grinning from ear to ear when I enter the diner where we agreed to meet. The place looks like it hasn’t been renovated since it’s founding back in the sixties, when Meirton was a major coal town. And yes, as a matter of due course, tinny mullet rock is playing on the speakers overhead.

  But the waitress behind the counter greets me with a happy, “Hey, hon! Sit anywhere you want.”

  So though it’s doubtful I’ll find much of a vegan selection in a place like this, I feel comfortable enough to find an empty booth next to the window. But then I frown when I glance at my watch. It’s ten minutes past the time we agreed to meet and John’s still not here.

  “How’s it going?” I text him.

  “Good. Almost done. I’ll be there in a few.”

  “What can I get you, hon?” asks the same waitress who greeted me, coming up to the table with an order pad. She looks like she’d be perfectly cast in the role of a weathered, small-town waitress with frosted blond hair.

  I order John the meatiest thing on the menu and tell her I’ll be eating the salad that comes with it, so please bring them both out at the same time. Then I pick up my phone to check my brother and mom’s Twitter feeds.

  My mother is having “an inspiring time” on her sermon tour across America. And apparently Curt just killed it as BuhBouncye, a taller and plumper version of the Queen B, in a Montreal nightclub last night. Looking over his feed, my heart lets go of a little pang because I didn’t even know he was working on a new character. Strange, I’d come to West Virginia to get away from my family, and I’d chosen Seattle because it was close, but not too close to them. But now even that compromise doesn’t feel like enough. Because the closer I move back to them, the farther I’ll be moving away from John.

  “Hey, Doc,” John drops into the booth seat across from me.

  “Hi!” I quickly switch the phone off and smile at the backpack he’s carrying. “Mission accomplished?”

  He nods, but looks tense. “Yeah. The police had a few more questions for me before they’d give me back my bag, though. Sorry I’m late.”

  “A few questions must have been a lot,” I observe, glancing at my watch. “I dropped you off over an hour ago.”

  “They got a menu?” he asks, looking around.

  I’m about to tell him I already ordered when our conversation is interrupted by the arrival of the waitress with our food… and the unholy sound of several motorcycle engines.

  Both John and I turn to look out the diner’s plate glass window just in time to view something I’ve only ever seen on TV. A white motorcycle gang, in what I can’t help but refer to as “full costume” after growing up in L.A. and my one semester at performing arts college. They look straight out of central casting with flat black helmets, patched up denim vests, and a ton of tattoos. A few of them even have face tats.

  Maybe I’m just imagining things, but every single one of them seems to be staring at us as they cruise by on their bikes. Not Harleys, I can see from here. And the lack of brand identification let’s me know they are in fact a real motorcycle gang, and not actors hired to look like one.

  I watch them pull up to a dive bar a bit further down the street. And my heart pinches a little less tightly when they start removing their helmets and filing into the club. Many of them are shouting so loudly, I can hear them from where I’m sitting through the plate glass.

  “The New Rebels,” the waitress who brought us our food says, drawing our attention back to her. “They’re based a few towns over, but sometimes they come over here to drink at that bar down the street. Damn nuisance if you ask me. Just hope they don’t come in here looking for food.”

  As if called forward by her wish not to have them in her establishment, two of the bikers make their way back up the street and crash through the diner door. Stomping in their big boots toward a small table right across from us.

  “That section isn’t open,” the waitress says, not bothering to cloak her irritation.

  “It is now, sweet tits,” the bigger of the two men answers. He points at John’s plate. “I’ll take the same as him.”

  “Me too,” his companion says. He’s skinny with a paunch. Probably in his late twenties, I think to myself, but with the dark, under eye circles and patchy skin of a man twice his age. Twenty going on forty because of what I can only assume are a number of shitty lifestyle choices.

  The waitress huffs away, but I have a feeling she’ll be a lot faster with their order than she was with ours. At least, I hope so.

  A chill runs down my back when they both turn in their seats and openly stare at us. My earlier sense, about this maybe not being the best town for an interracial lunch outing, comes back strong. And I peek over at John to see how he’s handling their aggressive double stare.

  John doesn’t look remotely intimidated. In fact, he returns their hard stares with one of his own. “Can I help you?” he asks, flat and mean.

  The bigger biker has the word “PRESIDENT” patched across the right side of his denim vest, and I’ve watched enough episodes of Devil Riders to know that most likely means he’s the leader of the gang that pulled up to the bar. He looks from John to me. Back to him, then back to me again.

  “Heard you were at the police station earlier, friend,” he says to John while continuing to squint hard at me.

  Cold dread seizes my chest. This is bad, and only going to get worse if we stay here. I throw a twenty down on the table and scoot out of the booth.

  “C’mon let’s go,” I tell John.

  “We’re not done eating yet,” John answers, his eyes never leaving the bikers.

  “I know, but I’m not feeling well and I’d really like to go. Right now. Please,” I whisper.

  “You don’t feel well, Doc?” John asks, worry replacing the hard edge in his tone.

  I nod, happy to lie if it means avoiding what I know will be a confrontation. A really bad one.

  “Okay,” he says, as if my welfare matters more than anything else in his world. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  But before we can move forward, the biker president stands up. “Would you look at that?” he observes to the skinny biker with a snicker. “His nigger bitch is scared of us. What’d we ever do to her?”

  And just like that, John’s quiet deference to my supposed sickness disappears. In an instant he’s launching himself at the biker president with the reflexes of a crazed and dangerous animal.

  “John, no!” I scream.

  But he’s already throwing a punch before I’m done begging him not to. His fist slices across the biker president’s face so hard, blood spews from his meaty nose.

  So hard, the man falls right at the other biker’s feet.

  The skinny biker’s mouth drops open at the sight of his leader groaning on the floor. But then his face goes nasty and hard…right before he pulls a very big gun from beneath his jacket.

  My heart screeches to a stop, even as behind me, chaos erupts. The mullet rock playing overhead is completely drowned out by a soundtrack of patrons yelling, “He’s got a gun!!!!” and running toward the door.

  I don’t run. Though I grew up in Compton with strict instructions about what to do when guns were whipped out, I find myself unable to take any kind of cover, unable to leave John with these violent thugs. I’m too afraid for him on several different levels, starting with his head injury and ending with potentially fatal gun shot wound.

  “Shoot him!” the fallen biker yells from the floor. “Show ‘im what happens when a nigger-fucker messes with The New Rebels!”

  “John, don’t!” I shout when he takes a step toward the huge biker, good fist curled tight. “Please don’t, baby…”

  Th
is time, John actually seems to hear me. He raises both hands in the universal sign of surrender. “Okay, okay…” he starts to say. “I don’t want any more trouble—”

  —only to whip his good hand out, faster than a snake. He snatches the gun out of the younger biker’s hand. At the same time, he places a sneaker-clad foot on the neck of the biker he knocked to the ground. Effectively holding one biker down while holding the other at gun point.

  Yet his voice sounds calm as a summer day when he says, “Now, I think you two owe my lady an apology.”

  “I’d fucking let you put a bullet in me before I ever say sorry to a nig—” the biker president starts to choke out.

  But he’s interrupted by the skinny biker’s frantic, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, ma’am. Please don’t kill me, sir. Oh God, please don’t kill me! I wasn’t really going to use it. I swear!”

  John accepts the biker’s apology with a squint of his glittering blue eyes. Then he transfers the gun from the small biker to the big one. “How about you, Bubba? What you want to do here? Apologize or die?”

  To his racist credit, the biker president actually seems to consider sticking to his fucked up morals for a few seconds. But I guess a gun is a helluva persuader, because he finally mumbles, “Sorry,” not quite looking at me or the gun.

  I try to answer them, open my mouth to diffuse the situation as best I can before the police arrive. But I don’t feel right. The restaurant is hot and the world is spinning.

  “Doc? Doc?” John’s voice says, farther away in the distance than it should be.

  That’s the last thing I hear before I’m stumbling down, down…

  The next thing I know, I’m being shaken awake.

  I open my eyes and find myself flat on my back with my legs being held in the air by the diner’s waitress. Meanwhile, a paramedic I’ve met a few times at UWV/Mercy is shaking me awake, yelling, “Dr. Dunhill! Dr. Dunhill! Wake up, doctor. Come on back to us.”

  I blink, woozy and confused. “Monty?” I ask.

  “Good, she’s coming to.” To the waitress, Monty says, “You can drop her legs now.”

  “Where’s your uniform?” I ask when I’m free to sit all the way up.

  Monty grins, glancing down at his simple short sleeve button-up and jeans ensemble.

  “I was pulling up to have a bite to eat with the wife and kids when that ruckus broke out. I started hustling Shannon and the kids back to the car and then a waitress came out yelling they needed a doctor inside. So I locked the family in the car and responded to the call.”

  He throws a wry look at the crowd gathered behind him. Strange. All the patrons who went running as soon as a gun was drawn now seem to be back in triple fold. I can only thank the good God this isn’t L.A., where the first instinct of every person in the place would have been to pull out a camera phone and roll tape.

  But then I notice someone is missing from the crowd. “Where’s John?” I ask, scanning the surrounding faces, none of which belong to him.

  The paramedic grimaces. “I was afraid he might be telling the truth when that John Doe told the police he was here with you. They hauled him away, along with those two bikers.”

  “It wasn’t his fault!” I start to explain. Then feeling silly, I let Monty help me all the way to my feet before explaining, “He took the gun off the biker. Oh my God, I have to go get him! Where exactly is he?”

  “They took them to the jailhouse,” the waitress answers. “But they didn’t take any statements, so you know they won’t be keeping them there long. Least not the bikers. Pretty sure they got that whole department on their meth payroll.”

  “Man, did he put up an unholy fuss when they took him out of there!” Monty tells me with a shake of his head. “The two bikers went without a word, but that John Doe was yelling about how he couldn’t leave you here. It took three officers to get him in the car!”

  “Don’t call him that. He hates being called that,” I snap, unable to keep the rather unprofessional peevishness out of my voice. Hey, I’ve already been caught out on a date with one of the hospital’s former patients, why not exacerbate it with unnecessarily bitchy commands?

  I grab my Virkin from a patron who was nice enough to hold it for me while I was resuscitated by an off-duty paramedic. Then I dart back to the table where I find John’s backpack exactly where he left it, stuffed up against the window.

  “Thank you,” I call out to Monty and the waitress, but not necessarily to the huge crowd gathered around them.

  “Dr. Dunhill, I’m off-duty so I don’t have to report this to work,” Monty says as I head toward the door. “But I should ask you a few questions before you leave—”

  The diner’s glass door closes, the bells ringing over Monty’s due diligence. He’s right. I just fainted and I should let him, at the very least, check me out. But I can’t think about myself in that moment; my thoughts are only for poor John as I rush back to the same police station where I dropped him off earlier.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There are a lot of great ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. Waiting around for hours for the police to release your amnesiac boyfriend from jail is not one of them.

  The waitress is right about the police not pressing charges. Both bikers come out less than an hour after my arrival. Luckily the waiting area is toward the back of the station, and the men don’t notice me tucked in the corner as they stride out through the station’s front doors. They’re both glowering, and the president’s nose is swollen in a way I’d definitely insist on examining if he were anyone other than the racist asshole who landed John in jail.

  The guy at reception tells me they won’t be pressing charges. However, they keep John in there for hours, ignoring all my questions about due process in the meantime. Only after I threaten to call a lawyer do they finally release him.

  I expect John to look as miserable as I feel when he comes through the door that separates the station from the cells in back, but all he looks is frantic.

  “Doc!” he yells, running across the station to me. “Thank fuck. Are you okay?”

  I nod and he gathers me tight in his arms, knuckling my cheek and kissing my temple like he hasn’t seen me in a century. “You sure? When you fainted, I just about lost it. And they wouldn’t let me stay with you. I’ve been going out of my mind. Thank God you’re all right.”

  He holds me close with no self-consciousness at all. But I can feel the frost of all the eyes staring at us. Judging. Wondering.

  “Let’s just go home, okay?” I whisper.

  This time I get no argument whatsoever. In fact, he takes me by the hand and leads me out of the station without so much as a backwards glance over his shoulder.

  As all about me as he was in the station, he’s on high alert as soon as we’re back outside. We’ve been here so long, it’s pitch black out and the night has grown frigidly cold, letting me know winter hasn’t completely let West Virginia go. It’s probably 80 degrees in California today, with a low of “maybe you’ll need a cardigan.”

  But now I’m shivering in the zip-up fleece I wore for what I thought would be a simple errand run and lunch. John isn’t wearing anything but a zip up hoodie, but he takes it off and puts it over my shoulders, even as he continues scanning the distance.

  I want to tell him to keep the sweatshirt, that I’ll be fine, but something about his demeanor tells me to keep quiet. That he wouldn’t welcome a distraction right now.

  So I let him lead the way and don’t even argue when he deposits me in the passenger seat of my car and walks around to the driver’s side. I’d had the sense he was barely tolerating my driving when we headed into Meirton, and my suspicions are confirmed by the way he easily depresses the start button, even though the first time I’d driven him home from the hospital he’d said, “That’s new.”

  But he must have been paying attention, because he pushes down the brake and puts the car into drive without a hitch. We’re smoothly on the road back to my place in
a matter of minutes, no navigation system required.

  So he knows how to drive, too, I think to myself. And fight. And easily disarm a man with a gun.

  My cop theory is becoming more and more prominent. Maybe even FBI. But that definitely wouldn’t explain why his fingerprints aren’t in the system.

  I make a mental note to call my best friend, Sola, as soon as I can. I haven’t been exactly thrilled to tell anyone I’m embroiled in a relationship and living with a guy I’ve known less than two months. But today has made me realize just how far I’m in over my head.

  And while I don’t want to call her Russian husband, Ivan, and his family of “legitimate businessmen” shady, he did make a point of giving me his card before their wedding.

  “Sola considers you family, da? So if ever there comes a time you are needing something or you are in any kind of trouble, you will call me.”

  Back then, after defying my family to get my medical degree while living three thousand miles away from them on my own, I inwardly bristled at the idea of needing anyone other than myself to solve a problem.

  But I’d taken his card. And not only that, I’ve been carrying it around with me in my wallet ever since. Almost like I knew I’d need it someday.

  And on the silent drive home, I consider making the call I never thought I’d make. Because if anyone has the resources to get to the bottom of John’s mystery, it’s Ivan and his powerful Russian family.

  “Stay here,” John says as soon as we pull into one of the parking spaces beneath my second-floor apartment.

  He gets out and takes his time coming around to my side of the car. And I don’t think it’s a southern gentleman thing. Instead, I get the feeling he’s doing an even deeper scan of the distance beyond my apartment building than he did when we left the police station.

  He does eventually open the door for me, but he doesn’t relax until we’re inside my apartment.

  “Nobody followed us,” he says. “That’s good.”

  I open my mouth, but before I can get words out, he says, “Hold on, Doc. I know you got questions. But give me that backpack. I got something to show you that I think might answer a few of them.”