I caught myself giggling at the thought, as well.
“But, yeah, Anne,” Danny went on, bringing back the subject of Jace’s wife. “She seen somethin’ in Jace early on—everyone with eyes ‘nuff to see could see that much—an’ the two of ‘em got along great. I guess ya could say the way it happened was exactly how everyone suspected it would: they grew, an’ as they did… well, I won’t say they grew closer. That’d be a lie. No, they was always close, but that closeness started to realize what it was more an’ more as they got older. Like, they’d always held hands—right?—but when they went from bein’ li’l boppers to bein’ teens, we could all see that the way they held hands had gone from bein’ friendly to bein’…. well, y’know. Like I says: it jus’ happened the way everyone suspected it would.”
I blushed at that, feeling both a twinge of jealousy at the thought as well as a mighty wave of sorrow for Jace. Knowing how things turned out made such a happy story into a bitter tragedy.
“Annie woulda liked ya,” Danny offered with a smile, seeming to understand what I was thinking. “An’ I think she’d agree that ye’re exactly what Jace needs.”
“Th-thanks, Danny,” I smiled. “I think… well, I feel better knowing that.”
“‘Mercury,” he corrected me again, but the smile didn’t waver. “An’ it’s no prob.” Then, after studying me for a moment longer, he said, “Hey, I gotta go downtown to pick up some supplies after lunch. Ya wanna join? There’s a few cool little shops ‘round there ya might like.”
“That would be nice,” I answered with a smile.
I wondered just how much Danny could see. He seemed to just understand exactly what I needed. Like Jace, as it turned out, I hadn’t grown up with many friends, and I wished I had someone like him growing up. Even though Danny seemed to occupy the role of a friend, I couldn’t help but see a paternal connection, and even I felt like I was being “adopted”—for lack of a better word—by the jolly gay giant.
As our food arrived, I found myself hoping all over again that things with Jace would turn out alright. I was too in love with my new life and everyone in it to have to go back to square-one.
****
“Danny? Why don’t you have someone in your life?” I asked over the bike’s engine as we headed downtown.
“Me? Well, I’m married to my work, I guess.”
“Really? I’m sure you could find someone nice,” I added. “There’s a few gay bars in the area even, have you been to any of them?”
Danny shrugged, glancing over his shoulder. “Don’t ya be worrying about my love life, I’m fine with how I am,” he turned back quickly.
I bit my lip, hoping I didn’t offend him. I didn’t want to lose one of the small list of allies I had in my life. With Jace’s coldness and how busy Candy was with opening the brothel for the Crows, I didn’t have many people left in my life.
“There was somebody,” Danny said over the bike. “But when he found out what I did fer a livin’, well…he didn’t want nothing to do with it.”
“I’m sorry for that, Danny,” I said, squeezing his shoulders reassuringly.
“Yer a good girl, Mia,” Danny gently patted my hand on his shoulder.
He turned the bike onto another street, pulling to the side and parking the bike. I moved off the bike, handing him the helmet and looked around. The street consisted of a few small local shops, including a parts store, a clothing store, and a small bakery.
“I’ll be over there,” Danny pointed to the parts shop. “That shop there,” he gestured to the clothing shop, “they might promote themselves as clothes, but they got a lotta cool knick-knacks if you wanna check ‘em out.”
“I think I will,” I smiled. “Meet me there when you’re done?”
“Will do,” he turned away, heading towards the parts shop.
Taking a deep breath, I headed inside the shop, deciding that I’d buy something for Jace. I wanted to get him a gift that meant just as much as the bird pendant he’d gotten me on the first date. Looking around the shop, I saw just what Danny had meant. While the shop did have a good amount of clothes for sale, the other half of the store sold a myriad of random stuff. I began to look around, wondering if I would be able to find anything for Jace here. As I made my way to the last aisle, I began to lose hope. I hadn’t even realized how much I wanted to find something to give to Jace. I wanted to be able to show my thanks, wanted to see the familiar smile I’d grown to love as I handed over whatever it was that I’d found for him.
Face it, Mia. Things are only going to get worse. You’re lost.
I remembered Jace’s cold eyes and shivered again. I closed my eyes, willing myself to relax. I didn’t know what was going on with Jace and I didn’t have any right to assume anything. Things would be fine when I got home. I was sure of it. Finishing down the aisle, I sighed, not able to find anything for Jace. I headed out, seeing Danny stepping out of the parts store. He seemed to see something on my face and moved closer.
“Ya okay? Somethin’ happen?” he asked, looking around as he did. There was a violent edge to his scanning gaze, and I realized that I wouldn’t want to be a person caught in that radar.
Knowing that he was prepared to hurt somebody on my behalf was more endearing than it was horrifying, and I realized I was smiling at the thought. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “I think I’m just tired. Rough night worrying about Jace and all,” I explained, then immediately regretted it. Knowing how intense Danny’s radar was for me made me wonder if he’d still take my concerns to Jace; made me wonder what he might say. Smiling, hoping it would be enough to convince him that I wasn’t as wracked in the brain as I was, I said, “I think I’m going to call a cab and get home. I’m sure you’ve got to get back to work.”
“Ya sure?” he asked with a frown. “It’s not a problem fer me to drop ya off at home.”
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “I need a bit on my own, anyway.”
“Alright, be careful though, a’right?” he said sternly, and I remembered that word again: “adopted.”
“I will be,” I said.
I watched as he sauntered over to his motorcycle. He kept looking back at me, concern filled his face and I offered him a reassuring smile as I pulled my phone out. I called for the cab, glad I had taken the number down earlier when the front desk assistant had helped me at the apartment.
The cab was there ten minutes later and as I slid in, not wanting to go home yet. Deciding I still had some time, I asked the cab driver if they knew any good area with a lot of various types of shops. After a few different choices, I picked one and the driver headed out. I stared out the window, hoping I’d be able to find something for Jace.
****
It was starting to get dark as I walked through the last shop. I’d begun to feel defeated in my mission to find Jace something, and with that sense of defeat came an overwhelming dread that we truly were doomed.
And then, when everything seemed at its most bleak, that’s when I found it.
Sitting on a shelf with a few others styles was a small hand-crafted black crow keychain with bright green inlaid eyes. The eyes, what initially caught my attention, reminded me of Jace’s, and I realized I was smiling at the find before I’d even come to register what I was looking at. Without a second thought, I grabbed it, feeling a sense of rightness from it in my hand, and hurried to the counter with it.
As I made the purchase, I caught sight of the contents of my wallet and realized that I was running low on funds. Since the encounter with T-Built that had ended in his death, I’d been sitting on a sizable wad of cash that would have otherwise been handed over. With Candy and I no longer (enslaved) working with the Carrion Crew, we’d seen no reason not to consider that money ours—we had worked for it, after all—and, with our otherwise frugal lifestyle acting as a sort of instinctual budget, I’d been surprised how long the few hundred bucks had lasted.
Then again, I thought as I handed over a few bills to pay for t
he keychain, I haven’t exactly been forced to spend much since…
I sighed at myself, deciding that it wasn’t fair to keep making Jace pay for everything, and I began to consider what sort of work I might be able to find so that I could help out.
The remainder of the trip back home was spent in equal parts of thought between this and the subject of Jace and, hopefully, making things better. As I exited the cab and started for the elevator that would take me up to Jace’s condo, I had to pause, taking a deep breath as I tried to fight the sudden growing dread that I’d begun to feel all over again. Holding the bag with the keychain a little tighter, I forced myself forward.
Onward and upward, I thought.
****
As the doors open, I was startled at how dark the apartment was. Stepping through, I moved my hand to the wall, finding the switch and flipped it on. The bright fluorescents assaulted my eyes and I had to blink a few times before finally adjusting to the new lit room. I glanced over, seeing Jace sitting at the dining room table, a large near-empty bottle of Vodka standing beside him.
“Jace?” I whispered, not wanting to startle him.
He hadn’t even looked my way.
Growing more concerned, I moved towards him, wanting to make sure he was alright. That’s when he looked at me. His eyes were cold like they had been. I froze in the middle of the room, terrified at the look he gave me.
“Where were you?” he asked, his voice just as cold as his expression.
“I… I was with Danny,” I stammered.
“After,” he spat. “I spoke to Danny. He said you turned down a ride home and went off more than two hours ago!”
My eyes widened at that, and I realized with dawning horror that I’d let the time get away from me in my hunt to find him a present. “I…” I fought to find the words, wanting desperately to make things right but feeling paralyzed by his voice; his eyes.
“So I’ll ask again, Mia:” he was whispering, but it seemed to grind like shale clattering down a rocky surface, “where were you?”
“… a place fer everythin’ an’ everythin’ in its place,” Danny’s words chimed back at me, seeming to accuse me of interrupting the order of things.
And how had little Jace responded when somebody had come along to disrupt the order of things?
“Why are you so mad?” I whimpered, shaking my head in disbelief. “You… the way you just left me this morning. I just had to… I felt so alone, Jace.”
“You and me both,” he grumbled, looking away.
I frowned at that, feeling wounded by those words. “You left me here,” I reminded him. “Why should it matter if I left, too?”
“Because you know I have no one else to go to,” he shot back, glaring.
“And I have someone else to go to?” I challenged.
His eyes burned with fury, and I watched him wrestling with himself. He seemed to lose the battle, a part of him seeming to sink while another swelled. “Let’s not pretend”—there was a strange slowness to how the words were delivered, and I remembered hearing stories of people recounting attacks as though they’d happened in slow-motion—“that you didn’t make an entire career for some time out of having lots of ‘someones’ to go to, Mia.”
I felt my breath snag in my throat. The inflection he’d put on his name felt painfully parallel to the one that T-Built used to put on the word “whore” whenever he spoke to me or Candy.
“And… and what’s that supposed to mean?” I fought to hold myself upright despite every muscle begging to be let go from the demands to keep me upright. I had to be strong.
I had to be…
Everything was wrong.
In the back of my mind, I heard Mack’s laughter.
The threat of tears began to form in my eyes and I clenched them shut, refusing to cry right now. I didn’t want to be weak right now. I wanted to be strong, had to be strong. For myself. For us.
There was an us still, right?
“You’re smarter than that, Mia,” Jace challenged, folding his arms over his chest. “You and I both know that whores aren’t as stupid as everyone says.”
The words hit me like a punch to the stomach.
Somehow I avoided folding over in agony; somehow I kept the tears locked up behind my eyes.
“J-Jace, what’s going on with you?” I pleaded. “Please, you can tell me.”
“Why? So you can have more power over me?” he demanded, seething now. I could almost see another face behind his eyes—almost—spouting words at him, driving his thoughts into…
Depression. Forests. Rape.
You’re fooling yourself, Mia. He isn’t like that; isn’t like you. Only you’re fucked like that—only you; ONLY YOU!—and now he’s got your card. Your Jace has finally figured out that he can do better than some used-up slag and he’s not yours anymore. Not anymore!
If I heard my depression speaking to me in Mack’s voice, I wouldn’t realize it enough to admit it until later.
Until then, I had to at least carry myself out of there on my own two legs. Because there was no way Jace was going to do it for me…
“Power?” I spat back, refusing to let the hurt that was eating away my insides show. “What the hell are you even talking about? Do you even know?”
The venom in my voice was like gasoline for the fire in Jace’s eyes, and he seemed to swell up that much more from it. Still, somewhere deep, I could almost see a part of him struggling within the flames.
I wondered if he could see a part of me burning away within my own eyes.
Morbidly, I thought back to the fire that had almost killed us, and I wondered if this was just fate coming back around to finish the job.
“I was just an ease for you, wasn’t I?” Jace demanded. “Cozy up to the rival gang’s leader, let him slip it to you—pretend you give a fuck about him—and see if he couldn’t give you a better life? I mean, hell, I couldn’t really blame you,” he barked out a harsh laugh. “If I was a whore I’d probably do the same. Money, protection, and all you gotta do is what you were doing already: just put out, right? What’s one more dick in the sea of dicks that your life already existed as, right? One dick to free you from all others, in fact? Boy, oh boy, Mia, if I’d found myself in your shoes I’d be all over that one dick that could save me from all others. I’d almost—ALMOST!—feel sorry for you for following that logic…” he heaved and sucked in a monstrous breath of air, his face turning dark-red. I could already see he was about to shout, and I was hunching away from it before it even started. “BUT IT WAS MY DICK THAT YOU USED TO RUN! MINE! AND I’M NOBODY’S LIFE RAFT, ESPECIALLY NOT A STUPID, MANIPULATIVE WHO—”
Some force overtook me then, and I felt a sudden and morbid kinship to Jace’s own rage. Whatever dark force was driving his words was, at that moment, driving my body. My hand took flight without my mind commanding it, and I distantly wondered how much of what Jace was saying was just as mindless. I wouldn’t get to find out. The time for talk was over.
My hand came down hard enough on his face to stagger him. The sound echoed through the room and I realized too late that I was already crying. He stumbled back a step, two, and then dropped to a knee, his eyes wide and awed.
He looked horrified.
“Oh no…” he mumbled, seeming to say it more to himself. Then he looked back at me, tears in his own eyes. “Mia… shit, Mia, I’m so so—”
I missed the rest. I was crying, and I couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing me like that.
And so I ran.
EIGHT
~JACE~
My face still stung where Mia had hit me. Even after a few hours of riding around in circles, it still stung. It still stung because I’d been delivering a fresh slap, letting my own palm replay the process that Mia’s had, whenever I had the chance. I figured I deserved the reminder.
She might have been a manipulative whore, but…
I sighed, slapped myself again. This time just as much for the thought as for th
e reminder. Even after all that had happened—even after the painful truths that Mack had unloaded on me—I still couldn’t bring myself to think of her that way.
Not that she had any reason to know that. Not now, at least. As far as she was concerned that was exactly what I thought of her. It was practically what I’d said to her, after all. I’d been hurting—fucking festering on the inside, it felt like—and the moment I’d opened my mouth all of that pain—all of that rot—came pouring out. There’d been a toxic landfill growing in my guts since my encounter with Mack, and the moment Mia dared to ask me what was wrong I’d gone and turned myself into a cannon to fire that toxicity at a force that would’ve knocked most girls flat on their ass.
And what did Mia do under that onslaught? She nearly knocked me flat on my ass…
And then she’d left.
Like she ought to, two parts of my brain thought at once before splitting off into individual parts:
Like she ought to, thought one part, a logical, more rational part; the part that kept reminding me to slap myself—the part that kept telling me I deserved the reminder of that pain. Because if this is how we’re going to act—if THAT’S how you’re going to talk to a girl who stepped back into that shit-shack apartment when it was on FIRE to save your dumb ass—then you don’t deserve to even see that sweet ass of hers as it saunters away for good!
And, my god, how I wanted that thought to be it. Because it was bad enough to remind myself I was an asshole, bad enough to think that I’d gone and let myself think the worst of her, bad enough that I’d let it get to that point. It was bad enough that I’d let that sniveling little pissant, Mack, convince me of something so… so…
But then there was that other part of my brain:
Like she ought to, that other part said to me, its shields raised, its swords bared, and every would-be free hand clutching something—anything!—to use as a weapon against somebody—anybody!—who dared to threaten me. Because everything Mack said made perfect sense, and that little trollop realized that you’re not gonna take it; that you’re not gonna let yourself be taken advantage of like that. You’ve been hurt before! You’ve been twisted and deformed by this shitty, miserable fucking world, and if you’re an asshole then it’s because that’s what you’ve had to turn into to survive! And why not? If she’s what this world’s gonna offer up now as a replacement for what’s been taken from you then maybe it’s better that she’s gone. She is, after all, just a manipulative fucking—
Riding On Fumes_Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Romance Page 16