Craving Constellations

by Nicole Jacquelyn

  “Brenna. I’m gonna pick you up.”

  She barely shook her head from side to side.

  “Baby, we gotta get you outta here. I need you to wrap your arms around my neck, so I don’t have to touch your back. Okay? Grab a hold.”

  And then, I lifted her up, a low moan coming out of her swollen mouth.

  When I got outside, I was surprised to see four cops but no ambulance in sight.

  “Daniel White?” the officer closest to me asked.

  “Yeah, what’s this about?” I asked them, not sure what the fuck was going on but pissed as hell that they hadn’t brought a fucking ambulance with them. “Where the fuck are the paramedics?”

  “Sir, I’m going to need you to put the woman down and walk down here with your hands above your head.”

  It was then that I noticed all of the officers were eyeing the boys on the porch, especially Casper, who was lying near the rail using Tommy Gun’s cut as a pillow. All had their hands on their weapons though none had drawn on us.

  “I can’t fuckin’ put her down! We’re waiting on a goddamn ambulance for Christ’s sake!” I told him sharply, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  “Sir, I’m not going to ask you again to put her down. We’re trying to be peaceful here, but you need to walk down here with your hands above your head,” he told me again as I thought of all the ways to kill him with my bare hands.

  I didn’t know if they just couldn’t see Brenna’s face or if they just didn’t care, but they weren’t going to fuckin’ stop until I put her down. Poet started across the porch toward me, and all of the officers drew their weapons.

  “You! Stop right where you are!” the one who seemed to be in charge yelled at Poet.

  “Boy, none of us are gonna cause you any problems. No need for you to be pointin’ guns,” Poet told him calmly, his face as innocent as a baby. “That girl ain’t gonna be standing up no time soon. You want him with you, gonna have to let me go get her.”

  “What’s wrong with her? What the fuck is going on?” the cop finally asked belligerently.

  “Well, now, we just called you boys. Someone came in, shot that boy lying on the porch, and beat the hell outta that girl. We’re waiting on…” He pointed to the ambulance and another cop car pulling up the road. “That ambulance and the police.”

  The cop’s face turned bright red as he looked between Poet and me. Finally, he told Poet to come get Brenna, and I felt her arms tighten around the back of my neck.

  I whispered to her, “It’s okay, baby. We’ll get this straightened out. You go with your pop; he’ll take care of you.”

  She squeezed even tighter, her breath wheezing out of her mouth fast and hard.

  “Remember what I told you, Brenna? We talked about this. I said if I was gone, you needed to lean on your pop and Vera. Remember?” I felt her chest stop for a second as she finally understood our conversation. “You do that now Brenna. I love you.” Then, I handed her to Poet gently, prying her fingers off my neck.

  Poet’s eyes met mine in understanding. “I’ll call the suit. Don’t say shit,” he told me as I walked off the porch, hands above my head, passing the EMTs as they spread out to help Casper and Brenna.

  When I reached the driveway, two of the cops started searching me, but I was completely focused on the sounds happening behind me.

  The cop who’d called me off the porch stepped in front of me, his eyes remorseful. “You have the right to remain silent…”

  Then, the sound of my Miranda rights were overwhelmed by Brenna screaming my name.

  I had been right. Tony had broken my jaw. He’d also bruised my ribs and sprained my wrist. There was a warrant out for his arrest, but no one had seen him since he left my house in Kendra’s car. Nobody had seen her either. I wasn’t sure what had spooked him, but he’d set me on the couch and was ranting and raving, and then all of a sudden, he’d taken off like a bat out of hell. I didn’t care why he’d left. I was just grateful that he had. Only minutes after he’d left, Dragon and the boys had pulled up to the house.

  I didn’t remember a lot of that day, but I did remember the sound of Dragon calling my name. It was the best sound I’d ever heard. I knew I was safe when he’d gotten there. I’d known Trix made it to him. The rest of the day, I remembered in flashes, like the moment I watched from my gurney when they pushed a handcuffed Dragon into the back of the cop car. I hadn’t known what was going on, but I was in agony that they were taking him away from me. I thought I’d screamed.

  I spent three days in the hospital while the doctors ran tests and wired my jaw shut. I had to wear the wires for about six weeks, and the first day I had them, I knew they were going to be a huge pain in the ass. Drinking all of my food through a straw sounded like a special form of hell.

  I was really sore, but the doctors were hesitant to give me any heavy-duty drugs.

  I hadn’t lost the baby.

  The doctors said to be cautious but optimistic. The little bean was still so small that he or she was pretty well-padded in there. They said that trauma could cause miscarriages though, so they told me to prepare for the worst. I was trying. Every day that I didn’t bleed, I said a prayer of thanks and then tried not to think about it more than that. Worrying about what would or wouldn’t happen was too much to handle on top of everything else. I was grateful. My injuries could have been so much worse; I was lucky he didn’t kill me. The baby was like the cherry on top—an extra thing to be thankful for.

  Casper had been shot in the shoulder, but they didn’t think there would be any permanent damage. When he was hit, the impact pushed him into one of the posts on the porch, and he’d knocked himself out. The boys gave him shit constantly for that, but he was digging the attention. Behind the jokes and jibes was an underlying respect. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d be patching in really soon. The fact that they’d found the trail of blood from where he landed to the doorway of the house was a pretty clear indication he was trying to get to me. He’d passed out before he could reach me though, and I was thankful for that. Tony would have killed him.

  I missed Dragon more than I thought was possible. The days dragged on without him, and I wondered what he was doing as I lay in bed and counted the ceiling tiles. I ached to hear his voice or feel his fingers in my hair. I was at my lowest point, and I needed him with me.

  My second day in the hospital, Pop brought Trix into see me. She’d been scared. I could tell she wasn’t sure where she could touch me, so I’d lifted her hands in mine and set them on my belly. She chattered nonstop about running through the grass and asked if she did okay. It was hard for me to talk through the wires, but I assured her that she did exactly what she was supposed to. She giggled uncontrollably at the way I spoke, and Pop had to pull her off the bed to keep her from jostling me.

  “Trix, where’s your game?” he asked her once she was on the floor. “Get up in that chair, would ya? I wanna talk to your mum.”

  She frowned at him. She didn’t want to leave my side, but she turned and walked to the corner of the room, pausing to put little headphones on, before she climbed into the chair.

  “What’s happening with Dragon?” I asked him or tried to through my teeth.

  “That’s all going well. The lawyer doesn’t think he’ll be in there long. Might be a couple months though for skipping out on a court date,” he told me as he sat on the edge of my bed and held my hand.

  “What court date? What happened?” I didn’t know why they had even arrested him. Every question I’d asked since I got to the hospital had been ignored or talked around. I was going crazy with the possibilities that ran through my mind.

  “Well, now…back before he got his cut, there was a little altercation in a bar,” he told me, and I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Dragon wasn’t a part of it, but he took the rap for another brother. One who had a sheet.”

  I raised my eyebrows as he explained.

  “And?” I garbled at him.

 
; “Well, he didn’t show up for court. So, there’s been a warrant out for him, seeing as how he never showed up, and the guy had been stabbed…” he told me.

  I felt my eyes close in defeat. Assault with a deadly weapon. Fuck.

  “He got his cut right after that, and by that time, we’d started callin’ him Dragon. So, he pretty much dropped off the map. When he filed those papers for Trix, his name was flagged,” he explained to me apologetically. “I knew it was gonna cause problems, but the boy wouldn’t listen to me. So, that’s where we’re at.” He patted my hand. “The suit says he’ll have him out soon. The witnesses aren’t talkin’, and they’ve got nothin’ else. We just gotta be patient. He’s an Ace, and that’s makin’ wheels turn a little slower.”

  “Okay,” I told him, nodding my head decisively. “We’ll just wait then.”

  “Wanted to come see ya. Vera’s gonna come get you when they let you outta here tomorrow.” He leaned forward and gave me a kiss between my eyebrows. “She’ll take care of ya until I get back or Dragon gets out. Don’t you worry about nothin’ but that. You’re safe.”

  He stood up and motioned for Trix to come and say good-bye.

  She came and stood next to the bed while I ran my fingers through her wispy hair. I watched Pop closely. Something was off. Trix kissed my leg in good-bye, and as they walked out the door, I called out to Pop.

  “Where you goin’?” I slurred to his back.

  When he turned back to me, he looked like a different man. His shoulders straightened. His chin tipped up, and the fingers not holding Trix’s hand started tapping a tattoo on the leg of his jeans. The look in his eyes was frightening, and I felt the muscles in my body tighten against my hospital bed.

  “Hunting,” he told me with a nod. Then, he was gone.

  Vera took me home when she picked me up from the hospital. When I walked in, Casper was sitting on my couch, watching a movie, and I glanced at Vera in surprise.

  “Got two of ya to look after. Boy’s got no family around here to take him in, and he’s not patched in, so he can’t go to my house,” she told me as she brought my flowers from the hospital into the kitchen. “Sit down, and I’ll get you some iced tea. Or, you want a nap?”

  “No, I don’t want a nap,” I slurred at her through my teeth.

  Ugh. She’d already coddled me the whole way home, forcing me to sit in the backseat of the car so I could rest. I’d been home for five minutes, and I already wanted to leave.

  “Hey, stranger.” I smiled at Casper as I sat beside him on the couch. “How’d you get out before me?”

  “Damn, Brenna. I can barely understand you!” He laughed. “Not sure why I was home before you. They let me out yesterday. Just said I had to wear this.” He wiggled his sling at me.

  “Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Where’s Trix? I thought she’d be here.”

  “Nah, she went with Tommy Gun’s old lady and her kids. They were going to hang out over there for the day.”

  I missed Trix, but I was kind of glad that I had the rest of the day to relax. I’d called the club’s attorney when we’d left the hospital, but I’d had to leave him a voice mail. I wanted to see Dragon. It’d only been three days since I’d seen him, but it seemed like a month. I was hoping that the attorney could get me in to see him sooner than the visiting days, which Vera said were Thursdays and Sundays. I didn’t know if I could wait.

  It took a few minutes. I didn’t realize right away where I was sitting. Casper was enough of a distraction. But once he turned away from me, it hit me. Flashes of sitting in this same spot while Tony screamed in my face came flooding back, and immediately, I was afraid I was going to throw up. My head pounded, and my stomach cramped as I tried to get my frozen limbs to lift me off the couch.

  By the time I was standing, Vera and Casper were standing with me, speaking in low voices.

  “You’re okay, baby girl. You’re okay,” Vera reassured me, rubbing my lower back where I had the least bruising.

  “I can’t throw up!” I told them desperately, pulling my lips back as far as I could as if to remind them of my broken jaw.

  “You’re not going to throw up,” Casper told me calmly. “You do need to calm the fuck down though.”

  I raised my head to call him every name I could think of for being so insensitive, but when I saw the look he was giving me, I paused. His eyes were filled with concern as he searched my face.

  “I’ve heard the way Dragon calms you down,” he answered the question in my eyes with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “You listen to authority. If I tried to comfort you, it would have made things worse…be glad I didn’t threaten to spank your ass,” he told me with a lopsided smile.

  I made a small chuckling noise in my throat and shook my head. I did feel a bit better now, but I wasn’t sitting back down on that couch. We were going to have to move it or something. Maybe if we rearranged the furniture it wouldn’t bother me as much.

  The doctors had talked to me about post-traumatic stress disorder. They’d warned me that I might have some of the symptoms, but I’d brushed them off. I’d been in pretty bad situations with Tony before, and I hadn’t had flashbacks or anger problems. They thought the fact that he had violated my sanctuary might change things though, and I guessed they were right. If that little memory on the couch hadn’t been a flashback, I was the Queen of Sheba.

  I decided I was going to lie down for a while, and I asked Vera to make sure the window in our room was closed before I stepped inside. I didn’t think I could deal with any more reminders. When I climbed into bed, I was instantly comforted by the scent of Dragon on my sheets, and I inhaled until my ribs protested. It was exactly what I needed.

  “I didn’t wash your sheets,” Vera told me from the doorway. “When we were younger, Slider was inside for about six months. I didn’t change the sheets until I couldn’t smell him anymore.” She laughed. “Probably couldn’t smell him anymore ’cause they were so rank from never getting washed!”

  I smiled back at her in thanks before she left the room, closing the door behind her. I wasn’t tired. I just wanted to lie in our cocoon and pretend that Dragon was in the living room with Trix, playing Legos and letting me take a nap. I missed my family. After everything that had happened with Tony, I needed Dragon’s arms around me. I needed the reassurance that the life we’d built over the last couple of months wasn’t just a dream.

  I tried to stay strong, to tell myself that he’d be home soon, and that I didn’t have long to wait. But, within ten minutes of Vera closing the door, tears were running down my face and soaking into Dragon’s pillow.

  I fell asleep at some point and woke up to Casper calling my name from the doorway of my room. When I opened my eyes, he told me that the attorney was in the kitchen and walked away. He seemed a little abrupt, but I was in a hurry to talk to Dragon’s attorney, so I did a quick check of my clothes and hair and headed toward the voices in the front of the house.

  The attorney, I thought his name was Duncan, was sitting at the kitchen table, chatting with Vera when I walked in, eager for news. I sat across from him and tried to read his face, but it showed little emotion. I didn’t know if he had good news or not.

  “Mrs. Richards, I hope it’s okay that I stopped by—” He started speaking, but I cut him off.

  “Brenna,” I gritted through my teeth.

  We’d had this conversation before, and the douche continued to use my married name whenever I saw him.

  “Brenna.” He nodded his head once. “I have a couple of things to speak to you about. First, let’s get the questions you left on my voice mail out of the way. I can’t get you in to see Dragon this week.”

  “Why?” I interrupted him again. Pop and Slider seemed to think he could move mountains. It seemed like a very little thing to get me into the jail.

  “Well,” he paused. “I’m just going to tell you. I talked to Daniel White today, and he doesn’t want to see you.”

&
nbsp; I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me, and the absolute lack of compassion on his face made it ten times worse.

  “Why?” I asked again.

  “Mr. White didn’t give me his reasons, but he was adamant that if you showed up, even during regular visiting hours, he wouldn’t see you,” he told me impatiently. “Now, regarding the custody suit, that’s been dropped due to the death of the plaintiff.”

  “What?” I cried.

  He was going too fast; the information he was giving me was making my head spin. I felt Casper come up behind me and lay his hand on my shoulder as I looked at the attorney in bewilderment. He acted like we were wasting his precious time, like he had better things to do than sit and try to explain things to me.

  “Mr. Tony Richards was found dead in a hotel room on the California border this morning. Of course, nothing is legal yet, but without a plaintiff, it’s all a matter of paperwork at this point,” he told me offhandedly, gathering the paperwork on the table into his briefcase. “I’ll still work on getting those birth certificates changed though, but I don’t foresee any problems with that.”

  I looked over to Vera for verification, and her face was like stone. I opened my mouth to say something, I didn’t know what, and she shook her head at me once. Not while the lawyer was there. That little shake of her head reminded me of Pop’s visit the morning before. He’d said he was going hunting. Holy God.

  Dragon never changed his mind about letting me visit.

  I had to learn about how he was doing from the brothers who visited him every Thursday and Sunday. I gathered their news like a hoarder, thinking about it over and over again, as I lay in bed at night with Trix cuddled into my side. The attorney was still a complete asshole, but he seemed to be doing his job. Dragon got three months, and by the time they’d decided, he’d already finished a month.