by J. C. Allen
Now… I was home.
As in, the apartment condo my brother had once owned.
How was she here?
Maggie…
“Derek, my sweet, silly Derek,” she said.
She had one pearly-white hand cupping my bruised jaw while the other cupped her eternally pregnant belly. It did not bring about any pain—in fact, her hand on my jaw made it feel much better. Everything she touched brought a sense of peace and calmness to my body. Even as I had first seen her and become cognizant of these self-inflicted wounds… none of that mattered.
I could smell her, that same scent that used to bring me to tears the first few weeks after her death. I could taste her, even though she had not yet kissed me—I just could. And I could, of course, hear her sweet, feminine voice and see her graceful beauty, a sign of what was to come.
“What are you doing here?”
I looked around.
“I, I, I’m in my—”
But she shushed me, wearing a sweet, kind, warm smile.
“You know I don’t mean that, silly,” she said, her words so soft I could have fallen asleep on them. “I mean what are you doing here, having come to me?”
I, I didn’t think I had made that choice.
But I knew I had. Well, I knew I had as much as I could have in this moment.
I wanted to tell her about Matty, about wanting to help my friend and finally tracking down her killer…
About how I had finally avenged the death of everyone in my family…
But I couldn’t find my voice. I couldn’t suddenly bring myself to sully this moment with the darkness and cruelty that death’s finality brought.
This, I decided, was best. I was pretty sure she wasn’t asking about the burning apartment.
Angels don’t come to hell, I thought. Most especially when your actions led to the almost-certain death of your best friend.
She smiled, seeming to hear this. Once more, she placed a comforting hand, but this time, she pulled me in close. I never wanted to let her go, and I held on as such—I could now complete the sensation of having her here.
Never will I let you go again, Maggie. Never again.
“She needs you, Derek.”
What…
I pulled my head back and saw Maggie moving backward—not stepping backwards, just moving so, as if she was falling but on a horizontal plane. I reached for her, but she seemed out of reach. She wasn’t coming back.
“She needs you almost as much as you need her.”
“Maggie!”
But there was a truth inside of me that, while perhaps a little unsettling, felt right.
Maggie was right.
She’d always been right, even when she was wrong.
She was right about “she.” It was no mystery that she was referring to Eve, but hearing it from my deceased wife… and having it feel so right…
I had no idea if, had Maggie ever met Eve in real life, they would have been friends. But I knew that if it had come to something like this, Maggie had always said that life had to go on, no matter how much tragedy we faced. Perhaps it was her way of coping with joining the Knight family, but it was the approach that she took all the same.
“Go to her, Derek,” Maggie said, reaching her hands out… but just always slightly out of reach. “Go.”
And with that, she began to fade, becoming more transparent by the second.
“Goodbye, Maggie…” I whispered.
“This isn’t goodbye, Derek,” she said, even as she vanished completely. “This is just my way of telling you you need to move on. Move past me. You’ve met someone special. I married you because you were the happiest man alive. I want you to be that way, Derek. I love you.”
“I love you too, Maggie…”
“Now, go get her. Get her, Derek.”
“Her…” I said. “Eve…”
“Eve…”
“Eve!”
My eyes shot open, having gone one moment from my apartment to a blank, white ceiling. I heard pumping around me, beeping around me, and some sort of exhalation of a machine from nearby.
“The fuck?”
I was speaking as much to the dream I’d just had as to my current predicament. I knew what had happened. I’d driven in the rain like a fucking idiot and, somehow, had survived—unless heaven had an odd way of letting me play out a very realistic simulation of my life after. Or maybe that’s hell? I’m a likely candidate for both, let’s be honest.
But the dream… the dream just boggled the mind. It felt so real—it wasn’t like the typical visions that happened so much that I knew what they were. I could feel, taste, smell, see, and hear Maggie. She was right there! She was there, and I would swear on my life that her spirit had taken physical form in my mind and met me.
And she’d told me to let go… to move on…
Clearly, my actions had suggested that was happening. I’d told Eve I’d loved her, and I meant it in every sense of the word.
But was this destroying my legacy to Maggie in the process? Was my love for Eve ruining what Maggie meant to me? Did the fact that I’d moved on so quick—it’s been years, Derek, that’s not quick—mean that I didn’t really love Maggie?
I groaned as I tried to move but instead encountered the pull and tug of various wires and contraptions on my body. I loved both of them. I really did.
But there would come a day when Eve would probably want me to do more than say I loved her. She’d want me to really show it—show it with vows that I had given Maggie. Could I say those when the time came? Could I really?
Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve known this girl like, two weeks at most, if you’re being generous and lying to friends at the shop. Just… I mean, holy shit, Derek, you’re alive!
After what you pulled? That’s the fucking miracle. Not some coma-induced hallucination. That you could even have a goddamn hallucination in the first place!
I looked to my right at the window with its blinds drawn tight. A pair of vertical, needle-like lengths of light cut through the dim and wonderful darkness of my oblivion, marking it about mid-afternoon—the typical time I woke up when it wasn’t a night with Eve.
I woke up. I fucking woke up.
I was awake, only just barely, but goddamn, that was better than being dead.
And how great was it that I could finally think that? How great was it that, in my heart and in my head, I didn’t resent being alive? How great was it that I’d actually acted out the death wish I’d pressed my luck with so often and for so long… and instead of feeling pain that I had failed, I felt unbelievable relief that I had survived?
Both my heart and my head, however, cursed the sunlight that cut past the edges of my hospital room’s ridiculously useless little blinds and stabbed me like trained assassins. Turns out that while I may have given the middle finger to Death and walked away, she had still left a few scars and a few reminders of how close I’d come to taken her hand to the afterlife.
Even this pain and agony, though, was not enough to keep me from truly enjoying the awakening. Sure, my skull felt like it was a few sizes too small around a brain that was a few sizes too big, and I felt like I’d been the puck in a monster game of air-hockey played atop a field of sandpaper…
But I was alive!
I.
Was.
Alive!
I laughed, groaned, and laughed some more. And the next round of “fuck”s, though half-hearted at best in response to the pain of my skull and my ribs, were more recognizable. I was slowly morphing back into Derek Knight.
I just had one question, though—how long had I been in there?
And then a second one came up, but I wasn’t going to get an immediate answer to that one—and when I did, I knew the answer would come to me shortly after.
Seeming to challenge the assault of medical technology, a horde of flowers, stuffed animals—most wearing hilarious mockeries of motorcycle leathers and one even seated upon a big, plastic Harley—an
d all manner of “Get Well” cards. The nearest card, stood upright and partially opened, offered enough of a view to let me read its handwritten contents:
* * *
need skin?
i gots a hairy kiester
Covered in it!
har har har
T
* * *
“Tyler,” I said, recognizing the “trademarked” humor of one of the Savior’s more loyal new recruits. I could even hear his “patented” laugh—Har har har, indeed—chiming in my mind as I read it.
Similar cards surrounded this one, most likely containing similar sentiments, and I couldn’t help but smile at the combined effect of all the various sentiments. It was, admittedly, a truly beautiful thing to wake up to. I may have given shit to Roost to his sense of humor and to the rest of the Saviors for picking up on it, but you know what… in a moment like this, I couldn’t mind too much.
But wasn’t that the point? I knew that I sounded nothing like the gruff badass that I tried to make myself out to be. I knew I was a far cry from the man who had shot Rock and done so with glee, or killed the John who had almost killed Eve.
But damnit, after those events, after nearly dying, and after the dream that had scrambled my brains worse than any motorbike accident, I think I deserved a little bit of a mental break.
“Rise and—”
“Sweet titty-fucking Christ!” I cried out in alarm, nearly throwing myself right out of my hospital bed in the process.
If there was one thing that I hated more than the Black Falcons—and this was a stretch, but in the moment, it wasn’t much of one—it was surprises. Like a soldier who never wanted to be tapped or spoken to from the rear, someone coming out of nowhere to surprise me was a good candidate to get an instinctive punch to the face.
And naturally, the goddamn nurse found it all hysterical.
“I-I’m… I’m so-sorry, Mi-Mister Knight,” she stuttered around her cackles, “b-but th-THAT was the… the f-funniest—”
She left the sentence unfinished as she doubled over yet again with laughter, forced to hold herself upright against the door frame that separated my room from the rest of the hospital. I rolled my eyes but let her have the moment—I had no reason to truly be afraid. It wasn’t like the Black Falcons had come here to kill me.
“‘Sw-sweet titty-fuck—’” she tried to repeat before another bout of laughter stopped her. “Oh, boy, Mister Knight! That likely just made my entire day, I’ll tell you that much right there.”
“Happy to oblige,” I grumbled, still working to stifle the urge to die, pant, or outright murder the giggling woman. “Just call me ‘Mister Laugh-Riot,’ over here.”
“Well alright, Mister Laugh-Riot,” she said. “The doctor’s on his way. In the meantime, can I get you anything? Some water, perhaps?”
“Just a few questions,” I said, trying my best to ignore the throbbing pain that returned to my head as my headache subsided. “How long was I out?”
“Hmm? Oh, maybe a day and a half, nothing too crazy,” the nurse said. “Nothing like that other guy. Said he knew you or something. Big ol’ boy, would’ve thought he was Jesus the way he seemed to rise from the dead with such ease, I was sure it was a miracle he walked out of here.”
Roost.
“Where is that guy?”
“Hmm? I just said he walked out of here.”
“Seriously?”
I’d seen Roost pull off some goddamn impressive stunts in my day. I’d seen him get shot right by the heart and not even go to the hospital. I’d seen him get hit with a bike, go through the air, and come up with nothing more than a few bruises. I mean, hell, I just saw him shoot up a fucking meth lab with bullet wounds and an inferno and somehow not die on the spot or in the building.
But this? For him to have walked out of here after just a few days?
“I told him he needed to stay, but he was insistent. Kept saying he had a job to do and some gal to protect.”
Eve.
Damn, Roost. You never die and neither do your principles.
You are truly one hell of a man.
“Where’s the girl?”
“Who?”
“The one whom I assume,” I said, not even needing to put the qualifier of “hope” on there. “Has visited me the past few days.”
“Oh, right! Eve Kellerman, I believe her name was. I apologize, Mr. Knight, I just have so many patients to take care of and what not. I will give her a call shortly, and—”
“Can you do it now?”
The nurse looked at me askance, as if I’d just asked her to also make me Jesus and rise out of this bed.
“I would suggest, Mr. Knight, that you take a few hours to recover. The time after—”
“Call her,” I said.
It wasn’t quite a growl, but it didn’t leave much room for interpretation.
“Of course, Mr. Knight. I’ll let you know when she’s on her way.”
She left without another word, to which I gave a simple nod. The headache had begun to become a bit much to handle, and I had a feeling I’d drift right back off to sleep for a little bit—hopefully not to the point of passing out for another day and a half. Not when Eve would likely be here in less than an hour and a half.
I looked forward to seeing her. I really, truly did. All thoughts of Maggie aside, I really did love Eve and wanted to spend as much of my future with her as possible.
No doubt, there would come a period in my life when I’d have to make peace with the idea of moving on past Maggie. And when that time came, I’d have to deal with a shitload of personal demons that I couldn’t even begin to contemplate. And I’d have to face them alone—Eve, for all her goodness and for as much as I loved her, could not fight my fight.
But that was not a topic to dwell upon this afternoon, not when I’d just survived nothing short of a flirtation with death. There was, actually, one thing worth thinking on.
I knew right then and there my days of acting suicidally stupid were over.
Whatever God existed had given me a second chance at love, a second chance at a good life, a second chance at being happy. I had almost fucked it up with a stupid, emotionally-driven move that Roost, when he saw me, would surely slap the shit out of me for. That God had given me a second chance at life, but he wasn’t going to give me a third.
I would never give up my bike—I sure hope she’s OK. Girl probably took a nasty spill on the street—but I had to give up the emotionally impulsive actions. I had to start thinking in terms of my long-term future, precisely because it was worth thinking about. I had to do these things for Eve.
No more fucking around.
Only work to make the Saviors a strong presence in the city, Eve my beloved partner, and me a healthy, strong, powerful individual who—
“Good afternoon, Mr.—”
“Goddamnit!’
I’m really getting sick of these fucking surprises. This is worse than a haunted house—at least there I know I’m getting terrorized.
“I see you have your enthusiasm and personality back,” an older man in a white coat, sporting thick glasses and balding hair said. “That’s a remarkably quick recovery for someone who survived what you did.”
“Yeah, tell me about it, doc,” I said. “When can I go home?”
“Home? Are you crazy, son?”
“Yeah.”
The doctor just shook his head, probably not used to someone who would own such insanity with such ease. That, and he was too white collar to appreciate my bluntness.
“In any case, you suffered some trauma to the brain, but we avoided internal bleeding by some miracle—or should I say, your decision to wear a helmet. That—”
“Doc, I don’t need a lecture on safety or the power of protection,” I said. “I really just have one question that, if you can answer it, I’ll gladly stay here to appease your team. When is Eve Kellerman coming?”
“I’m sorry, who—”
“She’s on her w
ay.”
“Fu…uuck yeah,” I said, smiling as my initial scare from the first nurse gently morphed into excitement. “You’ll have to forgive me for my foul mouth, doc.”
“Oh, that’s nothing to the things I heard the grizzly bear of a man say earlier,” he said. “I don’t think I will ever forget some of the things he taught me with his words.”
None of us ever will, Roost.
But none of what followed mattered.
I had exactly what I wanted.
Eve coming my way.
18
Eve
If I couldn’t have Derek by my side, then I would the memories of Derek to keep me happy.
And there was no happier place to do that than to go to the places that we had spent many of our dates.
At first, when Matty pulled it out of me what I intended to do, he didn’t feel especially great about the idea. He warned me that going out into the open, even with the Black Falcons in disarray, was a good way to draw dangerous eyes—eyes thirsty for revenge and perhaps a reward for my head.
But at the risk of sounding naive, I didn’t think it would happen. I didn’t have much doubt that the Falcons might spot me, sure, but they were not stupid. They wouldn’t kill me in public or even abduct me. So long as I remained in plain sight for the public to see, so long as I avoided the alleyways and empty streets, I’d be fine.
That, and I finally had freedom. That could not be underestimated—the desire to break free of the chains of my time as a hooker, to breathe air without the stress of impending death, to know I wasn’t one wrong word away from death… I really hadn’t had a chance to experience it and enjoy it on my own. And as much as I loved Derek—and would much rather have had him here—there was something undeniably rewarding about having independent solitude.
I started by going to the history museum where we had had our erotic warfare, thinking it would remind me of the titillating experiences that we’d had in there, and how dangerously close we had come to fucking like animals on the exhibits with stuff animals.