by Miranda Bee
The water eventually went from hot to cold, pricking my skin like little needles. I wept as I slammed my fist against the floor. It was over. I pushed the faucet down, shutting it off.
I stepped out of the shower and wrapped my body in a towel. I walked through the house, dripping wet. I searched through the duffle bag I’d set aside for my trip. It had the basics: A few outfits, my phone charger, my wallet and a toothbrush. I got dressed and laid down on the floor.
I intended to sleep. Instead, I went over every memory of Devin. I tried to commit to memory the exact color of his eyes, the sound of his voice, and the rhythm of his heart whenever we made love. I knew I needed to let him go, but I just couldn’t.
Maybe I would allow myself to suffer a little if it meant that I could think of him whenever I wanted.
Chapter 22
Devin “The Devil’ Winchester
I had everything set. I planted my three C-4 bombs in Mathias’s office. I put one in his closet, one behind the sofa, and one in the bathroom cabinet that connected to the office. I originally hoped to bring the entire building down. It wasn’t enough, though the explosives would do significant damage.
Really, I just had to make sure Mathias didn’t make it out alive. He wouldn’t if everything went right.
Whatever he was planning was very bad. I spent a good amount of time hiding the wires that connected all the bombs to the mobile detonator. It was a little black box that connected to the switch via Bluetooth. I was actually kind of proud of myself for setting all of that shit up. Prison wasn’t all that useless. I took a lot of tech classes to take up time.
I also got this shitty little bug from a dinky computer store just outside of town. It was the only one they had. I tested it out at home, and the quality was subpar. My voice fed back garbled like the device was submerged in a pool of water. Still, it would have to do.
I had to move fast. It wouldn’t take much snooping for Mathias to find the wires and the bug. He was as evil as sin and only half as fun. He wasn’t a moron, though. He’d be able to put it together if given the opportunity. That jackass wasn’t slipping through my fingers. This was my one shot.
As I worked, I thought a lot about Sammy. I suspected I would spend much of whatever time I had left thinking of her. Seeing her beneath Charlie, his hands wrapped around her throat, made me crazy. He was gone, and yet, it still drove me insane with anger.
If I could kill him again, I would. I would take my sweet time, though. I’d make him suffer. I’d indulge my rage.
I tried to focus on happier thoughts. I remembered how Sammy would come up behind me when I was sitting on the couch. She’d place her small hands on my shoulders, massaging them. She’d kiss me on the cheek. That was never enough for her, though. A peck on the cheek would turn into a drawn-out kiss on the lips. She would climb past the back of the couch and crawl into my lap, never parting from my lips. We’d start making out. She was always on fire for me.
“I’m worse than you,” she would say with laughter.
She would rock her hips, dragging her pussy along my rigid cock. She wasn’t worse than me, though. I was grateful, always obliging her impulse to fuck me. If we weren’t fucking, we were thinking about fucking. When we weren’t doing either of those things, then we were talking.
We had so many great conversations. We laughed a lot, too. She made me feel so different. She made me feel like more than I was. I wasn’t just a criminal, or a prisoner, or a biker. I felt like we could do whatever the fuck we wanted. It hadn’t escaped my mind that I could just say ‘to hell with revenge’ and abandon it all for Sammy.
Leaving The Sons of the Shadow wasn’t that simple. It was fucking hard. When you pledged, you pledged in love and for life. Not to mention, Mathias was planning to hurt my brothers and sisters of The Sons. I couldn’t let that happen. They were good people. All they wanted was to carve out a little happiness in this world. I wouldn’t betray them. Unlike Mathias, I had a little character.
I hid outside in a thick green bush just off the entrance. The clubhouse was completely empty. Everyone else was off on a long ride in the foothills for the next few days. The engines of twin Harleys rumbled, echoing in the otherwise empty lot. I listened to the crackle of gravel underneath two pairs of steel-toe boots. My heart raced, the adrenaline pulsed through my blood like a swollen sun. Mathias and his partner approached the building.
As they got closer, I recognized the man with Mathias. He was an older guy, covered in faded-bluish tattoos. He was thin and frail looking. He had a white handlebar mustache and long white hair. He wore a vest that represented The Snakes with symbolic patches sewn to the breast panel. His name was Abraham Lyons. He was the leader of The Snakes.
I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it didn’t matter. I planted a bug in his office for that very purpose. I wanted to know exactly what he was up to. There was no telling if I had more work to do, even after I set the bomb off. I might still need to thwart whatever they were planning. I might have to warn The Sons of the Shadow and The Snakes. However, if I could avoid having to explain myself, I would.
I listened in on their meeting.
Mathias and Abraham sat in Mathias’s cushy office, drinking scotch and laughing about how they’d pulled it off. They were planning an ambush. At the conference, The Snakes would try and take out The Sons, and vice versa. After the blood bath ensued and guns had finished firing, Mathias would detonate a bomb that he purchased on the black market. It was a big bomb, much stronger than the ones I’d built. They needed to make sure that every single patched member was dead. Then, they’d sell off all the respective assets of each club, keep the profits from the sale of arms (which would take place at the beginning of the conference), and live out the rest of their lives in the Bahamas. This was their retirement plan.
My fingers curled, my nails dug into my palm. I gritted my teeth. My heart raced as I realized Mathias wanted to kill us all. He didn’t give a fuck about any of us. He didn’t give a fuck about me. I knew all of this already, somehow. In my heart, I felt the ache of abandonment. I knew he didn’t give a fuck. Hearing it, the way the words casually slipped out of his mouth, was something else. Organizing our death was, simply, business as usual for him.
The rage that bred within me was sweltering. I was doing my best to contain it. I realized that I would never get the answer I sought. If retirement was the answer, it wasn’t enough. If greed was the answer, it wasn’t enough. Mathias was a corrupt asshole who didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. Sometimes the simplest answers were the truest. He didn’t care. Plain and simple.
I felt such burning fury as I realized he’d fooled me. It made my job easier. I would kill those fuckers, and I wouldn’t feel an ounce of remorse. Still, it wouldn’t absolve the anger I felt. Perhaps that was something I would live with forever.
I pulled out my cell phone and hit the icon for Mathias. It was a little thumbnail picture of him holding a glass of beer at my ‘welcome home’ party. It rang. I heard my phone call feedback into my ear from the bug, garbled and broken. I heard Mathias sigh and tell Abraham to hold on.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Hey, Mathias. How’s it going?”
“Fine, fine. What’s up? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“Oh, I don’t want to hold you up. Truth is, I’m right in the middle of something, too.”
“Well, go ahead then.”
My heart raced, I took a deep breath and cleared my throat.
“Listen, I know you think you got this whole thing in the bag. You don’t, I’m sorry, you just don’t,” I paused, “But if it’s any consolation, you had me fooled for years. You’re not an outlaw. You are an elitist pig. I will enjoy watching you die.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, son?”
“Son? You are a pile of dog shit. I will never be your ‘son’.”
I hung up the phone and listened to them scramble.
“He k
nows!” Mathias shouted.
“Who?” Abraham didn’t seem alarmed.
“Devin!”
“Devin “The Devil” Winchester. I thought you were going to take care of that!”
“Yeah, I did. But your boys failed to deliver.”
“Yeah, well, he’s one tough son-of-a-bitch. I’ll give him that,” Abraham said.
“We need to get out of here,” Mathias was frantic.
His hand was likely on the door handle. ‘Your boys failed to deliver.’ Those words almost broke my heart. Trouble was, I didn’t have one to break. Not anymore. Nothing was real. My code, my patches, everything was fake. I hit the button in my pocket without taking a breath. I sprang up from the bush and sprinted as far away from the building as I could.
The building didn’t fall. There was a massive ball of fire that blew out Mathias’s office windows and caused the whole floor to collapse. The building still stood, though encompassed in flames. Debris shot out everywhere. I narrowly avoided a huge chunk of cement that came hurtling toward me. Fittingly, Mathias’s bike was destroyed by some of the debris.
The noise was deafening.
I hopped on my bike and sped away. I couldn’t even hear the rumble of my engine. I could only sense it by the vibrations in my feet. The moment was surreal. I was moving through the streets, cutting out the path ahead of me at dangerous speeds. Still, it felt like I wasn’t moving at all. The only thing I could hear was my heart beating in my chest and pulsing in my ear.
The earth stood still. Everything was wrapped up, motionless, like plastic statues. The people who walked on the sidewalk, leaves on branches (mid-rustle), colorful cars and rays of light were all as still as stone. It was like a portrait or a painting. I was nothing but a passing ball of dark matter. The world made no sense.
My chest pounded, and it made no fucking sense!
I was on the clock now. I had a very small window to escape my fate. I sped to the apartment to grab my shit. I needed to meet my contact. I needed to get the fuck out of the country or else I was a dead man.
Sammy’s face flashed in my head and my stomach twisted. Was I really never going to see her again? Fuck, she was so beautiful. The shrill sound of her voice, the night I killed Charlie, echoed in my ear. She begged me not to leave.
Don’t be a selfish prick, Devin!
She was clearly still in love with me. That was all the more reason to stay out of her life. She’d accept everything I’d done, including the consequences. I couldn’t allow her to do that. I wouldn’t bring her down. It didn’t matter how bad it hurt to be apart from her.
Everything wasn’t fake. I was wrong. My mom was real. Sammy was real. That was it.
I was a demon. I was broken. I couldn’t have nice things. I couldn’t fall in love because life would chase me down and take it away. Call it cosmic intervention or karma, I knew I could never be happy. I didn’t deserve joy; my sins were too great. Sammy could make me happy, but it would cost her. The price was too high.
I loved her more than myself. I loved her enough to let her go.
I hopped off my bike, ran upstairs and grabbed my bags. I immediately ran back downstairs to rendezvous with my contact. He was taking goods over the border. As long as everything went according to plan, I’d be in Mexico by tomorrow morning. I would disappear somewhere along the southern coast of Mexico. It would have to be a small town. Somewhere tourist would not venture. I was starting to believe that I may have pulled this shit off. I would just have to leave my heart behind.
Sammy was my heart and soul. She would be okay. She’s gonna be okay.
I took a deep breath and road on.
Chapter 23
Sammy Wood
Everything was boxed up and pushed against the wall next to the door. I didn’t have anywhere to sleep, but I wasn’t sleeping much anyway. Charlie was done. He deserved everything he fucking got. I couldn’t understand why Devin had even bothered to help.
When I walked out of that door and drove to Florida, all that was him would have to stay behind. I had to let him go, or it would fucking kill me. I missed him so badly, it made my body literally hurt. That’s why I shouldn’t have let myself open up. I should have stuck to myself like I used to.
I couldn’t deny that he showed me a version of myself I never thought existed. I was happy. I could be happy. I could be funny. I could be creative. I could be passionate. Maybe I would hang on to that, at the very least. I didn’t want our entire relationship to be in vain.
He was a complicated man, after all. I knew there were problems with The Sons of the Shadow. I knew he had committed crimes worthy of a life-sentence in prison, many times over. I knew he had killed more than once.
I wasn't surprised that he left. He was an intricate maze of a man, and it was fun while it lasted. I came to a dead end, one of many, and was booted out of the game. There was so much freedom in his chaos. Fuck. I hated this.
I took all the pictures of Devin that I’d hung wall, the photos under my bed and anywhere else in the house. I gathered them up in a pile and took them outside. I sat in the folding chair and pulled out my lighter.
One by one, I began to burn them all.
He was so beautiful. Tears streamed down my face as I attempted to let my soulmate go. The flames flickered as they crawled up the picture. Black smoke rose like a rain cloud over his head until he was nearly gone. I dropped the remaining corner of the picture onto the ground and watched it turn to ash.
I set the remainder of the pile on the pavement and lit the bottom corner. The flame was weak at first, but then it grew. I felt the lump rise in my throat. I fixed my gaze on his crystal blue eyes and his fading smile, and I wept.
“I can’t do this.”
I grabbed the top picture out of the flames and threw it to the side. I stomped out the fire and took the pictures that remained inside of the house. I sat down on the floor and held his image close to my heart.
“I’m not going to forget. I’ll take the hurt if it means I can take a part of you.”
Just as I was about to go full on ugly cry, there was a brazen knock on the door. Before I could collect myself, there was another. A stroke of fear coursed through my veins as I realized that I could be implicated in Charlie’s Death. After all, it happened right outside Roto’s. It could be the police. Or maybe it was some rival gang that had a vendetta against Devin. It wouldn’t be a leap to assume that if anyone were after him, they would know about me.
Maybe that was why he left?
There was another knock, only this time it was louder and faster. I opened the door. Devin stood there with a bag over his shoulder. His eyes were red, tears streaming from their corners. Before either of us spoke, he rushed forward.
In a quick moment, he dropped his bag on the ground, shut the door with his foot, and grabbed my waist. He pulled me towards him, kissing me as his tears rolled down our faces. I wrapped my arms around him, locking my hands at the nape of his neck.
He pushed me to the other side of the room, up against the wall. He pulled my top off as I tore at his belt. I pulled his wife-beater tank top off over his head and threw it to the ground. Immediately, I was consumed by the heat of his skin and the song of his heart as it beat against my breasts. He slid the black lace straps of my bra down, kissing my bare shoulders and along the length of my collarbone. He unclasped my bra and kissed my bare skin.
I yanked at his jeans, tugging at the waistband. I pined for his sex, thick and swelling. I slid his jeans and boxers over his ass. They dropped to the floor and his cock jutted out. He put his hand on the small of my back and his other hand on the wall next to my head. He rocked his hips, slipping himself inside of me.
He groaned. His voice was shaky.
I gasped, digging my nails into his back. His thrust grew exponentially faster, slamming my body into the wall with each swing of his hips.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” he cried.
I kissed each tear a
s it fell, frantically. Was he real? Was this just a vivid, fever dream?
“Devin, cum inside of me!” I demanded.
I was close to falling off the edge. I wanted him to fill me up. I needed all of him. He was like a drug, and I had gone without for too long.
He crushed his lips against mine, his tongue sliding in slow loops, like a residual haunting.
He haunted me. I wasn’t entirely convinced that this wasn’t all imagined. A complex fantasy played out as a coping mechanism because losing him had finally pushed me into the fog of insanity.
I felt his thighs grow rigid as his seed burst in violent streams within me. I screamed, diving off the cliff head first. I trembled in his arms. The warmth rolled up and down my body in static waves. My breath was short. My heart was full.
“I fucking love you,” he said, “I fucking love you, Sammy.”
I kissed his salty lips, “Am I dreaming? Are you really here?”
“Darling, I’m the one who’s dreaming,” he whispered.
I kissed him again and laid my head against his chest.
***
The amber lights danced on the barren walls, flickering in the darkness. I looked at Devin, who was naked under a cotton sheet. His blue eyes stood out, even in the low light. I was so happy with him. I never wanted to spend another night apart.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“You, of course.”
He smiled, perching his head on his hand as he turned on his side. I kissed him. His big hands slid along my torso, tracing the curve of my breast and moving up to my neck. He kissed me, again.
“I am so sorry for hurting you,” he sighed, “I just…”
“You have to give me all of you,” I begged, “because I am giving all of me.”