Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  Rad didn’t understand what that meant, but Willa shook her head. “RN.”

  “Then no. I’ll do your sutures. She can flush your wound and get you prepped. I’ll be back when you’re ready.” He walked away, pulling his latex gloves off as he went.

  “That motherfucker is not touching me.” Rad began to stand up, but Willa set her hands on his shoulders. She didn’t push, but he stayed seated anyway.

  “Please. I’m too tired to deal with a scene. You’re still bleeding. You need sutures. Please, just do it now, and not…I don’t know, in the bathroom of a gas station or something later, after you’ve lost more blood and had more time for infection to set in.”

  “He’s an asshole. Did you see the way he looked at you? Fucker needs a punch.”

  She smiled and bent down to kiss him on the mouth. “I love you getting riled up for me. But I am used to doctors thinking I don’t rate. It’s okay. I don’t need his opinion of my worth to form my own. Plus, he’s been here since ten o’clock this morning, working nonstop, taking care of horribly hurt people. Cut him a break.”

  Rad answered only with a nod. He was too distracted by the way his body had gone taut when she’d said the words I love you to continue the argument. Those words hadn’t been her whole sentence, or her meaning, but he’d barely heard what had come after.

  That clench hadn’t been revulsion—it hadn’t been like the morning he’d woken in Kay Ann’s bed, with her drawing circles over his chest with her hot-pink fingernail and purring about how that was so great, baby. His body had withdrawn from that woman’s touch with dread and regret.

  What he’d just felt had been the sensation that came with an electric charge. It had been exhilaration. The thought that Willa was telling him she loved him had excited him.

  But she hadn’t been saying that.

  So he kept his mouth shut and let her have her way. He had some things to think about. In the meantime, he’d let the arrogant prick of a doctor sew up his head, because it would make things easier for Willa if he did.

  ~oOo~

  “Fuck, I need a shower.” Rad shed his kutte and hung it on the back of the shit-brown vinyl chair near the window of this room in a budget motel. He dropped his pack and Willa’s on the seat, one on top of the other.

  At about midnight, after talking with an EMS official, Delaney had called the Bulls together and said it was time to get some rest. No survivor had been found for hours, and the crews on the scene had shifted fully into recovery mode. In the dark night hours, they’d pushed volunteers back.

  Delaney’s sister and brother-in-law ran this motel on the edge of the city, and they’d cleared a bank of rooms for the Bulls to bed down for the night. The club had done a lot of business in these threadbare rooms over the years.

  “You shouldn’t get your sutures wet yet. It increases the chance of infection.” Willa walked into the room as she spoke and turned to stare into the mirror over the bolted-down dresser.

  Stepping behind her, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her shoulder. She was still wearing the blue scrubs he’d watched her put on that morning, though now they weren’t so blue. To her reflection he said, “I am covered head to toe in filth and blood. You think stayin’ that way is gonna keep the stitches clean?”

  She smiled wearily and leaned back on his chest. “I guess not. Be careful not to rough them up, though.”

  “You’re not gettin’ in with me?”

  “I…can’t. I need…” Her sigh filled the room, and Rad felt her body slump in his arms. “I need a minute. Okay?”

  Something in her posture or expression, or her presence itself, made Rad reluctant to leave her alone, even to go into the next room. “I’m worried about you.”

  The weary smile again. “I’m okay. Just tired.”

  “Okay. You know where I am if you need me.”

  “Yeah. In the shower, ten feet away. I’m okay, Rad.”

  Unconvinced, he left the bathroom door open, just in case.

  The shower was best of his life, excepting any in which Willa had gotten him off. The water stung his scalp, and washing his hair hurt more than he’d have cared to admit, but the piercing shock of the day sluiced from his brain as the grime sluiced from his body. He made the water hot—not as hot as Willa liked it, but hotter than he normally did—and washed again and again until the water pooling on the floor of the shower faded from thick, near black, to foggy grey, to clear. Then he leaned against the wall and let the spray run over his back.

  When he felt able, he turned off the faucet and dried off. The images of the day were still in his head, still vivid, but he could face them now. Leaving the scene, stopping at an all-night diner with Willa and his brothers, all of them still coated in evidence of what they’d been doing, refusing to allow the manager to comp their meal, then coming here to this plain-Jane old motel he knew so well—all of that had given him the bit of distance he’d needed to confront the reality of this day. Washing the last traces of it from his skin had made it something that had happened, past tense, and he could get his mind around that.

  The awfulness wasn’t diminished, but Rad’s ability to acknowledge it had increased.

  That was his way. He could act in the moment, always, and usually rightly. But he couldn’t think in the moment. Not clearly. He needed distance in order to really see.

  Hanging the towel over the rod, he went back out into the room.

  Willa hadn’t moved. She stood almost exactly as he’d left her, in front of the mirror. She was staring down at something she held in her hands.

  “Willa.” She didn’t answer or move. Wishing he’d wrapped the towel around his waist, Rad walked naked to her and put his hand over hers. “Baby, where are you?”

  It was a bit of cloth she held; Rad took it from her, prying her hands away with force when she resisted him.

  A sock. A little cotton sock that fit completely on his palm. It was filthy, the kind of muck Rad had just washed from his body, the kind that happened when blood met soil and dust. A torn bit of lace trimmed the edge.

  A baby girl’s sock. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Baby, where’d you get this?”

  As he asked, he knew—triage. What had she seen today? He’d been processing his own shock, his own memories, his own new reality. What was hers?

  He remembered something she’d said that night he’d brought fried chicken over for dinner: that she’d hated working emergency medicine because it was so sad, that so many people were having their worst day there. She preferred to help mothers bring their babies into the world. Babies who wore little socks like this.

  “Ah, Willa.” He set the sock on the dresser and wrapped his hand around her arm, meaning to embrace her. But she woke from her fugue then and shoved him away with a gasp.

  He was not so easily discouraged. She needed comfort, and he was there to provide it. He grabbed her again, not roughly, but not gently either, and pulled her into his arms. She tried to push away, both of her hands flat on his chest, but he simply changed his grip and forced her to come close.

  “Let me hold you, baby. I got your back, remember?”

  She froze and stared at him like she couldn’t remember who he was or why he was there, and then her face…it shattered. She collapsed against him and began to weep—great heaving sobs.

  Still completely naked, though that was irrelevant, Rad picked her up and sat down on the side of the bed, cradling her like a child. He held her and let her cry until the tears had run their course.

  When she lay quietly in his arms, he asked, “You want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay. I’m gonna take these filthy clothes off you and put you in the shower. I’m gonna wash this day off you. Don’t fight me, Willa. Let me take care of you. Can you do that for me?”

  It took a long few seconds before she responded, but when she did, she nodded.

  ~oOo~

  Rad woke in the middle of the night, unsure where h
e was. Once sleep cleared from his vision and he understood the room’s spectral orange glow for what it was—the motel sign at the road—the rest of time fell back into place.

  But the pillow at his side was empty. Lifting onto his elbow, he saw Willa sitting at the end of the bed, shoulders slumped. Her ghost faced him in the mirror, bathed in faded neon light.

  He knew what she was doing. “Willa, put it down.”

  She didn’t. “He killed babies.”

  Word had come during the day that some survivalist piece of shit had been arrested not even two hours after the blast.

  Rad sat up. “I know. Baby, put it down. Come back to bed.”

  When she didn’t move, he got up, walked to the end of the bed, took the damned little sock out of her hand, and opened a drawer in the dresser. It was empty except for the Gideon Bible. Not sure why, Rad opened the bible and set the little sock on the random page it had fallen to. He closed the book, put it back in its place, and closed the drawer.

  “Come back to bed, Willa.” He held out his hand.

  She ignored his hand, but she finally stirred, looking up at him. In the odd artifice of the neon light, her eyes seemed too big and too sad. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand how somebody can do something like that. People woke up and had breakfast and got their kids dressed and went to work. They probably listened to the radio. Maybe that little girl was having a bad day. Maybe she was crying and fussy and her mom was irritated. Maybe that was the last thing she thought about her little girl when she dropped her off, that she wished she’d shut up for a minute, and she was glad to be rid of her for the day. People do that. No matter how much you love somebody, sometimes you hate them a little. What if that’s the last thing you feel and you can’t ever take that back?”

  Rad crouched before her and covered her hands with his. They were both naked now, but Willa sat there with more than her body exposed. “No good can come from thinkin’ like that. If you love somebody, that’s what they feel. Even if you hate them a little for a minute.”

  “There was somebody walking around for days and days, planning all those people’s deaths while they were just having their life, not knowing how close they were to being over. They woke up and didn’t know it was the last time they would. They got their kids dressed in little lacy socks, and—”

  “Willa!” Enough of this; Rad needed to get her back on the rails. He shook her hands sharply. “Stop this shit right now. Most people don’t get to know when their time is up, whether they die in their sleep or in a highway wreck or in a blown-up building. Every day could be anybody’s last day. What happened—it’s…I don’t know the right words. Fucked all to shit. But it don’t do any good to think like you are. You just gotta live and not worry about where the road ends.”

  He stood and pulled on her hands. “Come to bed with me. We both need rest.”

  “I can’t sleep. I see too much.”

  “Then lay down with me. At least rest.” He pulled again, and this time, she stood. He led her back to bed and got her settled next to him under the covers, with her head on his chest and his arms around her.

  She lay with him quietly, but she didn’t rest. Rad could feel wakefulness throughout her body. He stroked her arm, ran his fingers through her hair, but he couldn’t make her calm.

  He’d asked her earlier in the night if she’d wanted to talk, and she’d refused. Now, she’d tried to talk, and he’d shut her down. He wasn’t good at this stuff, and his instincts, which so rarely let him down, were at a loss now.

  With Dahlia, everything had been fighting and making up, round and round and round. She’d start something, push his buttons, and he’d get mad and shout, and she’d shout and cry, and they’d go at each other like that until they were fucking like rabid dogs.

  He’d called that passion. It was a sort, he supposed.

  But this, Willa’s quiet, her obvious need for comfort and her reluctance to take it, he didn’t know what to do with it.

  So he held her and stroked her and let her be.

  After a while, she began to stroke him back, her hand moving over his chest in the same pattern and tempo as his hand down her arm. Soft, soft strokes, the velvet of her palm coasting over his chest, moving the hair so lightly, over his belly to the edge of the covers, then back up.

  His cock couldn’t help but react to that, but he made himself hold back the groan that filled his throat when he stretched to his full length. There was little light in the room, just the glow of the motel sign filtered through insufficient drapes; he hoped she hadn’t noticed the shift of the covers.

  As a stroke went over his belly, her fingers skimmed his side, and she paused there, tracing a fingertip over a scar. “This is a bullet wound,” she said with a voice lower than a whisper.

  “Yeah.”

  Her finger moved and traced another scar, finding it immediately, as if she’d memorized the texture of his flesh. “And this one, too.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Same time, or different?”

  “Different.”

  She found another scar. “This one?”

  “Knife.” If she was going to catalogue all his scars one by one, it would be daylight before she was done. And some scars, he wasn’t ready to tell her about.

  “This one, too?” Her finger traced up the long scar in the middle of his belly.

  That one made him chuckle. “Nah. Scalpel. Hernia.”

  The scar was thick and uneven, the nastiest one on his body. It made her lift her head and focus on him. “That’s a surgical scar?”

  “Might’ve gotten into a scrape while the staples were still in. Might’ve pulled a few.”

  “Stupid.” She shook her head.

  “That’s the second time tonight you’ve called me stupid. Don’t much like it.”

  She reached up and lightly brushed her fingers over his new wound. “If the scar fits. How’d you get a hernia?”

  “Pickin’ up somethin’ too heavy.”

  “What was it?”

  “A car.”

  “What?” Surprise was clear in her short laugh.

  “Guy on the side of the road had his little cage up on one of those cheap-ass jacks they give you. He had the back wheel off and was underneath, tryin’ to tie his muffler back up. Had the car parked off the shoulder, and it was leanin’ way wrong. I stopped to help, get him out from under, but the jack gave before I could. Didn’t think about what I was doin’, just grabbed the wheel well and gave it a heave. Guy rolled free, and I dropped it. He had a couple of busted ribs, and I had a hernia.”

  He’d been riding alone, and his brothers had thought he was telling a tall tale until the guy he’d helped had shown up at the station to thank him awhile later.

  “You picked up a car.” She crossed her arms on his chest and looked up at him in wonder. He liked this—the shift of her thoughts and, with it, her mood.

  “Well, I didn’t hoist it up onto my back or nothin’. Just held it a few inches off the ground for a few seconds.”

  “You’re a hero.”

  He laughed that absurdity off. “No way. I just do what needs doin’.”

  “Seems to me that’s what a hero is.” She tipped her head and kissed his chest.

  Cupping his hands around her face, Rad made her look him in the eye again. “I’m no hero, Willa. You try to see me like that, and you’ll be disappointed right quick. I try to do more good than bad, and I try to keep my bad where it belongs, but make no mistake. I’m an outlaw, and I’ll never be anything else.”

  Her eyes squinted in that way that made him feel like a bug under a glass, but she didn’t say more. Instead, she bent her head and kissed his chest again, this time lingering. He felt her tongue against his skin, and he realized that she had kissed a bullet scar.

  Shifting over him, she moved to the other, similar scar. Then to the mark of a hunting knife sliding between his ribs. She tasted every scar on his chest and belly, even those she hadn’t asked ab
out, and those he wouldn’t have told her about if she had. Her body slid over his, her bare breasts gliding across his belly, as she moved to reach every mark, and she never missed her aim. She had, indeed, memorized his scars.

  Rad wove his fingers into her hair and held her head, letting his eyes close. He hadn’t expected this development, but he craved it. To be inside her, to feel the perfect pleasure of her and to give her the same bliss, that would restore the balance in the tiny world between them.

  He pulled lightly on her head, wanting to draw her up, wanting his mouth on her mouth, wanting to roll her body under his and take it. But she leaned back, out of his reach.