by Max Henry
“What can I do?” Hooch whispers. “Tell me what to do, Dee.”
“For now?” I sniff. “Just stay.”
He wraps his huge arms around me, and for a brief moment nothing else exists. I’m not a naïve young woman, blindly stumbling through life. He’s not an outlaw biker who leads a group of criminal men. And we’re not two people who’ve screwed this up every step of the way.
We’re whole, complete, and happy.
We’re loved, and in return, we love.
“They found him,” Hooch says, his words vibrating where his throat rests atop my head.
I stiffen, the thought Digits is in the same building almost too much to bear. “And?”
“It’s your call.”
“What is?”
“How he dies.”
Jesus. “I’m not a killer, Hooch. I can’t condone that.”
“You don’t need to. It’ll happen either way. I just thought it might help.”
Does it? I want nothing more for him to hurt, but the stupid, stupid part of me that has faith in redemption wants one last moment with him to give him a chance to explain himself.
What would turn a seemingly kind man so vicious like that? What isn’t he telling everyone?
“Can I talk with him?”
This time, Hooch stiffens. “Why?”
“With you there.” I pull back enough to see his face. “I want to know why he did what he did.”
“Do you think reliving the moment is going to be a good thing?”
He has a point. “Not particularly. I don’t expect it to be easy, Hooch, but sometimes you just have to make the hard choices to find the good in a situation.”
He’s not convinced, given the dip to his brow, but then neither am I.
“Tomorrow,” he grumbles before kissing my forehead. “Right now, though, you rest.”
I settle back into his hold, my head fitting snugly against his chest as I close my eyes. He wraps me in promises, whispering things in my ear as I drift off that prove to me the distance between us is gone. He may have pushed me away, pushed me into leaving, but I guess in the end, it was the same push he needed to break down his walls and accept what he has around him.
A club who is his family, the support to get through the rough times, and people who love him, faults and all.
Including me.
FORTY-FIVE
Hooch
I’m still not convinced Dagne’s thinking straight when it comes to this. She follows me across the grounds to what was once a worker’s cottage, run down, weathered, and partially overgrown with vines.
Ironically she cleared the gardens around it, but my guess is she never stepped foot inside, otherwise she would have seen our darkest shame. Something we’ve managed to avoid for almost a decade. But then again, my old man always knew the time would come where this little house had it’s uses, and so he never had it torn down or burnt to the ground.
I put the place to good use in the small hours of the morning after they’d dragged Digits in. Crackers, Jo Jo and a couple of our newer members stayed behind after we found Dagne, with the singular purpose of bringing Digits home once Ty got a lock on his location.
Amazing how sloppy a tech genius can be when he’s not thinking clearly. An ATM transaction here, a phone call there. Ping, ping, ping. All little dots on a radar that narrowed down his location to a tight enough circle that bumping into him was inevitable.
And so, at 4:15 A.M. while Dagne slept, I was at work in the cottage getting answers to a long list of questions—the hard way.
“Are you ready for this?” I ask as we hesitate at the door.
Murphy and Jo Jo are already inside, making sure precious is wide-awake.
“Yeah. I think so.” She eyes the frosted glass, her fingertips tapping on her bottom lip.
“Hold your nose.” I swing the door open and the smell of fresh urine hits us square in the face.
There are no working amenities in the house, and people who have reason to be bound up inside usually aren’t afforded that luxury, anyway.
“Oh, my God.” She blocks her nose with her arm. “What the hell?”
“It’ll get hosed out soon.”
“Hosed out?” Her eyes grow wide as I suggest we treat the house like a cattle pen.
Abattoir, more like.
I lead her through to where Digits sits strapped to a segment of wall installed in the center of the living area for just this purpose. His hands and feet are bound to the plaster, a cesspool of excrement at his feet.
Yeah, we should clean it up for Dagne’s sake. But the stench is a great reminder to those who’ve crossed us how human they really are. People tend to believe the lie that they become untouchable, invincible, once they reach a certain level of power. Takes a bit of roughhousing to remind them that they’re only human after all. They bleed the same as everyone else.
I watch Dagne as she takes in Digits, stepping carefully to his left where Murphy sits on a stool, watching our ward. I crane my neck to get a line to the back door, and find Jo Jo where I expected him to be: smoking on the back step.
Anything to dull the sense of smell, I suppose.
“Hey, love,” Murphy greets, holding his hand out for Dagne.
She takes it, a moment passing between them where Murphy shares his respect for the fact she’s been so brutally abused, and yet she’s still standing, still here.
The woman surely doesn’t recognize her own strength.
I stare at the wall behind them, refusing to look at Digits on my right for fear that I’ll snap his neck before Dagne’s had a chance to speak to him. If I thought I exorcised my demons last night on the asshole, then seeing her in the same room as him has proved me wrong. If I could beat him all over again, I would. Again and again, so every day all he felt was an ounce of the pain she’ll have to live with for the rest of her life when she thinks back to this time.
“Why?” Dagne whispers, the sound loud in the otherwise quiet house.
I take a deep breath and look to see how Digits reacts. He stares at her through one swollen eye, the other bruised, without an ounce of emotion.
“Was it worth it?” she asks.
Yeah, asshole. I smile at the state he’s in. Was it?
Digits rolls his lips a couple of times, and then spits at her feet.
She doesn’t flinch. Good girl.
“Tell her the whole story, brother,” I grit out. “Tell her what you’ve been up to.”
He rolls his head my way, and smiles a bloody, toothy grin. “Fuck you.”
My hand itches to drive into his stomach, yet I stand firm. Jo Jo rejoins our party, pulling up a worn chair to sit on.
“How long?” he asks, getting comfortable.
Digits looks the other way.
Murphy lifts his middle finger in response.
“How long, what?” Dagne asks, looking between us all.
“We deal in drugs, right?” I explain.
She nods.
“But the end game to our trade is that we slowly kill the demand by offering free help services to addicts, trying to get our clientele clean.”
“Controlling the supply?”
“Yeah.” I glance at Murphy who nods for me to carry on. Telling people outside those who wear a patch what we do isn’t normal. “But lately we’ve noticed somebody else filling that void with cheap, dangerously cut product.”
“Economical,” Digits rasps. “Not dangerous, economical.”
I fix him with a glare. “Cutting the product with toxins isn’t good economics, you idiot. Got to keep your customers alive if you want them buyin’.”
“What do I care?” he slurs with a swollen jaw. “One fucker dies, ten more take their place.”
“I don’t get what’s going on,” Dagne says, stepping closer to me.
I take her hand and give it a squeeze. “Fuckhead here thought he had the best position as an insider to take up the slack we created.”
“You were
the person filling the gap in the market?”
“Yeah, and I would have got away with it if it weren’t for you kids and that dog.” He laughs, bone-chillingly mad.
“Why hurt me though?” Dagne asks the room in general. “I’m not involved.”
“But you are,” Digits says solemnly. His black eyes flick between the two of us. “You are.”
“If he hurt you, he got to me,” I explain.
“Numb-nuts here thought he could blackmail Hooch into turnin’ a blind eye to his new drug venture,” Murphy says. “Thought if he hit pres where it hurts, he could get him to do anything.”
“I never would have let you,” Dagne says, conviction in her eyes as she stares at me. “Not because of me.”
“He never stood a chance.” I smile, feeling the softness of her cheek beneath my palm.
She recoils from my touch, hugging herself as she steps back with an apology in her eyes.
I see red.
Digits’ eyes go wide as I swing away from Dagne and approach him at speed. They pop even wider when I send a fist curling under his ribs, leaving him gasping for air.
“See what you did to her?” I yell. Yeah, I’m letting him know that he won, that he did get to me. But I’m also showing this asshole that he gets no respite, that I’m fucking mad and ready to tear him apart for the pain her caused her.
Dagne’s gasp is the only thing that stops me from beating the life out of him in that instant. The asshole doesn’t deserve to share her air. He doesn’t deserve anything but the full weight of his consequences.
Digits stares up at me, remorseless as I literally hold his life in the balance with my hand wrapped around his throat. “You’re dead to me, you hear? Dead to the club. Dead to all of us.”
He snorts a laugh, eyeballing me. “I’m dead anyway, brother. Man up and get it done, yeah?”
“No.” I shake my head, sparing a glance over my shoulder at Dagne who watches with such sincerity it makes my heart ache. “No,” I repeat, looking back to Digits as I let his throat go. “First, I’ll get Jo Jo to expend a little energy removing your ink. And then I’ll get Murphy to take your first two fingers so if you ever try to ride again, you’ll think of us each time you reach for the brake and fail to stop. And then,” I say, pausing to take a deep breath. “Then I call up our friendly foes at the DEA and point them toward where they can not only find the body of their missing agent, but the asshole who killed him, too.”
The blood drains from his face, his cheeks going pallid as my smile grows.
He lost. He played the game, set up the board in his favor, and still got left with no pieces.
“Sucks to be you.”
I give Jo Jo the nod, and then turn to collect Dagne as I leave. She leans into my side, looping her arm around my waist as I guide her to the door. It feels like home.
“You did the right thing,” she says as I let her step out into the sunshine first. “Violence doesn’t always have to be your answer.”
“I know.”
But I also know what’ll happen when he’s tried and convicted, when he goes inside to wait out his turn on the execution table.
He won’t make it that far before somebody else finishes the job I started.
And Dagne never needs to know.
FORTY-SIX
Dagne
Eight months later
“Well, look at you.” I can’t help the smile that takes over my face as Hooch steps out of the barber.
He’s still the man I know, the one I fell for before I even wanted to admit how I felt. Just with a shorter beard.
He looks hot. Tidy, and hot.
“Not looking too bad yourself.”
He blatantly checks out the new dress I bought while I was waiting for him. It’s a simple strappy boho style, but it makes me seem almost a foot taller with its floor-sweeping length. Of course I had to put it on straight away, my old clothes bundled in my bag.
“You like, then?”
“Love it.”
I link my hand in his and we start down the sidewalk toward the new store the Aces opened last week: a saddlery of all things. I laughed, but then Hooch showed me some beautiful braided reins he’d been working on and I caved.
He’s so talented, and I never knew. More so, he never wanted anyone to know until now.
He’s come out of his shell since the drama with Digits has been resolved. I can’t even fathom how that feels, to be betrayed by somebody who you trust so intimately. These men place their lives in their brothers’ hands, and to know that there was one who would have gladly traded it for his own gain? Yeah, it makes me worried about him every time Hooch goes out on “business.”
Adjusting to his life still has its ups and downs, but the support I have from the club is second to none. I’ve got Beth to help me understand the rules and customs, and I have Murphy’s sensible advice to guide me when past demons start to poke and prod again.
What Digits did … I won’t lie, it haunts me. And it’s definitely put a wedge between Hooch and I when it comes to intimacy, given I still flinch without even realizing I am.
But he’s patient. He’s so much more, in fact. He’s kind, understanding, and never lays the blame on me—for any of it. A luxury I’ve never been afforded in the past.
I keep waiting for his faults to surface, for the disappointment to set in … but I even love his bad habits for their quirkiness.
“We’ll only be a minute,” Hooch says, tugging my hand as we walk into the shop.
He said something about having to sort a stock order, but I really don’t get why the staff they’ve hired can’t do that. Surely they’d know what’s needed to run the place?
Hooch pulls me close and runs his hand down the small of my back as he places a gentle kiss on the top of my head. “Wait here.”
I take a seat on the bar stool tucked to the left of the counter as he disappears out the back, and spin in a lazy circle while I take in the displays. They’ve done a great job at keeping it feeling rural, while still having that clean simplicity of a city store. It feels as though you’re popping over to a friend’s barn more than walking into a place that’s trying to convince you to upgrade what you’ve already got.
Hooch returns a few minutes later, an envelope clutched in his hand. He spins me to face him, slotting himself between my legs as I hastily push the skirt of my dress down into the gap in case a customer walks in.
He chuckles, fiddling with its length. “I think they’d need to be lyin’ on the floor between my feet to see anything.”
Heat peppers my cheeks as his face falls serious. My heart slows, anticipating the worst.
“What is it?”
“I’ve got something I want to share with you, but first”—he holds up a single finger—“you have to promise not to get angry.”
Oh, hell. “What have you done?”
“Nothin’ bad.” He frowns. “I think.”
I reach out for his hand and he offers it willingly, stroking his thumb over the back in a calming gesture. “Spill.”
He passes the envelope over, and I let go of his hand to take it. My fingers shake as I press the sides apart, sliding the slip of paper inside out and unfolding it.
A phone number.
I look up at Hooch, and frown. “I don’t get it.”
“Here.” He passes me his phone over since I never have mine on me—old habits. “Facetime. They’re expecting you.”
I sit frozen as he retreats to sit on a display made of hay a few feet away, caught up in the nostalgia of the last time I saw him atop a bale. He gives me a gentle nod, coaxing me to do it.
One by one, I enter the numbers, working through the possibilities in my mind. Nothing. I’ve got nothing. The screen changes to the camera, my concerned expression mirrored back at me. I give Hooch one last glance, and his smile sets me at ease.
If he’s okay with this, then so am I, because this is a man who wouldn’t knowingly do a thing to hurt me.
&
nbsp; The recipient answers, and for the longest moment I hold my breath, disbelieving what I see staring back at me.
My mother.
“Hello, Dagne.” She smiles, and I falter, caught in the new age lines, the natural grays that have weaved themselves into her hair, and how tired she looks.
“Mom.” It’s all I can say. After so many years of being denied contact. How?
“Spin me around so I can say hello to that man of yours,” she says. “I’m guessing he’s close by.”
I turn the phone in a daze toward Hooch. He raises his hand in greeting. “Hi, Fiona.”
“Thank you,” is all she whispers before I spin the phone back around.
I can’t hold back; I ask the burning question. “What made you change your mind?” Obviously, Hooch is involved, but how?
She fusses off camera, the scrape of paper coming through the speaker. “I got some mail, last week.” She lifts a square of paper into the shot, but I can’t see what’s on it. “Normally I’d throw out unsolicited letters, but this one …” She sighs. “I don’t know. Something made me open it.” Her fingers gently fidget with the edges of the paper before she lifts it to the camera so I can read it—even if it does come through backwards.
Thought you should at least know what you’re missing out on.
She smiles sadly as she spins the square around. It’s me. A photo Beth snapped on her phone and posted to Instagram a couple of months back after the dust had settled. I’m laughing at Crackers’ joke, and I look … carefree. For the first time in what feels like forever, I’m truly happy, and it shows.
I glance up at Hooch as he sits leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands steepled in front of his mouth. He watches me with such intensity, such relief.
How did I luck out with this guy?
“He’s right, Dagne,” Mom says, drawing my focus back to her. “I didn’t block your calls because I didn’t believe you, I blocked them because I was too guilty to face the truth.” She dabs her finger beneath her eyes, sighing as she tries to regain composure. I’ve caught her at work, the setting behind her giving it away. “Your father told me the truth before he died, and I felt so ashamed,” she stresses, “that I chose to deny it was my fault you left rather than face facts and try to make things right.” She bows her head, shaking it. “I didn’t know what to say.”