Absolution

by S. Kirkpatrick

  I remember the Matt Nathanson song that was playing the day Brody asked me to marry him. There’s a phrase in that song, the reason I hated it so fucking much… It said ‘bought and sold like property.’ Every time I heard that song, the memories tried to fight their way to the surface, wanting to cripple me with the weight of how heavily they held me down.

  “I learned over time that the more I screamed, the more it encouraged them. They thrived on my pain. By the time I was eleven, I didn’t even cry when it happened anymore. I hoped that if I didn’t give them that power, that they would eventually stop. I thought that if they enjoyed bringing me pain and if I didn’t let them see that they were hurting me, that they wouldn’t want to come back. But that’s not what happened.”

  I remember the first time I forced myself not to cry. The voice inside my head screamed at me to be strong, to take what little control of the situation that I could. So while the man who was old enough to be my grandfather shredded my clothes, I held it in, dying a little inside because there was a part of me that was ten times more scared than normal. It was a new fear. What if he thought I enjoyed it? What if my attempt at control made things worse?

  “After I had my first period, I heard them talking one night about what they would do if I ever got pregnant. The bastards were excited. They said even though my dad only had one daughter, it was possible that would somehow make me more susceptible to have daughters myself. They made ca-ching sounds for days after that, thrilled at the prospect of having another child to abuse and profit off of.”

  Brody shoves off the bed and sinks a fist into the closest wall, screaming out as he does. I’ve never heard someone’s voice reach that high of a decibel out of frustration. It causes me to jump inside my own skin with shock. He’s shaking almost as badly as I am now, trying like hell to contain the fury that I know is coursing through him like an electric current.

  He pulls his fist back long enough to drive it into the wall once, twice, then three more times. His rage is manifesting physically all over his body that he’s now vibrating with so much anger that I’m genuinely worried he will destroy the entire room in order to expel his emotions.

  Because I know, without even having to ask, that he’s thinking about Oaklynn. About what would have happened if those bastards got their hands on our daughter.

  “How…” He cuts off, clearing his throat of the emotion clogging his voice. “How did you get away?” He croaks out.

  “When I was fifteen, something big happened. Some kind of attack against the club that apparently called for all hands on deck. That meant even the fucking hell hounds that my uncle recruited to watch me. One of my brothers, Ruger, was somehow in a blood-war with the rival MC responsible for the attack. He was on a warpath. For him, it wasn’t just business as usual, it was personal. He got it in his head that he was going to need our dad’s lucky pistol, so he came back to the house searching for it.

  “He found me. It didn’t take a genius to piece everything together. He helped me escape and helped get me the fuck out of there. I told him what mattered, the basics. He wanted to kill my uncle, but I was so scared of that man. In my eyes, he was this big and powerful evil. I was convinced that if Ruger confronted him, that my uncle would kill him before my brother could even blink. And then once Ruger was dead, he’d come after me again. For the first time in nine years, I had an ally and I was scared to lose him. So I begged my brother to help me get as far away as I could. Help me run. And then once I was safe, we could figure out what to do.”

  Brody punches the wall again, causing a massive section to crumble around his feet.

  “He fucking failed you, Remi. He should have put that bastard six feet under that fucking day!” He screams.

  I shake my head, refusing to let anyone demonize the brother that saved my life. “You have to remember that Ruger’s only two years older than me. He was still a kid. And he put my immediate safety above revenge. That was enough at the time. And he’s been helping me every day since the day he saved me.”

  “You’re a fucking gypsy without a fucking pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, Remington. How the hell is that helping you?” He shouts, throwing his arms in the air.

  “My uncle owned that fucking town, Brody! Do you know how many cops and politicians took turns raping me until I forgot my own name? He had everyone in his pocket! It took Ruger two years to find a fucking clean agent to help me. Corruption isn’t as rare as people might want to believe.”

  “So where’s this fucking agent then, Rem? What are they doing to help you? From where I stand, not a goddamn thing!”

  I gesture to the fucking bar that I’m currently living in, indicating that it should be obvious.

  “Henry?” He asks, astonished.

  “No, his daughter, Liz. She’s the reason I ever ended up in Deacon Hill to begin with. She’s my handler.”

  Realization dawns on him right before an odd look of understanding that I feel confused by. He shakes his head in frustration and for some reason, it pisses me off.

  “Did you really think I was just some brain-dead heartless gypsy that liked living out of a duffel bag, Brody? Do you truly believe that I wanted to abandon our life and all the fucking dreams we had together so I could run away on my bike to be a carefree little hippy? No! I’ve been swimming around in fucking witness protection for years while Ruger has been working with the feds to bring down every single person that ever touched me! He’s a fucking FBI informant, risking his life every day to gather as much intel as he can so that I can eventually stop running. If anyone in the club found out that he was working with the feds, they’d kill him without even giving him a chance to tell them why. He and Liz have been working their asses off for years to build an iron-clad RICO case to reign hell down on everyone who hurt me. The men who rented my body like a pay-by-the-hour hotel. The men who begged for my uncle to just sell me to them so that they could keep me all to themselves to inflict their fucking horrors on me!

  “It took years to try and identify photos of all the men who came to that basement of fucking horrors. Even still, I doubt we’ve been able to identify them all. Me, Liz, and Ruger have been doing everything we can with limited resources because Liz doesn’t have very many people she can trust with my case without jeopardizing my life. I’ve lived on the run since the day my brother found me taped to that mattress.

  “And my psychotic uncle has sent his goons after me every day since. Every time I run it’s because they fucking find me! The only reason I ever got to stay with you as long as I did in the past is because my uncle or his goons ended up in jail for petty crimes. It was the only time I got a reprieve.

  “The bruises you were so quick to judge aren’t from therapy sessions. They’re from almost dying when the hell hounds my uncle hires, fucking find me. The broken bones are from them trying to beat me to death so they can try and rape me again! The scars are from the times they shot and stabbed me, trying to silence me forever! So don’t sit here and accuse the only two people on the planet who keep me alive, of not doing enough!”

  I’m sobbing as the last words leave my mouth, trapped in memories of the hands all over me. I’m full-on gasping for air in between dry heaves as I break apart, falling to my knees on the floor at Brody’s feet.

  The memories that find me when I close my eyes, the hands… They try to suffocate me as I lay my fucking soul at Brody’s feet, hoping and praying that now he understands why I am the way I am. Why I’ve had to do everything that I’ve done.

  But the voice… The voice that whispers to me in my dreams.

  That voice belongs to me.

  It’s me, begging myself to pull the trigger on all of the men that hurt me, burying them once and for all. I’ve had to protect a lot of people along the way, causing delays for longer than any of us would have liked.

  It’s me, wishing I would have killed my uncle a long time ago so that I never had to run, to begin with. When the
voice whispers ‘you had your chance.’ That’s me deciding to sacrifice my safety, my future, and yes, even my life if that’s what it costs, so that I can do more than just kill the man who started this whole thing.

  Since the day Ruger found Liz, I’ve been torn apart by my decision to go after every single one of them. The way those thoughts and emotions manifest themselves in my dreams reminds me of how much damage will be done when I’m finally free of their hands.

  Because I’m going to rip their fucking hearts out.

  Brody gets down on the floor with me and scoops me into his arms, trying to calm down the cyclone of emotions that’s engulfing me. I latch on to him, taking comfort in his arms as I unleash everything I’ve held on to for so many years.

  Ruger knows what happened. Liz knows more. But I’ve never allowed myself to feel the pain as I retold this story. I made myself numb when I told her everything. I stored my emotions in a box, hiding them in the recesses of my mind where no one could use them against me.

  Brody rocks me back and forth, running his hands through my hair in a soothing gesture. I feel his chest start to quake underneath me and I know that he’s finally allowing himself to understand the depths of my situation. He knows why I’ve done the things that I’ve done. It’s all affected his life too, he just never knew before now.

  “I’m so sorry, Remi.” He cries in my hair. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  Part of loving someone as deeply as he once loved me, means being able to feel their pain as if it were your own. It’s not about just holding them when they break, it means feeling them so intensely that you break too.

  I want to tell him that he has nothing to apologize for, that he did nothing wrong. But before I can take the time to reassure him…

  “There’s more.” I confess, wiping my eyes and trying to catch my breath.

  I move to sit up so that I can look at him for the rest of this, but his arms flex around me holding onto me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish again. When he realizes that I don’t plan on leaving the comfort of his lap, he lets me sit up, but he doesn’t remove the firm grip he has on me, wanting to keep me close.

  “I told you that Liz and I have been building this case with Ruger’s help.”

  He nods, twisting his fingers into my long hair, holding me steady.

  “A RICO case is tricky because you have to prove a pattern of ongoing corruption, but it has to be within a ten-year span. Between how long it took to find a fed Ruger could trust, to identify all the men that hurt me, and all kinds of other stuff, my timeline was up a while back.”

  Brody stiffens underneath me, but before he has a chance to interrupt, I push on.

  “Liz and Ruger have been working their efforts on gathering as much to nail all of them with as they can. It’s been hard and that’s why it’s taken so long to bring them all down instead of just nailing them after we found Liz. There’s a small handful of them that have been good at covering their tracks, and I might not get a chance to see them taken down.”

  The look on his face is one of so much more hate and anger than he’s ever had when he was angry with me.

  “Why?” He barks.

  “I can keep trying to run until I nail them all, and most likely die in the process, or I can stop running and fight. When I saw your face again, I knew I couldn’t keep running anymore, Brody. I just can’t do it anymore. For so many reasons. The reason I wasn’t here when you woke up is because Liz wanted me to get me out of here today. Someone tried to kill Ruger last night. They took his MC cut off and burned it next to his body as he almost died. There’s a good chance Ruger’s cover is blown.”

  “I just got you back.” He says, gripping on to me while the tears flow down his face.

  “I know.” I say, running my fingers through his hair. “And I plan on staying to fight. I told Liz to pull the trigger on the RICO case today. The feds on her team made it look like I was in another city with the way they filed their paperwork. They’re trying to buy me and Liz some time to make a plan, to set a trap for when my uncle and his goons find out that I’m really in Deacon Hill. We want to have time to get everyone we care about out of town before they show up.”

  “What do you mean?” He asks, a little panic in his voice.

  “As soon as the arrests start happening, my uncle and the goons will come for me harder than before. It will be a blood bath.”

  “Let them fucking come!” He hollers out, the words rumbling like bombs going off inside his chest.

  “No, I don’t want you involved in this. They are ruthless and they will kill you just to get to me. You were my happily ever after, Brody. But if I let you stay now, I’ll just be your tragic ending. I don’t want you to ever forget that I’ve loved you in all the ways I could. Everything you felt for me back then, it was real. And if what you said last night was true, if you still love me, then love me enough to walk away. Let me go. Because that’s the only way I can save you. It’s the only way I can save all of us.” I say, shaking my head vehemently and jumping off his lap.

  “Why didn’t you ask me to go with you when you left?” He demands.

  My face contorts into confusion, thrown by his question.

  “What?”

  “You said each time you’ve run off it’s because they found you. You could have told me the truth back in LA. You didn’t have to leave me like that, Remi. I would have gone with you.”

  I shake my head, wishing that could have been the case.

  “There was a time when I thought that if I had to run again, I would ask you to come. A part of me wanted you to come with me because I was selfish. But everything I ever did, every secret I’ve kept, it was to keep you safe, Brody. I’m serious, they will kill you and everyone you love, just to get to me. I wouldn’t let them do that to you. The WitSec life equates to sacrifices I would never ask you to make.”

  “It wasn’t your choice to decide for me!” He yells. “You should have told me. I had a right to choose!”

  “You don’t even know what you would have had to choose!” I say, raising my voice. “You would have had to give up everything, Brody. Everything! You would have had to walk away from Abel, Dex, and Ryan. You would have had to throw your DRAB dream away. You would have had to give up your two real brothers, your mom, and dad. You would have had to disappear in the middle of the night, just like I did. You would never have been able to talk to them, see them, visit them, anything! You would have had to cut all of that out of your life as if it never even existed. All so that you could be placed in some crappy town with a new identity and fight through near-death experiences in every single town. You could have been killed.”

  “But we would have done it together, Remi. I could’ve helped you.”

  I shake my head at him. It’s easy to say that he could have or would have when he’s not actually faced with the choice. When it’s all hypotheticals and not down to the nitty-gritty of slicing your life apart in a split second. It’s easy to romanticize a life on the run together. I mean, look how the world still reacts to Bonnie and Clyde.

  But the sad truth is, even if I believe he would have said yes, I would have never asked him to that. And if anyone ever found themselves in my same position, and they would have done it any differently, then they’re selfish pricks.

  You don’t do something like that to someone you love. You don’t let the person you crave in your blood give up their family, their friends, their hopes and dreams, just so you can have them by your side.

  That’s not love.

  That’s possession.

  “I already had to give up everything. I would never let you do the same.”

  “But you are my everything, Remi. Don’t you fucking get that?” He draws closer, pulling me into him, lifting my chin to meet his eyes. “But we can be together now.” He whispers, wiping the tears away that I didn’t realize had fallen.

  “How can you do that?” I ask, confused for the hundredth
time since I woke up today.

  “Do what?”

  “Forgive me so easily.”

  “How could I put any blame on you when all you’ve ever done is try to stay alive? Do I like the choices you’ve made? No. But can I live with them knowing what I know now? Yeah.”

  “I’ve killed people, Brody.”

  He wanted the truth, let’s see how many truths he can handle before he breaks.

  “How many of them weren’t in self-defense? How many of them weren’t kill or be killed?”

  “None.” I admit.

  “I have some girls I want you to meet. I think you’ll get along pretty well.” He laughs a little.

  I told him I’ve killed people and this crazy bastard laughs and wants to help me make friends?

  “I seriously think you might be in shock.” I tell him in all seriousness.

  There’s no way his responses are rational. No, this has to be a sign of a mental breakdown, right?

  “No, for the first time since you left I think I’m finally thinking clearly.”

  “Brody, you need to get all of these girls you think I might like far away from here.”

  “Huh?”

  “There’s a war headed straight for Deacon Hill and everyone either of us cares about is liable to be collateral damage.”

  “For right now, I don’t want to focus on anyone but you, Little Wolf.” He says, leaning his forehead against mine, pulling me so tight against him that I just know he can feel my racing heart in his blood.

  “I’m damaged goods, Brody.”

  “No, Remi. You were always meant to be mine.”

  A few loose tears still linger on his cheeks and I stand on my tiptoes to try and kiss them away. All I’ve ever wanted was his happiness. All I’ve ever wanted was to keep him safe, to keep him alive.

  To keep us all alive.

  “Loving someone like me is a death wish.” I tell him.

  “I can’t think of a better way to die.”

  He walks us to the bed, laying his body over the top of me, his arms lay on either side of my face, keeping himself propped up over me. It’s moments like this that I feel the strength he possesses like a physical entity.