Charlie's Heart: MC Romance (Burning Bastards MC Book 3) (5 page)

Juanita appeared to be thinking, and she smiled for the first time that he’d ever seen.

“There should be a key to the car they brung her here in on that leather, Ol’ Merl and Saul took the truck to go buy sugar and provisions, the car belongs to Merl. I can take you to your motorbike I guess, they’ll be here by mornin’ so I can’t take you to town an’ be back here pretendin’ to worry about Birdsong.”

He bent down to pick up his ladylove, and started walking to the cave’s entrance.

Juanita hung back for a few minutes, and ran past him once she’d lit the fuze on the sticks of dynamite that she put under Birdsong’s fat belly. She’d grabbed the cash and left him lie.

“You might want to speed it up a bit, I don’t know how old those sticks of dynamite is, but they was startin’ to leak when I took them outta the sack.” She kept going and Charlie looked around for cover.

They were only about fifty feet from the cave, and his knees weren’t up to running right now, even if he wasn’t carrying the extra weight. He crouched down and laid Selma’s unconscious body on the soft ground cover, before lying on top of her, covering her face and torso from flying rocks and debris. He tried to keep his weight off her chest, but the impact of the explosion shoved him down on top of her hard. He was so stunned by the impact of rocks that pelted his head and back, that it took a few minutes for him to realize what he was doing, and he pushed himself from her body.

He sat up and had to orient himself for a few long minutes. The last explosion that big he’d been around for was in Nam, and the results of that had been a titanium plate in his head and several years of riding his bike to help him settle his past experiences. He kept his eyes trained on Selma, if he closed them he knew he would see the movie running through his brain of that last mission. He didn’t want to see that again. Seeing body parts flying around you, well, it had a big impact on his life. Her eyes fluttered open and he leaned down to kiss her.

She chased his demons away. Once they became lovers, his nightmares were almost gone. She’d been his touchstone, and there was no way he would let her go again, somehow, some way, he would find a way for them to be together.

She was waking up and he pushed her hair back from her face with a shaking hand. Fuck, he couldn’t lose her again. He got to his feet and pulled her up and into his arms to resume the walk to the Johnson homestead. Nothing mattered but the woman in his arms. He ignored the way the almost non-existent cartilage in his knees stabbed pain through his thighs and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

He left Selma in the house with Juanita while he got a drink, and headed back to the hill to retrieve his rifle and pack. He thought about leaving them, but that rifle had kept him alive many times over, and he’d be damned if he would leave it to be ruined in this place. The three long swallows of good corn liquor had helped oil his joints, and dull the pain so this walk wasn’t bad.

Seeing the hole in the hillside made him whistle. He wondered how many sticks of the dynamite she used, because half of the hill resembled a molehill. There was no sign of Birdsong, and that was all to the good. He found his things and went back to the house.

It was time to take his woman home.

Hearing Juanita helping Selma around upstairs, Charlie headed to the bathroom where they were and walked in while they were talking. He noticed Juanita had helped her to the bathroom and given her a washcloth to wash her face and arms. He hated to break up the hen party. “I hate to break into this reunion, but we need to get moving if we plan on getting off this hill before dark.”

All the way down the hill, Juanita kept telling Selma about the kids and how she worried about them. “I know you’ll give them good homes and plenty of food, but I’m still gonna worry ‘bout them. You promised you’d send for me if they need me, so I’ll be holding you to your word.”

They were finally at the bottom of the hill close to where he’d parked his bike and he wanted to get moving. Juanita started the old car and jumped back out to give Selma a hug, and crooked her fingers at him to come to the vehicle.
Fuck, now what
?

She pulled the bungee cord loose from the trunk and opened it to reveal five cases of quart jars filled with Birdsong’s moonshine. “Here you go Mr., you take whatever you can carry. I plan to run the still now, and anytime you want more, you just come back, and you can have a few quarts anytime you want them.” She leaned down when he bent to select a couple of quarts, and said, “You take good care of that woman now, you hear me? She’s a saint.” She grabbed two more quarts and followed him back to the scoot.

He put the four quarts in his saddlebags and hoped they didn’t crack and leak out, but Juanita ran back to the car and came back with two old pieces of cloth to wrap them in.

“There you go. Judge, don’t forget, you promised, and I’ll be content knowing my babies are getting what they need.”

She left them there and Charlie smiled at Selma. He had to step up to her and hold her one more time before they got on the Indian and got back to town. She squeezed his ribs tight as they kissed.

“We’re going to sort us out as soon as I get this mess about the children straightened out. I am serious, we have to find a way, I can’t keep living without you.”

He nodded his head. “Goes both ways, babydoll, now, let’s get situated and get out of here.” He got one more kiss and backed the bike out of the bushes completely and onto the road.

Once he reached the main road, he gave the throttle a twist, and the old bike ate up the miles. It occurred to him that they were exactly where they should be, on the bike, with her arms around his waist holding him tight. He gave a shout of sheer happiness and got an extra hard squeeze from behind him.
Fuckin’ A there would be some way, it was just fucking hair.

As much as he wanted to, he didn’t take her home. He stopped the bike at the emergency room entrance of the hospital, and cut the engine.

“Don’t leave me, Daddy, you can get your cuts taken care of and be with me, can’t you?” She hated hearing the desperation in her voice, but she couldn’t let him walk away, she needed him. “You promise you’ll come in with me, or I won’t go inside, I mean it.”

He was weary to the bone, but wasn’t ready to let her stray too far from his sight either. “Babydoll, I’ll stay with you as long as they let me, but we both know they are gonna have questions that we won’t be answering the same. They are gonna at least take me in to question me, and probably lock me up until the suits bail my ass out. I killed a man, and it don’t matter what walk of life or what he’s done. He’s dead.”

She grabbed his arm and shook it. “Birdsong Johnson died tragically in an explosion when he tried to kill me. You pulled me from the cave just before the place went up with Birdsong inside. That is what I saw, and that is what they will hear from me. You were just arriving when you saw him put the dynamite down and you ran inside to get me out. They won’t arrest my hero. I won’t let them. Do you understand what I am saying? Birdsong died a deserved death, and you might have wanted to kill him, but you didn’t.”

He pulled her close and kissed her again before letting her go so he could go inside for a wheelchair. It would be a miracle if the cops believed her story, but he trusted her word, and resigned himself to being henpecked.

In the end, her story was taken as the official record of happenings. Charlie’s injuries supported the story, and Charlie knew she wasn’t happy the doctor at the hospital declared that she was dehydrated and had signs of mild exposure, her feet had several stones and briars embedded under the skin. He said she would need to spend the night for observation.

Given the suspicion of the agents assigned to protect her until they were certain the threat to Judge Pearson was over with, there was heavy distrust and dislike between them and the old biker.

Charlie finally had had enough. He leaned over Selma and gave her a quick kiss on her sleeping lips. “I’ll be here to take you home when they’ll let you out of here, babydoll.” He knew she couldn’t hear him, but it made him feel better for saying it. It was just as well that he went home and took a shower, he needed his arthritis meds, and some rest himself. He also needed to think about what he was going to do now.

All the way back to the duplex apartment where he lived, he thought about what he would be forced to do in order to live with Selma in his life. The only solution for him was to do what she’d asked him to do in the first place.
Fuck
.

He backed the Indian under the carport next to the ‘Cuda. He bought the classic car as soon as he was released from the VA hospital in D.C. back in ‘70. It was kept in pristine condition, just like the Indian. It was his birthday present to himself before he’d shipped back out for another tour of duty. That tour had turned into a third, but he never regretted it. His country was worth the sacrifice. The handful of medals and even the purple hearts were just symbols now.

He came home for the last time in ’74, a year before the last choppers left Vietnam, and the only reason he’d left then had been the explosion that rattled his brain, and sent one of his ribs through his lung. It had taken him almost a year to relearn the simplest of tasks. Thinking on his time in the rehabilitation center often made him feel guilty about the guys he hadn’t been there to save. It had taken years, and thousands of miles, to come to terms that he couldn’t save them all.

Seeing the way he and his fellow soldiers were being treated by an ungrateful nation took what little pride in his accomplishments during the war, and dropped them into a big pile of cowshit. He still helped his fellow veterans when he ran across one. The empty eyes and disillusioned look was almost universal with the homeless, and he always felt his throat tighten at the sight of yet another good man wasting away. Why had he been fortunate enough to be spared? The dumbest thing about all of it was that he’d put the uniform back on and take up arms again in a heartbeat if his country needed him. So would the thousands of homeless veterans across the country. It didn’t matter their own country continued to betray them, even to this day, that oath of allegiance was burned into their souls.

He was sixty-two years old and felt every one of those years as he slid his body into the hot tub of water. The shower knocked the dirt off, but the tub would help ease his tortured muscles, and he laid back and let the heated water do its work. The water stung the nicks and cuts from the explosion, but the slice over his rib hurt like a motherfucker.

When he climbed out of the tub after the water cooled, he dabbed the slice and used butterfly strips to pull the edges of the wound together. He coated the entire thing with glue they called a liquid bandage, and hissed through the burn of the chemicals adhering to the wound. If he was careful the wound would heal fairly fast, and he’d have another scar for Selma to kiss better when she was finally back where she belonged, in his bed, and in his arms.

Grabbing a frozen dinner from his fridge, he nuked it and sat in his chair in front of the small flat screen to watch the news. Seeing the news that those cocksuckin’ goat fuckers had beheaded another man pissed him off. “Why in the hell are we coddlin’ these fuckers? Hunt every one of them sonsabitches down and drop ‘em where they stand. Of all the dumb shit. Goddamned pansy-assed government we got.”

He trashed the rest of the food and took a beer from the fridge to wash the pain meds down. His system was so used to his drink of choice that it didn’t seem to have an affect on either the meds or the buzz he was looking for. The buzz didn’t come to him, but he was so fuckin’ tired that it wouldn’t matter once he fell asleep.

He woke up feeling like shit and took a cold shower. Twice in the night he’d woken up from his nightmares, and the clammy sweat that had dried on his skin was washed away with the water down the drain. He toweled off and happened to see his naked form in the mirror. No matter which angle he saw of himself, nothing changed. He laughed at his own vanity, after all, “You was never a cover model for a romance book to begin with. What the fuck are you looking for? You let your ass fall apart, and now you want to see the muscles you used to have, you gotta’ go back to work on them.”

He wasn’t flabby, his ass wasn’t as tight as it’d been, and his balls hung a little lower, other than that he was the same as he’d always been to look at. A little older maybe, but not ready for the pine box yet either. He hated to shave his face, it had been years since he’d sported clean cheeks, but he gritted his teeth and set his jaw to the task.