Craving Constellations (29 page)

My second day in the hospital, Pop brought Trix into see me. She’d been scared. I could tell she wasn’t sure where she could touch me, so I’d lifted her hands in mine and set them on my belly. She chattered nonstop about running through the grass and asked if she did okay. It was hard for me to talk through the wires, but I assured her that she did exactly what she was supposed to. She giggled uncontrollably at the way I spoke, and Pop had to pull her off the bed to keep her from jostling me.

“Trix, where’s your game?” he asked her once she was on the floor. “Get up in that chair, would ya? I wanna talk to your mum.”

She frowned at him. She didn’t want to leave my side, but she turned and walked to the corner of the room, pausing to put little headphones on, before she climbed into the chair.

“What’s happening with Dragon?” I asked him or tried to through my teeth.

“That’s all going well. The lawyer doesn’t think he’ll be in there long. Might be a couple months though for skipping out on a court date,” he told me as he sat on the edge of my bed and held my hand.

“What court date? What happened?” I didn’t know why they had even arrested him. Every question I’d asked since I got to the hospital had been ignored or talked around. I was going crazy with the possibilities that ran through my mind.

“Well, now…back before he got his cut, there was a little altercation in a bar,” he told me, and I rolled my eyes at him.

“Dragon wasn’t a part of it, but he took the rap for another brother. One who had a sheet.”

I raised my eyebrows as he explained.

“And?” I garbled at him.

“Well, he didn’t show up for court. So, there’s been a warrant out for him, seeing as how he never showed up, and the guy had been stabbed…” he told me.

I felt my eyes close in defeat. Assault with a deadly weapon. Fuck.

“He got his cut right after that, and by that time, we’d started callin’ him Dragon. So, he pretty much dropped off the map. When he filed those papers for Trix, his name was flagged,” he explained to me apologetically. “I knew it was gonna cause problems, but the boy wouldn’t listen to me. So, that’s where we’re at.” He patted my hand. “The suit says he’ll have him out soon. The witnesses aren’t talkin’, and they’ve got nothin’ else. We just gotta be patient. He’s an Ace, and that’s makin’ wheels turn a little slower.”

“Okay,” I told him, nodding my head decisively. “We’ll just wait then.”

“Wanted to come see ya. Vera’s gonna come get you when they let you outta here tomorrow.” He leaned forward and gave me a kiss between my eyebrows. “She’ll take care of ya until I get back or Dragon gets out. Don’t you worry about nothin’ but that. You’re safe.”

He stood up and motioned for Trix to come and say good-bye.

She came and stood next to the bed while I ran my fingers through her wispy hair. I watched Pop closely. Something was off. Trix kissed my leg in good-bye, and as they walked out the door, I called out to Pop.

“Where you goin’?” I slurred to his back.

When he turned back to me, he looked like a different man. His shoulders straightened. His chin tipped up, and the fingers not holding Trix’s hand started tapping a tattoo on the leg of his jeans. The look in his eyes was frightening, and I felt the muscles in my body tighten against my hospital bed.

“Hunting,” he told me with a nod. Then, he was gone.

Vera took me home when she picked me up from the hospital. When I walked in, Casper was sitting on my couch, watching a movie, and I glanced at Vera in surprise.

“Got two of ya to look after. Boy’s got no family around here to take him in, and he’s not patched in, so he can’t go to my house,” she told me as she brought my flowers from the hospital into the kitchen. “Sit down, and I’ll get you some iced tea. Or, you want a nap?”

“No, I don’t want a nap,” I slurred at her through my teeth.

Ugh. She’d already coddled me the whole way home, forcing me to sit in the backseat of the car so I could
rest
. I’d been home for five minutes, and I already wanted to leave.

“Hey, stranger.” I smiled at Casper as I sat beside him on the couch. “How’d you get out before me?”

“Damn, Brenna. I can barely understand you!” He laughed. “Not sure why I was home before you. They let me out yesterday. Just said I had to wear this.” He wiggled his sling at me.

“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Where’s Trix? I thought she’d be here.”

“Nah, she went with Tommy Gun’s old lady and her kids. They were going to hang out over there for the day.”

I missed Trix, but I was kind of glad that I had the rest of the day to relax. I’d called the club’s attorney when we’d left the hospital, but I’d had to leave him a voice mail. I wanted to see Dragon. It’d only been three days since I’d seen him, but it seemed like a month. I was hoping that the attorney could get me in to see him sooner than the visiting days, which Vera said were Thursdays and Sundays. I didn’t know if I could wait.

It took a few minutes. I didn’t realize right away where I was sitting. Casper was enough of a distraction. But once he turned away from me, it hit me. Flashes of sitting in this same spot while Tony screamed in my face came flooding back, and immediately, I was afraid I was going to throw up. My head pounded, and my stomach cramped as I tried to get my frozen limbs to lift me off the couch.

By the time I was standing, Vera and Casper were standing with me, speaking in low voices.

“You’re okay, baby girl. You’re okay,” Vera reassured me, rubbing my lower back where I had the least bruising.

“I can’t throw up!” I told them desperately, pulling my lips back as far as I could as if to remind them of my broken jaw.

“You’re not going to throw up,” Casper told me calmly. “You do need to calm the fuck down though.”

I raised my head to call him every name I could think of for being so insensitive, but when I saw the look he was giving me, I paused. His eyes were filled with concern as he searched my face.

“I’ve heard the way Dragon calms you down,” he answered the question in my eyes with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You listen to authority. If I tried to comfort you, it would have made things worse…be glad I didn’t threaten to spank your ass,” he told me with a lopsided smile.

I made a small chuckling noise in my throat and shook my head. I did feel a bit better now, but I wasn’t sitting back down on that couch. We were going to have to move it or something. Maybe if we rearranged the furniture it wouldn’t bother me as much.

The doctors had talked to me about post-traumatic stress disorder. They’d warned me that I might have some of the symptoms, but I’d brushed them off. I’d been in pretty bad situations with Tony before, and I hadn’t had flashbacks or anger problems. They thought the fact that he had violated my sanctuary might change things though, and I guessed they were right. If that little memory on the couch hadn’t been a flashback, I was the Queen of Sheba.

I decided I was going to lie down for a while, and I asked Vera to make sure the window in our room was closed before I stepped inside. I didn’t think I could deal with any more reminders. When I climbed into bed, I was instantly comforted by the scent of Dragon on my sheets, and I inhaled until my ribs protested. It was exactly what I needed.

“I didn’t wash your sheets,” Vera told me from the doorway. “When we were younger, Slider was inside for about six months. I didn’t change the sheets until I couldn’t smell him anymore.” She laughed. “Probably couldn’t smell him anymore ’cause they were so rank from never getting washed!”

I smiled back at her in thanks before she left the room, closing the door behind her. I wasn’t tired. I just wanted to lie in our cocoon and pretend that Dragon was in the living room with Trix, playing Legos and letting me take a nap. I missed my family. After everything that had happened with Tony, I needed Dragon’s arms around me. I needed the reassurance that the life we’d built over the last couple of months wasn’t just a dream.

I tried to stay strong, to tell myself that he’d be home soon, and that I didn’t have long to wait. But, within ten minutes of Vera closing the door, tears were running down my face and soaking into Dragon’s pillow.

I fell asleep at some point and woke up to Casper calling my name from the doorway of my room. When I opened my eyes, he told me that the attorney was in the kitchen and walked away. He seemed a little abrupt, but I was in a hurry to talk to Dragon’s attorney, so I did a quick check of my clothes and hair and headed toward the voices in the front of the house.

The attorney, I thought his name was Duncan, was sitting at the kitchen table, chatting with Vera when I walked in, eager for news. I sat across from him and tried to read his face, but it showed little emotion. I didn’t know if he had good news or not.

“Mrs. Richards, I hope it’s okay that I stopped by—” He started speaking, but I cut him off.

“Brenna,” I gritted through my teeth.

We’d had this conversation before, and the douche continued to use my married name whenever I saw him.

“Brenna.” He nodded his head once. “I have a couple of things to speak to you about. First, let’s get the questions you left on my voice mail out of the way. I can’t get you in to see Dragon this week.”

“Why?” I interrupted him again. Pop and Slider seemed to think he could move mountains. It seemed like a very little thing to get me into the jail.

“Well,” he paused. “I’m just going to tell you. I talked to Daniel White today, and he doesn’t want to see you.”

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me, and the absolute lack of compassion on his face made it ten times worse.

“Why?” I asked again.

“Mr. White didn’t give me his reasons, but he was adamant that if you showed up, even during regular visiting hours, he wouldn’t see you,” he told me impatiently. “Now, regarding the custody suit, that’s been dropped due to the death of the plaintiff.”

“What?” I cried.

He was going too fast; the information he was giving me was making my head spin. I felt Casper come up behind me and lay his hand on my shoulder as I looked at the attorney in bewilderment. He acted like we were wasting his precious time, like he had better things to do than sit and try to explain things to me.

“Mr. Tony Richards was found dead in a hotel room on the California border this morning. Of course, nothing is legal yet, but without a plaintiff, it’s all a matter of paperwork at this point,” he told me offhandedly, gathering the paperwork on the table into his briefcase. “I’ll still work on getting those birth certificates changed though, but I don’t foresee any problems with that.”

I looked over to Vera for verification, and her face was like stone. I opened my mouth to say something, I didn’t know what, and she shook her head at me once. Not while the lawyer was there. That little shake of her head reminded me of Pop’s visit the morning before. He’d said he was going hunting. Holy God.

Dragon never changed his mind about letting me visit.

I had to learn about how he was doing from the brothers who visited him every Thursday and Sunday. I gathered their news like a hoarder, thinking about it over and over again, as I lay in bed at night with Trix cuddled into my side. The attorney was still a complete asshole, but he seemed to be doing his job. Dragon got three months, and by the time they’d decided, he’d already finished a month.

Trix and I continued with our regular routine even though most of the club’s kids returned to school at the end of the summer. I decided to homeschool Trix for preschool that year. We’d had too many changes and upheavals as it was. I didn’t want to add to the things she would have to tell her therapist as an adult.