“I don’t sound like that.” I rolled my eyes. He was trying to walk over me to do God knew what, so I assisted him by sticking my leg out. It tripped him. It was a total accident. There went the coffee table for good.
“Shit, Lex liked that one,” he said, pushing himself out of the rubble. It was now a mess of splintered wood. I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh. Manly laugh, not girlish giggling.
“You’ll get her another one, you know, just go and fucking take it. And you might have a zombie try to eat you while you take it, but you’ll kill it. Just like we’re going to kill those motherfuckers in Lakeview.”
“I don’t want to, I just want to stay here in the compound. I don’t ever want to risk her again. I don’t want to risk anyone else from our group,” he whispered, sitting back down on the sofa, his task forgotten. He looked over at me, a frown on his face.
“Okay, we don’t have to, we’ll just make sure Lex gets better, she’ll be back to normal in no time, you’ll have your girl,” it stuck in my throat just a tiny bit. Even though I told myself they were good together, it still hurt.
“She’s your girl too, Blake,” he said and I shook my head.
“Nah, y’all belong together. I fucked up. I thought, maybe, but I shouldn’t get in the middle.”
“She loves you, she never stopped. She loves me too, but we sort of all fit together. I’m willing to give this a shot, if it’s what she wants. I just wanted to tell you that, you know, I’m okay with it.”
“Things might be different now. We don’t know what happened, she could…” My voice wavered and I hid it by taking a long gulp of my drink.
“At least she’s alive,” he said looking around for his glass, which he had knocked over on the floor.
“There’s that,” I agreed.
“I’m serious, Blake, we’ll make this work. I want to make her happy and if it entails putting up with your ass, I’ll give it a go.”
“Don’t expect me to fuck you too,” I grinned and he grinned back.
“Well, I always did think you were awfully pretty.” I found the other shoe and this time I didn’t miss.
ZACH
My head hurt like a bitch. I hadn’t put down that much gin in a long time. My memory of the conversation with Blake was fuzzy, but I felt a bit lighter, like I had gotten some things off my chest.
After cleaning up the mess we made in the front room, I went directly into Lex’s room. I checked her IV, bandages, keeping busy. I had to keep busy.
I wasn’t in there ten minutes before the first knock on the door rang out. It was Grace Peters with breakfast. Thirty minutes later, it was Isaiah. Heather Murphey showed up with Baby an hour after that to talk strategy. She didn’t like any of my ideas. Fucking Army.
I went back to Lex’s bed. Blake paced back and forth. If he didn’t stop, I was going to punch him. I got up and walked out instead. Progress.
BLAKE
After a few hours of watching Lex sleep, I couldn’t take the waiting anymore. She would get better, and my staying in here and staring at her wasn’t going to make things quicken any. I wanted to be there when she woke up. Zach kept coming in and out of the room all day long. The doorbell kept ringing and I didn’t want to deal with any of it.
Bubba got it into his head that he wanted to arrange a memorial for Martinez. We didn’t have his body. It was still in the classroom in that school, but we could say a few words, eat a meal, whatever. It was too soon for me. I didn’t want to think about it, I didn’t want to think about any of it.
I stood up abruptly and marched into the front room, coming to a stop when I noticed Zach wasn’t alone. Tammi was there with Heather Murphey and they didn’t look too pleased with Zach.
“We have to act now, Zach, they are reeling with the loss of their leader. They are unorganized. As soon as Junior gets a stranglehold on that group, all bets are off. He’s nothing like his father, no heavy drug use, military background…he’ll be a formidable enemy once he flexes his muscles,” Murphey was saying when I walked in.
They all turned and greeted me with grim expressions.
“Just give me a few more days, ladies. That’s all I’m asking.” Zach ran his hand through his hair, which was growing out.
“We don’t have a few more days,” Tammi said.
“Well, then you’ll have to go in without us. I’m not leaving this house until I know Lex is better.”
“We don’t know when that will be!” Murphey exclaimed exasperated.
“Soon, it’ll be soon,” I said, butting into the conversation. “Not to mention, Lex is a great strategist. She’ll be a very valuable asset when it comes to information on the gang. She pays attention, she knows protocol. She’ll be able to tell us things that the other girls wouldn’t think of. It’s how she got out of there. Wait for her to come to. You’ll thank us later.”
“You think she’ll be up and about in twenty-four hours?” Murphey asked and I just nodded even though I wasn’t sure. Who knew what she had to heal before she could be up and about.
The two women left but not before a parting shot from Tammi. “It smells like a bar in here, gentleman. Might want to get your shit tight before Sleeping Beauty wakes up.”
“Fuck,” Zach cursed and made a grab for another bottle of gin. Not to clean up though.
“Zach, maybe you…”
“Shut up, Blake.” He went straight for the back deck and I went back to Lex’s bed.
ALEXIS
For the first time, I awoke after blacking out and I knew exactly where I was. I was in my house; I could smell my sheets, the familiar softness of the bed and even the sound of the house around me was familiar. There was nothing like being home. I was finally home.
My back still ached slightly even though I was lying on my stomach. I was grateful that I was here and not in the infirmary. I could feel the pull of bandages, so Isaiah must have already been here to fix me up. I moved my shoulders to experiment with my range of motion, and there was only a twinge of intense pain when I pushed up. I had been afraid that my back had been split open, but from the dull throb it was obvious it was bruised badly, but maybe not ripped open.
"Fifty-six stitches." Blake's voice came from my left, and I turned my head to find him. He was sitting in a chair next to the bed. I expected a little warmer reaction to my waking, but he looked like a pot that that was about to simmer over. Anxious and worried. He reached out a hand and brushed my hair from my face.
"Isaiah played homemaker on your back for three hours. Zach had to hold you down until we finally just shot you up with the good shit. You've been out for two days."
"Two days, shit." I tried to sit up, but the pain shot through me again, and I held still too quiet down the roaring.
"You don't know the self-control it took to not storm into that place and kill every one of those motherfuckers."
"As long as you wait for me to get back in working order and then I'll be right there next to you."
"You aren't going near those men, Alexis. I can't...I can't sit here and look at you..."
"Damaged goods, huh, Blake?" I couldn't blame him. I had put him through a ton of shit and now I was all sorts of fucked up. He probably thought I had been fucked ten ways to Sunday...who knows what kind of diseases I might have. If I were him, I wouldn't want any part of me either.
"Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding me, is that what you think?" He leaned forward and grabbed for my hand.
"What else?" I said softly.
"I was supposed to protect you, but instead I brought in a person that hurt you. I should never have left. I should never have abandoned you. I broke my promises and all over a woman that wasn't worth my attention, much less my loyalty. I should have let Zach kill her.”
"No, we did the right thing, killing her in cold blood wasn't an option. I'm pretty sure she endured hell at the hands of the bikers." My voice hitched thinking about what she must have gone through, what Melinda went through long before we arrived. "
They
need to be taken care of, I couldn’t give a shit about Clara."
"If it weren't for her, you wouldn't have gone through what you did...what did you go through?
Just the crap we went through to get you out. I can’t even imagine what they did to you. It makes me want to kill them all.”
"I don't want to talk about that right now. And what do you mean, the shit that happened trying to get me out?” He just shook his head, tight-lipped.
“Where's Zach?" I tried to push up onto my elbows again, but the pain was unbearable, so I fell back down onto my stomach.
"Lemme get Isaiah." Blake stood.
"Where is Zach, Blake?"
"He's around. There is a lot of stuff going on, Lex, he'll be in to see you soon."
"I don't want fucking Isaiah, I want Zach."
"You need the doc." He backed up out of the room and I wanted to throw a fucking fit, kick something, throw something but I couldn't even move. I felt so helpless stuck in this damn bed.
And sure enough, Isaiah poked his head through the door five minutes later and I could practically feel my blood pressure skyrocketing. Where the fuck was Zach? Why wasn't he here?
"How are we feeling?" Isaiah asked as he settled in the chair next to my bed.
"How do you think I'm feeling? Get me the fuck out of this bed, doc."
"You aren't going anywhere, Lex, you've got to heal and you'll only heal in bed, resting."
"I'll rest when I'm dead. Get me the fuck out of this bed." I kept my voice firm even though the pain had me gritting my teeth.
"Not going to happen," he insisted.
"I'll kick your ass when I get out of this bed..."
"I hate saying this, but I look forward to it," he laughed and grabbed my arm. On a good day, I could have shaken off his grip, but I was as weak as a kitten and all he had to do was inject the damn IV.
I hadn't even noticed I was hooked up to one.
"You play dirty," I whispered as whatever he hooked me up with took me down.
BLAKE
I gave in and joined Zach after night fell. I knew we wouldn’t get any more visitors from the group, visitors that would judge and demand.
“Hey, you remember Nawzad?” he laughed when I sat down next to him. I don’t know why he was laughing. Nawzad was a fucking shit show. One of the ten worst places on Earth, Nawzad, Afghanistan. It was also the setting of one of my reoccurring nightmares.
“Yeah, how could I forget?”
“We got pushed back and had to hole up in that house. What was that guy’s name, kept fucking trying to get me to screw one of his daughters or wives or something?”
“Hafez,” I said to help him out. “And I don’t think he was trying to get you to have sex with one of them.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it was sex. He locked me in a room with one of them.”
“That’s ridiculous, where was I?”
“I don’t know, where were you?” I just shrugged and he continued. “You remember how stir-crazy Martinez got? You remember I told him to find something to do with himself or I was going to knock him out?”
“Yeah, I was there then,” I laughed.
“He was pacing around and talking to himself in Spanish. Driving us all crazy.”
“When he started telling bad jokes, you made him put on a burqa and do surveillance dressed as a woman just so I wouldn’t whale on him. That was priceless.”
“Shit, that worked so well, everyone was doing it by the time we left.”
“You got that idea from the 1st, admit it.”
“I did not! I was trying to get Martinez out of the house, he was such a pain in the ass back then.” I laughed again, but then fell silent. We had all been so young. We had believed ourselves immortal, until a few months later when we lost so many.
“How many does that make?” he whispered.
“Twenty-three.”
I reached for the bottle of gin and he pulled it away.
“Someone’s got to stay alert, there’s not gonna be a twenty-fourth.”
“Damn straight, but you gotta pull your head out of your ass, Zach. Lex asked about you. She’s going to throw a fit if you aren’t there the next time she wakes up.”
“I don’t want to be the one to tell her about Martinez. I can’t tell her that.”
“Why not?” I asked.