Authors: Lauren Gilley
Michael felt a stab of regret. She felt bad now, and that made him feel bad, but he didn’t know how to fix it. The girl needed friends. She needed a family – a real one, that had no relation to the filth that had raised her. So what did he do, invite her to have Christmas with him?
In truth, he was feeling in desperate need of seeing her again, and again.
“I guess I should get going,” she said, still facing away from him, loading the dishwasher. “I have to work this afternoon, and I should go by the store first, and–”
“Holly.”
She closed the dishwasher and turned to face him, eyes wide with sudden nerves.
“Have you ever had Christmas?”
She glanced down at her bare toes, peeping from the hems of the pants, and he saw the tiny shudder move through her.
“Hol.”
Her eyes came up to his face, and her mouth was very small and bow-shaped, pressed tight with the revulsion of her memories.
“What I meant was, have you ever had a nice dinner, and a drink, and a fire to sit in front of on Christmas?”
She shook her head.
Michael swallowed and felt the dry sides of his throat sticking together. His mother hadn’t had those things either, because her husband had killed her before they could start a new life at Uncle Wynn’s.
He looked at Holly’s complete delicacy of form, the way she was as beautiful as she was, in ways he couldn’t quantify, despite the awful things done to her. Camilla was twenty-seven years in the ground, but he could do something for Holly. He could settle the cosmic score just a little.
And he needed so much more of what they’d had last night.
“You can come here,” he told her. “We can have Christmas.”
It was wondrous, to watch her absorb his words, and hold them in close behind her eyes to stop the tears, the breath lodging in her throat. “I can cook,” she said, in a quiet, straining voice. “I can make all the things you’re supposed to make.”
Michael nodded. “I got plenty of whiskey and firewood.”
She smiled, and it cracked, and her lips trembled.
Michael wanted to go to her, but it felt too soon and dangerous to do that, so he stared down into his coffee instead.
It was too cold to even think about putting her shorts back on, and besides that, Michael wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re gonna catch pneumonia and die,” he said, and insisted she keep the clothes he’d given her to wear. That was fine with her; they smelled like him, and the cedar drawer of the dresser he’d pulled them from.
In the bathroom, she scrubbed her face, combed her hair and tied it back with an elastic from her purse, and then it really was time for her to go, and she didn’t want to.
She faced him in the foyer, the house looking even more dated, but charming around them in the daylight. She twisted her hands together as the nerves stole over her, and as she stared up into his unforgiving face. It was a different breed of nerves from last night, though. Now, she was nervous about leaving him, breaking the spell of last night. She didn’t want to lose this, whatever it was. It was the most wonderful, precious thing, and she wanted to hold it close, to preserve it in her cupped hands and keep it burning.
Michael, again with the power to read her thoughts, said, “The other two will be cautious now, but I’ll get to them. They won’t be able to hide for long.”
She smiled, marveling at this new soft underbelly in his voice, and at the way such harsh words were like the sweetest love poetry to her ears. She nodded. “I know you will. You’re…you’re wonderful…”
“Ah, Holly, don’t…”
“But I mean it!” She stepped in close to him, her heart pounding. She couldn’t hold her hands back, clutching at the hard knots of his biceps. “I know it doesn’t mean much, coming from me, but you’re wonderful for what you did.” She felt the pressure of tears at the backs of her eyes and blinked against them. “What you did for me…” She bit down hard on her lip, on the verge of losing her composure completely. How could she make him understand what this meant to her? All of it.
He swallowed, his throat rippling in a way that looked like it hurt. His eyes were trained on her face, a striking depth to the hazel centers she hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t going to speak, she realized, only stare at her. But she felt his hands at the backs of her arms, clutching her as she clutched him.
“Oh, Michael.” She flung her arms around his neck, pressed herself against him and strained on her tiptoes, so she could tuck her face into the crook of his neck. The disbelief and the joy and the rapture crashed over her again, too consuming to be real. “You killed him. You really did, you killed him.”
His voice was thick. His hands were against her back, smoothing up and down the length of her spine. “I really did.”
“Tell me how to thank you,” she said against this throat, kissing the skin there. “I’ll do anything.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and eased her back, so she could see his face again, the pain pressed into the sinister lines of it. “Don’t thank me.”
She started to protest, and he shook his head. He wasn’t going to talk about this, acknowledge what it meant to her.
“When’s dinner tonight?” he asked, changing the subject without grace, his gaze almost desperate.
Holly reeled in her composure, lowering down onto her heels, nodding. “I get off at ten. So, eleven? It’ll take the lasagna a while to bake.”
“I’ll come by the bar.”
The tears rallied again, in her eyes, putting pressure on her sinuses. He had to know how excruciatingly magical it felt to think that a man who had killed for her, who had given her the first physically pleasurable moment of her life, would then come wait for her after work. Was this what normal girls felt? Was this the wondrous comfort Ava Lécuyer had in her husband?
“Okay,” she whispered.
But as she was turning for the door, his hands captured her, curled lightly around her throat. And he kissed her with the sudden, assured fervor of a drowning man.
Holly opened her mouth against his, melted into his chest, as his arms stole around her. She let him in and in, his tongue and his lips, and his hands going under her shirt in the back, finding her warm naked skin, overcome by the thought that in this small way, giving herself over to him, she was easing a deep ache he carried inside himself.
His breathing was ragged as he pulled back, his eyes liquid and sparkling, the way they’d been last night.
“Go,” he urged.
And she laid her hands against his face, and whispered, “I can’t wait to see you again,” before she left.
Michael stood in the foyer a long time after the front door closed, after he’d watched the Chevelle go rumbling out of his driveway. The house was silent as a tomb. Mocking him.
You thought you liked all this loneliness
, it whispered to him, in the utter stillness.
You were wrong.
Twelve
Leroy’s was a cramped gas station market with a surprisingly diverse grocery store inside, along with a deli and a tiny frozen food section in back. Every few weeks, Holly made the trip to Kroger, to stock up on basics and fresh herbs, but most times, she popped into the hotspot to pick up a few things here and there. Painfully conscious of her man-sized sweats, and what they implied, she parked at the curb and went into the market in hopes they had ground beef for the dinner she’d promised Michael. If they didn’t, she’d already decided she’d traipse across the entire state to get the fixings for the lasagna she’d told him she’d make.
There was a teenage girl behind the register, cracking her gum and flipping through a magazine. She didn’t acknowledge the chime above the door, or Holly’s entrance.
That was fine. Holly picked up a basket and went hunting. She found the beef she needed in the cooler in back, and then she picked up a few other things: bagged lettuce at the deli for a salad, a cheap bottle of white wine, a bottle of Jack, since she didn’t have any at home, a bag of flour for the cookies she planned to make.
She’d just added olive oil to her basket when she stepped back and bumped into another customer.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she rushed to say.
It was Ava Lécuyer standing behind her. She had a basket full of groceries and held a bottle of red wine vinegar in one hand. The collar of her long black wool coat was flipped around her throat against the cold, her cheeks still pink from the brush of the wind.
Holly wasn’t startled, but a little surprised, suddenly off-balance to see this member of the Lean Dogs royal family away from Bell Bar, and out in the real world, like this.
“Hi,” she said, drawing a complete blank. She was suddenly self-conscious. Would Ava sense where she’d been? That she’d spent the night with Michael?
Of course not.
“Hi,” Ava echoed, looking a little surprised herself. “It’s Holly, right?”
“Right.” Holly offered a smile, knowing that, beyond this casual greeting, there was no further obligation of politeness. They’d walk away from one another, and that would be it.
But Ava gestured to her basket and said, “Last minute Christmas shopping, you know? I’m in charge of making the salad.”
Without Carly at the bar, Holly hadn’t been spoken to in any sort of friendly matter in days. Unless she counted Michael, and friendly was too mild a word for what he was with her. “Dinner with your family?” she asked, a nervous fluttering in her chest. She didn’t know if she was any good at small talk. She hoped she was.
Ava nodded. “Just us, my parents, my brother, and my grandparents.” She made a face. “My biker-hating grandmother.”
“Ah.”
Small half-smile. “Yeah.” She pressed her hand to her belly, over her coat, confirming what Holly already knew. “And more biker-spawn on the way, so it should be loads of fun.”
Holly smiled back. “You and Mercy are happy about it, though, so that’s what counts.”
Ava’s smile softened a fraction, voice gentling a touch. “Yeah, we are.” She adjusted her basket. “What about you? Big plans?”
Just a day before, she would have been forced to say “no.” But now, her smile widened and her belly tightened with excitement as she said, “Not big, but they’re plans.” She nodded. “Yeah, plans.”
Ava studied her a moment, expression thoughtful, shrewd, well-guarded. Holly wondered if it was an MC thing, or an Ava thing, her quiet focus.
“With Michael?” she asked.
Holly felt the color come up in her cheeks.
“You really like him, don’t you?”
“I don’t think ‘like’ covers it,” Holly said, softly.
Ava regarded her another moment, then gave herself an all-over shake. “I’m sorry, ignore me. I’m home by myself so much these days, and I’ve got writer’s block…I didn’t mean to pry.” She started to turn away.
“You’re not prying,” Holly said. “Actually.” She winced. This felt like a betrayal to Michael. “Can I ask you something?”
Ava nodded.
“I know that the guys in the MC stick together.”
“It’s a brotherhood,” Ava said.
“Yeah.” A brotherhood stronger than any clique, or college fraternity, or friendship. Seeing them in the bar, in groups of two and three, had been enough evidence for her to learn that the Lean Dogs belonged to a nation all their own, a world beyond the reach of others. “But why,” she continued, “is Michael always alone?”
Ava shrugged. “I don’t know anything about him. I have no idea.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Ava hesitated, then said, “The brotherhood runs deep, but there are even deeper places, in all of them. Things they’d only ever tell their old ladies.” She lifted her brows. “Maybe Michael will tell you those things, in time.”
“Maybe so,” Holly said, and hope stirred in her chest, like the feather-light brush of wings unfolding.
Low indigo clouds were rolling slowly in from the west, vivid and dark against the silver morning sky when Mercy pulled onto the Dartmoor lot behind Ghost. The rusted-out Buick was already waiting for them, parked in front of the clubhouse. The sight of it angered Mercy. He hated these hillbillies anyway; daring to be on their property felt like an affront.
Abraham had another man with him this morning, a square-shouldered, wind-battered frown in a pair of Dickies that could only be his brother, judging by the physical resemblance. The pair leaned back against the Buick’s rust-eaten fender and waited with undisguised agitation.
Mercy watched the brother size him up as he and Ghost approached. Everybody sized him up, wherever he went, and they always found themselves lacking.
He smiled to himself.
“My brother, Jacob,” Abraham said by way of greeting.
Ghost spared the man a flat, disinterested look, and asked Abraham, “What’s this about? I don’t like my dealers coming onto club property.”
“My son-in-law, you remember him,” Abraham said.
“The one with the ears, boss,” Mercy said, helpfully, giving the two dealers his worst grin.
“Yeah, thanks Merc, I got it.” Ghost sighed. “What about him? So he’s missing. So what?”
“You gotta understand Dewey,” the brother, Jacob, said. “He ain’t the type to go running off and not tell anybody.”
Ghost’s face said,
I don’t give a damn
. “Obviously, he is the type.”
“Nah, you don’t understand,” Jacob said. “Dewey ain’t real smart.”
Mercy snorted. “Neither are you,” he muttered, earning sharp glances from all three of them.
“He doesn’t get ideas,” Abraham said, scowling now. “He doesn’t think to himself, ‘I think I’ll go over there.’ He does what he’s told. And nobody told him to get himself lost.”
Ghost made an impatient sound. “Say you’re right and something happened to him. How’s that my business?”
Abraham scowled. “He works for you!”
“No. I allow you to sell in my districts, at the agreed price. None of the three of you are my employees. Let’s get that perfectly clear. Understand? You don’t work for me. You are indebted to me.”
The brothers shared a look. “Okay,” Abraham said in a quieter voice, swallowing down his aggression. “I understand. But…you know better than anybody what goes on in this town. If there was somebody doing bad things to people in Knoxville, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”
“That girl got killed at that bar,” Jacob said. “I saw it on the news this morning.”
“And I got a bad feeling about Dewey, Mr. Teague. You know? Like a sick feeling, in my gut.” Abraham put his hand to his stomach, to drive home the point.
“No offense to your son-in-law,” Ghost said, “but guys who kill pretty young women don’t tend to go after big-eared doofuses, just on principle.”
“You saying you won’t help us find him?” Abraham asked.
“I’m saying it’s not my problem,” Ghost said. “I’m sorry for your loss, if it turns out to be a loss, but Knoxville isn’t exactly a murder hotbed.”
“What about that girl?” Jacob asked, scowling.
“An unfortunate statistic.” Ghost gave them both a curt nod and stepped away, headed for the clubhouse. “Now get off my lot, both of you.”
Mercy lingered a moment.
“That’s just how it is then?” Abraham asked him, bristling with hostility and frustration.
Mercy recalled what Michael had said about these men. In his gut, suspicion was hardening to assuredness. Michael wasn’t his favorite brother, but he was right on this count. He could smell the bad coming off these two in hot shimmers of acrid stink.
“Yeah,” he said, “that’s just how it is.”
Michael spent the day on his bike, the cold biting through jacket, cut, and leather gloves, flicking in around the rims of his Ray-Bans and blasting his eyes until they were dry and painful. He rode through all the rough parts of the city, venturing outside of it to check in with some of his usual rats and contacts. No one knew an Abraham or Jacob Jessup. No one knew where he might find them. His lunch was a gas station turkey club, with a Pepsi, that he ate on the sidewalk. A fresh pack of smokes. All afternoon the clouds piled in one after the other, until the sky was rounded and fleecy overhead. The promised snow, moving into place in time for Christmas.
By the time he gave up – not truly gave up, he reminded himself, just calling off the hunt for the day – he felt old, and stiff, and chilled. The faint glow of light behind the tinted windows of Bell Bar beckoned him off his Harley and through the doors, where the welcome heat blasted across him.
His hands were so cold he had trouble stripping off his gloves, and he didn’t unzip his cut right away, left it and the jacket on as he slid into his favorite back booth, where he could see and hear everything without being seen or heard. He didn’t have a book with him. He hadn’t even remembered one, in his preoccupation of the day.
The bar was full of people: last-minute shoppers, the usual drinkers, probably one or more of his brothers. He didn’t see any of it; it was all a multicolored blur. His eyes went straight to Holly, the luscious shape of her as she moved between tables in purple shorts and white tank top.
She noticed him, smiled, went back toward the bar. There was an unconscious, feminine swing to her hips as she came to his table. He knew what those hips felt like now, the hard points of the bones against his palms, the smooth skin.
She set a steaming white mug in front of him. Coffee. “There’s Jack in it,” she said. “You look cold.”
Her hand lingered on the table a moment, after she’d put down the drink. Michael laid his over it, running his fingers over the small bones of her knuckles in a silent greeting and thank you.
“Snack?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nah. I can wait.”
That afternoon before work, Holly had browned the ground beef she’d bought at Leroy’s and cooked her pasta, layering up the lasagna in the pan and putting it in the fridge for that night. She’d cleaned her apartment from one side to the other. The rug was still worn, the sofa threadbare at the front edges, but the loft smelled of lemons and mint and fresh things when they walked into it at ten fifteen, and Holly was pleased to see the faint glimmer of the floorboards, the shiny white of the tile at her kitchenette backsplash.
“It’ll take about an hour,” she said, going to turn the oven on as Michael engaged all the locks on the door and hung up his jacket and cut. “But we could have the salad before, if you’re too hungry.” She frowned as she pulled the casserole dish from the fridge and lifted off the cling film. “If you eat salad, I mean. Maybe you don’t. Do bikers eat salad?” She was on the verge of babbling, a little nervous about getting this whole dinner-for-a-good-man thing right.
She laughed as she opened up the oven, slid the lasagna inside. “Is that part of your outlaw code? ‘Thou shalt not eat salad’?”
She turned to him, after the oven was shut, and got caught in the fall of his gaze from across the narrow counter of the kitchen island.
All that slumbering intensity that dwelt behind narrowed eyes and frosty, disinterested glances was now laid bare, unguarded and laser-focused on her. It was a mask, his expressionless stare, an unconscious one and not an act, but a mask all the same. And beneath it, he was perhaps more alive and vibrant than anyone she’d ever met, even if he never put voice to the radiant energy. Even if he was as precise and intentional as always. A fire, trapped in a man, trying to be a statue.