Wild Ones (The Lane) (4 page)

I didn’t know how long we stood there, or if I was even standing anymore, or how my head had grown so fucking heavy before I realized that our trio had grown. I cracked open my lids, immediately met with the sight of Dark and Brooding gazing at me, my purse hanging from his fist by a pathetic broken strap. His face was thunder, his eyes lightning, a silent snarl on his lips. He was glaring at me and I couldn’t tell if it was me that caused the murder in his rigid stance or the ones he’d wrestled my purse from. Maybe a little of both.

I stared dully back at him, wanting to say something witty but drawing a blank.

“Karma,” I finally said, but it was a slur.

He arched an eyebrow, not in the playful way that Jax always did, but hard. Angry. Like his expression.

“I got paid back. Knocking you in the head?” My words were mush and I wondered if my bottle of Jägermeister had been smashed, its contents spilled all over the inside of my purse.

“I don’t believe in karma.” The gravel in his voice matched mine. “I prefer to do my own paying back.”

I blinked at his words and it took real effort to not give in and let my lids stay closed.

“You put ’em up to it?” I mumbled. God. I was tired.

“If I wanted to pay you back, I would have done it myself,” he replied and I nodded because I believed him. It didn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see that about him.

I let my eyes slide close and gave in to my knees’ incessant determination to buckle. Crew Cut’s arm tightened around me at the same time Dark and Brooding said “Sugar” sharply. I raised one hand and waved it weakly in his direction, shooing him away.

“I’m good,” I slurred. “Thanks for the help, boys. Next round’s on me.”

“She needs to go to a hospital,” yet another voice piped up, and even though I felt muddled, I was alert enough to protest that, albeit wobbly.

“No. No hospital. I just need to go home and drink my purse. I’m fine.” I attempted to grin but it felt more like a grimace. “Really. You guys were great. Go on...going on. Just give me the purse and we’ll all be on our ways here.”

“Bullshit. You need a doctor.” I was pretty sure that was Dark and Brooding that time, but I couldn’t be positive. They kept at it for a minute or two, each taking a turn to encourage or flat-out demand that I see a professional, but I wouldn’t give in. They must have finally sensed it was a dead end because the next words that registered came from Crew Cut next to me.

“Fine. How are you getting home?”

“Driving,” I answered, but it was more of a sigh, not a word at all, and I let myself drift, too tired to feel anything close to victorious over getting my way.

The next thing I knew, I was being jostled, then was no longer upright. Through a wall of cotton, I felt a hard warmth beneath my cheek, and the scent of soap and something dark surrounded me.

“Which car is yours?” The low growl told me it was Brooding above me.

“Red Cougar. Ninety-something. Somewhere.” I frowned and licked my lips. Even they hurt. “Second row?”

And then I was floating, only it was jerky, and the hands gripping my side and under my knees weren’t gentle. Which was fine. I was more comfortable that way.

I was awake again, briefly, and I realized I was in my car and it was dark. Brooding said something to me but it was low and muffled. Instead of asking him to repeat it, I closed my eyes again and was gone.

When I became aware again, I was bouncing, or at least that was what it felt like. I groaned before I could stop myself and Brooding was muttering about broken elevators and stupid girls. I had an inkling that I was one of the two, and I think I told him that no one had forced him to act like a pack mule. I said something close to that, judging by the way his muscles tensed around me, wordlessly saying that it was me who had. He might have had a point.

Then I felt my dress being pulled over my head, the sequins snagging in my hair on the way up, yanking at the stands before clumsy fingers untangled them. Before I could utter any kind of protest, I was being stuffed into a replacement. I slipped my arms through the sleeves automatically. It smelled like him.

“You got Advil?” he asked close to my ear. The surface underneath me felt familiar and after a second I realized that I was on my bed, being eased onto my back, his arm a solid band behind my shoulders before it slipped away. Dimly I wondered how he knew to bring me here and if I should be alarmed. I wasn’t. I was never alarmed when I probably should have been.

“Vicodin. Above the stove.”

He was back before I realized he had been gone, and he was trying to hand me a cup of water but I told him I wanted my purse. He knew what I wanted from it without having to ask. Keeping one hand on me, he twisted around then handed over my blessedly intact Jäger. I rasped my thanks before washing down the pill with a big swig straight from the bottle. Lying back and closing my eyes again, I thought once more about that wailing and I found myself wondering if it had been me after all. I must have voiced my question out loud, because Brooding answered.

“No. It was the old man.”

I nodded in response, and fuck, it hurt, but I was grateful it hadn’t been me making that god-awful noise, even if my throat did feel like it was. I started to slip away, but Brooding’s voice stopped my descent.

“Boyfriend gonna be coming home?”

“Roommate,” I muttered. “No. Pretty drunk girls.”

This time I was able to go, feeling a dip in the bed beside me before I was lost completely, swallowed up by the darkness that had been reaching for me with welcoming, soft arms.

Chapter Four

Five Years Ago

The sky was the color of blue jeans.

Not the cheap kind, the only ones I had ever worn, usually secondhand, but the expensive kind. The kind that the stores with low lights and one-word names sold folded on tables by themselves. The kind you walked in just to look at, to see what all the fuss was about, and knew, somehow, without even touching them, that they were better than the big-box store brand you were wearing. Better than anything in your closet back home, but you weren’t exactly sure how.

It was the color blue kids used when they drew the sky. Almost unnatural in its blueness, with not a single cloud marring it. It stretched on forever, or at least as far as I could see, and while I probably looked like an idiot—a too-skinny, wild-haired runaway with a tattered bag hanging from her shoulder, staring up at the heavens with a dumbstruck look on her face—I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Not even as the bus passengers who were getting off behind me bumped into my back with impatience, hissing and snarling their displeasure at being held up.

When I finally shook myself free of the trance I was under and started to shuffle toward the bus station, I noticed the grass, trimmed to perfection, a sea of even-colored green that surrounded the brick building in the midst of it. I almost stopped again, then caught myself midgawk, the urge to laugh suddenly bubbling up inside of me.

It was all things I was unfamiliar with. Blue skies and immaculate lawns and trees. My God, there were actual trees just there, growing as if their presence wasn’t baffling and unnatural to a girl who had spent her entire life in the city surrounded by concrete.

I breathed in, taking a lungful of air that wasn’t tinted with heavy exhaust fumes and the copper taste I always associated with lost ambitions. It was clean, pure almost. There were no weird, unidentifiable smells hanging on it. To be honest, I had never really noticed smells in the city either, not after growing up there and becoming desensitized to it at a young age. Then I got away and realized what no scent actually smelled like.

Around me people chattered, loved ones called to one another, excited to see each other, to be reunited. From the road beyond the station, I could hear cars as they drove past, accompanied by the low rumbling from the bus behind me. But underneath all that, there were birds chirping. I knew they were birds, recognized their birdsong, yet I realized in that moment I had never actually heard them before. Not really.

I thought I had stepped off that packed, creaking bus and into heaven. I didn’t even really believe in heaven. Not for me. Maybe it was there, but I would never see it. They’d never let in girls like me. Girls who only knew God as something that never listened to their whispered pleas. But surely, surely, this place I had stumbled on to, which had risen up like a mirage at the end of the Greyhound line, was a kind of heaven for poor girls from dirty, cramped city apartments. Who had been born and raised with sin.

Even once it hit me, as I bypassed the station building and headed for the parking lot beyond it, that I had nowhere to go, that I didn’t know a single soul around me, that feeling didn’t leave me. Not when I spent my first night on a bench in a park a block over and woke to the nudging of a police officer telling me to move on. Not when Sarah, the life-worn, wild-eyed girl with a thirst for heroin, took me under her thin wing and showed me the ropes of life amongst the forgotten. Not even when I developed a habit of sleeping in old bus shelters around town, curled up around my sad duffel bag to protect it from greedy hands, and spent my days hidden in the depths of the library, reading while she slept off the night before, to escape the weather and judging eyes. I never felt any different, remained convinced, through the dirt and the grime, that these streets I walked were the closest thing to salvation that I would ever get.

The illusion finally dimmed a few months later when I—by then almost a veteran of the street life—went searching for Sarah, wondering where she had been for the past few days. I stumbled on her tucked behind her favored spot for shooting up, a Dumpster hidden at the end of an alley on the Lane, her eyes wide and unseeing, her arms spotted and bruised, slack at her side. An OD, said the others, many of them kindred spirits who’d shared her brand of troubles, when word got around after I called 911 from a pay phone and fled the scene. They patted me on the shoulder, shaking their heads in sadness and acceptance, before moving away, moving on. It happened, some of the gentler, kinder ones had explained. Sarah was my first, but she wasn’t theirs and she wouldn’t be my last. Some I saw. Others I only heard about. Eventually, I moved on too. You had to in order to survive.

There were no pearly gates in my new life, it wasn’t quite paradise, not like I initially thought, but there also wasn’t a worn-down ma who slept with men for money while a drunken da swung at her children then crossed lines in the cover of darkness. There were dangers, yes, and a different kind of suffering, but it was different. Less, somehow. Easier to manage. And even while running in the midst of those different kinds of suffering and dangers and troubles, I could finally breathe.

Present Day

“Oh, fuck, Bri. You didn’t.”

I cracked open bleary eyes. The sunlight and lingering ghosts from memories disguised as dreams had shifted and flickered and blended into one another seamlessly, making me flinch. Slowly I dragged my head to the side, wincing with the movement, spying Jax in the doorway, a horrified expression on his face.

“This the boyfriend?” a groggy rumble came from next to me. Glancing back over my shoulder gingerly, I saw Brooding sitting up slowly, hair sticking up in every direction. It was oddly endearing, like watching a lion waking up at the zoo.

“Roommate,” I corrected, equally as groggy before looking back at Jax. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Pretty sure there’s only one thing it could be,” he replied with something like a smirk, but in his eyes I could see weariness. Or maybe it was wariness. Maybe a twisted combination of the two.

I glanced around the room without moving my aching head, noting my dress in a heap next to my nightstand, my heels half under it. I could just make out Brooding’s shoes near the foot of the bed, his socks and pants next to them. My purse was in the middle of my rug, its broken strap reaching out toward Jax in a sad greeting, the bottle of Jäger sitting up next to it, a watchman standing guard. Remembering the smell of Brooding wrapping around me after my dress had been removed last night, I looked down, seeing his white shirt hiked up, exposing my stomach, panties and bare legs. Either I had never been under the covers or I had kicked them off at some point.

He had a point, Jax did. Going by appearances alone, only one thing could have taken place.

Dark and Brooding was still just sitting there next to me, and I could sense rather than see his amusement. I cut my eyes at him and he gave me a half smile full of perverse satisfaction. I should have been irritated, and maybe I was a little, but mostly I found myself fascinated by those full lips.

“I think your boyfriend’s pissed.” He winked and I narrowed my eyes rather than respond to him.

Scratch that. Just irritated.

“Roommate.”

He shrugged, grinning in earnest at that. “Wouldn’t matter either way.”

Without another word, he climbed out of bed, oblivious to the fact that Jax was still standing there gaping at him. Back to me, he bent over and grabbed his pants, stepping into them and pulling them up in one fluid motion, giving me a glorious view of his toned ass before it disappeared from my view. From the doorway, Jax muttered something that sounded like “Seriously?” in a tone laced with disgust as he turned, head shaking, and headed down the hall, probably wishing—and not for the first time, I was sure—that we’d been a little more specific about the protocol for bringing people home.

After putting on his socks and shoes, Dark and Brooding turned to face me.

“Gonna give me my shirt?”

Without hesitation, I sat up and grasped the hem of it, pulling it over my head, trying to ignore the pulsating, stabbing pain behind my eyes. I tossed it in his direction and leaned back, now clad in only my bra and panties, making no move to cover myself up. He kept his gaze on me as he slid it on.

“Well, sugar, it’s been fun. Try not to get yourself mugged again.”

“I’ll do my best.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, knowing that my head wouldn’t put up with much more abuse.

He stood there for a minute, staring at me, and I got the impression he wanted to say something else, and I wanted him to say it. I wanted to know if he was thinking the same thing I was, that there was something in him that called out to me, something dark and menacing. It might have been the concussion, but even if it was, I thought it was on to something.

He didn’t say it though. Didn’t say anything. Just gave me a nod and walked out of my room, leaving my door open. I closed my eyes, partially relieved, though I couldn’t pinpoint why.

Out in the kitchen, I heard Jax’s voice.

“I wanna know, man, but I’m kinda scared to ask.”

“Wise. You should ask your girlfriend though.”

“Roommate!” I shouted out, immediately grimacing.
Fuck.
Ouch.
I’m sorry
,
brain.
Stop with the hammers.

From the other room, a low chuckle answered me.

“You’re gonna want to get her another Vicodin in a few,” he told Jax, his voice moving in the direction of the front door before it opened, then closed, and he was gone.

I tried not to snort and failed, knowing Jax was drawing obscene conclusions from that statement and was no doubt standing there with his mouth hanging open.
Yes
,
Young.
I
had wild sex last night.
So wild that I look like hell today and need not one
,
but another Vicodin to recover from it.

I forced myself to focus on how I was going to tell him what really did happen rather than what appeared to have happened. He wasn’t going to be happy. In fact, I probably needed to brace myself for a rousing chorus of “Didn’t I Tell You So?”

And he had, that was the shit of it. More than once he’d cautioned me about the dangers of “pretty girls and dark alleys and people with nothing to lose.” I’d always blown him off, because I didn’t fear the junkies in general and Preach in particular. Even after last night, I didn’t fear them now. But Jax wouldn’t see it that way, wouldn’t take that into consideration. He’d see that he was right, that he had been right, and he’d preach it while fussing over me and asking me to make promises we both knew I wouldn’t keep.

It might just be easier to let him believe in what appeared to have happened rather than telling him the truth. I wouldn’t do it though. I’d tell him the truth and let him have his moment of vindication, and once he was done attempting to scold me, I’d get cozy with my bottle of Jäger, and use it to help chase the aches and throbs of the pain away.

As well as the image of Dark and Brooding standing in the middle of my now-empty room, giving me a look that made me feel something more dangerous than anything I encountered on the Lane.