Long Way Home

  “Alone,” interrupts Mom, and her voice has gone higher in pitch. “Then where were you?”

  She doesn’t want the answer and I don’t want to be a witness to her reaction. Can’t imagine trunk will go over well. I was kidnapped, now I’m home. That’s all she needs to know. “I asked Violet what happened there. She said they hit her but didn’t try anything. Besides for a few minutes upstairs, she was in my sights the rest of the time.”

  Pigpen’s eyes snap to mine. “They separated you at the house?”

  “After the president brought us upstairs, I put Violet in a bathroom. Wanted walls between her and them while they called you. I had an eye on the hallway almost the entire time. There were maybe two minutes with her out of my sight at that point.”

  Cyrus and Pigpen share a look and I shake my head. “Even with her out of my sight, I would have heard if there was a struggle. I would have heard her yell for help.”

  “So Violet was talking,” Mom confirms.

  “Yeah.”

  “When did she stop talking?” Cyrus asks.

  I run a hand through my hair and there’s a shot of pain when I hit my newly stapled gash. “Sometime after the gunshot.”

  The hospital bed moves as Mom jumps to her feet. “They shot at you?”

  Ah, hell.

  “Who were you with when you were separated from Violet?” Pigpen asks.

  Mom throws her arms out to her sides. “Did anyone else hear what he said?”

  But they already know. “Skull.”

  Pigpen studies me with narrowed eyes. “What did you two talk about?”

  “Get out,” Mom roars as she rounds on Pigpen. “Get out now!”

  Pigpen and Cyrus both look at me for approval and I nod. That one act causes Mom to mash her lips together. “He’s my son and he’s a minor. I’m the one still making the decisions here. Not him and not you!”

  Cyrus raises an eyebrow. An unspoken reminder that I’m weeks away from eighteen.

  Pigpen pushes off the wall. “Won’t be far.” Which means he’ll be outside the door, standing guard.

  Cyrus rounds the bed and gives me a brief but strong hug. “I’ll find out about Violet and your discharge.”

  “I’ll find out about discharge,” Mom snaps.

  “Fine with me, but he’s coming home with us.” Cyrus leaves and my mother goes from exhausted gray to red.

  “I hate that man.”

  She’s never said that aloud before, but I have no doubt she’s thought it a million times throughout the years. Any other circumstances, I’d be giving Mom a hard time, but it’s been a tough day all around.

  I lie back in the bed and close my eyes. “I think we should do it.”

  There’s a dip on my bed as Mom sits, followed by a deep sigh. Cyrus wants Violet and me to stay at his place until the club and the police can figure out the fallout from the kidnapping.

  “I’ve never been welcomed at Cyrus’s,” she says.

  Not sure if it’s true or not. My earliest memories have always been a separation between Mom and the club. “He told me you could stay, too.”

  “I sleep during the day and work at night. It’ll be off from everyone else.”

  “I don’t want you at the condo by yourself.” I open my eyes and my heart rips at the wetness in hers.

  Mom glances away and wipes her face with the back of her hand. “You’re staying with him, aren’t you?”

  It’s what he and the board asked of me and I don’t know how to say no. Their logic makes sense, but I don’t want her alone either. Not until I know the Riot are no longer a problem. Until I can protect Mom on my own again, I’ll ask the club for a favor and ask them to keep it silent. To watch over my mother until I can.

  “He’s my family,” I say. “Same as you.”

  “You need to cut them out of your life.”

  But that would be like cutting off parts of myself. An arm. A leg. “I’m okay, Mom.”

  Her head tilts in an effort for composure, but a single tear falls from the corner of her eye regardless. She reaches out, palm up, and I take her hand again. We sit like that, in silence, holding on to one another.

  Violet

  SILENCE.

  It’s weird how I crave it, and I can’t seem to find it.

  There’s a thrumming. Like a strange background music. It’s persistent and annoying and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. None of the others who rotate in and out of my room seem to hear it. I don’t ask, but I can tell. They don’t appear as if they’re ready to peel their skin off their bones.

  My mother’s here, beside me. Chair as close to the hospital bed as it can go and she won’t stop talking. Mom talks when she’s nervous. She talks when she’s not nervous. Mom talks. Most of it nothing of importance. Just words so she can fill the quiet I so deeply desire.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I cleaned your room while you were gone. Thought it would be nice if you came home and found it clean. I changed the sheets and the comforter. I used a new fabric softener. Smells like lilacs. I know you like lilacs. At least I think you do.”

  Never really thought of lilacs one way or another.

  Mom braids her blond hair. It’s a habit she has when she’s anxious. Mom lives in a constant state of distress. It’s been worse since Dad died. I can’t imagine what the past twenty-four hours have been like for her. Possibly the same fear and soul-crushing agony as when I sat next to her waiting to hear why Dad hadn’t returned home.

  Because of that I let her talk. It’s what makes her feel better.

  I’m not in pain anymore. There’s an IV and there’s a drip and the nurse said whatever was in the drip would take all the aches away. She was right, but it also made my head light, my body numb and my nose itch.

  “Brandon and I made you cookies. Chocolate chip ones with oatmeal in them. You loved those when you were younger. We thought you would like them when you came home.”

  I haven’t seen Brandon yet and that makes me frown. There’s no reason for them to lie to me, so I’m assuming he’s okay, but I’ll feel better once I see him, hug him, confirm in real life he’s fine.

  Fine.

  My heart squeezes. Chevy. I need to know if he’s okay. I strip off the sheet and go to slide out of the bed. Mom’s face falls, her fingers freeze on the locks of hair she was braiding, then unbraiding for the umpteenth time. “Please stop trying to get out of bed. The doctor doesn’t want you placing pressure on your knee.”

  Evidently, I’ve tried this before. Time and words seem like running water.

  “Violet...” Mom hesitates. “I know you answered earlier, when the nurses admitted you, but...” Mom stands, the long strands of her braid unraveling. “Are you sure nothing happened to you? Nothing that you want to tell me about?”

  I blink and look down at my bruised body and my now immobilized knee. It’s in some sort of brace and the doctor talked to Mom about visiting a specialist. I raise my eyebrows. Pretty obvious something happened to me.

  Mom touches the end of the hospital bed as if it’s a protective shield between her and me. She doesn’t touch me. Just the bed. “Did any man... Did anyone... Because if so, there are tests that should be run and...things that should happen.”

  My stomach drops. It was bad enough to answer the questions the nurse asked when it was just me and her and she was helping me out of my clothes. It was odd and awkward then. With Mom it’s another level of hell. I shake my head no.

  A knock on the door and I suck in a breath. Maybe it’s Chevy. Mom answers and after a brief exchange she opens the door wider and Eli walks in. Rage locks my muscles.

  Eli.

  I hate him. Hate him so much. I hate his club. I hate the way he struts in here like he belongs, like he has the righ
t to care. If it wasn’t for his stupid club, I wouldn’t have been kidnapped. If it wasn’t for his stupid personal war with the head of the Riot, they wouldn’t be using me to hurt him and they wouldn’t be threatening my family.

  “Hey, Violet.” Eli stops near the edge of the bed, and unlike Mom, he touches me, my ankle, and I jerk. He immediately lifts his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Little too late for that.

  “Is your ankle hurting, too?”

  No pain right now. It’s the meds, but everything will hurt in the morning.

  “Everyone’s been asking about you. You’ve got an entire hallway and waiting room full of guys waiting to do your bidding. Just say the word, and any of us will do or get whatever your heart desires.”

  Mom comes up beside him and my muscles twitch when she touches his arm. Touches him. I turn away, because since Dad died, I’ve been unworthy of touch.

  “The doctor said she’s dehydrated, bruised, and that there’s damage to her knee. I’m worried. They’ve mentioned surgery.”

  Weird how important surgery seems, but how no one’s mentioned that to me.

  “She keeps trying to get out of bed. God only knows where she thinks she’s going. The nurse told Violet to push the button if she needed to use the restroom and Violet seemed to understand, so I don’t have a clue what she’s doing.”

  Even though Mom’s talking, Eli keeps his eyes on me and I don’t like that he watches me so intently. My thoughts have been tough to capture, but what if he’s able to read me and he knows what I’ve been assigned to do?

  “She’s still not talking,” Mom whispers.

  “But I bet her hearing still works,” he responds.

  The right side of my mouth turns up and Eli almost smiles along with me. A crinkling near his eyes, a small spark, but his expression then falls near black with seriousness.

  I agree. This entire scenario is as serious as a severed artery.

  “Are you purposely ignoring me?” Mom pushes down the sleeves of her red sweater. “Because if so, that’s childish. I’ve been worried sick—”

  My forehead furrows. The thrumming. It grows louder and causes a slashing pain in my head.

  “She’s not ignoring us,” Eli says, and Mom’s guilt trip magically vanishes.

  Now it’s his turn to lower his voice like I can’t hear. “Just talked to Pigpen. Chevy’s confirmed it’s been a complicated few hours for her. More than we originally thought.”

  The air catches in my throat. Chevy.

  “Complicated?” Mom’s hand goes to her chest like the word crushes her lungs. “Complicated how?”

  “I’ll tell you in the hallway. I’d like to talk to you and Nina at the same time. An opportunity for all of us to get on the same page.”

  Eli angles for the door and I grab his wrist. He knows about Chevy. Eli turns back to me, studies my face, then the worry in his expression fades. Sort of like he had spent the past few hours trying to solve a math problem, but then the answer appeared in a heavenly glow along with a choir of angels.

  “Chevy’s okay,” he says like that’s a secret between us. “He’s tough. Just like you.”

  He’s okay. That’s a start. I drop Eli’s wrist and calculate how I can find him without Mom freaking out.

  “Want to see him?” Eli asks.

  Yes.

  Eli does a quick scan of the IV leading from me to the machines. A tug of his ear and he sweeps me up into his arms. Multiple hospital sheets and all.

  “What are you doing?” Mom demands, but I know and approve. “Eli, her knee. Be careful of her knee!”

  “Do me a favor, Jenny, and grab that IV machine.”

  And we’re moving. Eli kicks at the closed door of my room as a knock and the door is immediately opened by Hook. He’s Razor’s dad and my mind slowly feels like it’s stretching after being asleep.

  Razor.

  Oz.

  My best friends. My brothers.

  I want to see them. Want to figure out if being here is a dream. My head swivels as if I can snap a panoramic picture. Along the hallway and the nurses’ station, there are plenty of men from the club, but not Oz, not Razor.

  The guys from the club smile at me, nod at me, watch me as if they’re grieving, angry and relieved. A strange combination. A wall of men. Most of them are men my father called family.

  “Razor and Oz aren’t here.” Eli carries me down the hallway. “They’re texting everyone in the club every ten minutes, though. And now they have Emily texting me every five minutes. They’re driving me nuts. Razor and Oz are with your brother. Keeping his mind off you being gone.”

  Good. That’s good.

  “Put her back in her room!” Nurse Becky shoots in front of Eli, but he doesn’t stop. Instead, he steps around her. She keeps yelling and it sounds as if someone is yelling back.

  We reach the end of the hallway and Pigpen winks at me as he opens a door. My heart stops beating when Eli enters a room almost identical to mine, but instead of my mom, there’s Chevy’s mom and in the bed is the one person who could possibly understand the thrumming.

  Dark hair, dark eyes, battered, definitely bruised, but he’s still a strong, safe port in a raging storm. Chevy sits up in the bed, the pure relief on his face an echo of the unraveling of tension happening within me.

  “Brought you a visitor,” Eli announces, and when Chevy scrambles to move out of the bed, Eli shakes his head. “Stay put.”

  Eli gently lays me next to Chevy, and when our gazes meet, my eyes burn. He’s okay. Chevy’s okay.

  “Eli McKinley!” Rebecca, Oz’s mom, flies into the room. Pieces of her black hair falling from a bun. She’s in her blue nursing scrubs, and she looks like she’s ready to roast Eli over an open fire. “I am doing my best to keep the hospital from throwing you and this club out the door and then you go and pull Violet from her room? You can’t do that!”

  Rebecca checks my IV machine, pushing buttons, tracing my line and then checking where the needle goes into my skin. Her eyes flicker from me to Chevy, then back to me. She purses her lips, then she tucks my hair behind my ear. “You okay?”

  I nod, and she tucks the hair behind my ear again. I like Rebecca. She understands that sometimes words are overrated. She understands a lot of things. I often used to wish she was my mother instead of Oz’s.

  “When are they going to be discharged?” Eli asks.

  “After the doctor goes over their test results. I’ve told you this.” Rebecca returns her attention to my IV machine. “She’s on a morphine drip. You can’t go messing around with the machines.”

  “I want them out of here,” Eli demands. “I want them out of this hospital and under my roof. I don’t know what the hell I’m dealing with and I don’t want them here so exposed.”

  Rebecca glares at Eli. “Orderlies are scared to come onto this floor because of the amount of men you have planted outside this door. I think Chevy and Violet are safe.”

  They keep arguing. Mom jumps into the conversation. So does Chevy’s mom. All loud voices with varying opinions that Eli won’t listen to because he believes he knows everything.

  There’s a movement of the covers and my heart flips when Chevy’s hand finds mine. Somehow, even though I was already lying down, I settle further into the bed, into the pillow, and the thrumming in my head becomes less severe.

  It’s like a buzzing now, less annoying, but still there. As if I was encased by a beehive.

  Chevy laces his fingers with mine and I breathe out. It’s a cleansing breath, it’s a cathartic breath, it’s like slipping into a hot bath.

  Chevy’s hand is rough, calloused from football, from the years of working on motorcycles and cars, from the fistfights he’s had over the years to protect his family, to pr
otect my brother and recently to protect me.

  It’s a strong but gentle hand. One that guides our linked fingers closer to his chest, closer to his heart, and I swear to God I can feel it beating through his shirt. Maybe that’s my heart beating. Maybe this is the first time my heart has worked properly since the gun was fired.

  We’re shoulder to shoulder in the cramped bed. His body heat drifts over me like an additional blanket, and for the first time since we arrived, my eyes grow heavy and the need for sleep is overwhelming.

  I turn my head, slowly, enjoying the way the cool pillow caresses my skin. Chevy’s already watching me, and if I had the energy, I’d touch his beautiful face.

  “Please make them leave,” I whisper.

  Chevy squeezes my hand, casts his eyes in the direction of all the grown-ups who have loud voices and even louder opinions. “Everyone needs to go.”

  It’s odd how there were so many things being said at once and how that all ended in an instant.

  “We’re tired,” Chevy says. Simple. To the point. I like it.

  “We’ll be right outside.” I can’t tell if that was my mom or Chevy’s mom and I’m honestly too tired to figure it out. Instead, I study Chevy’s jaw. There’s a bruise and I don’t like it. I wish I could wave my hand and he’d be healed.

  Shuffling of footsteps on the wooden floor, then Chevy calls out, “Eli.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need sleep.”

  So do I.

  I angle my head so I can witness Eli’s response, to see if he understands what Chevy’s really asking, what I need to know before I can let myself drift.

  “We’ve got every entrance and exit covered. No one’s coming in here if you don’t want them. You’re safe to rest. Get some sleep, we’ll get you both home soon and we’ll take care of you there, as well.”

  “Thanks,” Chevy says. Eli leaves and I watch as the door to Chevy’s room closes.

  Silence.

  There’s silence.

  Not really silence.

  There’s the sound of my breaths coming in and out. The sound of Chevy’s breaths coming in and out.