Six Brothers

Two

The morning is cold, the wind coming straight from the frigid sea, forcing strands loose from my messy ponytail. I jog in the street, a free woman for now, my new found exit a fire escape in the very back of the clubhouse, probably forgotten long ago.

My bright pink Nikes pound the pavement in stark contrast to my tanned legs as I sprint away from the clubhouse. My destination is just a few blocks away, in the opposite direction from Va Va Voom.

I take the scenic route, even though it takes longer and is out of my way, because I haven’t lived near the ocean for so long, and I can’t get enough of it.

About ten minutes later, I am puffed, strands from my ponytail sticking to my neck. I used to be a lot more fit than I am now, but the only exercise I’ve been getting lately involves sucking Dornan’s dick, which doesn’t exactly burn the calories.

The abandoned shipping yard in front of me is surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire, but I find a hole torn in the chain links and shimmy in. The yard is messy and unattractive, with high weeds, a derelict building in the middle of the block complete with broken windows. Just the way I like it for an incognito meet up.

We’re supposed to meet on the far side of the building, a brick complex that once housed an open-plan office. It now sits empty, home to stray birds who can get in through smashed windows to make their nests in the wooden rafters.

As I turn the corner at the far end of the building, I see him.

“Elliot,” I say, breaking into a smile. He grins, and my stomach does a flip. It’s been a week since I’ve seen him. Amongst all of the crazy shit that went down after Chad died, I haven’t been able to leave the club by myself for more than five minutes, much less get across town to Elliot’s tattoo studio or a pay phone.

He’s drinking coffee, bleary eyed, and dressed in jeans and a hoodie. “Hey,” he says, a slight pause after he says the word, as if he can’t decide what to call me. Good. He’s learning.

As I get closer, he opens his arms, pulling me into a bear hug. I flinch at first, not used to the sudden display of genuine affection, before I melt into his chest.

He gives me a brotherly peck on the forehead and steps back, surveying my ordinary clothes. “Where’s your slutty costume today?” he asks, putting his hands up when I go to punch him.

“Shut up,” I say, stealing his coffee and taking a swig. The liquid is black and bitter, without a trace of sugar or milk. I make a face and hand it back to him. “Dude, that is disgusting.”

He smiles and winks at me before his face turns serious.

“I heard about Chad,” he says, a deep frown etched into his forehead. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Elliot crosses his arms against the bracing wind, looking at me apprehensively. “Gee, I’m not sure…maybe because you’re the one who killed him?”

“Elliot!” I protest. “Jesus Christ.”

He shrugs and sips his coffee. “Well, what should we talk about? The weather?”

“It’s fucking freezing.”

“You never used to curse when we were together,” he says. “It’s sexy.”

“A lot’s happened since you left me,” I say, placing emphasis on left and me.

“Why’d you want to meet in this place, anyway?” Elliot asks, apparently ignoring my not-so-subtle jibe at him breaking up with me. He cranes his neck to look around. “Surely there are nicer spots for our rendezvous.”

I roll my eyes. “Did you bring the stuff I asked you to pick up?”

He sighs. “I’m still not sure how I feel about delivering this shit to you, Ju-“ he stops mid sentence, peering at me. “What was your stripper name again?”

“Astrid Jewel,” I say, “asshole.”

“Astrid Jewel Asshole?” His eyebrows shoot up. “Wow, okay, that’s an interesting name.” He pulls a small plastic package from his jeans pocket and slaps it into my open palm.

“Dick,” I say, pocketing the package.

He grins like a Cheshire cat, showing his teeth, before dropping it and becoming serious once more.

“I’m worried about you. Jesus, Julz, you’re all I can goddamn think about.”

“I’m fine,” I respond in a clipped voice.

“You’re not fine,” he argues, slamming his coffee down on the windowsill behind him. “You think I don’t know what it would take to get into the clubhouse of a man like Dornan Ross?

Just like that, his entire demeanour changes like the flip of a switch. I can practically feel the rage radiating from him, the frustration.

The terror.

And I understand why he’s acting like this.

Because he saved me from Dornan once.

We both know he won’t be able to save me twice.

“You think I’m some scared little girl, Elliot? Because, I’m not. I grew up in this life, remember? My first goddamn childhood memory is of me walking in on my mom sucking Dornan’s dick, for Christ’s sake. This life isn’t new to me, as much as you wish it was.”

He rubs his jaw, agitated. Suddenly, I regret saying what I did.

“Elliot,” I implore him, suddenly close to tears. “I can’t do this with you. I can’t. If you can’t accept what I’m doing, maybe we should stop seeing each other like this.”

“Stop seeing each other,” he mutters under his breath in a mocking tone. “No, that’s not going to happen.”

We continue to stare daggers at each other. His eyes are shiny and his hands are balled into fists. I chew on my lip to stop an avalanche of emotion from pouring out. I can’t lose him, not now. He’s the only person in the world who I can count on. He’s the only person who’d know to come looking for me if I went missing in a sea of treachery, leather, and Harley Davidsons.

He’s the only person in the world who actually cares about me.

I open my eyes wide and roll them around so the tears forming in them won’t roll out onto my face. The stupid thing is, I’m not even sure what I want more right now—to get my revenge on the Gypsy Brothers?

Or to be not so fucking alone.

Part of me wants to tell him how much he ruined me when he left me. Built my shattered soul back up, bit by bit, for three long years, only to smash it all down when he left me standing, barefoot, in his grandmother’s driveway.

But I won’t. I’ve been living inside my head for so long, I wouldn’t even know how to say those things to him.

He deserves better than someone like me, anyway.

It is Elliot who finally breaks the silence.

“You should call grandma,” he says pointedly.

Emotion slams into me again, and homesickness. I may hate Nebraska, but I love that woman with every bit of my soul. Elliot’s grandmother. My guardian angels, her and Elliot both.

I swallow sharply. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You just don’t want to.”

“I do want to,” I argue stubbornly. “It’s not that easy.”

He sneers at me. “It’s called a goddamned pay phone, Julz. It’s not like she’ll see your face.”

He says face like it’s the ugliest thing in the world, and I shrink back, anger and grief swirling in my chest.

I want to walk away, but I can’t. I never could walk away from Elliot.

“She misses you,” he adds, gentler this time.

“I miss her too,” I mutter, looking anywhere but at him.

“I still don’t understand why you had to go all the way to Thailand to get your face re-made. We’re in L.A. Plastic surgery capital of the world. Although,” he says, brushing a finger against my cheekbone, “they did a damn fine job of turning you into a stranger. If it wasn’t for…“ His eyes flick to my hip, and I just know he’s talking about my scars, the ones he’s turned into a beautiful work of art instead of an eyesore. He looks affronted, like he isn’t sure how to end that sentence. “…I wouldn’t even believe it was you.”

“That’s kind of the point,” I say, remembering the first time I met Dr. Lee; the first time it occurred to me that I could actually strike back at Dornan and his sons. For the first time, revenge had seemed possible and my tongue had salivated at the sweet taste of vengeance.

I was eighteen. Elliot had been gone for several months. I was barely holding it together. I was going through the newspaper, trying to think of a creative way to kill myself once and for all.

After all, he was gone. Grandma worked all day at the diner. There wouldn’t be anyone to find me.

Of course, the local newspaper didn’t report too much on suicides. It’s more that I was flicking through the paper idly, my brain stretching to think of ways for a painless release.

I’d heard of a drug that one could source in Mexico. Something that helped you to slip away, to fall into a coma and drift into death unbidden. But Mexico was too far away and I didn’t exactly have a passport.

I didn’t want to hang myself. If I failed, I didn’t want to be a vegetable, or in the spinal unit with a broken neck. The car fumes had been unbearable when I’d tried to gas myself in the garage. I wasn’t going to do that again. And, as much as I hated to admit it, it had hurt so damn much when I’d cut my wrists. I wanted a more painless solution.

But death by my own hand seemed painful and elusive, no matter how creative I got. It was a horrid realisation—waiting to die and being too afraid and miserable to live. I had acute survivors guilt, too. I was so ashamed that my father had died while I had been saved, only for me to waste my life wishing for death.

When reading that newspaper, my eye caught an article, and something dangerous began to flutter in my chest as my heart hammered at my ribcage.

I didn’t recognise the feeling at first. It had been so long.

Hope.

Thin and trembling, its shoots reached out and wrapped around my blackened heart, squeezing gently, making me wheeze. Goose bumps sprang up on my bare arms unbidden, and something hard and uncomfortable bobbed in my throat.

Fear. Excitement. Devastation. Longing.

On the surface the article was nothing special. A surgeon’s convention, being held in Lincoln, only a few hours drive from Grandma’s house. The feature article was about a plastic surgeon, Ilio Lee, whose entire family had been killed by a psychotic patient of his. He had dedicated the rest of his career to helping the underprivileged who needed surgery for facial deformities and horrible accidents.

I can’t say I even came up with the idea to change my appearance and wreak my revenge, because in that moment, staring down at his face, it was like someone else planted that seed in my mind. And as I sat there, tracing the doctor’s eyes with my trembling fingers, that thump-thump-thump in my chest was, for once, a comforting reminder that I was still very much alive.

I stole Grandma’s car that day and drove through a massive thunderstorm to get to the hotel where the conference was being held. I almost turned around so many times. What was I going to say? What if he told Dornan about me being alive? And yet, I was at the end. I had nothing else left in me but the hope that blossomed under the burden of what I was about to do.

When I got to the hotel, it was already three, and the conference had finished.

I was devastated. I had missed my chance to see the doctor and try to plead for him to help me. I didn’t even know if he would, but to have lost the opportunity to even try was the final straw. I stormed out of the hotel lobby to the parking lot out front. My final plan emerged, to smash the car into a freeway overpass pillar at high speed and just get this over and done with.

And then, as if by magic—as if by fate—the kind doctor was there, waiting under the shelter of a taxi rank out front, his suitcase in hand.

I hesitated, but only for a second, before I charged over to where he stood.

I could tell you what we spoke about, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters was that he agreed to help me, and that he did.

That night, I returned to Grandma’s house renewed, my spirit soaring. I had finally found something to live for—not Elliot, not victim’s guilt, not the endless desert plains that smothered me every time I looked out of the window.

Vengeance, plain and simple. I decided, then and there, to destroy Dornan’s club and systematically wipe out his family, and I knew exactly how to get under his skin.

Grandma was surprised to see me. “I thought you’d stolen my car,” she said, her face crinkling into a smile.

“I did,” I said cheerfully, dropping the keys onto the table. “I filled the gas tank, though.”

She was always a shrewd woman, smart and observant like her grandson. “You look different,” she said to me, her southern accent making me hang off her every word. “Happy.”

I smiled, my heart thudding excitedly in my chest.

“I’ve decided life is too short to keep moping around,” I replied, balling my shaking hands up into fists to keep them still. “It’s time to start living again.”

“I’m so happy to hear that,” Grandma said, closing the gap between us and putting her thin arms around me.

“You should call Elliot,” she said, patting me on the back. I froze.

Grandma stepped back and ruffled my blonde hair. “He’ll come back for you, girl,” she said softly.

But he never did.

“What are you planning to do with that stuff, anyway?” Elliot asks, changing the subject abruptly.

I break out into a wicked grin, one that I can feel all the way up to my eyes. “It’s a surprise,” I reply.

He just shakes his head, but a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, threatening to turn into a full-on smile. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

Something about that saddens me so much, my eyes well up with tears. I turn my face away, annoyed that he has to see me like this.

“What did I say?” he asks, reaching out to brush my cheek with his finger.

I shake my head. “Nothing, it’s stupid. It doesn’t matter.”

He’s wise not to press me; he knows when I don’t want to talk.

It’s silly, really. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. It’s all a lie, though. I’m not doing this because I’m strong. I’m doing this because I’m scared of the monster in my head.

The monster in my bed, the one who killed my father.

The monster who destroyed me.

I’m doing this because I just want to be able to sleep at night without seeing his face.

That’s not strength. That’s desperation.

Elliot drops his anger, his face morphing into concerned. And that’s almost worse. He draws me close again, his arms the safest place I’ve ever known, and I fight a battle within myself. “I don’t need your pity,” I say, even as I cling to him, my tears seeping into his jacket.

“It’s not pity,” he murmurs, one hand stroking my wild hair, the other clutched tight around my shoulders. “It’s love.”

He draws me closer, speaking softly into my hair. “We may not have worked together, but don’t ever think I’ll give up on you, girl. That’ll never happen.”

My heart just about fucking breaks.

It’s as if someone’s taken an icepick and jammed it into my ribcage. My chest burns with the pain of unrequited love. The sad thing is—or maybe it’s not sad at all—is that I did love Elliot. I still do. I love him for rescuing me. I love him for saving my life. I love him for sticking around for three hellish years.

But I don’t—can’t—love him like that. The way you love someone when they’re your whole world. I loved him for everything, but hanging in that artificial existence where he was my everything, I still hadn’t been able to give myself to him entirely.

After all, my heart belonged to someone else. Someone who made my breath catch in my throat. Someone who I had loved so fiercely from the moment I had laid eyes upon him, it had almost hurt. Someone who lit up my entire world, even as he believed that mine had ended at the hands of his family.

“Got you a present,” Elliot says, breaking away from me to dig into his pocket again. He pulls out a brand new, hot pink iPhone, complete with a set of earbud headphones.

“You shouldn’t have,” I say, fingering the phone delicately. I love it.

“I’m listed as Tattoo Guy,” he says, pointing at the screen. “Just in case that was unclear.”

I laugh, scrolling through the music he’s already loaded onto the phone. There’s a whole bunch of stuff. “What’s this playlist?” I ask, tapping the button as I read each song title.

“Janie’s Got a Gun? Red Right Hand? What the hell kind of music collection is this?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious,” Elliot asks playfully. “It’s your revenge playlist. If you insist on doing this, you really do need a soundtrack.”

I just shake my head and smile. “I remember now why I like you so much,” I say, beaming as I slip the phone into my pocket.

“My extremely large penis?” Elliot jokes as we begin to walk back to the fence.

I push him playfully. “Because no matter what happens, you can always make me laugh.”