Burn Down the Night (7 page)

“Max—”

“Go away, Joan,” he whispered. He was falling back asleep

Another few hours passed. I did every crossword and Sudoku puzzle in the papers with one eye on Max. I got myself a few of those burritos from across the street, but they weren't as good as I remembered. I had a sudden craving for macaroni and cheese. For Jell-O and forgiveness.

Oh, to have a second chance at that meal. I would have done everything differently. I would have let Jennifer eat until she was full. Until she couldn't move. Who knows how different things might have been if I'd done that.

I napped and played Candy Crush on my phone until finally, a few hours later, Max sighed heavily. He'd been sleeping so deeply I jumped at the sound. I hopped up and checked his forehead. The fever was gone and the bed was nearly awash in sweat.

Fern had been right. The fever had broken. The infection was under control.

“You're not going to die,” I said out loud. It had been so quiet since Fern left, so quiet that when the air conditioner thunked on I jumped practically out of my skin.

“Let's hope you not dying is a good thing, Max Daniels.”

I undid the handcuff and tucked the key and the cuffs in the pocket of my cutoffs.

The room smelled slightly of blood and sweat and I decided there was no time like the present to do the little bit of laundry we had. I stripped the sheets off my side of the bed and then put my hands under his shoulders to try and roll his dead weight over onto the bare mattress.

His skin was pale and slick, and for some reason, this felt far too intimate. My hands felt full of him and I didn't like it. He moaned and the vibrations in his chest rolled up from my hands to my arms. To my own chest. I felt his moan inside my body. And the reality of all of this was too much. He'd nearly died. I had only barely saved him.

All I wanted was my sister back and somehow I'd adopted a biker.

I felt too responsible. There were too many threads tying us together. And I still needed him. And he still needed me. And that sucked on a whole lot of levels—mostly because I wasn't used to being needed. I wasn't good at it. But I was worse at needing people.

Finally he rolled, groaning as his legs were tangled in the blanket. I pulled the sheets free, leaving the quilt over his bare body. I made sure the catheter hadn't gotten dislodged.

Hello, Max's penis.

And then I gathered up the sheets and the rest of his dirty clothes—leaving the bloodstained leather cut on the dresser.

The laundry was just on the other side of the hallway.

After I put the laundry in I decided to head out to Winn-Dixie. Because tuna salad and gas station burritos wasn't going to be much good for Max. When I came back an hour later, I was half prepared to find him up, standing and dressed, gun in hand ready to get back to his fucked-up life.

But the condo was dark.

He was still sleeping on the bare mattress. I touched his skin and found him cool to the touch.

In the kitchen, I emptied the jar of chicken noodle soup into a pot on the stove—because soup was what you fed people in sick beds—I learned plenty from an addiction to historical romance novels, thank you very much.

I also had the stuff to make grilled cheese sandwiches—white bread, cheese slices, and a tub of margarine.

It was pretty much all I knew of comfort. And it was from another lifetime.

Cold and shaky, I woke up with a start.

Naked. I was naked in a murky room that was vaguely familiar.

Closed blinds, the sound of the ocean. The low dresser across from the bed.

His and hers.

I remembered thinking that. When was that? Yesterday? A week ago?

My head fucking pounded. I lifted my wrist, and then remembered the rattle of the handcuffs I'd grown used to.

But the handcuffs were gone. Surprised, I touched my head, the shaved bit around a row of stitches.

I sat up and braced for the room to spin, which it did in dizzying arcs. But whatever. It was time to get on my feet. Figure out where I was and how to get back home.

Time to go back and deal with the fucking cowards who shot me.

Revenge.

It was time for revenge.

You want the club, fine. Great. It's all yours you fucking sociopaths. But you don't get to shoot me and get away with it. No. You shoot me and I bring death to your door. I'll salt the earth where you stood.

But first I had to take out my own catheter.

Jesus Christ.

A
catheter.
Surgery. Joan was full of surprises.

I grabbed the rubber tubing and pulled, feeling like I was ripping out the inside of my dick as I went.

Fuuuuu­uuuuu­uuuuck.

It popped out and fell to the floor. I braced myself against the bare mattress, panting through the pain. Sweat trickled down my back despite the arctic chill from the air conditioner. I put my feet down on the plush carpet beside the bed and got to my feet, taking my time. Letting the world settle around me after every step.

I knew how to do this. The concussion. The broken ribs. The bullet wound—none of it was new.

The catheter, though, that was some fresh fucking hell.

I'm an MC president. A 1 percent. The life span is short and brutal.

I put weight on the leg that had been shot and winced at the pull. The deep muscle burn. Damn. That hurt. I limped to the dresser—where my cut was laid out, blood staining the white badges across the front. Breathing, slow and steady through my mouth, I pulled open the dresser. There was a small stack of boxer shorts. Red-and-green plaid. They were big, but I slipped them on feeling like I should have a Santa suit to put on over them.

Whatever, my junk was covered. If I had to fight my way out of here, at least I had that working in my favor. In another drawer, there was a golf shirt. I passed on that. There was a pair of flannel pajama pants. I pulled those on.

Beside the dresser there was a plastic garbage bag. But inside it were only women's clothes.

I lifted out a bright orange thong.

Joan.

There was a hollow thunk and some humming from another room in the condo. Had to be her. And the smell of food made my stomach, silent until now, wake up and take notice.

I split the blinds and peered out onto a dark beach, a bright moon over the ocean.

We were in a low-rise condo, next to another low-rise condo.

My gut said Florida. Like the ocean waves rolling up on that sand were familiar to me.

I stopped searching for clothes and instead searched the dark room for a weapon. There was nothing but a lamp on the bedside table. It had a solid glass base, so I tore off the lampshade with its pink feathers and useless fringe. I wrapped the cord around one hand and held the lamp in the other. I'd bash in some heads and strangle anyone between me and the door.

Clothes would have been nice.

I eased open the door to find a dark hallway and another door to my right. To my left was a brighter living room—I could see the edge of a blue couch. The wall behind it was empty. There was the sound of a door opening and closing. A woman said “shit” and something got dropped on the floor. The voice sounded like Joan, as much as I could be sure of her voice. But I had no idea who else was working with her. The woman—last time I was fully conscious—had bombs going off at the push of a button.

I could not underestimate that crazy bitch ever again.

I eased back into the shadows waiting for her to come down the hallway but she didn't.

The kitchen, with its sounds and smells, must be off the living room. I slipped out of the room, sliding along the wall of the hallway until I got to the corner of the living room—which was empty. Eerily empty. Just the love seat, a chair, and an empty TV stand.

There was a statue of John F. Kennedy on the TV stand. I picked it up to see if it was heavier than the lamp, but it seemed hollow.

Hollow plastic JFK statue.

Florida. Definitely Florida.

I eased around the corner, and stepped into the doorway of the kitchen just as Joan was turning toward me with a bowl of something hot and half a grilled cheese sandwich in her mouth.

She caught sight of me and jumped. The sandwich fell in the soup—the soup nearly dropped to the floor, but she caught it in time and it splashed up over her hand and across her chest.

“Holy shit!” she cried. “Max, what the hell—?”

Something about the soup and the grilled cheese sandwich made my murder lamp seem ridiculous.

She set the soup down and grabbed a towel from where it hung over the handle of the oven. I stepped closer.

“You alone here?” I asked her.

“You're here,” she snapped, all peevish.

That attitude wasn't going to fly.

I stepped closer, crowding her into the tiny corner of the galley kitchen. She looked up at me, registered my seriousness, and she got appropriately scared. Good. Finally something going the way it should.

“We're alone,” she breathed, her hands up as if to ward me off. “You shouldn't be up.”

“Where are we?”

“Safe.”

I laughed and stepped closer again. “Alone with you ain't exactly safe. You got any bombs you're planning on blowing up?”

I was right up against her. The heat from the spilled soup across her belly was burning across my bare stomach, too. She breathed and I felt her tits against my chest.

Oh, she didn't like that, but I leaned in closer. Because this woman needed to be scared. Scared women don't make up stories. They don't lie. They were too scared to do anything but think about how to best make me happy.

I had a lot of ideas about how she could make me happy.

“Where are we?” I asked. She gave it a good effort, I could hand her that. She gave me some pissed-off eye contact, but I leaned in harder, bullying her with my size.

“Fuck you, Max. I could take you with one kick to the bullet wound in your leg, so how about you back off.”

I smiled at her, but shifted my leg away, because she wasn't wrong.

“Tell me where we are.”

“Florida. Forty-five minutes outside of Tampa. It's safe and we've got it for a week.”

The smell of the soup and the grilled cheese was making me dizzy. My stomach growled against hers.

“You're hungry.”

Joan wasn't one of those pretty girls. Her cheeks were razor sharp, her green eyes hard as glass. Her mouth…well, her mouth was pretty when she wasn't scowling at me.

She was sexy as fuck, but hard. Maybe in another life, a couple of easier breaks in her story, and she could have been pretty. But she looked badass and capable. Nothing soft about her but her tits and her skin.

All of which I was plenty interested in. Not so much at the moment, dizzy and with my leg screaming at me to get off it already. But I wasn't letting her know that.

I glanced down at the skin revealed by her tank top.

She took a deep breath and her tits shimmied.

I was hungry and weak and the world was spinning.

“Sit down, you idiot.” She shoved at me and I snapped forward, my hand around her neck.

“I don't know what's going on, Joan. But you ain't the boss. Not anymore.”

She tilted her head up, getting a better breath but also glaring at me with as much fuck you in her eyes as she could. I squeezed my fingers at her throat and the fuck you dimmed a little.

“Do not fuck with me,” I said. “You got it?” I gave her a little shake when she tried to give me the silent treatment.

“Yes. I get it.”

“Good, now where are my clothes?”

“What wasn't ruined is in the wash,” she said, her voice a little strangled by my hand.

“You have a car?”

She nodded.

Okay. All right. All of this I could work with. Some food. Some clean clothes, and I'd be out of here.

“Look,” she whispered. “I know you're thinking about revenge—”

Nope. That wasn't going to work. I pulled her toward me by her neck, her skin suddenly pale as she realized she was in serious trouble. She was on her tiptoes and I could feel her swallow against my hand. I could feel her heartbeat against my fingers, like a bird trapped in a bag. I pushed my thumb against that frantic pulse—just to show her how small she was. How, in this cruel world, she was nothing.

I was bigger. Badder. And would hurt her without thinking.

“You don't know shit about me,” I told her. “Not one thing. You need to stop thinking you do. Understood?”

She nodded and I let her go. She fell back against the wall with a gasp.

“I saved your life asshole,” she snapped at me, rubbing at the red prints of my hand on the pale skin of her throat. I had to give her credit. She went down swinging.

“You were going to blow me up, Joan. You can see why I'm not thanking you.” I turned toward the soup and the sandwich practically floating in it.

Chicken noodle and grilled cheese.

The smell of it pulled at memories from my childhood. Happy ones. That shit apartment, Mom clean for the moment, Pops unable to take his eyes off her. Dylan…

Fuck that. I wanted nothing to do with those memories. They had no place in my life and hadn't for a long time.

“This for me?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“You already eat?”

I glanced back at her silence.

“It's a simple fucking question, Joan. Did you eat already or is this shit for you?”

“That's my sandwich,” she muttered pointing to the one in the soup. “You can have it, if you want it. I'll make another one.”

I nodded and took the soup to the couch. “Whose underwear am I wearing?” I asked. Sitting down felt good, laying down I knew would feel even better. I was suddenly really tired.

“No idea,” she said.

“You just happened to have some men's underwear kicking around?”

“My aunt did. I'm choosing not to ask. She performed surgery on you, by the way. Took out the bullet. Stopped an infection.”

I grunted. The catheter. I could thank her aunt for that bit of torture.

“I'll pass on your thanks,” she said, all attitude. Fucking Joan. She was a hard woman not to like.

“You look like shit,” she said, standing in the doorway to the living room in a pair of cutoffs and a tank top.

You don't. You look good enough to eat.

I didn't say it, because that was not something we needed in this room. I had memories of her at the club, good ones. There'd been an insane amount of chemistry between us that I'd always thought would get acted on one day. It had seemed inevitable.

But that day just never seemed to come. Which, frankly, was for the best.

“Comes with being shot.” I took a bite of the soup and it was good. Really, really good. But my hands were shaking. The next spoonful of soup barely made it to my mouth.

Weak as a fucking baby.

I could feel her eyes on me and I didn't like it.

I really didn't like it when I lifted another spoonful and most of it sloshed back into the bowl.

“I'm not going to feed you,” she snapped at me.

“I didn't ask.”

“Yeah. But you need it. You're shaking like a leaf. So I'm just telling you, I'm not feeding you.”

I dug the grilled cheese out of the soup and lifted it, but it was full of soup and heavy. I forced myself to take a bite before putting it back down.

“You know. The sheets are clean, I could make the bed and you could lie down for a little while,” she said. “You try and leave now, you won't get out of the parking garage.”

I nodded, hating to admit she was right. I could barely eat I was so weak. So tired.

“Give me a sec,” she said. She grabbed the laundry basket from beside the door and took it into the bedroom. I heard her moving around in there and set the soup down on the floor and braced myself as best I could to get to my feet.

I was glad she understood that little demonstration in the kitchen of who was in charge here. It would make things a whole lot easier. I made my way into the bedroom and found her bent over the bed, tucking in the sheets.

“Thanks,” I said, staring at her ass. “For the sheets.”

“Jesus, will you make up your mind, Max?” she asked. “Are you an asshole or not?”

“I'm an asshole,” I said and sat down on the side of the bed. Collapsed really. “But that doesn't mean I have to be a dick.”

She rolled her eyes at me, and I'm not kidding, I had one of those feelings I used to get all the time, those feelings I did everything in my power to get rid of because they were deadly fucking feelings.

For just a second I thought…what if shit were different?

What if I was normal? And my life wasn't just one long race to a shallow grave? In this clean, dark condo, what would I do with a woman like her?

“Your name isn't Joan,” I said, the memory coming out of nowhere.

“Yes it is,” she said, but her eyes told me something else.

“Lagan…your aunt…they called you something else.”

“You call me Joan. That's who I am.”

I felt the brush of something cold, heard the snick of a lock rattling together, and I glanced down at my wrist.

Handcuffs.

She had handcuffed me back to the bed.

I roared and surged to my feet but she danced back out of reach. I tried to pull the bed but it was cast iron and I was too fucking weak. Jumping to my feet like that made me so dizzy I was nauseous. I fell back against the mattress.