Ruined #5 (The MC Motorcycle Club Romance Series - Book #5) (2 page)

She’d gone on the side of the bed to get something
and when she stood up she said, “Oh Dax! You’re awake!”

I tried to smile but even my face hurt. Maybe my dad
didn’t shoot me. Maybe he beat the shit out of me instead.

“Hi Mom,” I said. “How are you?”

She laughed. “I’m just dandy, thanks…and you?”

“I’ve been better,” I said. I was startled when the
curtain flew open. Olivia stood by me, smiling. She was beautiful.

“Hi, Liv.”

“Hey there,” she said. “This attention seeking
behavior really needs to stop.”

I laughed, it hurt like hell. “If you two would pay
more attention to me, I wouldn’t have to stoop to these measures.”

My mom waved a palm at me like she’d really like to
hit me with it. I imagine that although she’d never admit to it, she’d probably
love to smack me upside the head.

I looked at Liv and asked, “Are you going to wave a
palm at me too?”

She smiled and said, “I should, but no. I’m going to
do this…” She leaned over and gave me a soft, sweet kiss on the lips.

“I like that a lot better,” I told her, “Maybe you
could teach my mother a few things about how to treat a guy in a hospital bed.”
Olivia laughed and I got another raised palm from my mom, and then a kiss on
the forehead. “That’s better,” I told her. “What’s for lunch? It smells good.”

She grabbed the bag of IV fluid and said, “It looks
like you’re having 1000 liters of D5W with a morphine chaser.”

“Hmm, change that D5W to a sirloin steak and that’s
my Friday night.” In the middle of trying to be funny I suddenly had a flash of
a memory. Blake walking into the garage and pulling a gun. I’d had mine pointed
at my dad. Shit! Was I really going to shoot my own father? My thoughts were
all scrambled, but I was
pretty sure
that scene ended
with Blake shooting me in the gut.

“Dax?” I looked up and Olivia and my mom were both
looking at me with concerned looks. I realized they must have still been
talking to me while I was lost in thought. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Just a little out of it because of
the morphine I think. I know I have a bit of a reputation, but none of it’s
really true
. This is my first opiate rodeo.”

“Good to know,” my mom said with a smile. She ran
her hand across my forehead and made her worried face again. Then she asked the
question that I’m sure was on everyone’s mind. “Dax, who did this to you?”

“Was it Terrance?” Olivia said with terror in her
eyes.

“I really don’t remember. I was in the garage. I’d
gone to get my sketch pad out of my saddle bags. The next thing I remember is
this deafening blast…I guess it was a gunshot. Then, I woke up here.”

Olivia looked like she bought it, but my mom…not so
much. I wondered how much my dad told her already. I doubted whatever story he
told her had much of the truth in it. She didn’t push it though, for now.

“I’m going to take off for a bit and let you two
catch up,” my mom said, putting her purse on her shoulder.

“You don’t have to go, Gail,” Olivia told her.

“It’s okay, honey,” my mom told her. “I have some
errands to run and I’ll come back later.”

She bent down and kissed Dax on the forehead. “I
love you. Be good and don’t terrorize your nurses. You better be firmly in this
bed when I get back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I told her.

After she left Olivia looked at me and asked, “So,
was that story true? Do you really not remember what happened or was that for
your mom’s benefit?”

I took a deep breath, another fucking mistake. “No,”
I finally said. “That was the sugar-coated version. Sit.” She sat down and I
said, “I went to the garage to put the heroin in Blake and Terrance’s saddle
bags.”

She didn’t say anything. She just gave me
the look
.

I waited a beat and gave her a chance, but when she
didn’t speak out I finally went on and said, “Anyways, while I was in the
middle of it, my dad came in. I had a gun and I actually pointed it at him.”

“Dax!”

“I know, how fucked up is that, right? I didn’t plan
on shooting him. I just wanted him to give me a chance to explain and to not
try and stop me. I told him everything, but he didn’t believe me. I was still
talking and I heard a door open. When I looked up I saw that it was Blake. I
moved the gun and instead of my dad, I aimed it at him. The next thing I
remember is the sound…it was loud.”

Olivia looked horrified and I was afraid she was
going to cry for a minute. She didn’t, thank God. I hated to see her cry. She
had cried way too much over me lately.

Finally she said, “Please tell me that you know how
lucky you are to be alive.”

“I know,” I told her. The truth was, I hadn’t really
thought of it. I hadn’t had time.
 
“I’m
sorry I lied to you Liv.”

“I know,” she said. My arm was on the side of the
bed and she
lay
her cheek against it. Her warmth felt
good since the damn hospital was so cold. We just sat there like that for a
long time and she finally pulled her head back up and looked at me and said, “I
love you so much.”

“I love you so much, too. Were you at work today?”

“Yeah, I had just gotten there when your mom
called.”

“I’m sorry. Was your uncle mad?”

“No, not at all. I didn’t tell him what happened,
just that you were in the hospital and I needed to go. He was totally okay with
it.”

“Good. You don’t have to come back here tomorrow,” I
told her. “Go to work and if you want to stop by afterwards, I’m sure I’ll
still be here.”

“No, I can get someone to take my shift…”

“Olivia, you have already rearranged your life
enough for me. Go to work, I’m going to feel terrible if you don’t.”

“Hmm, maybe you just don’t want to see me.”

I put my hand on the side of her face and said, “I’d
have to be crazy not to want to see this beautiful face.”

She smiled and said, “Okay, your smooth talking
worked. I’ll go to work tomorrow but I’m leaving my number with the nurses,
just in case.”

“I can live with that,” I told her.

The rest of the evening she hung out with me.
My
mom came back and they both fussed over me when my clear
liquid meal was brought in, insisting I eat…or I should say, drink everything
on the tray. I drifted in and out a lot from exhaustion. It was probably just
the morphine, or just the trauma and stress of it all.

The worse part of it was every time I had a second
of alone time I would close my eyes and I would see Blake again, pointing a gun
at me…

CHAPTER
THREE

OLIVIA

The next morning I called the hospital as soon as I
woke up. They patched me through to Dax’s room.

“Hey, good morning,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

“Good morning, beautiful. I feel like a million
bucks.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he said. “I’m ready to blow this
joint.”

“Shut up! You better not be trying to get out of
there already.”

“I tried, but the Doc said no. This place is worse
than prison. Come break me out,” he pleaded.

“Nope, I’m sorry. You told me I had to go to work
today.”

“Damn, I did, didn’t I? My mom should be here soon,
I’ll ask her.”

I laughed and said, “Yeah, good luck with that. Has
the doctor been in to see you today?”

“Yeah, he said that I am a perfect male specimen.”

I laughed again and said, “Well, that’s a given.
Stop screwing around and tell me what he really said.”

“He said the bullet went clean through. They patched
the hole in my stomach and took out my spleen, which I don’t really need. He’s
just going to recommend I avoid sick people because I guess the spleen is part
of your immune system or something. That was pretty much it. When the swelling
goes down they’ll do another CT scan of my abdomen to make sure it all looks
like it’s supposed to and maybe I can go home in a few more days.”

“Now that’s good news,” I told him. “Has anyone else
been in to see you?” I was fishing for whether or not any of the guys from the
club were visiting him…or bothering him.”

“Not so far. I’m sure my mom will be here soon.”

“Okay, I’ll keep my phone on me so if you get bored
give me a text or a call.”

“Will do. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I hung up with an odd sense of peace, like
everything was going to be okay…finally. I finished getting ready for work and
headed in. My uncle had gotten in before me and opened up.

“Hey girl,” he said. “I’ll be in the back doing some
modifications today so if you need me just holler.”

“I will, but I doubt I’ll need you though. I’m
practically a motorcycle parts expert now,” I told him with a grin.

He smiled back and said, “Yeah, okay.”

I watched him go into the back and I opened up the
register for the day. A few minutes later I heard the door jangle. I looked up
to see three cops walk in…two in uniform and a detective. I was only assuming
he was a detective. He had on a cheap suit and his hair
was
styled
in a comb over. Add that to his choice of company and that was
what my brain deduced.

“Hi, can I help you?” I asked the one not in
uniform.

“Hi, Olivia?”

“Yes…”

“I was wondering if you had a minute. I’d like to
ask you a few questions about a shooting over at the Smoke Joint two nights
ago.”

“Okay,” I
said,
my voice
breaking.

“Were you there that night Miss?” he asked.

“I had been, earlier. But I wasn’t there when the
shooting took place,” I told him.

“So about what time did you get there?”

“I had been packing all day, so I wasn’t really
conscious of the time because I was so focused, but I think it was maybe
six-thirty or so.”

“Who did you go to see, ma’am?”

“I was there to see Dax,” I told him.

“Did you find him there?”

“He wasn’t there when I first arrived. He got there
about five minutes after I did.”

“Did he say where he had been?”

“No, but I didn’t ask.”

“Does Dax spend a lot of time at the bar?”

I thought about his parole and I knew that
him
living there was a violation. The thought of lying to
the police made me sick to my stomach but I wasn’t going to throw Dax to the
wolves so I said, “Not that I know of. He just stopped by to get his sketch pad
out of his saddle bags is what he told me.”

“If he doesn’t hang out there, why
would you
go there to look for him?” the detective asked me.
Shit!

I shrugged, I was a criminal genius. “I had looked
everywhere else he might be.” I said.

The detective didn’t look like he was convinced but
he changed the subject and said, “Who else was there at the bar when you got
there?”

“I didn’t spend much time there, I just walked
straight through to the back, but I saw Bull and Blake and Bo.” The detective
smirked and said, “The president, vice president and treasurer of the club?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know much about the club.”

“Do you know if Dax has any enemies?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“He did a couple years up at Folsom. Does he talk
about any of the enemies he may have made there?”

“Not to me,” I told him. “I really don’t know what I
can tell you about any of this, detective.
I
wasn’t
there when he got shot. I don’t know anything.”

“Of course you don’t,” he said. “Who were you living
with when Dax was doing time?”

The mother-fucker already dam well knew the answer
to that question before he asked me. I told him about living with Terrance but
breaking up a few weeks ago and moving in with my uncle. He kept a smug smirk
on his face the entire time. I had never wanted to hit a cop before, but I
really wanted to slap that look off his face.

He finally said, “Okay, if you think of anything
else,” and handed me a card.

I looked at it and then back at him and I said,
“I’ll call right away.”

He smiled and seemed genuinely amused. After they
left, my uncle who I hadn’t seen watching from the back came up to the counter.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Was that about Dax
getting shot?”

“Yeah, how did you know he got shot?”

“Honey, I work in the motorcycle business. I hear
all the good rumors. And of course there was you racing off to the hospital
yesterday.
 
How is he doing?”

“He’s doing well actually. They took out his spleen
and repaired his stomach…”