Trouble (8 page)

“I’ve done nothing to her,” I tell Carl, adding some red shade to the roses.

“Well do it, soon, or you’re both going to be fired. Jesus, I’ve Delilah texting me and wanting to know if you’re available, Daisy’s more frustrated than a cornered badger, and you’re flitting around like none of its happening!” He crosses his arms over his broad chest and looks down at me seriously. “Is it broken?” He snarls at me quietly. It takes me a few seconds to get what he’s saying.

“Jesus, Carl! No, it’s not broken.” I assure him, snapping the pencil in my hand.

“Because if it is, I’ve got these pills,” he goes to pull something out of his pocket, and I topple my chair as I stand up out of it.

“I said it’s not broken!” I shout at him. I’m pretty sure the
gaggle of girls waiting for their tattoos doesn’t know what we’re discussing, but I turn beet red in the face anyway when they all turn to look at me behind the glass wall.

“Then use it, before
that girl finds it somewhere else.” Carl stomps out of my office and slams the door. The glass vibrates and my teeth grind together as I watch him grab a tattoo gun and proceed to tattoo a dolphin on the girl’s ankle.

I grumble and stomp around my office a little before I calm down and sit at my desk again.
I finish up the shading of the rose and shove the piece of paper in the envelope labeled Joel. It’s Friday night, maybe I’ll take Daisy out to dinner. That ought to calm her down; at least, I hope it does.

With that idea in my mind, I grab my jacket off the back of my chair and pull it on, the leather creaking. I ignore the giggling ladies and put my hand on Daisy’s hip when she comes around the corner. The giggling immediately ceases when Daisy smiles up at me
, and I know I’ve dashed some women’s hopes that instant.

“You want to go out for dinner?” I ask her quietly, enjoying the way her body levitates towards mine.

“O-okay,” she stammers, holding a manila envelope up in her hands.

I don’t know if she’s nervous or if it’s just that all women lose their marbles when they’re asked on a date. She’s gone to the bathroom to recheck her makeup three times now, and she’s changed her shirt eight. I grumble in frustration when she tells me to hold on a sec again and heads for the bathroom. I grab her around the waist with my right arm and pull her back against my chest, my nose dipping down to involuntarily sniff at her hair.

“You look beautiful, now can we go?” I try to keep the heat out of my voice, but it still slips through like water through a crack.

“I just need to fix –” I clamp a hand over her lips and I’m really glad that she’s not wearing lipstick or lip gloss. She never does, not anymore. She sure can get elaborate with her eye makeup though. Yesterday she practically looked Egyptian.

“Nothing, you need to fix nothing because you are absolutely perfect. Besides, it’s nowhere fancy, alright?” I pull away my hand when she nods reluctantly, and let it fall to take one of hers. She doesn’t carry a purse, but after she got all her papers situated from the government she now has a state issued I.D. that she carries. I now know that she’s nineteen years old.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her birth certificate. I never bothered to ask her how old she was before I pulled her down onto the bed that night, for all I knew she was sixteen. My fingers loop in between hers and remain loose as I lead her towards the door.

“But –” she starts again, and I put a finger to her lips. Then I silence her with a kiss when she still tries to argue. By the time I’m done kissing her breathless, she’s like pudding in high heels. I lean down to whisper in her ear, my cheek touching hers.

“I could do all kinds of things to you right here, right now, because of that shirt, your tight jeans, and your heels that
will
stay on tonight. Do you want me to start now?” She whimpers and shakes her head in the negative, and I chuckle against her neck.

My free hand pulls open the door
, and I watch her leap out like she’s the mouse and I’m the tiger. I pull my car keys out of my pocket and press the start button. The Mustang roars to life, and I take those final steps to get ahead of Daisy to open up her door for her. Never in my life have I had the urge to open up a girl’s car door, but with Daisy it’s different. It’s like if I don’t do that one, small thing I don’t deserve to be able to tear off her clothes at night and make her call out my name.

I manage to stay well within the parameters of the speed limit even though my blood is roaring through my veins. I told her it was nowhere fancy just to placate her, in reality we’re going to one of the nicest places within
a one hour radius. I drive right out of town and turn on the music softly to set the mood.

When I pull up to the curb in front of a world renowned brewery her eyes widen ever so slightly
, and I see her catch her breath. Every movement she makes screams at me to kiss her, to drive home and fling her down on the bed. To go all the way this time instead of teasing her like a madman.

But I act like a gentleman; I contain myself and turn off the car. I get out of it and get to her door before she opens it. I hold the door open for her when she walks into the building, and I order the most expensive wine I can. Then she stares at me and quirks an eyebrow.

“It’s a brewery, and you’re ordering wine?” She asks incredulously.

“Do you want beer?” I sound pretty desperate even to myself and she laughs at me, the sound of it twinkling off the walls around us and drawing the eyes of some of the men around.

“No, I think I’ll stick with the wine.” I wish she knew what the lights were doing to her hair and her eyes. She might not tilt her head this way and that as she looks at the menu or play with her bottom lip when she comes across something particularly complex.

“Are we ready to order?”
Of course, we have a male waiter. He beams at my date and takes her order first, barely acknowledges that I’m even there, and breezes away to do Daisy’s bidding.

“Wow, I feel like I should be wearing a sign that says ‘I’m over here, yeah, over here’.”
Daisy giggles and sips on her wine, her eyes rolling towards the ceiling.

“It wasn’t that bad!”
She chides me in a joking manner, buttering a complimentary piece of bread.

“It was, believe me.” I watch her bite down on the bread and manage to choke my own down. Right now I’m not thinking about eating food, I’m wondering about eating other things.

I almost die when she starts eating the Rangoon I ordered for appetizers. The noises coming out of her are almost like the ones that I produce, and suddenly I’m jealous of the food. I didn’t know it was possible to be jealous of food. I stab mine with a fork, and when she stares at it I try for a smile. Daisy scrunches up her face until I start behaving like a normal person.

I even make it through
dessert, little fruit tarts with whipped cream on top. She’s had two glasses of wine, and her cheeks are growing rosy. I’ve been sipping on my water the entire time. I don’t want to think about Ronnie tonight but after what happened I’ve been more careful about what I do when I’m behind the wheel.

I’d like to think that he would have liked Daisy. She finds amusement where it shouldn’t be found sometimes, snorts when she finds something particularly hilarious, but never in public. And she can handle it when I go dark, pinning her down and getting so rough with her sometimes I feel guilty in the morning.
But she never looks angry or like she’s been hurt. She always looks sated and loved when I see her first thing in the morning.

If someone
would have told me I would fall in love with a woman that forced her way onto the back of my bike at an illegal fight, I would have laughed in their face. Then I would have chuckled all the way home. But I’m not laughing now as I pay the check and escort Daisy from the restaurant.

Her long hair whips around in a gust of wind
, and she smiles as she pulls it away out of her gaze. I put my body between her and the wind to shelter her and hit the start button for my car. The vehicle starts up, and I’m looking down at her when the unthinkable happens.

There’s a pain that starts in my shoulder and radiates down through my spine and bounces back up again to the back of my neck. I hear the
crack
a split second after the pain overcomes me, causing me to grab my shoulder and fall to my knees on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. I hear Daisy scream my name, and when she screams again it’s different.

It raises the hairs on my neck and my arms it’s so earsplitting.

“Thought you could just take Big Man’s property, huh?” The man looms over me and raises the baseball bat again, about to hit me in the face with it.

Daisy lunges at him with one of her heels in her hand
. She hits him close to the eye with the sharp stiletto. I see him whip out his free hand and grab her by the throat, pulling her off her feet. Suddenly the pain in my shoulder is nothing compare to the heat of rage flooding through me. I’m off my knees in a heartbeat, slamming into the man with all my strength and grabbing at the baseball bat with my right hand.

“I’ve called the cops!”
Someone shouts out the restaurant door, and I shout back.

“Good!” I grunt with the effort of trying to keep the man down on his knees, but he’s larger than me. Daisy’s starting to turn red in the face, an alarming shade that is bordering on purple. She’s gasping for air like a fish gasps for water, her eyes bugging out in her face. If I don’t get this monstrosity to let go of her soon there’s going to be some serious damage.

So I do the only thing I can think of. I take my free left hand and go for the eyes. I don’t know how to describe what it feels like to shove my fingers into someone’s eye sockets, kind of like shoving two somewhat hard marbles back into a dense mush. And then the blood starts seeping out and some sort of strange goo. I pull my fingers back at the man begins to scream, something about his eyes. But he lets go of Daisy and forgets all about beating me with a baseball bat.

“Get in the car!” I tell Daisy, pointing at it. She’s dry heaving alongside the curb. I don’t want her anywhere near this madman, even if he is permanently blind.

I hear the sound of sirens in the distance, and they make my heartbeat race even faster. The blood rushes past my eardrums, making it hard to hear anything else. Daisy leans against the car with her hands around her neck, crying uncontrollably. I want to go over to her, comfort her, but my hands are full of blood and I think I might throw up. In fights I’ve always punched and kicked, never poked out someone’s actual eyes.

Wiping the goop onto my pants doesn’t make it any better. People are fleeing from the restaurant and by the time the ambulances arrive, followed by four cop cars, most of the patrons are either out on the sidewalk or gone. The man’s whimpering on the ground, the baseball bat still near him.
I stumble onto the restaurant steps and put my head between my knees as the cops get out of their cars, their guns up, screaming for hands to be put up.

I put my hands up in the air and watch as one of the EMTs runs for Daisy, she’s still pretty red in the face
, and there’re going to be angry bruises on her neck tomorrow. Cold steel wraps itself around my wrists and the restaurant patron that called the cops comes storming up.

“He didn’t do a damned thing but defend himself!” The man yells, pointing at me. I’m glad someone’s on my side.

“And he can explain that to me while he’s in cuffs.” The officer calmly tells the man, keeping me seated on the steps. Daisy’s looking at me as the EMT tries to get her pulse and help her to her feet all at the same time. I wonder if she can even talk or if her windpipe is shot. I guess if it was that awful she’d be in the ambulance already, but I feel the need to go over to her and check her out myself. It’s too bad I’m in cuffs.

“Alright, explain to me what happened, sir.” The officer stands in front of me with one hand on his holstered weapon and the other on his hip. I feel like I’m sitting alongside the highway all
over again, my bike up and my eyes glued to the grill of the eighteen wheeler. Except its Daisy leaning against my Mustang, refusing to go anywhere.

“Could you tell them to let her stay until I’m done here? So I can go with her?” I ask the man, and he looks back at Daisy who’s staring at me. Silent tears are trailing down her face
, and I’m not sure if she looks guilty or if is she looks frightened, maybe both.

“
Sure, don’t move,” he seems to understand that I’m not a threat and grabs one of the EMTs. I don’t hear what he says, but the man looks back at me and then at Daisy. He nods once and heads over to tell Daisy what’s happening. She allows them to lead her to the ambulance when they tell her they’re not leaving without me.

The officer takes my statement, collects the evidence from my fingers, and helps me to my feet. He tells me to stick around town and undoes my handcuffs. I stumble for a second, the pain radiating down my back again.
But when I see that Daisy is still conscious and waiting for me I straighten up as best I can and shake off the officer’s helping hand. I don’t want her to see me as weak.

When I get to her
, I climb into the back of the ambulance and help her to her feet with my strong arm. I sit her down on the waiting gurney and take a seat on one of the benches as the doors close. The EMT says nothing as he checks out my shoulder, poking and prodding until I hiss in pain.

“Dislocated,” he mumbles, grabbing a sling from one of the compartments and wrapping it around my arm. I keep my eyes glued to Daisy’s the entire ride to the hospital.
It’s not quick since neither one of us are in immediate danger.

“Daisy,” I finally
say her name to get her to stop crying. She’s hiccupping, and the swelling around her neck is starting to look angry. It doesn’t help that she’s bawling.

“Daisy,” I try again, firmer. She finally seems to come back to herself and realizes that she’s staring at me. Her face falls forward into her hands and I hear strangled sobs coming out of her throat. I’m not sure, but I think I hear her say she’s sorry. I won’t have that
. She can’t be sorry.

I glance over at one of the EMTs
who’s getting ready to dose her with a sedative and shake my head minutely. I manage to struggle to my feet in the moving vehicle and sit next to her on the gurney, pulling her against my good side, my left side. She’s stiff at first, but as we get closer to the hospital and her bawling turns into quiet tears again she leans into my side and grips my shirt with her hands.

Maybe it never
quite sunk in until now, but I never realized how bad some of these girls actually had it. I’d
heard
of things like this on the news and from Ronnie, but I’d never witnessed it. That man would have wrung her neck if I hadn’t intervened, and he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. I hope he lives, not because I’m feeling guilty, but because I want to find his blind ass and rip off his balls.

I’m jostled out of my thoughts when
the door to the ambulance opens, and the two EMTs try to help Daisy from my arms. Maybe it’s the reminder of Ronnie’s death, her strangled cry, or just the adrenaline finally giving me one last kick in the ass. I punch the man in the face and get stabbed in the arm with a needle for my efforts.