Chains Page 2

  Fi came by every day, sometimes twice a day, to check on me. Fi and Chains were hiding me from someone named Mad Dog, that they claimed to be their club president, and Jeb, my husband. If only someone could have invented an invisibility cloak, I think I could breathe easier inside it.

  “I’m sorry, did you want the living room?” I questioned as he stood across the room.

  “No, I was coming for some water, but…”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” he questioned, but I had seen it in his eyes as well as on Fiona’s.

  “Don’t walk on eggshells around me. At some point, I have to go out there in the real world and no one out there is going to treat me with kid gloves, so don’t do it now.”

  Chains took a step inside the room and I involuntarily flinched. We stared at each other in silence. What I had asked for, I meant. I wanted them to treat me as they would anyone else, but with the knee-jerk reaction I had, Chains retreated to his room.

  This wasn’t working. I had to break away from the instant fear I felt whenever anyone was near me. As the hours passed, and the rain fell harder outside, I swallowed every ounce of fear I had and walked to Chains’ bedroom door.

  The floor creaked, and I lost my nerve to knock. I repeated my mantra that I would be okay, that everything would be okay. As the rain poured harder I focused on controlling my rapid breathing. My shaking hand tightened to a fist to try and knock again, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t shake the anxious feeling that when I woke up in the morning, my husband Jeb, would be in my bed, angry that the sun was shining, leaving watermarks on the outdoor furniture. It was the things outside of our control that pissed him off the most and I took the brunt of that rage.

  Somehow, I found the courage I needed to lightly knock on his door. I heard movement and then he was there, larger than life with a gun in his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” he questioned without hesitation, but I couldn’t speak. He was so close to me, the man who both comforted me and intimidated me. I hesitantly reached my arms out and wrapped them as far around him as I could get, and I crumbled.

  With very little effort, he lifted me off the floor and carried me into the living room. I had no idea where his gun went because it wasn’t in his hands, I was. He sat on the couch, and I cuddled up into his arms, trying to cry away the fear that when I woke up in the morning, someone was going to hurt me.

  “I’ve got you,” he whispered as I surrendered to the painful memories, but my saving grace was a sliver of solace I found while cocooned in his arms. I started to drift off to sleep when I heard him whisper. “No one is going to hurt you and I’ll kill anyone who tries.”

  ***

  “What the hell?” Fi yelled, waking me up, still cradled in Chains arms. The rain had stopped, and for a moment, that feeling of fear and anxiety pitted in my stomach, but then I looked at Chains and Fi and remembered I was safe. Jeb couldn’t hurt me here. “I told you to take care of her, not… whatever this is.” Fi was doing a lot of hand waving, which was common when she was angry.

  I climbed out of Chains’ arms, who was being reprimanded by Fi and drug her off into my bedroom.

  “What the fuck?” she started her diatribe. “I told him to take care of you, but this…”

  I waited for her to take a breath as she paced the floor and pulled her away from the door a couple of times when she said she was going to castrate him.

  When she had finally spewed out all her thoughts, I exhaled three little words, “It was me.”

  “What?”

  “The rain was falling,” I tried to explain. “When there was rain with no thunder or lightning Jeb would sleep like a log, but come morning he would be angry that things got wet, that watermarks would be left behind, that the gardener would track mud, or whatever he could find to get angry with me. Last night there was rain with no thunder, and there was this feeling inside of me. I don’t know how to explain it, but I felt like my world would come to a painful end this morning, so I went to Chains.”

  “Did you ask him to hold you?”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I just wrapped my arms around him and started to cry. He knew what I needed.”

  “I guess he lives to see another day then,” Fi announced loudly.

  I smiled. I didn’t deserve her. When I met Jeb, he was this amazing man with big plans, it was awe-inspiring to hear him talk, to watch him strive for the things he wanted, but he had little tolerance for my friends who didn’t want big things, too.

  I still remember when Fi went to go live with her mom. I hugged her goodbye, promising to call, but Jeb had told me I was better off. He tried to convince me that she was holding me back. All those years we spent apart, and when I tracked her down and dialed her number, the first thing she said was, “What are you waiting for, get in the car and come here.”

  “I love you, Fi,” I confessed, interrupting her don’t get attached lecture.

  She just smiled at me, her newly dyed pink hair falling in her face, hiding what looked like watery eyes.

  “Chains is a good man, but he intimidates me. Last night won’t happen again. You don’t have to worry.” The words felt bitter leaving my lips because, for the first time since I left, I had a full night’s sleep. Feeling a warm body next to me was something I had been used to, but knowing the person in that body wouldn’t hurt me, was a kind of relief that let me sleep in and miss my shift at Medic’s with the kids.

  As the days came and went, it became routine for me to go to Chains door when I was ready for bed and knock. We had finally upgraded from the couch, which I knew was uncomfortable for him, to my bed. He slept against a mountain of pillows stacked up so that it was like sleeping together, but the angle made it less intimate, or so I tried to tell myself.

  I was healing at my own pace, and I was selfishly using Chains to do it, but he never said no. Every time I went to hold his hand, he held mine. Every night I went to him, he stayed with me. He wasn’t chasing after me, he wasn’t pushing me to do more than I was ready for, he wasn’t even trying to figure out what we were, he just let me be. He was there for me in a way I didn’t expect anyone to understand. He still intimidated me, and I had no idea why, but he was becoming the most important person in my journey to stop living in fear.

  A month later, we were having breakfast and dinner together, and I was no longer thinking of Jeb when it rained except on really bad nights. Those nights, Chains would have a prospect turn on his motorcycle and rev it up periodically to make me think it was the rumble of thunder and ease the lingering anxiety in me.

  One night I dared to ask Chains questions. I wanted to know who it was that I put my trust in, who was wiping my tears away. Was he a good, kind, and gentle soul like I imagined in my head, or was he evil and putting on a show like my husband?

  “Why do they call you Chains?” I inquired as he grabbed the plates for dinner. “Did you road-haul someone with a chain? Tie someone up to a tree with a chain?”

  “No, nothing like that. Back when I was a teenager and had just come to the club, I made friends with Karma, Dagger, and Ty; they were showing me the ropes when there a girl…”

  “There’s always a girl,” I joked and saw a full grin cross his face.

  “At that age, everything we do that’s stupid, is usually to impress a girl,” he continued as he placed the plates on the table and then brought over the lasagna I had cooked. “She needed her car fixed, and we told her we could do it. Mad Dog forbade us from helping because her dad was the Sherriff or something, I don’t remember exactly why we couldn’t, we were just told not to, but that didn’t stop us.

  “We needed to lift her engine out of the car and couldn’t get the cherry picker, so we strapped up a pulley system with chains and the hydraulic winch on the front of the club truck. It was all going well, till the hooks gave way. Ty had been under the car with the girl, showing her what it was that we were going to fix when the engine began to fall. I grabbed the chains and tried to
pull them, but it was heavy. I locked my feet around the road guard on the truck and it was enough to buy a handful of seconds for everyone to get out and away from the car.”

  “So, you saved everyone,” I loved listening to him tell stories, just like when he was talking to the kids. Didn’t matter what he said, his voice just carried you into the story and you saw it happening.

  “I put everyone in danger,” he corrected me. “The club names are from things we have done that have put others in harm’s way. For instance, Dagger, earned his name when he was trying to learn how to throw weighted knives. There was this boy at the school who used to pick on one of the club daughters. Dagger was waiting to threaten him, you know, make him piss himself, and he was tossing around the knife. He saw the boy push the girl down on the desk, and with only a dagger left in his arsenal, because everything else was all over the room, he threw it. Missed the guy completely, but the blade did land in an outlet and shot sparks at the boy’s face. He never saw Dagger and swore the girl was a witch.”

  I smiled. “Sounds like he got lucky.”

  “It was definitely luck, but now he carries the name as a reminder. Just like they call me Chains as a reminder that I nearly got three of our own killed.”

  “That’s not how I see it.” I reached over and put my hand on his. “You pulled the chain and saved their lives. Dagger threw the knife and saved a girl. I see your names as a reminder that in all the bad that’s out there, you are the ones who stepped in to save those who couldn’t save themselves.”

  “You paint me as a hero, but I’m not. I wanted to impress the girl; I knew it was dangerous, and I reacted on instinct. I didn’t choose to save them. There was no time to decide to help them, I just did it. You’re romanticizing what happened, but the ugly truth of it is I broke three bones, damaged the winch, put the lives of three of my brothers in danger, and all of it over a girl.”

  “Is that why there haven’t been any women beating down your door while I’ve been here?”

  He pulled his hand from under mine and began dishing out the food. By the time he had placed the garlic bread on the plate, I fumbled words out loud that should have stayed in my head.

  “Aren’t we a pair… I am terrified of being hurt and you are scared of doing the hurting.”

  Chapter Four

  Ellie

  “Do you remember how to use the gun?” Chains asked like he always did whenever he had to run an errand and didn’t know when he would be back. Sometimes it was hours; once, it was a few days.

  “I remember.” I smiled. “Besides, Fi is headed over here and anything I don’t know, she does.”

  “Do you need me to bring anything home?” Chains inquired in passing as he got ready to head out. Dressed in his leather cut, with his brown hair slicked back behind a bandana, he looked like a biker, not the type of man that cuddled me every night and made me breakfast every morning.

  His newly bulging biceps had been part of his new morning routine. He had set up an entire gym in his garage and he was looking more and more like Thor, and less like Dr. Strange, I had met.

  “Just come back safely,” I rasped out the words with a new feeling in my stomach. Worry.

  “You okay?” he questioned.

  I realized at that moment, that in the months I had been here, the time spent in his arms, I had done the one thing that Fi had told me not to do. I got attached. I thought I was using him to get past my triggers, but instead, I had been slowly lowering the walls around my heart.

  “I’m fine,” I lied, terrified of what this meant.

  “When a woman says she’s fine hellfire rains down as the smell of brimstone fills the air,” he tried to joke.

  I gave him a fake smile.

  “Talk to me.”

  “I’m just worried,” I admit.

  “You’re safe here. I swear it to you.”

  He thought I was still worried about my husband, and to be honest, he was always there in the back of my mind, but this wasn’t about that.

  “I know.” I stood up from the table and walked into the kitchen where I poured out a freshly made cup of coffee down the sink. Apparently, it was a dead giveaway that something was gnawing at me because Chains sat at the table instead of leaving.

  “I’m not going anywhere until we talk this out,” Chains stated. He was being that friend I needed but asking questions that would destroy the foundation of our friendship.

  “I think I have become too comfortable here, maybe it’s time I get a job and a place of my own. Can’t hide forever.” I refused to look at him as the words left my lips, but the silence that fell after them forced my eyes to turn and look at the shock on his face.

  “You haven’t gotten your divorce yet… not even a restraining order. Is it the club you want to leave or is it me?”

  “You and I have become really good friends. We have grown incredibly close and I trust you with my life…”

  “But?” He tried to hide the frustration in his eyes but failed.

  “I don’t want to complicate things,” I confessed as he stood up and I watched the internal debate between doing what he had to and staying.

  “Complicating things would be if you walked out that door. I wouldn’t be able to think, eat, or even breathe if I thought you were out there vulnerable and alone. You know what’s not complicated, staying.”

  “I should really learn how to knock,” Fi spoke as she put her things down on the couch and walked toward us in the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea,” Chains admitted as he set his helmet down on the table and sat in the chair, “but I’m not leaving this house until I know what I did to make her want to leave.”

  “You didn’t do anything,” my voice was growing hoarse from the tears I was trying not to shed at the thought of leaving him. “It’s not you.”

  Fi came over and turned me to face her, away from Chains. With reddened eyes filling with tears, I know she saw what I didn’t want her to see. She knew my heart was breaking, but I was never supposed to fall for him. She pulled me to her and gave me a hug.

  “Go run that thing for Mad Dog and let me have some time with Ellie. She’ll be here or at my house when you get back,” Fi intervened and eventually convinced him to leave. I’m sure there were punishments if he didn’t do as he was told and the last thing I wanted to do was get him in trouble.

  “You love him,” Fi stated as a matter of fact as soon as he was out the door. “You went and did the one thing I told you not to do.”

  “I care about him,” I tried correcting her. My comment made her shake her head. “That’s why I want to leave, I want to step away so we can still have our friendship and he can find some girl who doesn’t carry enough baggage to fill a 747. He deserves better than what I could give him…”

  Fi continued to shake her head at every excuse I gave.

  “If he felt the same way I did, Jeb would kill him.”

  “Took you long enough to get to the core of it all,” she scoffed. “If there was no Jeb, would you still want to leave?”

  “I don’t want to ruin what we have,” I tried to reason with her, but we both knew I was avoiding the answer. “Look at what he did to my brother. Pauly has been in prison for attempted kidnapping, just for helping me pack to leave. Could you imagine what he would do if he knew I had feelings for Chains?”

  Fi made phone calls and worked it out so I could stay with Medic. I left a note telling Chains that he had become too important to me to let him get hurt, and my leaving had nothing to do with him and everything to do with me. I even told him where I would be, so when or if he felt like hanging out, he would know where to find me.

  Then Fi and I took what I had and headed to Medic’s, who was waiting for me with a fresh cup of coffee and a hug. We talked about everything throughout the day, I found myself staring out the window and listening for motorcycles to come close, but there were none. I wanted to know that Chains got my note, that he made it home sa
fe. I had made his favorite casserole and left it in the refrigerator since he was used to me making dinner.

  Wishful thinking.

  Those two words can lead to a distortion of reality, and I had drowned myself in it in the week since Chains had left and hadn’t returned.

  In my head, I was thinking of how I could have this amazing life, but in reality, I was still married to a bastard of a man. And I was allowing my thoughts of having a life with Chains to bleed into my fantasies. The reality was, he deserved better.

  As I drifted off to sleep, another night alone, I heard the rain as it hit the roof. I used to love the rain, I used to dance in it, and when I lived with Chains, I learned how to sleep through it, but now, I needed thunder, I needed quiet, I needed anything besides the water drops reminding me of what used to happen when I woke up.

  As much as I didn’t want to hurt him, I needed him. I needed the calm energy he put off. I needed his morning coffee. I needed his arms around me and those lips, that the best stories escaped from, on mine. I needed Chains.

  Chapter Five

  Chains

  “What are you doing here?” Fi questioned.

  I should have felt bad about waking her up before the sun was up, but I didn’t. “I need… girl talk?” I stated with hesitation because I was sure that was the wrong thing I needed, but the laughter that followed made Fi a little less angry about being woken up, and she welcomed me into her home for a cup of coffee and an education in her friend, Ellie.

  “Where’d you stash her?” I demanded. I had an idea of where she would be, but since Fiona helped her leave me, she had to answer for it.

  “Didn’t you get her note?”

  “I haven’t been home yet. I came straight here.”

  “She’s staying on the couch in Medic’s office.”

  “Why not in the guest room?”

  “Something about the rain, I don’t know.” Fi was yawning as the words came stretching out.