Skyler screamed and her voice echoed off the walls.
Shards of glass carved into my fists and arms, slicing into my face too. I didn’t pay any mind to the blood dripping from my body as he stumbled to remain upright. Using his momentum, my fist connected with his jaw before he even saw it coming. His head snapped back, taking half his body with him. I was over to the piece of shit in one stride, grabbing ahold of his cut and punching his fucking face repeatedly.
Delivering blow after blow to his stomach, his ribs, his chest, and back to his fucking face. Hearing hasty cracks in my fist’s wake.
“Jesus Christ, Noah! Stop! You’re going to fucking kill him! Stop!” Skyler begged for his mercy.
I let the pussy go and he fell to the ground, covered in blood, whimpering in pain.
“Get up!” I snarled, kicking him repeatedly in the kidneys. Making him recoil, feeling more of the agony I was spitefully delivering. “Get the fuck up and come at me like a man!”
“Noah! Enough! Stop! He’s had enough!” Skyler demanded, her voice still sounded so far away as I heard her struggle to break free.
It didn’t stop me in the least. I continued my assault on the motherfucker’s face and body. Hitting him until my knuckles felt raw. When suddenly, it was as if Skyler appeared out of thin air. I felt her hands on my cut, trying to desperately pull me off of him.
“Stop!” she yelled with despair in her tone. “You’re killing him! You’re fucking killing him!”
I instinctively spun around, and she slapped me across the face, snapping me back to reality. Instantly making me realize what the fuck I had just done.
“Holy shit,” she breathed out, immediately falling to her knees on the floor to tend to his knocked-out body. I halted her attempt, clutching onto her wrists. Roughly yanking her to her feet and turning her to face me instead.
She didn’t back down, using all her strength to shove me away. “Don’t fucking touch me! What the fuck is wrong with you?! You didn’t have to do that! You could have walked away! You could have walked the fuck away! For me! With me!”
I stepped toward her. “Cutie—”
“Don’t ‘Cutie’ me! I can’t believe you just did that! Why would you?!” she bellowed, tears falling down the sides of her face as she started to slam her fists into my chest.
I let her take her aggression out on me. Her adrenaline was pumping through her veins at full force, blowing through the abandoned school’s roof. She was now in fight-or-flight mode because of me, and I hated myself a little more for what I was putting her through.
This didn’t go as planned. I shouldn’t have brought her here. Shown her this aspect of my life if I knew things would have turned south, becoming something it wasn’t intended to be. I allowed her to scream, hit me, do whatever the fuck she needed to calm her ass down and come back to me.
Taking every blow to my bruised ego and my tattered soul.
“Is this what you do?! Is this who you are?! A fucking killer?!” Her words hit me as hard as my fists hit that motherfucker on the ground. She stumbled back, trying to catch her footing. “I don’t know you at all, do I?”
“Don’t say that! Don’t fuckin’ say that! You know me more than anyone!”
She fervently shook her head, scowling, “Not like this! I don’t know this person standing in front of me! Who the fuck is he?! Not my Noah.” She pointed to herself. “I don’t even think you know who he is! It’s like you’re not even here, Noah! Like you don’t even know what you’re doing!”
“Fuck, baby… I’m sorry… I don’t know why I would think this was a good idea. To show you this. I just wanted you to see my life, ’cuz this is who I am… this is what I do…”
“For who?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“For who, Noah?”
“My father.”
She jerked back, winded. All the fight in her gone. “Oh. My. God. This is what you do for the club?” she asked, her mind trying to process the reality of my life. “How long has this been going on?”
“Skyler—”
“How long?” she repeated in a harsh tone.
I shook my head, answering, “All my life.”
Her lips trembled as she backed away from me, slaying my heart a little more. Fear evident on her face.
For me?
Or because of me?
She stopped once she was standing beside Diesel, breathing out, “Please take me home.”
His eyes shifted over to me, and even though it killed me to think about my girl on the back of another man’s bike, I reluctantly nodded. Giving her the space she obviously needed.
“I’ll let his club know to come get him,” Diesel informed, mostly for her. Knowing I didn’t give a fuck about him. “He ain’t dead,” he added, glancing at Skyler. Trying to ease the strain between us.
“So that makes it okay?” she countered, locking eyes with him.
“Just sayin’. You got your panties in a bunch, and you shouldn’t, ’cuz he ain’t dead,” Diesel voiced, wanting to help but failing fucking miserably.
She scoffed, “I see. But he would have died had I not been here, right?” She peered back at me. “Is this how it works, Noah?”
“Somethin’ like that,” I implied, at a loss for words.
She took one last look at me with so much uncertainty in her gaze, digging the dagger deeper into my fucking heart before she unwillingly turned and left.
Leaving me there with nothing…
But my shame and regret.
TWENTY
NOAH
“Motherfucker!”
My fist collided with the old, tarnished lockers as I walked toward the exit. The sound of metal crushing echoed down the vacant hall with each strike, seeing images of Skyler’s face looking at me with so much disgust. Her hurtful words ringing in my ears as my knuckles took another beating that night. But I didn’t care, I welcomed the fucking sting. I deserved it tenfold.
Why did I think this was a good idea?
Punch.
I’m such a fucking idiot.
Punch. Punch.
Worthless piece of shit.
Punch. Punch. Punch.
I turned, sliding my back down the steel, banging my head against the locker a few times. Trying to knock some sense into my mind. Listening to Diesel’s bike roaring to life, whisking away my mistake. My chest was heaving for my next breath, and my vision began to tunnel. I was still in fight mode with no one to fight but myself.
She was gone.
I didn’t stay absorbed in my own self-pity for very long after they took off. I waited until they were gone because there was no way in hell I was going to just watch her leave on the back of another man’s bike. Even fucking Diesel’s. She was mine, and I already had to share her with the world, which fucking killed me inside. I jumped on my bike around two o’clock in the morning and drove around for I don’t know how long, aimlessly wandering the streets of Southport. Hoping this was all just a nightmare I’d wake up from. I was never that fucking lucky, though. It was damn near sunrise by the time I found myself smoking a cigarette on the bridge over the river. Nothing else in the world compared to seeing life just come awake right before your eyes.
I thought about Skyler.
About the life I wanted with her, and the one I’d have to live without her.
What could I fucking do at this point? She’d seen my true colors, flashing bright and bold in front of her eyes. My truths were like a warning in the night, telling her to steer clear of the jagged rocks. Like the current of the river that almost took her life. I was the force of gravity trying to drag her down the stream right along with me.
See her beauty in my pain.
Hear her voice in my nightmares.
Feel her love in my death.
“Is this what you do?! Is this who you are?! A fucking killer?!”
Question after question plagued my thoughts as I sat there on my bike chain-smoking
. Each thought more unforgiving than the last, tumbling around in my mind. Fighting every bone in my body not to go to her, make her understand, to see the guy I was with her, and the one I wanted to be when I wasn’t. Throw her over my shoulder if I had to, and take her and the pain I caused away. She was the only person who could bring me to my fucking knees without even trying. Without so much as a breath or a word.
I inhaled deeply, finishing off my cigarette, and flicking it off the bridge into the rough waters below. Waiting for the black Lincoln hot rod, driving up onto the bridge, to pass so I could take off and most likely go drink my weight in a bottle of Jack.
However, the car abruptly stopped. The driver’s side door opened, and out came the last person I ever expected to see.
“Noah?” Doctor Aiden Pierce addressed.
I nodded at him. “Nice wheels, Doc.”
I probably saw him a handful of times since our last encounter when Ma had a seizure. Each time needing to have her stomach pumped after a night or two of binge drinking. And every time we showed up in his ER, he was still on my ass about getting her into rehab. He was a good fucking doctor, I’d give him that.
He narrowed his eyes at me, cocking his head to the side, taking me in. “Jesus, man, you look like shit.”
“You should see the other guy, but nice to see you too. Might wanna work on that bedside manner.”
His gaze shifted from one cut to the other on my face, hands, and arms before his concerned stare met my eyes. “Have you been to the hospital?”
“If I had, they sure as hell did a shitty job fixin’ me up,” I chucked, lighting another cigarette. Noticing he was wearing scrubs, I asked, “You on your way in?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m actually on my way home. Are you going to go to the hospital?”
“You always this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the ass crack of fuckin’ dawn?”
“Noah,” he coaxed in a straightforward tone. “Just by looking at you from over here, I can see you need stitches.”
I shrugged. “A little blood ain’t ever hurt anybody.”
“Yeah, well that shard of glass lodged in the left side of your head is a lot more than just a little blood.”
I touched the glass he was referring to. “Well, that explains the killer fuckin’ headache.”
“You need to go to the ER.”
I grabbed it, hissing, “Nah, I can take it out.”
“Noah!”
I halted.
“Your hands are covered in blood, which I’m guessing isn’t yours. So not only are you fucking stupid for fighting, that person’s blood is going to give you an infection if it hasn’t already. You need a doctor.”
“For fuck’s sake, Doc, you always this big of a pain in the ass?”
“According to my wife, yes, but you can ask her yourself after you follow me home. I live right up the road about two blocks. I’ll get you stitched up and you can be on your way.” He didn’t give me a chance to reply, stepping back into his car. Nodding at me through the rearview mirror to follow him, and I simply nodded back.
It was late, yet too fucking early, and I was too exhausted to refuse. Besides, he was right. I didn’t need an infection on top of all this bullshit. Taking one last drag of my cigarette, I flicked it to the ground and followed the good doctor to his house. He was right, he lived only a few blocks from the river in a fancy gated community, where I pictured a bunch of country club sons of bitches having BBQ’s every Sunday after church. With a bunch of Suzy homemakers or Betty fucking Crocker’s or some shit that they were married to. Living their perfect lives, with their perfect kids and their perfect pets that didn’t shit in the house.
As he pulled into his three-car garage, I parked on the side of his driveway out of the way. Deciding at the last second to take off my cut and leave it on my bike. Not that I gave a flying fuck what people thought about me, but I was already covered in dried blood, and he was doing me a solid by fixing me up. The least I could do was have some respect for his wife. I was probably going to scare the shit out of her as it was with my being there. I didn’t need to add to it by showing her I was just one of the outlaws that I called my family.
I took a deep breath and met him in the garage, trying to wipe some of the dried-up blood off the back of my hands on my jeans. He took another look at me from head to toe when I was standing in front of him, and this is when I knew he was too good to be fucking true.
I scoffed, shaking my head. Mentally chastising myself for letting my guard down for even one fucking second. I was about to turn my ass around before he had the chance to tell me he changed his mind. Not wanting him to see the disappointment in my eyes for believing in someone who bought me a cup a coffee a few times. Trying to pretend like he gave a fucking damn about my life.
When he said, “Tell my wife whatever you want, but don’t tell her the truth, alright? She’ll worry about you,” almost knocking me on my ass.
I jerked back, caught off guard by his statement. “She don’t even know me.”
“That won’t matter to her.”
My cautious gaze moved to the tattoo on his neck, the three crosses were now on full display, but his solely black ink didn’t stop there. More religious pieces followed all the way down his left arm, ending with a dove on his wrist.
I peered up at him through the slits in my eyes, locking them with his knowing stare. “So she the reason you’re such a good doctor?”
“No. She’s the reason I’m a good man. I told you, I know what it’s like to be—”
The garage door opened, cutting him off. Pulling both of our attention to who I assumed was his wife.
“Hey! I thought I heard you,” she greeted him with a huge smile on her pretty face.
He walked up to her. “Hey, baby.” Kissing her before they both peered back at me. “I picked up a stray. Want to feed him?”
She giggled in a Skyler sort of way, making me miss her even more. Playfully smacking his chest. “Don’t mind him. I picked him up as a stray too. Fed him once and he never left my side.”
I scoffed out a laugh despite myself.
“I’m Bailey.”
“Noah.”
“I’d give you a hug because I’m a hugger, but uh…” She eyed me up and down. “What happened?”
“He walked into a sliding glass door,” Aiden replied for me.
She regarded him for a few seconds and then returned her stare to me, glancing down at my knuckles before returning her perceptive expression to him. Sassing, “And I was born yesterday?”
I chuckled, I couldn’t help it. I instantly liked her, she called him out on his shit like Skyler did with me.
Without another word, she shook her head. Opening the door wider, motioning for me to come inside.
I did, immediately realizing how nice their house was. Not a thing out of place, except me.
“Take a seat,” Aiden stated, pulling out one of the chairs at the island in the kitchen. “Give me a couple minutes. I’m going to go grab a few things I need to fix you up.” He kissed his wife again, looking at her adoringly, and walked out of the room.
“Noah, how do you like your eggs?” she asked, opening the fridge. Making me feel like I was a guest in their home, and not the trash they needed to take out.
“Don’t need ya to cook—”
“Don’t even try me, boy,” she chimed in with a teasing tone, setting the eggs on the island. Never breaking her stare from mine. “I know a hungry guy when I see one, and you are definitely starving. I don’t need two hangry men in my house. Besides, I love cooking. It’s a good distraction, keeps me busy while Aiden’s working mostly nights for his residency at the hospital. I find it brings me a sense of peace, since I have a hard time sleeping without him,” she freely shared, as if I was just an old friend and not a random guy covered in blood, sitting in her kitchen that probably cost more than anything I’d ever be able to afford.
Knowing I wouldn’t have a chance to win this figh
t, I muttered, “Sunny side up.”
“That’s how I like my eggs too.” She smiled at me, cracking an egg on the bowl. “So how do you know my husband?”
I hesitated, because for some reason, I didn’t want to lie to her. There was just something about the Pierce’s that fucked with my mind. Wanting to let my guard down after having it up my entire life.
“My ma, uh…” I rubbed the back of my neck in a nervous gesture. “She’s umm… a drinker and… uh… an ambulance brought her into the ER.”
“Oh, Noah… I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged, not used to the sincerity and sympathy pouring out of her. The only other people that ever showed any concern for me were her husband and Skyler.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“You look a lot older than that.”
“Feel a lot older too.”
“Yeah, I understand.” She nodded. “Don’t you wish we could just choose our families. It would make life so much easier. Aiden was—”
“Alright, you ready?” Aiden walked back into the kitchen with a black bag in his hands. Cutting her off without even knowing it.
“You got any Jack?” I questioned, wishing that she would have finished what she was going to say.
The look in Aiden’s eyes every time he saw me at the hospital, the look in hers from the moment she saw me in her garage. It seemed so familiar yet foreign, almost like they were looking at me from the inside out, and not just my appearance like everyone else. As if they knew who I was and what I’d been through because they were once there themselves. Like they were looking in a mirror, making a connection brought on by pain and suffering. Sensing maybe I needed exactly what they did back then.
“Not for a minor,” Aiden remarked, pulling me away from my thoughts as he set up his medical shit on the island in front of us. “But I have something better.”
“Doubt that.”
He held up a needle. “Lidocaine. It will numb you, but it’s going to burn like a bitch before it does.”