Brick's Addiction

Donny had already gone to jail twice for his employers. Never once did they lift a finger to help him. Rose had to bail him every single time.

“Nope, haven’t seen him this week.” Janice handed Stefan back to Rose. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know about that,” Rose admitted.

They bid each other good night, and Rose retreated inside the trailer. She remembered to engage all five locks on the front door. One could never be too careful, and with a baby to care for, Rose had become extra paranoid. She sniffed at Stefan. Janice had given him a bath. Good.

Rose set Stefan down on the cot in her room. She looked at the kid for a few moments. Stefan had inherited the same dark curls she and Donny had, but he had brown eyes instead of blue.

“What am I going to do with you, kid?” she whispered.

For now, her system worked as long as she could find a trustworthy babysitter for Stefan. What happened when he finally started school? God knew how she’d be able to pay for his education. Her brother and father might’ve not been there for her, but the last thing she wanted was to abandon this kid. Rose had to exhaust all her options first.

She took a shower. The incident on the road had woken her up. She shook a little as she put her head under the warm water. No use thinking about that either. So far, Rose had stuck with one philosophy throughout her entire life—live one day at a time. Still, she couldn’t ignore her mounting problems.

How could she provide the kid in her room a decent future when she wasn’t even sure of her own? Rose started toweling herself off when she heard that monstrous noise again. Vroomvroom, followed by the sound of men laughing and yelling at each other.

She froze. Rose thought she imagined all that noise at first, but it only grew louder. Rose quickly dressed. Instead of her usual nightwear—usually a big shirt, she put on jeans and a shirt. Then she made her way to Stefan. All the noise woke him up and he started crying.

Rose bundled him in his favorite blue blanket and gathered him to her chest. She exited her bedroom. Thank God she had closed all the curtains in the living room. She could make out harsh lights through the window and dark shapes. How many of them were out there? She swallowed. Fear gripped her tight.

There was only one way in and one way out of the trailer. That was through the front door.

“Donny, you thieving, no-good son of a bitch, come out here and face us like a man!” someone yelled.

“You think you can steal from the MC and get away with it?” another drunken voice yelled.

Rose wondered if these were the same bikers that passed her on the way home.

She shoved aside her rising anxiety and tried to make sense of their words. So they were looking for Donny. God. What had her idiot brother done now? What were the chances they’d go away if she and Stefan kept quiet? Stefan sniffled and brawled.

“Shush,” she told Stefan. He wouldn’t stop crying. “Please, Stefan. We can’t aggravate them any further.”

“Is that a baby I hear in there, Donny?” a biker asked. “Didn’t know a dickless coward like you could father a kid.”

The bikers laughed at that.

Sweat trickled down her face. It soaked the back of her shirt.

Something crashed against the windows. Amber liquid sprayed over the window. She recognized that liquid well enough. Rose served plenty of it at the bar. A beer bottle. She sucked in a breath. They were starting to throw things at the trailer now?

“Boys, if we can’t convince him to get out, we’ll just have to flush him out,” yelled one of the bikers.

Her heart nearly stopped at those words. Rose touched the edge of the curtain and took a peek. One biker held out a beer bottle, the top covered in flames. A Molotov cocktail? Rose’s heart was in her throat. The biker spread his legs apart, then entered a baseball-throwing position. Without another warning, he tossed the makeshift bomb right at the window Rose was standing in front of.