“I’m sorry,” I said when she turned away.
“It’s fine. I didn’t really want to be a biker. I just wanted to fuck with you,” she said. “Okay. Cuts get cleaned. Then I am going to find something to pull those screws out with,” she said, looking a little green at the prospect.
“That’s what these are for,” Voss said, grabbing a fresh pair of pliers out of the bag, then soaking them in alcohol. “Might as well get this done before the cleaning,” he added, coming at me with the pliers and the kind of determination that meant he didn’t waste any time in plucking them out of my abdomen, no matter how much I cursed and slammed my fist down on the counter at my side.
“There,” he said, dropping the last screw with a pinging noise into the sink. “Done,” he added, moving away.
“I hope you’ve had a tetanus in the past decade,”Louana said, looking no less green even though she hadn’t been the one to do the extractions.
“A year back,” Voss said. “Rusty fence in Texas,” he added, recalling it as vividly as I did. Those wounds had gotten gnarly fast. Ended up needing a course of strong antibiotics to fight off the infection. He walked over toward me, untwisting a bottle of whiskey, and handing it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, getting another nod from him.
“Alright. Good. One less thing to worry about,” Louana said as she grabbed the alcohol and gave me a sad nod. “This is going to suck,” she warned as I took a long swig of the whiskey.
And then it did.
It sucked.
The alcohol, the scraping at wounds to get grit out, the slathering on of creams, then the wrapping up.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get any bones broken,” she said as she helped me get back up.
“That would have come,” I assured her. “I lucked out that everyone was tired from all the robbing.”
“It’s so exhausting being a complete and utter shithead,” she agreed as she lowered me down onto the corner of the bed, then pulled the bottle from my hand, and took a long fucking chug of it.
“Needed that, huh?” I asked, giving her a little smile.
“Your whole disappearance thing killed the little buzz I came back to the clubhouse with last night,” she told me.
“Went to the bar, huh?” I asked.
“And had a nice long heart-to-heart with Jase Mallick.”
“Jase?” I asked, hearing my tone get sharp.
“Oh, stop puffing up,” she said, making me realize that I had straightened, even though it hurt. “It was a friendly talk. He actually convinced me to go back to you and have the ‘hard talk’ as he put it. Then, you know, I had to run around and save your life, you stupid ass,” she said, getting a low chuckle out of both me and Voss as he moved back in from the bathroom.
“How pissed is Fallon?” I asked.
“Eh,” Voss said, shrugging. “Used to the shit,” he added.
I guess that was fair. It seemed like every six months or so there was a major incident going on in or around the club.
“You two crashing here for the night?” Voss asked in a way that said he was assuming that was the case.
“Honestly, I’m too beat to drive,” Louana said, making my gaze slip in her direction.
It was the first time I was seeing her with clear eyes and no adrenaline clouding my perception. She looked rough. I mean as rough as someone as gorgeous as her could look. Her eyes were bloodshot and heavy-lidded. The night of drinking, no sleep, planning, and action was clearly weighing on her.
“I’ll let everyone know,” Voss said.
“Hey, Voss,” Louana called.
“Yeah?” he asked from the doorway.
“Thank you. You came in just at the right time.”
“No one has to act alone,” Voss said. “Not in this club.”
And with that, he was gone. Before I could thank him too.
“I am almost scared to learn what he’s been through in his life. Alone,” Louana said as she kicked out of her shoes.
“Honestly, me too,” I admitted. “Voss has a lot of dark. But I don’t know if I’ve met anyone as loyal as him. Except for you,” I added. “Maybe even when you shouldn’t be,” I added.
“We don’t have to do this now,” she said, sensing the mood shift.
“I think we do,” I countered. “We need to have the…what did Jase call it?”
“The hard talk.”
“Yeah, I think it’s time we have the hard talk.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Louana
The last thing in the world I wanted to do right then was have the hard talk.
I mean, I’d been all jazzed up and ready to have it after Chaz’s. But after all the stress and running around and then the whole potentially getting assaulted thing, followed by cleaning up some gnarly wounds, yeah,I just wanted to sleep.
But I also knew me. And him.