Sicko

“Agreed, but he will want in.”

“I know,” I say, reaching over to my bike and grabbing my helmet. “He can once we’ve gotten what we need. The kill will be his.”

I tell Justice to take him to the basement of one of the clubs that the MC owns. It would be risky if we didn’t have confidence in our cleanup crew. Swinging my leg onto my bike, I nod my head at Wicked to gesture to follow me.

This is going to get messy. I’m fucking on it.

Candy apples. I remember loving them as a small kid. Royce, Orson, and Storm would drag me to the fair every year, and every year that they would visit Stone View I would beg for a candied apple. Something about the way the sticky red toffee would tickle my tongue. Sugar, the first drug we craved.

I look down at the gummy red liquid over my hands and clothes, stretching my fingers wide until they’re no longer stuck together. “I’m sorry.”

Lion is curled over Bonnie’s lifeless body, her eyes now closed but the blood still seeping through her white blouse. Fresh. She was alive moments ago, and now she’s gone. “I love that top, Bonnie! Where’d you get it?” Hard to believe that I asked her that question thirty-minutes ago as she was pulling the muffins from the oven. The muffins that are sprayed around her body, soggy with blood.

“Don’t be sorry.” Lion’s voice cracks and I swipe my stray hair away from my face. “You need to go inside, Jade. Royce won’t want you out here, and we’ve got to carry out a process that you might not want to see.”

My lip trembles as sorrow sucks me in like a whirlpool in the middle of a calm ocean. Silently and carefully pulling me under. “Okay.” Standing, my legs liquify and I began falling, just as Slim comes up behind me, catching me by my back.

“You’ll make a good doc one day, Jade. Stick to your studies.” Lion’s comment throws me off, in the midst of everything, but when I look back down at him clutching Bonnie in his arms with his eyes pained and trained on me, I see why he says it. Maybe I could have saved her, had I known what I was about to learn. He’s right. This is all wrong. I never want to feel like I maybe could have saved someone had I known what to do.

I promise myself and Bonnie that I will graduate medical school. I will do it for her.

Once we’re back in the house, Slim leads me up the stairs as police cars roll in through the gates. Gypsy is quiet in the corner of the kitchen, his head hanging between his arms, resting on his knees. My heart contracts seeing him so young and losing a parent. I could have only wished that I had a parent even close to as warm and loving as Bonnie was. I whimper, my lip trembling. I want to wrap my arms around him and take his pain away.

The front door slams closed, the silence inside the house deafening.

“I’ll head up for a shower.” I push past Slim and ignore the girls who are on the sofas in the sitting room, soft cries and hushed whispers.

Once I’m in the safety of Royce’s bedroom, everything seems to come crashing over me at once. It’s as if I mentally know that I’m safe and stable, and now I can crumble with Royce around me. Running for the small toilet and shower area, I kick open the bowl and bend over, spilling out my breakfast from this morning. Muffins. Orange chocolate chip. Pain grapples with sorrow, fresh tears springing from my eyes. My shoulders curl over, my chest caving in. I clutch the porcelain of the toilet, releasing angry wails between hiccups. I didn’t know Bonnie for long, but she welcomed me into this family and made me feel like I was important. The world needed more of her, not one less of her. I will forever hold a piece of her within me.

I tap the lever and watch as all the murky, orange goo gets washed up and sucked through the bowl before coming to a stand and removing my clothes.

The shower was rough. I cried a lot while scrubbing off the blood and washing the taint of death from myself. After changing into some fresh gray yoga pants and a white crop top, I slip on some socks and bag my bloody clothes, the smell of what just happened laced within the stitches of my favorite pair of jeans. Snatching up my phone after brushing my long hair and twisting it into a topknot, I push open the door and freeze when I see Bea on the other side, glaring at me with red-rimmed eyes. Her white skirt is short, her fishnet tights ripped in various places. Her mascara bleeds down her flawless cheeks as her platinum blonde hair hangs like daggers down her back.