There were a lot of doctors doing what they could for girls that didn’t have a whole lot of options. Most of those doctors were good, their motives pure. But when you were performing illegal shit, there were bound to be women desperate enough to see the quacks that did it for kicks and from what little I’d gathered, Vera had been that desperate and her grandmother hadn’t known any better.
The sun set as I waited for Vera to wake up. Doc came in and gave her another shot of penicillin. Another brother came by to tell me that they were grabbing dinner and asked if I wanted anything. She slept through it all.
It wasn’t until the room was dark and the clubhouse started getting rowdy that Vera opened her eyes.
“Where am I?” she asked, her eyes finding mine across the room.
“You’re at the club,” I replied, watching her for any sign that she was going to lose it again. “How you feelin’?”
“Your club?” she asked. We’d talked about the club and my place in it plenty of times, but I had a feeling she was still in for a shock.
“Yeah, my club,” I replied. “You feelin’ any better?”
“Not really,” she said, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
“Doc’s been giving you some meds,” I said, leaning forward to rest my elbows on my knees. “It should clear up any infection you’ve got.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“But—” I paused. I had no idea how to even bring the subject up. I felt like a fucking idiot. “He needs to take a look.”
Her eyes widened a little, and I had a feeling they’d be as big as dinner plates if they hadn’t been so swollen.
“You don’t want him to,” I said before she could reply. “We’ll find someone else.”
“No. I don’t want anyone to know,” she said, her voice raspy and thick.
“There could be somethin’ wrong,” I replied as gently as I could. Hell, I could feel the back of my neck getting warm with embarrassment. I could whisper the filthiest things imaginable in her ear, but this conversation was uncomfortable as fuck.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said quickly.
I wanted to argue with her. Something had to be wrong if Doc thought she had an infection. Whatever was wrong with her had been going on since before I’d shown up at her door, so I knew it couldn’t have been from the beating. She’d looked like shit before that.
How was I supposed to talk to her about this shit? Jess would know what to do, she’d know what questions to ask, but there was no way in hell I was going to put them in a room together.
“Are you hungry?” I finally asked, choosing to change the subject, at least for now.
“Not really,” she said with a yawn. She winced.
“I can get you some painkillers from Doc,” I said, climbing to my feet. “And I’ll grab something for you to eat anyway. You haven’t had anything since yesterday.”
I expected her to argue, but when I looked down at her she was already asleep again.
The next few days were spent walking Vera to the bathroom, getting her food, watching her sleep, and avoiding my dad. The first three tasks were easy, but the last one took some work. I knew he’d be pissed that I’d dragged her home with me so I’d been trying to avoid any conversation with him. I wasn’t about to go head-to-head with the president of the club, but I had no place else to stash her if he ordered me to get her out of the clubhouse.
I should have known that he’d track me down eventually. He wasn’t the type to let shit slide.
“Charlie,” he said evenly, startling me as I backed my way out of the kitchen carrying a couple of sandwiches and sodas. “You got somethin’ you wanna talk to me about?”
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath before turning around.
He was sitting at the bar with a beer in his hand, his lips curved in amusement at my deer-in-the-headlights look.
“She had nowhere to go,” I said, setting my loot down on the bar. “I couldn’t leave her up there.”
“Couldn’t?” he asked calmly, lighting a cigarette. “Or wouldn’t?”
“Her old man beat the shit out of her because of me,” I replied, the words burning as they left my mouth. I’d nearly torn the hotel room apart when she’d told me that little piece of information. I’d gone to help her, and instead I’d fucked shit up for her even worse.
“Not sure how you had anything to do with it.”
“I’d been seeing her while I was up at mom’s,” I told him reluctantly. It was one thing to help out a friend, but another thing entirely to help out some chick I’d been fucking. As far as my dad was concerned, friends deserved loyalty but women didn’t. Unless that woman was my mother—and his loyalty to her only went so far.