“What did the doctors say?”
“That she hit her head too hard, and it’ll take time for her brain to get unscrambled. The fall broke bones. She needs a spine brace and casts. A gunshot tore up her shoulder,” Anise said and began to cry. “She won’t be okay for a long time, but shewillbe okay.”
Beckoned by Anise’s sobs, the members of the Everything Nice Crew entered the room like a tsunami. I moved aside toallow them to comfort their friend. The women had been tight for around forty years. Nothing I could say would soothe her like words from her ENC family.
I studied Cher and tried to see the green-haired goofball I knew. This fragile creature felt like a lie. My mind flashed with the memory of her falling at the parking garage. I could still hear her frightened cry, followed by the unnatural sound of her body landing against concrete.
“Lula,” Sabrina said and wrapped her arms around me from behind. “Let’s get home and let Anise care for her girls. We’ll come back when Stevie and Cher are awake.”
Turning to hug my sister, I felt buried under too much guilt. I couldn’t breathe. My heart ached. I wanted to hide away from the world, but I also needed to make everything right.
Sabrina didn’t allow me to choose my path. She told everyone how I needed to get home. The women offered hugs and warm words, yet I felt the Rawlins crew rallying around their own people.
In the hospital hallway, Rowdy and Vanessa talked to Nine and Ben. The brothers were Rawlins kids like Cher and Stevie. Clint had assigned them to act as security for an eight-hour shift.
I opened my mouth to thank them, only to begin crying instead. Rowdy hugged me to his body and told the brothers goodbye. We walked toward the elevators.
On the way downstairs, Rowdy didn’t need to speak a word. I knew how he wished he had been the one to kill the men. Our people should have claimed vengeance for yesterday’s attack.
Instead, retribution came in the form of the Black Rainbow Motorcycle Club and a biker I couldn’t get out of my mind.
EXILE
Baton Rouge wasn’t my hometown. I grew up surrounded by cornfields and long stretches of beautiful nothing in South Dakota. I felt trapped back then. The only way to escape that life was to join the military.
As my club returned to Baton Rouge, I recalled how my mom cried when I told her I had enlisted. Laverne claimed I’d never come back home.
“I’ll lose you forever,” was how she put words to her feelings.
Laverne had been right about losing me. I never visited Bixby while on leave. I stayed away for the same reason I left in the first place. In South Dakota, I would never be anyone except my father’s son.
Danny Shaw was a rowdy kid. That was how everyone described him, as if his rowdiness had been a warning of what was to come.
The only time I returned to Bixby was to bury Laverne when her third husband crashed their car when he tried speeding around a slow semi on the grassy side of the highway. I wasn’t surprised to learn Laverne had died thanks to a man. Her life had never truly been her own. Like a lot of women, my mom believed she could only be truly whole with a ring on her finger, even if the man who put it on her was a moron.
My kid sister, Nova, followed in Laverne’s footsteps by marrying a dumb guy who made her laugh. She swore Chris would treat her right. I hadn’t come to their wedding, figuring I wouldn’t like the guy and might cause trouble for my happy sister.
When I had flown into South Dakota from Baton Rouge to bury Laverne, I drove straight to Nova’s little house. I hadn’twanted to get out of my car. I couldn’t believe Nova was happy living trapped in the middle of nowhere.
I hated South Dakota. The beautiful land disguised the state’s ugly underbelly. My father had spilled innocent blood in this place. I’d been beaten half to death by angry men more than once while surrounded by gorgeous views. My mom died here because her latest man had no patience. The place felt cursed.
When Nova answered the door, she was hiding a black eye under too much makeup. I nearly didn’t recognize my sister. The brunette was somehow too thin despite being six months pregnant with her second daughter. In our childhood, Nova had been a ray of sunshine. She smiled all the time, and her blue eyes shone. When she opened the door for me that day, Nova looked like a stranger without a hope in the world.
I still felt great pride in how I restrained myself from killing Chris when he showed up at home. I hadn’t laid a single finger on him. I just got through the funeral before renting a truck for Nova’s shit.
“You’re leaving Chris and coming to live with me,” was what I told my sister.
“Okay,” she had replied as if she’d been waiting for me to offer. “I’m a good cook, and I keep a clean house.”
That was four years ago. Nova was no longer sickly thin or dulled out. She smiled easily. My nieces were goofballs like their mom, enjoying life in a way they wouldn’t have if they remained in South Dakota. The girls never asked about their dad, who died years ago when he decided Nova had been gone long enough.
I dropped his battered corpse in the Mississippi River. Chris might have been a funny guy with plenty of friends, but no one ever came looking for him.
Life in Baton Rouge wasn’t always easy, but the city suited me better than small-town life ever did. My house was located in a quaint neighborhood far from the club’s tawdry clubhouse.I bought the fixer-upper when I moved my sister and niece to Baton Rouge to start over. Though I had wanted something move-in ready, my sister insisted on a house in need of help.
“I’m starting over,” Nova said back then as we stood in the unloved house. “I’m rebuilding my life. No, scratch that. I’m rebuilding myself. This house is a project, just like me. If you deny me this, you’re saying I should remain a drunkard’s doormat.”
I should have shot down her argument. Nova was heavily pregnant. Her daughter viewed the world as her playground. I would be busy with the club. Renovating this house was a huge mistake for us.
