BONER
The whole clubhelped with the search. Curtains worked his technological wizardry, Zeus put out feelers with dealers and smaller allied clubs in the province, the prospects did rounds of our territory, and I went out every day for two weeks searchin’ the cold trail of our one night together for any sign’a Blue.
We didn’t find her.
But Curtains wasn’t a well-known hacker for nothin’.
We found out Blue was Faith Felicity Cavendish, born to ‘Rooster’ Thomas Cavendish and Davina Wood in Calgary in 1998. Married to ‘Hazard’ Rick Elsher.
She was twenty-five. Same as Mei and Cleo.
Only three years younger than Curtains and me.
And married.
Curtains had tried to talk me down from my feelings as if I was on the ledge of a buildin’ about to plummet to my death.
“She’smarried, man,” he’d said like I didn’t know. Like those words weren’t branded on the inside’a my skull. “And you told her to wait for you, but she didn’t. I know you think you had somethin’, but maybe…I mean maybe she just wanted independence or hell, wanted to go back home?”
Home.
I’d known the woman for less than twenty-four hours and we’d barely talked about our pasts, our traumas, but I knew in my bones that Blue was a girl who’d never known a home.
It was in the way she seemed shocked by my kindness and praise. In the way she seemed stunned by the club, not ’cause of our outlawed nature but ’cause we got along, shot the shit and supported each other like a family.
Even though I was the one who didn’t have any family left, save the sister I’d lost years ago, it was Blue who was alone in this world.
And I couldn’t stand the thought’a that.
It haunted me almost more than her absence. This idea that wherever she was, she was alone, and she’d probably stay that way outta fear for a long fuckin’ time.
A girl like Blue deserved the world, and I wanted to be the one to give it to her so bad it ached in my fuckin’ teeth.
So no, I didn’t think she went back to that motherfucker Rooster and that limp dick Hazard ’cause she missed her family. I had to hope she’d left me to flee from them and find some kinda freedom for herself again. I liked the idea of her livin’ free and bold, blue hair shinin’, smile beamin’ as she went through her day without worryin’ about the men who’d tried to cage her for so long.
I wished she’d given me the chance to prove I could take care’a her myself, especially ’cause I refused to believe the connection between us was one-sided, but I got rationally that a lifetime’a fear had a lot more weight than one night’a heaven.
If she had found some peace somewhere far away, I could live with that. I just needed toknow,or my mind would take me to dark places I knew all about ’cause my sister had disappeared once ’fore too and ended up in exactly those kinds’a places.
“She’s not Swan,” Curtains’d reminded me softly as we sat side by side on the couch playin’Call of Dutyone night. “You don’t know she needs savin’.”
The sound’a my sister’s nickname burned through my brain and tangled with the synapses worryin’ about Blue.
I knew they weren’t the same.
Elsa was lost to me forever. I got that. We’d saved her from the triad years ago only to lose her in a way we knew she didn’t want to be found.
But…
“I gotta know she’s okay, man,” I’d murmured, lettin’ the ache in my soul saturate the words on my tongue. “You think I can get outta bed every day knowin’ I’ll never see my sister again without those emails she sends once a year checkin’ in? If I didn’t know she was alive, that she didn’twantus to find her, you think I wouldn’t tear the world apart searchin’?”
Curtains was quiet after that. He got it ’cause it’d been years, but he still loved Elsa more than he’d ever loved anyone probably.
It was the thing that’d brought us together. The thing that brought us to this club.
“I gotta know,” I’d finished, unpausin’ our game. “If she needs help, I gotta be there to give it.”
So we searched for weeks, and Z even pulled Lion in on it. I offered to pay him ’cause he was one’a the most sought-after private investigators in the province now, but he’d tossed my wallet in the trash and told me not to be a fuckin’ idiot.
