CHAPTER FOUR
They’d taken his kutte.
He knew they would, of course. He’d been waiting for them to do it. Waiting for months for them to do it. Knowing they were watching him, waiting for their chance. And now they had.
They’d taken his kutte.
Isaac was in his face, snarling at him. Len was holding him down, his hands pressing heavily on his shoulders. Cold rage blasted out at him from Show’s eyes. But he didn’t care about any of that, because Adrienne was there, too. Adrienne. He didn’t understand how or why she was there, but she was standing there, so delicate and pretty, and her lip was cut and swollen.
He’d done that. The whole—morning?—was a blur, and he didn’t know what the fuck was going on except that everything was falling apart, but he did know that he’d done that to Adrienne. He could still feel the soft skin of her face giving against his knuckles. He’d hit her. He’d bloodied her. Oh, God.
God, why didn’t they just kill him already? It would be so much better if they’d just kill him.
“Just kill me. Just kill me. Just do it. Please. Please, just kill me.”
“Badge, no.” Adrienne’s voice was little more than a gasp, but it stabbed at him nonetheless.
Isaac looked over his shoulder. “Show—get her out of here.”
“Come on, little one. Let’s get you home.”
“No, I…”
“Let’s go, Adrienne.”
Badger watched Show take her by the arm and escort her out. And then he was alone with Isaac and Len—and Tasha, keeping her distance at the bar.
“Just please. I can’t deal anymore.” He couldn’t. He was more tired than he had ever been, and he hurt. He hurt all the fucking time. It was just too much.
Len’s hands eased off his shoulders, and then he was squatting next to the chair they’d shoved Badger onto.
“You can, little brother. You can. We don’t take the easy way out. We fight. We survive. Time to remember how strong you are. Come on.” He grabbed Badger’s arm and lifted him up to stand. Then he led him back to the dorm.
Badger didn’t quite understand what was going on, but he was too exhausted to resist.
They’d taken his kutte.
They might as well have taken his life.
~oOo~
They were killing him. Jesus Christ. They were just killing him slowly, letting his body turn itself inside out while they sat by and waited. Jesus.
They had him locked in his room, but they’d taken almost everything out of it. Even the fucking lamp on his dresser. The only light in the room was the overhead, which burned his eyes like the damn sun was bolted to the ceiling.
The second time he shat the bed, they took his linens. Now he had a plastic pillow and a rubber sheet. When he got the chills so bad he thought his teeth would rattle right out of his head, they gave him a blanket back.
And they had the goddamn girls coming in. As if they’d been instructed not to, they didn’t look at him or talk to him. They cleaned up after him and brought him food and drink. Which he couldn’t keep down. He puked and puked, whether he had food to lose or not.
It was fucking humiliating.
He had no television, no book, no anything but his misery. He lay; or, when his legs would not keep still, he paced; or he sat; or he curled up on the floor. And he let his head torment him. Everything hurt—every inch of his body, inside and out, was being pulled apart, set on fire, eaten alive—but nothing hurt as much as the anguish in his head.
None of his brothers—former brothers—came to see him. He had been forsaken.
When he could sleep, the dreams were more terrible and vivid than ever, his mind showing him again and again that day with the Perros, making him relive what they’d done to him. When he couldn’t sleep, his mind showed him all the ways he’d fucked everything up, how he’d exposed himself for the weak suck he’d always been. He’d failed everybody. He’d hurt Adrienne. He was a worthless sack of fucked-up flesh.
Tasha came in at some point—Maybe the fourth day? The fifth? Only the third?—when he had lost the ability to bear up silently and had spent hours weeping and moaning like a little girl. She hooked him up to an IV. He thought maybe he was going to get some relief, but she told him it was just fluids.
Keeping him alive longer, prolonging his agony and the inevitable conclusion of it.
She stayed with him while the bag drained into his vein. He lay on his fucking rubber sheet with his eyes closed, wearing nothing but his boxers and a t-shirt, and tried to pretend he was already dead.
But then he started to feel a little better. The weed-whacker in his head slowed. The reaching tendrils of pain settled. His stomach eased. He opened his eyes, and Tasha smiled at him. Then she put her finger to her lips, and he understood. She was helping him. He wondered if she was helping him live or die.
“You should be through the worst of it now, Badge. Where you are now? This should be the bottom. Okay? You made it through the worst of it.” She put her hand on his face and brushed his hair back. Her hand was soft and cool, and it was the first time someone had touched him with kindness since Adrienne had roused him in his office.
He didn’t even try to be strong. He just wept.
~oOo~
The first Horde who came to see him, the day after Tasha had helped him, was Isaac. Badger was just clear enough again to be scared, and just strong enough again to manage to hold it together. He was still practically naked, and Isaac walked in wearing his kutte. Of course he was wearing his kutte—they were in the clubhouse. But it hurt so bad to see it.
Davey came in carrying a straight-back chair from the Hall. Even Davey’s Prospect kutte gave Badger a pang of loss and jealousy.
When Davey left, closing the door behind him, Isaac brought the chair closer to the bed, where Badger was sitting, and sat down. “Badger.”
“Isaac.”
“You look like shit.”
“Yeah. Feel a little better, though.”
“Good. You ready to talk?”
No. No, he was not ready to talk. He did not want to have this conversation. He was straight enough now to know that they weren’t going to kill him. Well, not to know for sure, but to be able to work out that if they were going to kill him, they probably would have already. But he also knew that he was out of the club. And he didn’t know how to live outside it. He’d given himself over to the Night Horde a long time ago. He’d done things in the name of the club that would have horrified him in his earlier life. He’d seen things, felt things, experienced things that were nothing but insanity without the frame of the club and the support of his brothers. So he did not want to have the talk with Isaac that would conclusively end that support. He was not ready at all.
But he met Isaac’s eyes and said, “Yeah. I’m ready.”
“You lied to us, Badger. Every day. You lied straight to my face.”
There was no way to explain everything that had been in his head, that still was in his head, no way to make anybody understand the hole he’d been in. Was in. Certainly not Isaac, whose will was stronger than anybody’s Badger had ever known. Badger couldn’t believe Isaac had known a second’s weakness in his entire life. Not even when he was paralyzed. Fuck, he was sitting right in front of him. He was riding. And he’d been paralyzed. How could somebody like that understand a pussy like him?
Without any way of making Isaac see, Badger just dropped his eyes to his lap and nodded.
“We can’t have that, Badge. As brothers, we have to be straight with each other. Always. Trust is all we’ve got, and it’s been in short enough supply. You understand?”
Again, still staring at his limp hands, Badger nodded.
“So what are we gonna do about it?”
“What you have to. I understand. I’m not cut out for the Horde. Too weak. I know. I’m sorry I let you down.”
Isaac didn’t answer. He was quiet for a long stretch, but Badger kept his head down.
Eventually, Isaac spoke again, his voice softer than before. “When we took you on as Prospect, you were a pimply-faced little shit. Skinny as fuck. And you’d quake in your boots if a patch so much as looked at you twice. Len fought for you when he brought your name to the table, and he convinced us to give you a chance. But I was sure a puny little pup like you would wash out fast.”
He leaned forward, his hands on his knees. Badger looked up then and met his eyes. He saw no condemnation there, and the lack of it stunned him.
Isaac went on. “But then the Ellis shit got hot, right after you came on, and you were in it, Badge. You were in it. You didn’t back down. You took a fuckin’ bullet guarding Lilli, and you came right back. You came out of that Perro hell alive. You’re not weak, little brother. You’re not. You’re tough as fuck.” He took a deep breath. “You know, I know about wanting to quit. Wanting shit to just end. There were lots of times when I was laid up that I just…wanted it over. Especially when I didn’t even have my hands. Those days, if there’d been a way, I’d’ve checked out. So I understand feeling too weak to face what we have to face. I got through it because I wasn’t alone. I had Lilli and Gia, and I got through my shit because they still needed me. They wanted me. I couldn’t do it alone, so I didn’t. I leaned on my family.”
The thought of Isaac wanting to end things boggled Badger’s mind, but it wasn’t the same. Isaac had lost almost everything. Badger merely couldn’t deal with the pain and fear he’d been living with since the fall. He wasn’t man enough to overcome it. Show and Len had. He was the only one not strong enough.
“It’s not weakness that’s the problem here, Badge. It’s trust. You are not alone. You fell because you’re acting like you’re alone. You didn’t trust us enough to let us hold you up. And you lied. You put us at greater risk every time you went on a run fucked up.” He leaned forward even farther and wrapped his big paw around Badger’s arm. “Did you go on a weed run fucked up?”
Badger’s first inclination was to deny it, to lie. But he paused, took a breath, and nodded.
Isaac released his arm roughly and sat back. “Fuck. You see our problem?”
He nodded again. He saw—he’d seen at the time, too. He’d known how bad he was fucking up while he was fucking up. But he hadn’t been able to stop.
“That’s a lot of trust you’ve lost, Badge. Trust you gotta build back up. You want that kutte back, you gotta build that trust.”
Isaac was offering him a second chance. His heart sang at the thought of getting his kutte back. For a brief, glorious second, he felt good. He felt hope. But then he realized that he had no way of building back the kind of trust he’d squandered. “How?”
“I don’t know, little brother. I don’t know.” With that, Isaac stood. He laid his hand on Badger’s head for a second, and then he left the room. Davey came in right after and took the chair out.
A second chance without any hope of attaining it. Meaningless.
~oOo~
Len came to see him the next day. He was feeling well enough that he thought he could have gotten dressed, gone out, moved around a little, but he was still locked in, still without anything to do but confront his own mind. He’d thought a lot about what Isaac had said, and what he hadn’t said.
He wasn’t feeling so hopeless. There wasn’t much hope, but he felt a little. Enough to make him restless in his cage.
Len came in and sat on the end of his bed. Badger was up and pacing. “I need to get out of here, Len.”
“No can do, Badge. Not until Tasha says you’re all the way through it.”
“She hasn’t been here for…” He wasn’t sure. “Like…two days or something. How would she know?”
“She’s paying attention. And she’s a doctor. Why don’t you sit?”
“I’ve been sitting for days. I need out. Fuck, I’m goin’ crazy.” He didn’t know how to start fixing anything or if he even could, but he knew he couldn’t from this room.
“Badge. Sit. Now.”
Len had sponsored Badger when he applied to prospect, and he’d been his mentor since long before that. When he was still in middle school, Badger had ridden his Huffy down the road to Len’s and asked for work. Len had given him work—shit work, hard, grueling tasks that made Badger sometimes want to weep from the exhaustion. But he’d paid well, and he’d paid even better in knowledge, teaching Badger everything there was to know about horses. He immensely admired and respected Isaac and Showdown. But Len was his guide. That it was Len who’d torn his kutte off his body had hurt more than anything else.
Now, he did what he was told and sat, on the side of the bed, pulling his leg up and turning so that he could face Len. No more looking away. That had to be the first step. There were steps, right? Twelve of them, or something. He didn’t know what they were, but facing himself and everybody else had to be the first one.
So when Len looked him hard in the eye, even his eye patch seeming to see into him, he looked right back.
“I want to talk about Hav.”
At that, Badger almost looked away anyway. He couldn’t do that, couldn’t talk about Havoc. But after a single blink, he made himself hold.
“What’s your last memory of him?” Len’s gruff voice was quiet, and it broke in the middle. He cleared his throat.
What Badger remembered about that day, that place…was pain. Fear. Helplessness. Hopelessness. He remembered the room they’d taken him into again and again. He remembered them taking his skin—and what they’d done to it. He remembered horror and pain vividly, but little else.
He didn’t remember Havoc almost at all from that time. He didn’t remember Len or Show much, either, but it was far worse not to remember Havoc. He’d died there, and Badger had no memory of it. That felt like a betrayal of his brother, and there was no way he could undo it.
He shook his head. And then he dropped his eyes, ashamed.
“S’okay, little brother. I want to tell you my last memory of him—the one before he died. Because it’s about you.”
Badger looked up.
“You were in real bad shape. We all were, but, Badge, you were dyin’. Right there in front of us. They’d caved in your chest, and they’d…fuck, they skinned you alive, and you were dyin’. Hav wasn’t in much better shape. They’d taken all his fingers and just left his hands to bleed. He was worried about you. He couldn’t get a pulse on you, because of his hands, so he called me over when I woke up. I found a pulse, but you were on the way out. I told him to let you go. I’m ashamed of it now, but I was out of hope, and you were sufferin’ so bad. Jesus, it hurt me to see what they’d done.”
Badger felt ill—enough that he looked around for the bucket he’d been using—but he didn’t stop Len from telling the story.
“Hav wouldn’t let you go. He got you to talk a little and he asked you to find one good thought. Your best thought. You said you didn’t have any, and he called bullshit. He told us his best thought. He got you to say yours. You don’t remember?”
The urge to puke had passed, in favor of the urge to weep. Badger swallowed to stop the sobs massing in his throat, but he didn’t try to dam the tears. Those he let fall. He shook his head.
“It’s okay, little brother. I’m glad you don’t remember. Even with what I felt that day, I can’t imagine what it was like for you. But Hav kept you going. He helped you find something to fight for. You told us your best thought. You know what it was?”
He knew what his best thought was. He didn’t know if he’d said it out loud, and he didn’t know what to say now.
“It’s okay, Badge. Show was still out of it when you said it. And I haven’t said anything. He doesn’t know.”
So, then, he had said it out loud.
“Adrienne.”
“Yeah.”
“I hurt her.”
“Yeah, you did. She’s okay—she’s pretty much healed now. And I don’t think she’s holdin’ a grudge. She asks about you every day. But you did hurt her. That day, when you said she was your best thought, and I thought you were dyin’, I was mad. At you. For wasting that chance when you had it. Wasting it because you’re afraid of Show. Well, you made that worse. He will kill you now if you so much as nod in her direction. But I say you figure out how to fix that. Because you don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever.” He punched Badger lightly on the arm. “You love her?”
“I hurt her.”
“Not what I asked, Badger.”
Did he love her? He’d made himself not think about that much. He’d tried hard, anyway, not to think about that. He and Adrienne had started a friendship with a kiss. A really incredible kiss. That had been four years ago. Since then, they’d only been in the same place six or seven times, when she’d come for a visit.
When she was in town, they’d hung out a fair amount. Not really doing anything—watching movies, riding horses, knocking around in town. They’d made out a few times, but nothing more than that. Not even any over-the-clothes action. And she’d initiated everything. Of course, until recently, he’d never made a move on any girl. Not even the club girls. He’d been a total pussy that way. And every other way.
He’d stopped everything at kissing, because Show had been clear that Adrienne was off limits, and he was not about to go against a brother—and most certainly not Showdown.
But they were good friends, and they’d kept in close touch online and by text and video chat. He’d thought they were close. And he knew it was him who’d broken that, who’d pulled away. He also knew that she was hurt and confused.
“Badge.”
“Yeah. I love her. But I hurt her. And not just when Show stopped me. I knocked her down the day before.”
“Shit, kid.”
“Yeah.” Badger looked down at his hands, which had done the things he’d described. He curled them into fists and slammed them down on his thighs. “Fuck.”
“Remember what Hav did to Cory?”
He remembered. Hav had hit his old lady in the head with a sledgehammer. But it was nothing like what he’d done. “That was different. That was an accident. And he was nuts after his sister…”
Had been beheaded by Martin Halyard. Which was how they’d ended up in Chicago, killing Halyard. Which was how they’d ended up in the Perros’ House of Pain.
“He was outta his head. Right. And we made space for that. Cory made space for that. Right?”
Unsure what Len’s point was, Badger just stared.
“What you went through, Badge—that’s crazy shit you had to deal with. More than even me or Show. I’d say you were a little nuts, too. Adrienne believes you didn’t mean to hurt her, and I do, too. And everybody knew what happened with the drugs could happen. Tasha told us you would probably get hooked. We told you to let us know when you were in trouble, and we were looking out so we could catch you. There’s space for you, too. But you have to give yourself some space so you can trust us. We can’t trust you if you don’t trust us.”
“I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Stay clean. Man up. Take your lumps. And talk to Show. Be straight. I think I can get you your kutte back when you leave this room if you can get right with Show. If you can’t, then I don’t know what to say. Because, Badge, he sees a little bit of Daisy in Adrienne. What she might have been. That makes Adrienne real special to him, and seeing her hurt—if you don’t get right with him…you gotta get right with him.”
Badger nodded, but he had no earthly idea how to get right with Show, who’d seen him at his very worst, hurting the girl in whom Show saw his murdered daughter.
There was no way to make that right.
~oOo~
When he was a kid, every Christmas Eve after church and supper, Badger’s mom and dad would let him and his older brother, Jason, have their filled stockings. The family had never had much money, but they’d always had full stockings and one or two presents under the tree. When they were young enough to believe, Santa came while they were at church. Santa was eventually revealed to be their dad, who only went to church for weddings, christenings, and funerals. But before they knew better, their dad always had a big story about helping Santa unpack his sack. Then he and Santa would sit on the porch for a spell and share a smoke.
Before they could have their stockings, though, they had to sit in front of the television, all four of them, and watch their mom’s favorite Christmas movie on VHS: Scrooge, with Albert somebody or other. Some English guy. There was singing. Badger—Justin, in those days—had always thought it was pretty lame. It was old, and there was, you know, singing. But they’d sit there with their tantalizingly full stockings dangling from the mantle, drinking homemade virgin eggnog and eating sugar cookies shaped like stockings and Christmas trees and sprinkled with colored sugar, and they’d watch. Their mom sang every song. And she always cried at the end.
And when it was over, they tore into their stockings, which always had a bunch of cool, junky little toys and good candy.
Also fruit. There was always an orange in the toe. Badger didn’t think either Jason or he had ever eaten their Christmas orange, but they always each got one. Usually, they ended up hitting each other with them. A stocking with an orange in the toe made a pretty good weapon.
It was a good memory, and Badger knew that movie by heart. He probably always would.
When Show walked into his room much later in the same day that Len had been there, Badger laughed a little. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, he, too, was being visited by three ghosts. Isaac, the ghost of his Horde past; Len, the ghost of his Horde present; and now Show, looking still furious and terrifying, the ghost of his Horde future.
Show came in, closed the door, and leaned back on it, his arms crossed over his chest. One look at his stony features told Badger that there was nothing he could say to gain this man’s trust. Nothing.
So he didn’t know what to say. Show didn’t say anything, either. For infinite seconds, the room was a vacuum, the silence sucking Badger dry of any will or strength. He had to say something.
“I’m sorry, Show.”
“I’m only here because they won’t let up about it. They’re stupid to send me back here, because what I want to do is rip your fucking hands off and shove ‘em up your pussy ass. So you got something to say to me, you say it, and I’ll get out before I do just that.”
But there was nothing he could say. Nothing he could do.
“I fucked up so bad. I don’t…I want to fix it, but I don’t know how.”
Show’s eyes narrowed dangerously, but he said nothing.
“Show…please.”
Show huffed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the drugs. We knew it could happen. I get it. You’re a junkie piece of shit for putting the club at risk with your damn lies. After all we’ve been through, to—” He gave his head a sharp shake. “But I can set that aside.”
He came off the door and stalked forward, his arms unfolding and his enormous hands curling into bricks of fist. “But you put hands on Shannon’s girl. My girl. You screamed in her face. Called her names. Bloodied her. You hurt an innocent girl. A girl who fuckin’ cares about you. That makes you dead to me.”
“I’m sorrier about that than anything. Anything. I don’t know how to make it right.”
“You want your kutte back, you promise me right now that you will never speak to her again. I mean not one fucking word. Ever. You don’t fucking look at her. Ever. You make me that promise, and I will not stand in the way if they want to give you back your kutte. I’d fuckin’ burn it if it were just up to me.”
He could have his kutte back if he made that one promise? Badger stared at Show’s ominous face. His kutte. His club. He needed that so bad. He needed it. He was nothing without the Horde. He was nothing.
But Adrienne was his best thought. He loved her. He thought about what Len had said. You don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever. But she was better off without him. Show was right about him, right in every way. He was a pussy. A liar. A junkie. And he’d hurt her.
You don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever.
“I…Show, I love her.”
One of those massive fists burst forward, and Badge’s head snapped back, his nose feeling like it had utterly imploded.
“No, you don’t. That’s not how you treat somebody you love.”
You don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever.
Blood ran down his throat and down his chin, and his voice sounded bizarre, plugged and garbled, but Badger persevered. “I do. I fucked up so bad. But I do. I love her. I won’t ever hurt her again.”
A fist to the side of his head. He fell to the mattress on which he’d been sitting, his head ringing like a church bell.
“I will beat you to death right now if you say that one more time, asshole. Try me.”
You don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever.
Knowing what it meant, knowing that Show could and would do what he said, Badger closed his swelling eyes. “I love her. I love her, Show. I do.”
His eyes closed, he waited for the painful end he deserved.
There was nothing. Then he heard the door. When he opened his eyes, Show was walking through it.
He left it open behind him.