Clementine
I stood in the window and watched the scene unfolding at the warehouse from inside Nathan’s living room. I held a cup of coffee in my hand. It was no longer night. We were making our way into the dark hours of morning now. A new day was about to dawn on us while we were still cleaning up from the night before.
Nathan had avoided everyone from the time we made it to his house. He went off into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. He sat at his dining room table, out of the way but close enough if anyone needed to know where something in his house was. I was glad he stayed out of the way.
I had decided that Thomson must have had some sort of military background. He seemed to love his weapons, and he patched Falcon up like it was nothing. He also seemed to have a much harder, sterner attitude than everyone else. He took charge from the moment we arrived.
“Anyone who doesn’t want to stay, you can go home and we’ll keep you posted,” he told the guys once they got Falcon inside and bandaged up. Then, turning to Nathan, he added, “If you want to stay, I’m sure our host will be more than accommodating.” His tone did nothing to hide the fact that he was done with the weaker member.
“Really, there’s no shame in leaving,” Nathan said nervously. “We understand if you have to go. Plus, I only have so much room.”
That last part was a lie. His house was massive. He had a large, spacious patio in the back overlooking the river. It had a wall around the edge so guests couldn’t see too much of the river from out there.
His living room was larger than my apartment, and it was open. He had created cozy space within it by positioning his couches close to the fireplace. I hadn’t even seen what was off in the wings of the house on either side of the living room.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked Thomson while everyone decided if they wanted to stay or go.
“Just hang around in case he wakes up and decides he needs you,” Thomson told me.
That was what I was doing. And I was watching as the police roped off the warehouse to let the investigation begin. As ambulances arrived, more police showed up. The uniforms already on the scene were probably requesting backup due to the sheer enormity of what had gone down earlier.
I ran the scene in my head over and over again, replaying what I could remember from it. I wondered what all had gone down before I came to in my brother’s arms. I wondered how the conversation had gone between Leo and Falcon. Those two sure loved to talk. I wondered if Falcon would talk to me as much as he talked to my brother once he woke up and started recovering.
Of course, I wanted him to say better things to me than he did to Leo, but it was hard to deny those two had a special bond between them. They must have had a pretty intense relationship leading up to Falcon’s prison sentence. Then, for my brother to continue setting him up even after he went behind bars? That took some serious commitment on his part.
“How are you holding up?” Thomson asked, walking up next to me with a beer in his hand.
“Not as well as you,” I said, eyeing his beer.
“Oh, this?” He laughed. “Yeah, I love having a nice cold one after we finish a job.”
“Is it finished?” I asked. “I mean, Falcon is in there unconscious. When we found him, he was mere moments away from death. Can we say that the job is over?”
“Falcon? Falcon’s fine,” he insisted. “He’s just sleeping it off, which is something we should all think about doing right about now.” He looked at my coffee.
“Hey, I want to be awake when he wakes up,” I said, justifying my drink.
“I wouldn’t count on him waking up too soon. He’s got five years of this crap to sleep off. Revenge has been on his mind since the day they picked him up at the pawnshop,” Thomson said. “He’s going to be down for a while. You should get some sleep.”
He walked off with his beer, chugging the last little bit of it. I heard the bottle clang in the sink as he walked past Nathan, still brooding over the dining room table. He jumped at the noise in his kitchen and shot Thomson a nasty look.
“What are you going to do, boy?” Thomson asked as he got another beer and opened it. He flicked the bottle cap at Nathan.
“That’s it, I’m going to bed,” Nathan pouted as he got up from the table. “Let me know if you need anything.” He stormed off to his room and slammed the door, like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
“He’s not going to last much longer,” Thomson contemplated as he took a long sip from his bottle.
I watched him, turning my attention away from the scene across the river. I was fascinated by the relationship these men had with each other. Everyone in the MC seemed to have his own distinct personality, and each member played a particular role in the group dynamic. It was amazing to me.
In my mind, I had always just imagined a bunch of rowdy, drunk street thugs who cursed and spat and rode loud motorcycles. They would go out every night, get drunk, and start fights. I always imagined them like the fat old-timers I saw on TV, the guys who had been riding since before color television. They raised a lot of hell and got in a lot of trouble, but they were harmless in the grand scheme of things. There was a kind of simplicity to them that made them endearing.
Rogue Demons were not those bikers. These men were fit, in great shape. They were all wide and packed with muscle. A few of them seemed skittish, like Nathan, but they all seemed to be able to man-up when necessary, like Falcon. They were organized behind some sort of intelligent plan.
And for the most part, they were fiercely loyal, but not just to Falcon or the MC as a whole. They were loyal to each other, as well. All except for Nathan, it seemed. It seemed Nathan was done. I wondered if he had been like that before Falcon went to prison or if it was something that happened to him while the MC was out here on their own in the real world without their leader.
Hell, they had a natural born leader among them already in Thomson. He would have been a great second in command, or whatever they called that position, probably vice president. Something told me that was Nathan’s position. What a joke! Nathan wasn’t a leader. He was barely even a follower.
I sighed and sipped my coffee, turning my attention away from the men in the room to the hallway where Falcon’s room was. I could only distract myself from worrying about him for so long before my mind drifted back to him.
A noise came from across the river. I turned around and saw that there were men storming the warehouse where we’d just been.
“Hey, guys,” I called out to Thomson and the other members sitting in the living room. “Something’s going on at the warehouse.”
“You think they just found something?” Thomson asked as he walked up. I could see his reflection in the glass. He looked smug, confident, unshaken. It was like he didn’t even care what they were doing over there.
“What would they have found?” I asked him.
“Probably some secret stash of weapons or drugs,” he said, and shrugged. “Then again, they could just be imagining things. It’s pretty dark out there.” He blew it off as he walked back over toward the couches.
This was my family we were talking about here. I turned back around to watch. I had no idea what could have inspired the cops to storm a building full of dead men and spent ammunition. Until all of this happened, I hadn’t even known my brother was a criminal to begin with. I always thought of him as some great businessman.
I took another sip of my coffee.
Thomson had been right. Standing by the window trying to stay awake wasn’t going to make the time move any faster. It wasn’t going to wake Falcon up any sooner. I needed a place to sleep.
“I’m going to bed,” I told him as I put my cup in the sink and wandered back through the living room.
“Good. Whatever they find over there will be on the news tomorrow. We can all get caught up to speed then,” he said. “If we need you, we’ll find you,” he added.
“Thanks for everything, Thomson,” I told him as I walked into the hallway. Yeah, he was going to find me if he needed me for anything. I was going to lie down next to Falcon and share the bed with him.
I may have been going to bed, but I wasn’t going to put myself in a position that would make it hard to get to him if he needed me. I was going to be right there next to him all morning, until one or both of us woke up.
I carefully pushed the door to his room open and crept in. It was dark except for a small lamp on the bedside table. Falcon was on his back in the bed with covers draped over him.
He was snoring. Snoring! It warmed my heart to hear him snore. I didn’t know much about what happened when people died, but I imagined people close to death didn’t snore in their sleep. It just made sense to me that he was already on the road to recovery if he had gone from the weak breaths he had been taking when we found him to the deep snoring I heard coming from the bed.
I slid out of my shoes and stepped carefully around to the other side of the bed. I climbed in and pulled the covers up over myself so I could lie there next to him and share his body heat. I would have lay down naked if we had been alone, but I was sure Thomson or one of the other guys would have been in there at some point to check on him.
I settled on my right side, facing him. I wanted to put an arm across his chest, but I also didn’t want to risk hurting the wound on his side by putting too much pressure on him. I rested my head on the pillow next to him and closed my eyes while I listened to the amazing sound of Falcon breathing next to me.
Words could not express how happy it made me to hear him breathing normally, and that was fine, because there wasn’t anyone to tell how good it made me feel to know that he was going to be okay. I certainly wasn’t going to talk to Falcon about it, and everyone else was dealing with it in their own way.
Nathan was shut up in his room. Thomson was going to drink until he passed out. And the other members seemed to be doing just as I was, trying to sleep through it.