CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ellie
“Laundry.” Tammy snapped her fingers at me. I didn’t mind helping out, but I didn’t see why she had to be so nasty about it. “Change all the sheets. Laundry room is down the left hall.”
I shot her a curt smile and scurried off. I started stripping the beds in the girls’ rooms, doing my best not to think about what could be on those sheets. I figured that would keep me busy for a while. To be honest, I was nervous about changing the guys’ sheets. Not that they would be any cleaner than the girls. I had been around long enough to know what went on practically everywhere. It was more that I was intimidated to even go in their rooms, let alone the fact that I would have to ask them all if I could. Most of them had been nice to me, so I wasn’t sure why I was still so scared. Every one of them except the one that I had come here to see, that was.
Diesel still hardly spoke more than five words to me at a time. Most of the time he did his best to avoid me. And when we were in the same room, he would try his best to not look at me while he clenched his jaw.
Sometimes, there were those moments when I would catch him watching me and I saw something else in his eyes. I was never good at reading people, so I had no idea what it was. Something inside me pulled towards him in those moments. But I kept my distance. It was hard enough being there knowing he wasn’t very far away. The anger and rejection that poured off of him most of the time was enough to make me want to run and hide whenever we collided.
Fighting to carry the heavy and overflowing basket, I tried to find where the laundry room was. It was late at night and for some reason, there didn’t seem to be many people around. This was usually the time things got cranking and the men started drinking.
Letting out a heavy sigh, I opened the first door. Nope, it was just a storage closet. Wow, that’s a lot of bleach. But I guessed with that many men to clean after, it was needed.
Right as I was about to open the next door, a strange noise caught my attention. I turned and waited to hear it again. It sounded like someone screaming out in pain. I quickly opened the door on the other side of the hall, not really thinking about what I was doing. If someone needed help I might have been the only one around to hear them. There was no way I could ignore that.
An odd smell wafted through the open door. It was something I wasn’t familiar with and it burned my nose making my eyes water. I fought the urge to gag and cough. Through the door was a long set of concrete stairs.
This must be the basement. Hm, maybe the washer is down here. Two birds, one stone. I hope.
The light was dim as I carefully made my way down the stairs. The smell got stronger and my stomach clenched tight. Then I heard it. An awful noise that I couldn’t place and the strangled screaming I’d heard before. I stepped down three more stairs and craned my neck to see into the middle of the room.
Gasping hard, I dropped the basket. It landed with a loud thud making him turn to me. And by him, I mean Diesel. The other guy, who was tied to a table and looking half-conscious, probably didn’t even notice I was there. I backed up, but being on stairs I stumbled a little and hit the wall. Luckily, I didn’t go tumbling down like the basket had.
I closed my eyes tight. There was no way what I had just seen was real. My mind had to be playing tricks on me. But it wasn’t. No, the image was burned into the back of my lids as vivid as it had been in reality.
Diesel was bent over some shirtless guy with a blowtorch in his hand. He was burning the skin of the guys back. The guy’s eyes were unfocused and his mouth hung open as if it were stuck in a silent scream. Drool and blood pooled out of his mouth, leaving a sticky, thick line connecting to the table. His cheek and nose were split open. His body looked like it had been worked over with something heavy and hard. The bruises were already forming a deep black color.
I inhaled through my nose trying to calm myself. It couldn’t have been real. My eyes must have been deceiving me. My mind playing some kind of crazy trick. But the smell was still there. And in that moment I knew what that smell was. It was unlike any other and something I had never experience before. Something I hoped I would never experience again. I opened my eyes, and sure enough, the scene was still there. Only now, Diesel was standing straight, looking my way with a blank expression on his face, and the torch was off. His eyes were such a deep blue that he was almost unrecognizable to me.
“Oh my—” I turned, panicking and needing to get away as fast as I could.
I stumbled up the stairs, only half aware of his heavy footsteps coming fast behind me. I hit the door jamb with my shoulder as I fell into the hall. Then I hit a wall.
No, it wasn’t a wall. It was Bocca. I looked up at him, tears running down my cheeks. His expression was hard, something I hadn’t seen on him before. He grabbed my arm, but not tightly, just enough to hold me up. Which was good, because I felt like I was about to collapse. His eye flicked behind me and without turning, I knew Diesel was there.
“Ellie,” Diesel said in a tone that held no emotion. But I shook my head looking up at Bocca with pleading eyes as I fisted his shirt.
“I got it,” Bocca said as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me away.
What did that mean? Was he aware of what was going on down there? Oh gosh, were they going to kill me now? I felt the urge to vomit. I pushed off of Bocca and ran as fast as I could, holding my hand over my mouth like it could hold back the bile somehow. I didn’t slow down until I was kneeling in front of one of the toilets in the girls’ bathroom. Then it came. Everything I had eaten in the last month. Or so it felt like it.
“Here,” Jessica’s calm and sweet voice said as I fell away from the toilet, my back on the tiled stall wall. I reached out and took the cool, wet rag she was offering me.
“I-is that normal?” My voice was shaky. Jessica let out a soft, sad sigh and helped me to my feet. She led me over to the sink and gave me some mouthwash. I swished, trying to rid my mouth of the acid taste and my mind of what I’d seen.
“We don’t ever really truly know everything that goes on,” she said, leaning her hip against the counter. Her demeanor was cool as ever. “But living here, you hear things and you can put the pieces together. This is a different kind of life than what you are probably used to. But I can tell you this, these guys don’t do violence for violence sake. If whatever you saw seemed bad, it wasn’t without purpose.”
I opened my mouth to tell her exactly what I had seen, but she stopped me by holding up her hand. I nodded and waited for her to finish. I guessed it was something we weren’t even supposed to talk about.
“This is a brotherhood. A family. They look out for each other and they will do anything to keep their family safe. In this club’s case, that often extends to the people they hold close, the old ladies, the club girls, and this town.” She watched me intently for a beat before she continued. “Yes, some of it may be outside of the law, but it has a reason. The reason now being, that guy they have down there is the one that killed one of their brothers. He had a wife and children. The club feels they failed. Diesel feels he failed Stone and his family. There is no greater reason to take revenge.”
“So, in a way, this is justified…” I croaked out.
I was trying to wrap my head around this way of thinking. It wasn’t what I had grown up knowing and living in, but did that make it wrong? My head was swimming and I needed time for it all to sink in.
“In the eyes of these guys, yes. And I can’t say I disagree.” She looked like she was thinking long and hard about something. Maybe it was just how much she should share with me. I wasn’t sure if I could take much more at that moment. “Being down there, well, it’s sort of Diesel’s job. His role in the club. Well, it was until recently. Anyway, he kinda… needs time to come back after that. So I would let it ride for a while. Might be best if you rested for a little bit.”
I nodded as I chewed on the inside of my cheek. She followed me out of the bathroom and made sure I made it to my bed. I needed space to think.
I tossed and turned for what felt like forever. What did she mean that he needed time to come back? The look in his eyes was definitely not the one I was used to. It was even worse than the hard mask he wore around me. He almost looked haunted. Something inside me pulled and before I knew it, I was up and walking down the hall to his room.
The whole place was quiet and it set me even more on edge. I knocked lightly on his door and waited. Maybe he wasn’t even done yet. Maybe he was still down in the basement. But from what I had seen, I imagined there wasn’t much fight left in the guy on the table. The whole thing would be something I would never forget. And I wasn’t sure if it was something I could ever get used to.
I knocked again and still received silence. Something in me needed to talk to him. To make sure he was okay. But who could really be okay after something like that?
My brain screamed at me just to go back to my room, but instead, I found myself opening the door. I stepped into his room with light feet. His smell hit me right away, strong and enveloping. Light spilled out of the bathroom, like a beacon calling me in. I shuffled across the carpet, not sure if I was prepared for what I was going to see.
He was standing there, his back to me. His posture hunched, and for a split second, I wondered if it was even him. I had never seen him like that. His hands curled and limp at his sides. His breathing was rigid and heavy. I could still smell the burnt flesh and blood all around him. His feet were bare and I looked around for his boots, but they seemed to already be gone. His light jeans were splattered in red. His hands were raw and the skin was broken in various places. His black shirt was wet and darker in places.
There was so much blood all over him. Some his, but most of it I knew wasn’t. Something clicked inside of me and I instinctively started moving. Maybe I had watched too many crime shows in my life, but I felt like I knew what needed to be done.
“Come on,” I said in a soft tone.
He didn’t move. I guided him over to the shower, thankful that he moved willingly in his lost place. His dark place. I got him inside and felt a little nervous about what I had to do next. But it needed to be done and there was no time for modesty. I looked under the sink and found a roll of plastic garbage bags. I didn’t let myself think of why there was an entire roll there when there wasn’t even a trashcan big enough to fit them anywhere around. I grabbed two, thinking double lining them was for the best. I stripped his shirt off first, his body moving as needed, but he still wasn’t with me. I tossed it into the bags. Then his pants and his black boxer-briefs. He was naked and I tried my best to not get all flustered about it. I knotted the top of the bag and set it aside.
He still hadn’t moved. I turned on the shower head, making sure the water wasn’t too hot, and then closed the curtain. I scooped up the bag and headed for the door.
What was I supposed to do with it now? I needed to go find someone and hand it off. After my talk with Jessica, there was no doubt in my mind that everyone there knew what was going on. And more than likely, knew how to deal with it. I opened the door and almost ran into Bocca. He stood there like he was about to come in the room. He looked shocked as he looked down at me. Without a word, I held out the bag to him. His face relaxed a bit as he took the bag and nodded to me. I had learned by now that so much could be said with nods and chin lifts around this place.
His gaze flicked over my shoulder in the direction of the bathroom, then back to me. I sighed and took the large bottle of bleach he was carrying. He cocked his head at me like he couldn’t believe what I was willing to do. Like he wasn’t sure if he was really seeing what he was seeing. Yes, like little, fragile me was about to clean a crime scene without even blinking. Okay, there might have been a few blinks, but at that point, I was doing my best to turn my mind off. It was like I was moving on auto-pilot, following instincts I didn’t even know I had.
“I got it,” I simply said. I wasn’t sure if I did, but I figured I needed to scrub everything down. Everything. I was starting to convince myself that I did have it.
“Should you be… with that…?” He pointed to my belly. Yeah, okay, maybe bleach wasn’t the best thing to breathe in while pregnant. But for some crazy, unknown reason, I just had to do it myself.
“I got it,” I repeated in a stern voice, surprising both of us.
I appreciated his concern but I needed to handle it. I was sure breathing in bleach for a small amount of time would be fine. I wasn’t going to make it a habit. Diesel wasn’t my man, but I needed to be there for him and take care of him. I couldn’t explain it. It was like something was calling me out and I had no choice but to obey.
I closed the door and headed back to the bathroom. I cracked open the curtain and looked in. He still hadn’t moved. The water that poured off his body left a slight pink tint on the shower floor.
Good. Looks like most of the blood washed off.
But he still needed a good scrub down. It looked like it was going to have to be me. I stepped into the stall, still fully clothed. My leggings were soaked within seconds. I took the bar of soap and washcloth. I started scrubbing his shoulders, his hard muscles twitching under my touch. His body swayed with my movements but his head remained down. I turned him around and scrubbed his front, doing my best to avoid the area between his legs. Then I grabbed his shampoo and scrubbed his hair.
His eyes were on me, but his gaze was looking through me. I didn’t like seeing that look in his eyes. I couldn’t explain it, but it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Void and vacant. He was checked out and I wasn’t sure how to bring him back.
I reached over him to remove the showerhead. My belly bumped into him and I paused. Shaking off the odd spark that shot through me, I grabbed the showerhead and started rinsing his hair and body. When I put it back, the same thing happened. Only this time, I swear I thought I saw his jaw tick.
His hands went to my belly, startling me, as I lowered myself down from my toes. I held back the yelp that threatened to escape me. His gaze was now hard set on my stomach, but I couldn’t tell if he was back or not. We stood there until the water started to cool, his hands on either side of my bump, holding it like it might break. He blinked a few times as if he was trying to get his eyes to focus. Then his hands slid away and I knew that was the end of that hope. I sighed and reached around him to turn the water off.
I toweled him off the best I could before guiding him over to the bed. He flopped down on the edge of the mattress with ease when I pushed him and stared at the floor. The towel started to slip off, but luckily it was still covering his lap. I went to his dresser and pulled out a clean shirt and underwear. I set them on the bed beside him, hoping he would get the hint.
“Okay,” I said to the quiet room after he didn’t make any kind of move. “You sit there, then. I will be back.”
In the bathroom, I opened the bleach. The smell burned my nose and made my eyes water. I shook my head and scrunched up my face. Maybe this isn’t the best idea. But I wasn’t going to turn back. I took off my wet shirt and tied it around my nose and mouth the best I could. I knew it was probably useless, but I did it anyway. I made quick work of soaking down the shower, floor, and sink. Not finding anything to actually scrub with, I took off my leggings and started wiping everything down with them. Then I rinsed out the sink, dumping half of what was left of the bleach down the drain. I hopped in the shower. I stripped, leaving the rest of my clothes in a heap on the stall floor. They were ruined now, anyway. I washed the walls off, then cleaned myself. I could smell his soap on me even through the strong chemical aroma.
I so didn’t think this through. I realized as I turned off the water and reached for the towel that was no longer there. I did my best to wring out my hair and shake some of the water off. I stepped out, trying not to slip on the slick tile floor. Then I grabbed the bleach and dumped the rest down the shower drain, hoping that I had gotten everything. I tiptoed over to the bed, leaving the light and fan on in the bathroom. I sighed, noticing that Diesel was in the same position that I’d left him in, as I reached for the shirt I had set out for him. I slipped it on feeling a little too exposed standing there naked. Then knelt down to at least get his underwear on him. It was useless, I couldn’t get them any further than his parted knees. Sitting back on my heels, I blew out a frustrated breath and tugged them back off. I pulled back the covers then lightly pushed him down into the open spot.
It was done. He was cleaned up. The bathroom was taken care of. Now, I just had to walk across the clubhouse in a shirt and nothing else. I was just glad the thing hung like a dress on me. My goods were covered, even if I could feel the cool air blowing over them every time I moved.
I pulled the sheets over him then reached down to brush the hair out of his face. He still wasn’t there. I turned to leave, but he grabbed my hand. Turning back I didn’t see anything different in his expression, but he didn’t let me go. I nodded, not sure why, it wasn’t like he would see it. Then I slid into the bed, pressing my back into his front. His arm came around and his hand rested on my bump. I smiled and let out a shaky breath. Silent tears ran down my face long after I felt his breath even out against my neck.