KICK

I don’t know how long we stay beneath the spray, with me bent over her body protectively. It’d be nice if I could protect her from myself, but that’s about as likely to happen as me coming clean to the club about killing the Angels. After a while, I grab her wrist and pull her up to a standing position. She flinches and tries to struggle free, but I only tighten my grasp.

“I know you’re hurt. I can help you. You just need to trust me.”

She laughs. An outright, motherfucking, this-bitch-is-crazy laugh. She laughs until she breaks down sobbing again, her tears washed away by the warm water pounding us. Her face is frozen in a mask of anguish—her mouth open and eyes tightly shut. Saliva runs out over her chin, but that too is washed away. I want to comfort her; I wanna tear at her flesh, slam her up against the tiles and fuck the shit out of her bruised cunt, but I don’t do any of those things. I just stare at her, not knowing what the fuck to do.

Finally, I decide kindness is probably much worse in this situation than brutality is. She’s used to brutality. I’d say it’s all she’s known for a good long while now.

I shut off the water and climb from the tub, throwing the only available towel at her. It’s old, and drying yourself with the scratchy fibres sucks, but this ain’t the fucking Ritz. She just stands there; she doesn’t catch the towel, and it falls into the bath, soaking up the remaining water in the tub. I shuck off my soaking wet jeans as she covers herself from my view with her bony arms.

Did she forget I just had my rough, calloused hands all over her tight little body? I reach for her, and she skitters back against the wall. I sigh. Jesus Christ. I’m gonna start fucking shooting up like Ivy soon just to be able to deal with this shit storm.

The woman slaps at my arms to ward me away, but I clench my jaw, wrap my hands around her waist and yank her towards me, and out of the bathtub. I set her down roughly on the mat as I unlock the door and shove her into the room. I stalk naked over to the edge of the bed and pick up the gun, then I empty out the magazine and set the gun and the clip on the table.

The room is always stifling after a shower. With no windows and a pretty shitty central air-conditioning system the clubhouse is stuffy as fuck, and we have to rely on the small ventilation fan above the shower to suck up the steam. Of course, I didn’t remember to turn that fucker on because of the crazy bitch I had to wrangle into my shower.

I turn to the beaten-up old dresser and pull out a new pair of jeans. Sliding them on, I turn and look at her. Her eyes are downcast, her arms still attempting to hide her body from view. “What’s your name, little spitfire?”

She glares through bloodshot, puffy eyes, dropping her gaze to the gun. I quirk a brow and tilt my head towards it, daring her to take it. She doesn’t; she just glares at me.

“What’s your name?”

“Go fuck yourself,” she whispers. A beat passes. One in which the old wounds left by her open up again, rending my heart open. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a girl that sounded very much like this one, and looked almost exactly like this one, too. Only her skin was a pretty latte colour, and this girl’s is pale.

“That’s a nice name,” I whisper, echoing words from what seem like a lifetime ago.