A lot can happen in the span of a month, Hannah learned. But before that began, she had to deal with Chance’s anger. They found him outside. Link and Hannah got to him first while Moose and Scout helped Cindy to her feet. She was more conscious than she had been at the bar but was barely able to wobble to safety on her own. But Link and Hannah bolted outside after Chance when he tailed Ben.
What they found was Ben and his bike gone, the sound of it still fading into the distance, and Chance kicking a trash can so hard it smacked into the wall opposite it and bounced back. He let out a yell of pain as he likely broke a few toes in the process but didn’t let on any more than that, focusing, instead on his rage as he turned in the direction of the fading engine sounds, his nostrils flaring. Hannah hazard a step to him. Her hands out in front of her like he was a wild horse that was ready to kick at any second.
“Chance,” she whispered so softly she wasn’t she he heard, but he turned his rage-filled gaze to her and she swallowed thickly.
His eyes soften when they met hers. He took a breath and let it out and his shoulders slumped a bit. He brought his hand to his face and massaged every part of it he could reach, trying to will the stress and the anger right out of his muscles with the squeeze of his hands. But it was to no avail when he pulled away and the bags still remained, his eyes were still blood shot, and the vein in his temple was still visible.
“Let me try,” Hannah said softly.
She brought her hands up to either temple, two fingers lightly pressed against each, remembering the days when her mother would do this for her. She rubbed in small, slow circles over the points, careful not to press too hard but just enough to break up the tension there like a dam on a river that needed to be freed. She watched his eyes relax and close, as if against his will. They seemed to roll shut and he let out a breath as more of his weight fell into her grasp, his body slumping forward toward her.
“Better?” she asked.
“A bit,” he said, pulling away and opening his eyes a little wider. He looked calmer. “It doesn’t make every awful thing that just happened go away but it did make my headache go away.”
“Small victories.”
They regrouped. The adrenaline from the incident had left Scout and she was now on the ground, sitting against the wall, her knees tucked into herself. She was staring off into the space in front of her. Her eyes had been absently letting out tears, their streaks visible down her face. Her eyes were swollen and blood shot but blank of any emotion hiding underneath. She was just zoned out, staring into space, her fingers tapping away on her own knee.
Hannah walked over to her. She was evidently the Williams’ resident therapist at this point. She kneeled in front of Scout, putting her entire body within her field of vision. It didn’t phase the girl right away who went on staring into the darkness. Hannah tentatively reached out her hands and placed them on Scout’s shoulders, holding on there and squeezing a bit to try and bring her back to the present.
“Scout,” she said, with as much authority as she could muster. “You need to get up, we have to go now.”
Some part of Scout heard her because she saw a twitch at her eye, she watched her throat move as she swallowed, her jaw clenching. But she didn’t move, content on ignoring her. Hannah didn’t want to get mean, but they needed to go. Ben could come back with much worse than a pistol, the cops could show up from all the noise. They needed to get Cindy to a place where she could rest, swaying back and forth and looking positively dead on her own feet.
“Scout,” Hannah said a little more sharply and it got the girl to jump and turn to look at her. “We need to go.”
She pulled Scout up by her arm, not waiting for a sound of consent this time. Once she was on her feet, Link was moving over to them, pulling Scout into a tight hug and whispering the things in her ear a father would say to comfort his child. Hannah was a bit jealous of all that. She’d never heard such things form her own father. She backed away to give them their moment and moved over to wear Moose was practically panicking over Cindy who was now awake enough to insist she was okay, that she wasn’t any more hurt.
“Everyone okay over here?” Hannah asked.
The pair turned and Moose nodded stiffly, blinking a bit as if to bring himself back to reality. All the men here seemed to want to be tough guys, pretending to be steel. Hannah wasn’t going to fault them for showing some emotions where their loved ones were involved. She turned to Cindy who looked at her with very tired eyes.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I didn’t do much,” Hannah said.
“You were going to give yourself up for me,” Cindy said. “I think that’s actually quite a bit.”
Hannah just gave a stiff nod. She was never good at gratitude or praise. She always received awkwardly and couldn’t really bring herself to accept it. So she turned away and went back to Chance who was already sitting on his bike, waiting for her. She got on the back and fastened on the helmet. Together, they sat waiting for the others to join them. Once everyone was settled, Cindy with Moose and Scout with Link, they road off back home to lick their wounds in some peace and quiet.
***
Moose peeled off to take Cindy back to his apartment. He insisted he could take care of her and if he needed any help, any first aid gear, he’d call immediately or come rushing over. Hannah took him at his word and gave Cindy one last look where the woman expressed her gratitude before they turned away after the red light and disappeared into the night down the stretch of Lincoln Avenue.
The rest of them made their way back to Kat’s house. They pulled into the driveway, killing the engines as quickly as possible to avoid the ire and police calls from the overly sensitive suburban neighbors. They got off their bikes and made their way inside.
The first thing they all did was drop onto the couch. Everyone seemed to be in their own world, thinking their own thing. As much as Hannah wanted to help, wanted to dissect what was going on in the brains of her friends, she decided the best thing to do was to get them some beverages. She didn’t spring for coffee, though it was the obvious and first choice. Instead, she decided to take a page from her mother’s book and hunted around the cabinets for hot chocolate mix. She found some hiding behind an old bag of oatmeal and pulled it out. She decided to make it the old fashioned way, pouring out some milk and heating it on the stove top, slowly pouring in the contents of the packets until the milk turned a rich, deep color. It took several minutes and it was nice to have something to do with her hands, some kind of function to be performing. She stirred the pot and watched the swirl of liquid chocolate like it was some kind of calming hypnosis item.
She poured it out into mugs and sprinkled a tiny bit of cinnamon and nutmeg over the top, watching the small particles first sit over the surface like the world’s tiniest lily pads before they dropped down into the chocolate, melting away all their form and becoming one with the rest of the liquid. It was just the way her mother used to make it and the smell alone was enough to conjure up images of her mother in the kitchen and her family happy and together and not running from bikers.
She put all the mugs on one of the cookie trays she wiped down and brought them out to the group. She set them on the coffee table and took it upon herself to hand them out one by one. Through their absent gazes and ticking minds, they all managed to take the mugs and hold them close to their chests. She watched Link catch a whiff of the chocolate smell over coffee and a small smile played on his lips, looking at Hannah with a nod. She smiled back and shrugged, taking a seat next to Chance. She placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed, trying to be as reassuring as possible.
He took a sip of the drink and it seemed to knock him out of his daze as he looked down at the mug and then at Hannah, clearly expecting the bitter flavor of black coffee.
“I figured we could use something a little less strong and little more comforting,” Hannah said. “It always worked for me. Besides, it’s almost 2am, caffeine is the last thing any of us needs.”
He didn’t say anything. He just wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her in close to him, taking more sips of the hot chocolate. She felt his body slowly relax underneath her like every muscle snapped and went lose, one by one. She rubbed at his arm, occasionally caressed his chest, anything she could do to remind him that she was there, that she wasn’t going away.
“I’m going to get Scout to bed,” Link said, getting up and setting down his mug. “I’ll be right back.”
He helped his daughter up and put a hand on her back, lightly pushing her forward to her bedroom. She was a grown woman and her father was practically walking her back to tuck her in after they had a round of hot chocolate. It was fascinating how moments of trauma and disaster can turn you back into a child again. When awful things happened, craving comforts you knew from home was the only way you knew how to survive.
Chance had come more alive a bit beneath her ministrations. He’d taken to running his fingers through her hair absently and even scratching at her scalp a bit. She sighed and nestled herself into the muscle of his chest, listening to his heart beat beneath her ear like it was a secret message just for her. Link returned and sat down in his seat, sighing long and putting his face into his hands.
“How is she doing?” Chance asked.
“I’m afraid she’s going to go catatonic,” he said. “It would be easier if she was kicking or screaming or crying but I can’t seem to get much out of her.”
“She needs sleep,” Hannah said. “We all do. It’ll snap us back to normal in the morning.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Link asked.
“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now we need to be positive and focus on the fact that we’ve got a sunrise coming and that means a new start. So let’s go to bed and we’ll leave the planning and the scheming for tomorrow.”
Link nodded and got up, throwing back what was left of his now room temperature hot chocolate. Hannah got up as well, taking hers with her. She moved to go to the guest bedroom and heard footsteps behind her. Chance had followed her in and shut the door behind him.
“Is this okay?” he asked, suddenly frantic when he saw her looking at him. “I could sleep in my old room. They turned it into an office but I could—“
She silenced him with a kiss. She walked up and gently placed her lips over his, her hands on his jaw, and held him there until he realized what was happening and kissed her back. His hands gently came up to hold her waist and they stood there like that, swaying a little bit, and trading tugs and pushes with their lips. Eventually his teeth came into play, first brushing against her bottom lip and then tugging on it fully after he got a taste for it. She felt herself melt into him more, his hands coming all the way around to hold her by the small of her back, slipping slightly into the back waistband of her pants.
She tried not to moan, his entire family was only steps away in their own rooms, dealing with their own emotional trauma, but there was more than one way to cope and she could do this. She pushed her hips forward, into his own and swallowed his own strangled moan to keep him quiet. She pulled on him, walking back until she felt her legs hit the back of the bed and then she lowered herself down, firs to a sitting position and then laying back, pushing herself up the bed while he chased her from over top.
They settled at the pillows, one of his hands bracing himself next to her head and the other moving along the curves of her side, brushing the skin there that was exposed form her shirt riding up. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him down and into her, making their hips meet once again, this time he pushed into her as well. She could feel him hardening beneath his pants and she was far past the point of no return as she met his thrusts with the bucking of her own hips.
Her hands slid underneath his shirt and pushed up, he separated from her long enough to slip it off and toss it to the side, coming back down to meet her again, his hands more frantic now. He relieved her of her shirt as well, throwing it the side and moving in on her bra quickly. She arched her back to give him access to the clasp and it came apart with a small pop and ease of his fingers. It was gone as well and he immediately set to work hardening her nipples with his tongue on one breast and his fingers on the other. Her hips had a mind of their own now as did her panting breaths.
He continued to rock into her, getting himself hard but there was a point where she knew he needed more. She unbuttoned his pants while he worked on her breasts. She pushed them down his hips and he kicked them off the rest of the way. She found him through his boxers and began moving her hand up and down in a practiced motion. She felt the vibrations of his moan against her chest and he took to leaving small nips on the fleshy part of her breasts. His hand went down to relieve her of her own pants, rubbing her from outside her underwear once they were gone, making the wet spot there all the bigger. She used to be embarrassed when men would take away her pants to find her already wet down below but for Chance it seemed to be a huge turn on when his fingers met moisture already. It was a sign of her arousal, her want of him, just like the hardness underneath her hands was for her.
She pushed his boxers away, getting him finally free and wrapping her hand around his length to properly help him get where he needed to get. He was beginning to get erratic in the thrusts of his hips and she knew she needed to get him inside her soon.
“Take them off, I’m ready,” she said as he continued to play with her over the fabric of her underwear.
He nodded and pulled them down, sending them off in another direction. Then he shifted up her body, lining himself up closer. She used her hand to guide him in and they moaned together in the dark as his slid inside her so easily, as if she’d been waiting for him all her life. They stayed there for a brief minute, just relishing the feeling of being one. Chance was buried in her neck, breathing hotly there and whispering about how good she felt and how warm and all sorts of other blushing pornographic things that no man had ever told her before. Her eyes grazed over the spot where they were joined and she felt butterflies in her stomach.
It was perfect. And it only got better when he started moving. It was slow at first, he was pacing himself as if wanting to savor every feeling the walls of her insides could offer him. But soon he needed more and she was all too grateful to meet his thrusts with her own hips and get him deeper and deeper inside. He started moving frantically and she knew he wasn’t going to last. She moved her hand between them and worked two fingers over herself in a practiced motion to catch up to where he was. Simultaneous orgasms were the thing of romance books but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try.
“Do you want me to pull out?” he husked into her ear when he was close.
“No,” she gasped. “Keep going.”
And so he did. Right until the moment when she felt him still over top of her, his face contoured into the most beautiful picture of bliss and pleasure. Her fingers went for a few more seconds before she followed him over that edge and moaned underneath him. He let out some more sounds as he felt her clenching around him.
When they got the last of their aftershocks out, they lay together on the bed, cuddled into each other, not sure when they fell asleep but waking together with the morning sun.
***
As predicted, the next day was less painful than the one before it had been. And each day after that seemed to get easier and easier. For Hannah and Chance, at least. Scout was another story. They woke up the next day with an embarrassing amount of pep in their step that had an unfortunately obvious cause. But no one said a word or even shot them a knowing smirk, for which Hannah was incredibly grateful. Scout had taken to talking about, but she was still forlorn and incredibly heartbroken.
“These things happen,” Kat said to Scout over breakfast. “The degree to which he put you in danger is one thing but men are often not who they say they are.”
“He just wanted me to get close to Chance,” Scout said, miserably, not touching her pancakes or taking a single sip of her coffee.
“Did you love him?” Hannah asked, not sure if it was the right question but it was better to get these things out and in the open rather than bottle them up.
“I thought I did,” she said. “I know they say if you have to think about it then it’s not love but it felt so much like it. And the worst part is, if he walked through that door and apologized I’d probably forgive him.”
“If he walked through that door I’d put a bullet in his head,” Link said gruffly and Kat shot him a glare.
Chance was silent through all this and Hannah wanted to ask him how he felt about losing a friend, a comrade. But she kept to herself, eating her own breakfast.
Eventually it was decided that Scout would go away to the cabin for a while. She needed a retreat, some time away from the town and things that reminded her of Ben. It was also for safety reasons, getting her out of harm’s way for a while in case Ben came back to try anything. She didn’t object, in fact she seemed keen on the idea of getting out for a while.
Moose and Cindy made progress of their own as well. It wasn’t shocking when they saw Moose next and the girl was wrapped around his arm, a hand laced with his. She looked better. The swelling was gone and the bruises had moved to the heeling colors of green and yellow, her cuts closing themselves. She was smiling now and Hannah could see how beautiful of a woman she was. She admired her strength, her ability to smile through all this. But Moose was constantly at her side.
Chance had loosened up enough over the weeks to tease him about it, rib him for having some boyish crush on a girl and then managing to get her. Moose took it with smiles and shrugs, happier than Hannah had ever seen him. It was starting to feel like normal again, starting to feel like she could pretend this wasn’t some gang war they were in the middle of. She liked to think they were just four friends out on a double date and at night she and Chance would retreat back to her room where they would find all sorts of new ways to bring each other to climax. Sometimes they’d just lay there together, naked and huddled together, letting their hands wander aimlessly over each other’s skin with no real goal or destination in mind.
A month passed and it was like the honeymoon phase for all of them. It was a time of nothing but sex and smiles for Chance and Hannah, healing and sweet dates for Moose and Cindy. Out at the cabin, Scout was recovering. Kat was staying with her and Link would go to visit her every week, report back that she was doing better, that she’d taken up some hobby or another to pass her time and give herself something to focus on. He said she was smiling again and talkative but she was guarded, sometimes quiet, and often contemplative. She was changed, she’d been hardened a bit, molded into a slightly different person, but the pieces were all still there. She was still Scout, just an older, slightly more world hardy version of herself.
Ben had stayed quiet. They had no idea where he ran off to and after the first two weeks, Chance gave up trying to track him down. It had been a slight obsession of his for a while in the beginning but the less and less he was able to find, the more he was willing to let it go. Ben was lying as low as possible and Hannah decided it was for the best. Let him sit around and have his own wound licking. He may have gotten away from the confrontation at the old bottling factory, but he was far from winning. He hadn’t come out with any of his hostages and was now on the run, with half the Satan’s Knight’s out looking for him, fighting to be the one to drag him back in front of the brother’s he betrayed. A sadistic part of Hannah was a little too pleased with the idea of him being quartered and brought to justice in front of all the men. She wanted to watch him squirm and suffer.
But those thoughts subsided as the weeks went on and there was no sign from him, no sound. There was just her and Chance and their own happiness. It was lighter than she’d been in a long time, since giving up school to go into the protection of the knights.
“I was thinking,” Hannah said one day, they sitting together out on Kat’s patio in the backyard, a pitcher of margaritas on the rocks sitting between them and in their glasses.
“That’s never a good sign,” Hannah said and Chance gave her a sneer. “What was it?”
“About this living arrangement we have going on here.”
He leaned forward and put his nearly empty margarita glass down in front of him. He leaned back and stretched out in the chair. She knew at this point it was his way of pretending he wasn’t completely nervous, which meant he had something to be nervous about. For being a big bad biker of a local gang, he could be some kind of high schooler sometimes.
“Living arrangement?”
“Yes, that part where you’ve been living in my mother’s guest bedroom for over a month now, or did you miss that?”
She rolled her eyes and tossed a lime wedge in his direction. He swatted it away and sat up, taking a breath and letting it out slowly.
“I’ve got a shit-hole apartment but maybe it’s because I need someone to fix it up, you know? And you can’t exactly go back to your old place with the BD practically running nightly patrols all over it. So, I was thinking—”
“You were thinking you wanted me to clean your apartment for you?”
“You’re a real pain in the ass sometimes, you know that?”
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders, leaning back in her chair to suck down more of her drink and look at him with teasing eyes. She knew exactly what he was saying, of course. But she didn’t want him to know how much her heart was fluttering at the idea of it. They’d tiptoed around his family so far, dodging their glances and finding excuses to excuse themselves to the guest bedroom. They’d even once rode out to a motel for the night. It wasn’t Hannah’s proudest moment, but she wasn’t going to complain about how free she felt to be as loud as possible when it was clear they were alone for the night.
“What I’m trying to say is: move in with me,” he said. “You can think about it, I don’t need an answer now or anything. But I thought I’d bring it up because—”
She launched across the table and kissed him soundly, her hands running through his hair. He was quiet instantly, except for the moan coming from deep inside his throat.
“I’d love to,” she said and meant it, running her hand across his jaw, feeling the stumble there.
He smiled back at her and it was goofy and dumb but the most beautiful thing she remembered seeing in a while. When had she gotten so sentimental about all these things? A month and a few weeks ago she wanted to get as far away from this man as possible and now she was excitedly thinking about the possibilities of living with him.
They stayed like that, a couple of beaming idiots over their pitcher of margaritas, until the sun went down.