Page 9 of Kick

Fucking Ivy. That girl doesn’t need me, she needs to get clean and get as far away from men that use her up as fast as possible. She needs a rich man to keep and care for her, and she needs the best fucking psychiatrist money can buy.

I haven’t slept properly for three days straight, with the exception of the nap I just took, that is, so Ivy on a comedown is the last thing I feel like dealing with today. I grab a pair of jeans that haven’t seen the inside of a washing machine for far too long off the back of the recliner and pull them on. Prez turns to leave, throwing one last pitiful look at the girl in the bed.

“Prez,” I say. “Thanks.”

“You’ll be doing a lot more than thanking me, brother. You’re gonna be my bitch for the next three weeks straight for disobeying an order.” When he opens the door, the sound of Ivy’s screeching as she comes down fills the room. “If wishes were bullets,” Prez mutters as he stalks out and walks in the opposite direction of the noise.

I step out into the hall. Ivy is rocking on the balls of her feet, her hair hanging down in sweaty limp strands in front of her face. She’s shaking and chanting into the crook of her arm. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me. Please, stop.”

I crouch down in front of her, taking hold of her arm. She yanks it away and presses herself back into the wall. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Ivy,” I command in a voice that’s not really my own, but some weird persona of authority that she responds to when she gets like this. It’s the only fuckin’ voice she responds to. You could scream and shout and even strike her, as some of the others have done when she flips out, but she just retreats further into herself. Only when I use this voice does she sit up and pay attention like a good little girl. She’s told me bits and pieces of what her father did to her growing up, but none of us know the full extent of it. “Ivy, come here.”

She stares at me through her tears and then scampers on her hands and knees into my lap. I stroke her hair and marvel that this is the second naked broken chick I’ve comforted in my lap today. I’m beginning to feel like the fucking psychotic woman whisperer. Ivy sobs into my lap, clutching my jeans and leaving a wet patch from her tears. “What happened, baby?”

“Don’t leave me, Kick. Don’t replace me with her. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be whoever you want, but don’t replace me. Please? I’ll die without you.”

I stroke her hair and sigh. She doesn’t mean it. This is the comedown talking. It’s the same every time, only most of the time she calls medaddyand begs for me to put her over my knee to show her how much I really love her. I don’t say anything; how can I? By allowing her to behave this way, by taking her the way I do, by being the only brother who will care for her after I’ve fucked her senseless, I know I’ve enabled her behaviour. I’ve allowed it. Encouraged it. I’ve become her crutch.

The problem is that I’ve never seen Ivy as a long-term fixture. I’ve never looked at anyone butherthat way. It’s not my intention to replace Ivy with the woman in my bed; I don’t even know if the woman in my bed is going to be stable enough to endure a friggin’ conversation, let alone a lifetime in the MC. One thing’s for sure, though—if she can’t abide the life, she’s as dead as she was in that warehouse, because there ain’t no way Prez is letting her leave this compound. I should have killed her. Instead, I’ve condemned her to a life of monsters, of turning to drugs to dull the pain. And while I didn’t do these things to Ivy, she came to the club of her own accord, I certainly haven’t helped her in any way. I gave her what she needed because it benefitted me. I could get my dick sucked and live out my wretched rape fantasies with someone who couldn’t get off any other way, but that’s not the same as helping her.

I sit on the worn carpet that reeks of years’ worth of soiled boots and smoke, and I rock her in my arms. I stroke her hair until she falls asleep, and then I scoop her up and tap on Tank’s door.

He opens it, a beer in one hand and an unimpressed look on his face. “What?”

“Can she sleep here?”

“If she’s finished fucking wailing like a little kid she can. I can’t do strung-out bitches with tears.”

“Don’t be a fuck-stick, man. She’s messed up.”

“She’s a drug addict, Kick. She might be better looking than the junkies you find on the street, but she’s still fucked every which way from Sunday if she doesn’t get a hit.”

“She means a lot to me, Tank.” I lay her down on the soiled covers and step back from the bed. “I don’t expect you to understand that shit, ’cause you’ve never cared about anyone but yourself—”

“I cared enough about you not to blow your head off when you said you’d gunned down our entire chapter of the Angels, didn’t I?”

I scrub at my beard. “I still haven’t worked out why that was. But yeah, I guess.”

“I get it, you have this hero complex with these bitches, but you gotta know when to cut your losses. She’s a great lay, but she’ll fuck with your head, brother. They all do. And neither one of these bitches is Lauren. We both know that.”

“I’m not fucking substituting,” I shout, and then I lower my voice when Ivy jolts in her sleep. “I know they’re not her. No one knows that more than me.”

“I’m just lookin’ out for you, brother.” He shakes his head and grins, pointing towards Ivy’s naked body. “You already got your hands full with this one. Another bitch in your bed isn’t going to help anyone.”

“Let me worry about who’s in my bed.”

He holds up his hands and flops down beside Ivy, slapping her bum. “She does have a fucking incredible arse, though.”

Tank unzips his fly and shoves his jeans down his legs. He climbs on top of her body, engulfing her tiny frame completely, and ignoring her sleepy protests as he spits on his dick and rubs himself between her arse cheeks.

“You gonna watch, brother? Or are you gonna get the fuck out?”

“Don’t kick her out this time, arsehole. Try being fuckin’ human for once.” I shake my head and retreat to my room.

Opening the door, I see she’s still asleep, so I deadbolt it behind me and set the keys on the table. I pick up a cup of cold, stale, black coffee and chug it down. It tastes like shit, so I screw the cap off of a bottle of Jack and chase the black filth with the burn of amber. I set it back on the table while the familiar click of my gun being cocked echoes through my small room. I laugh.Fucking ballsy bitches make me hot.

“Hands in the air, and turn around. Slowly,” the woman says through a scratchy throat. I do as she asks, mostly because I want to keep my spine intact, but also partly because bitches with guns are fucking hot, and I’m hard as a rock just thinking about the way she’s gonna look with a pistol trained on me.

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