Page 8 of Brutal for It
But the feeling burns up as quick as it comes, because my priority is the little woman on the linoleum who has ruined me for anyone else.
I meant what I said back at the clubhouse. I meant it in my bones.
She is mine.
I’ll move heaven and earth to show her that she deserves a different life. I heard enough coming through that door to stitch the ugly picture together. Ezra’s venom as he didn’t deny her accusations. Jami’s voice, steady and broken at the same time, pieces of truth tossed like glass on a kitchen floor.
All the years going for high after high? Of course she chased it. Anyone would when every waking minute is a live wire of memory you can’t un-hear and a touch you can’t scrub off.
Jami’s eyelids flutter, roll, and then she’s gone, passed out. Fear rushes straight through me.
“Jami!” I drop to my knees, pry her from Jenni, scoop her into my arms. She’s small but heavy with the kind of deadweight that makes every muscle scream you’re too late. I can’t be too late.
Her head lolls against my bicep. My shirt soaks red where her chest pressed against me. I need her to open those pretty green eyes. I need her to know I’ve got her, that there’s a different ending to this story.
“She needs a doc!” I bark, already moving for the door.
My voice shocks the room into motion. Tripp’s already mid-stride, big hands steady, eyes cold. “Called in Doc Kelly already. She’ll be at the clubhouse waiting.”
Crunch pivots toward Jenni embracing her. “Keys,” he says, voice gone soft somehow. “Need your car, baby. Doc’s waiting on Jami. Keys.”
“In the car!” Red yells from the doorway, reading the scene like he always does, already two moves ahead. Crunch bolts, boots pounding down the trailer steps, and I’m right behind him, Jami in my arms, the night air smacking my face clean.
Tripp and the club will clean up the mess here. Doc Kelly will have one of the duplex crash pads set up and waiting for us.
The yard smells like pine and diesel and the copper tang of blood close to the nose. Somewhere behind us, the past finally stopped breathing.
Crunch wrenches open the back door of Jenni’s sedan, reaches to take Jami. I shake my head. “I’ve got her.”
He doesn’t argue. He never argues when a decision feels like a vow. I climb into the back seat with Jami bleeding all over me, cradling her like she’s a rare thing that might fly away. The door slams. Crunch slings himself into the driver’s seat as Jenni gets into the passenger seat trying to keep her eyes trained to her sister, the engine flares to life, and we’re gone, gravel spit like buckshot.
One of the brothers will take my bike. One of the brothers will handle the mess we leave. That’s what brotherhood is, carrying the load the other guy can’t, no questions asked.
The road blurs under streetlights. I press my palm to Jami’s cheek. “Stay with me, baby. Hey—hey, Jameson, look at me. You hear me?”
Nothing. Her chest stutters shallow. Panic knocks around in my ribs, wild. I count breaths, mine and hers. I press my fingers above the wound and feel them slick. The car smells like iron and gas station air freshener and my own fear. I can’t lose her. Not like this, not in the same night she finally tore her chains off.
We blow past the last gas station on the edge of Haywood’s Landing and hit the country road out to the compound. Pines turn into shadows, then the gates, then home. The Hellions compound has always been a safe house, a church, a war room. And for nights like this, it’s a hospital.
Doc Kelly’s already on the duplex porch, scrubs on, hair braided. Head Case, her man, stands beside her, hands steady, eyes that soft, scary kind of calm only shrinks and snipers have. Floodlights wash the drive pale.
Crunch brakes hard. Doors fly. I’m out with Jami and the world narrows down to two things: her breaths and the front door. Kelly meets us with a gurney and a handful of profanity I take as a good sign.
“Inside,” she orders. “Now.”
We move like a machine. Head Case peels the bloody fabric away, eyes moving faster than his hands. Kelly checks pupils, vitals, and moves like it’s another day at the office for her. I hear numbers, blood pressure, oxygen levels, words like clavicle and fragment and internal. I hate every word because words can be tricks. I want facts. I want yes or no. I want alive.
“Let me in,” I growl when they wheel her toward the back room. Head Case plants a hand on my chest.
“Tommy, you don’t want to be in there,” he says low. “You want us to be in there.”
The truth of it hurts more than my rib did the time Red caught me bare-knuckle. I back up. “Fix her.”
He doesn’t say I’ll try. He nods once. “We will.”
The door swallows them. I’m left staring at my own reflection in the living room mirror—gray eyes I got from my grandfather, Tank’s jawline making it clear he’s my dad, and blood on my shirt that isn’t mine, but it belongs to me all the same. My hands shake. I don’t like that.
I turn and drive myself into motion because standing still is where the doubts live. The common area of the duplex is a tight, neutral thing—the kind of space you make when you know it has to hold grief and relief, both. There’s a couch, a coffee table, two chairs. A coffee maker sits like a promise in the corner. The TV is off. Everything hums—the building, the lights, my nerves.
