Still Standing Page 8

  “Is this your place?” I asked.

  “No,” Lorie answered, smiling at me over her shoulder. “I wish. It’s Buck’s.”

  I nodded then asked, “Um…where is Buck?”

  Not that I wanted him to be there. He was pretty angry with me as I recalled. Him not being there was probably good.

  “He’s seein’ to business,” Ink stated, turning and moving to me to set a plate of buttered crackers in front of me.

  I took one and nipped at it. It tasted awesome so I shoved it into my mouth.

  Then, with mouth full, I looked up at Ink and said, “Thanks,” while reaching for another cracker.

  “Don’t mention it,” he replied while grinning at me.

  “Can I ask…uh, what business Buck’s seeing to?” I queried.

  Lorie looked at Ink. Ink looked at Lorie. And then Lorie went back to the saucepan and Ink turned his attention to me.

  “Clary, you woke up in his bed at the Dive,” he told me like that was an answer to my question.

  “Um…yes?” I replied as a question, since I didn’t have an answer.

  “In the morning,” he stated.

  I’d shoved another cracker into my mouth, so I chewed, swallowed and then prompted on a repeated, “Yes?”

  “Baby, she doesn’t get it. Look at her,” Lorie said softly from the stove, pouring the milk she’d put in the empty soup can into the saucepan.

  “Look at me?” I asked.

  “It’s not like you’ve been to a lot of cookouts at the Dive,” she said on a smile pointed my way.

  This was true. In fact, I’d been to none.

  Thus, I was still confused.

  “Sorry?”

  “This is the deal,” Ink cut in, having brought the sleeve of crackers and the tub of butter to the counter where I was. He started to slather more butter on crackers as I kept eating my way through them. “You woke up in Buck’s bed, in the morning. Women don’t do that.”

  This was surprising considering Ink himself indicated to me that Buck had a goodly number of women.

  “They don’t?”

  “No, they don’t,” Ink stated.

  “Um…okay,” I muttered, now sounding as confused as I was.

  Lorie approached the counter and looked at me. “Hon, he’s a man and he likes to have fun, but once he’s done havin’ fun, his girls go. They don’t spend the night. He doesn’t wake up with them. And none of ’em ever made her way up here.”

  Oh.

  Wow.

  “Really?” I whispered, and Lorie smiled big and happy at me.

  “Really,” she replied and walked back to the soup.

  “But,” I started, “have any of them been beat up by a sociopathic drug kingpin?”

  “Nope,” Ink answered, dropping a cracker onto the plate, which I immediately snatched up. “But some a’ them have been worked over. He might take his time to clean ’em up, but he never sent them to Lefty.”

  “Or brought them here,” Lorie reiterated from the stove, stirring but facing me. “We figure this means you’re his old lady.”

  “Moves fast,” Ink muttered.

  “His old lady?” I asked.

  “His woman, babe,” Ink answered. “That’s why your ass is here. That’s why he tore outta his room this mornin’ pissed as all hell. That’s why he made the callout to the boys and we rode to your apartment only to find that old woman tied up in it, which made him lose his fuckin’ mind. And that’s why he’s out right now, takin’ care of business.”

  Buck tore out of his bedroom pissed as hell, and when he found Mrs. Jimenez, this meaning he’d come after me, he lost his mind?

  “He lost his mind?” I asked.

  “You don’t wanna know,” Ink muttered.

  “I kinda do,” I told him.

  His blue eyes locked on mine. “Babe, it was me who let you walk out of there this morning.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “Sorry, it seems I got you in trouble,” I said.

  “It’s all right, darlin’,” he replied quietly. “Buck wasn’t really pissed at me. If he was, I’d probably look like you.”

  Oh my.

  Moving on.

  “And this business you were talking about, that would be?”

  “Clary, someone took their fists to you,” Ink said by way of an answer.

  “But—”

  “A woman wakes up in Buck’s bed, she doesn’t drive away from Aces and get beat to shit, hon,” Lorie put in. “No way. No fuckin’ way. That shit happens, a message needs to be sent.”

  Oh God.

  “So he’s sending a message to Esposito?” I whispered.

  “Yeah, babe, and that message, he’ll deliver himself,” Ink told me, his voice rumbling in a scary way.

  I didn’t know what to make of this.

  Any of it.

  Then I thought of Esposito and blurted, “Will Buck get hurt?”

  Ink grinned again and this one was different.

  A lot different.

  “Don’t you worry ’bout, Buck, Clary,” he stated firmly.

  As firm as he stated that, I knew Esposito pretty well.

  Therefore, I suggested, “Perhaps we should call him.”

  Lorie giggled, and Ink grinned again, back to good old boy biker.

  He took a cracker, popped it into his mouth and replied around it, “Thinkin’ he should stay focused, babe.”

  I watched him chew, thinking maybe he was right.

  6

  I Got Your Back

  I woke up to voices.

  “…she doin’?”

  This was Buck talking quietly.

  “Had some crackers, soup, called her girl about five dozen times. We could tell she wasn’t feelin’ good, so Lorie got her some pills and we got her to lie down in front of the TV. She was out in half an hour.”

  This was Ink, also talking quietly.

  “She’s cute, Buck. And sweet.”

  This was Lorie being nice, as I’d learned Lorie was.

  I turned under the blanket Lorie had thrown over me on the couch and pushed up. Putting my forearm on the backrest, setting my chin on my arm, I saw they were all standing by the front door. And they all had their eyes on me.

  I also saw that Buck looked to be in one piece, no visible marks, no blood, no bullet holes.

  He further didn’t look ready to release venom anymore.

  And lastly, it was dark.

  Night had fallen.

  “Hi,” I said softly.

  “Hey, Clary,” Ink replied.

  “Hey there, hon,” Lorie said.

  Buck didn’t respond to me, he turned to them and stated, “Thanks, later.”

  This obviously was a verbal hint to get out that both of them caught instantly. Lorie walked to her purse on the counter, Ink waited for her and I watched as Ink slapped Buck’s upper shoulder stoutly and Lorie waved to me.

  I waved back.

  Then they were out the door.

  Buck turned to me and I sat motionless as he walked up to the back of the couch and crouched so we were eye to eye.

  “Hey,” he said gently.

  “Are you still mad at me?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer at first. His hand came up to cup my cheek and, feather-light, he slid his thumb along the swelling on my cheekbone then down to the cut on my lip where it came to rest.

  His brown eyes watched his thumb’s movements, then they came to mine.

  “No,” he finally answered.

  Well, at least that was good.

  “I’m starved, Toots. You feelin’ up to keepin’ me company in the kitchen while I make a sandwich, or you wanna lie here?”

  Before I could control it, my mouth replied, “I’ll keep you company in the kitchen.”

  I heard the roar of a Harley indicting Ink and Lorie were on their way home as Buck straightened and started to round the couch. I carefully rolled to the other side and threw the
blanket off. But before I could swing my legs over the side, Buck had an arm around my waist and one under my knees. He lifted me and started toward the kitchen.

  “I can walk,” I informed him, sliding an arm around his shoulders.

  “Tomorrow you’ll need to move around so you don’t get stiff. Tonight, you need to let your body rest.”

  His body had probably weathered more fists hitting it than mine, though I couldn’t imagine anyone getting the better of him like they did me. Still, I figured he’d know, so I gave in.

  He set me gently on my behind on the counter then he put a hand on either side of me and leaned in.

  “You want a sandwich?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I answered.

  He pulled away, which I didn’t like all that much, considering I liked seeing his face that close, since it was a very handsome face.

  He moved to the fridge, and I watched while saying, “Tia isn’t answering her phone.”

  “That would be because it’s in her bedroom,” Buck replied, and my watching became staring as he turned from the fridge with bags of deli items and a jar of mayo.

  “It’s in her bedroom?”

  “Yeah,” Buck answered, dumping the stuff on the counter and reaching for a loaf of bread.

  “You were in her bedroom?”

  His hands—hands, incidentally, that had skin torn and angry-looking at his knuckles—worked the plastic wrap on the bread.

  “You wanted her, we looked for her. But, babe…” He hesitated as he looked at me. “We didn’t find her.”

  Oh no.

  My heart clutched.

  “Did you find Esposito?” I asked.

  He nodded, looking down at the bread. “Oh yeah, found him.”

  Oh dear.

  That explained the torn and angry-looking skin on his knuckles.

  “What happened?”

  “Thinkin’ Esposito is not gonna fuck with you anymore, Toots,” he muttered, lining up four slices of bread in a square.

  This was good news that didn’t hold a lot of detail for which I was grateful.

  So I got to the important stuff. “And Tia?”

  “Tia is in the wind,” he replied, reaching to open a drawer and get a knife.

  “In the wind?”

  He looked at me. “Packed in a hurry, car’s gone, found a tracking device thrown in a corner of the garage, ’spect it’s from her car.” He stared at me for two long seconds then finished cautiously, “She left you to him, Clara.”

  I closed my eyes and bit my lip, which hurt (again) so I stopped doing that, made a mental note not to do it again, then opened my eyes and whispered, “No. We made plans to make a break for it.”

  His brows drew together, and I kept talking.

  “I’d talked her into it. We were supposed to meet at a 7 Eleven. I didn’t show. She’s probably out there somewhere and scared out of her mind.”

  “You were gonna make a break for it?” he asked.

  “You said that was what we should do. I thought that was good advice. So that’s what I decided to do, and I talked Tia into going with me. Now she’s out there and—”

  He put the knife down and moved to me, standing in front of me and leaning into his hands on the counter on either side of my hips again.

  “Babe, I told you that was what you should have done, not what you should do. That was an option before you got tied up in Esposito’s mess. It isn’t an option now. Until I explained it otherwise, Esposito thought he owned you. He thinks that, you bolt, he goes to the end of the Earth to haul you right back.”

  “He thinks he owns Tia,” I told him.

  “No, his shit is centered on you.”

  “What?”

  “Clara, honey, you’re his toy. He plays with you. He gets off on it. She’s nothin’ to him. She was, but he played with her and broke her and now his interest has shifted. Unless she walks into a room and reminds him she exists, he forgets. He’s got dozens of girls. He just made her into one of them. So now, sensin’ your vulnerability, homin’ in on it, usin’ it and puttin’ Clara Kirk out to work for him, that gets his rocks off.”

  I stared into his eyes as my heart slid up into my throat.

  “My name is Clara Delaney,” I whispered around the lump, though it wasn’t, not really.

  Delaney was my adoptive parents’ name and I barely remembered them.

  The fact was, I didn’t know what my name was.

  “Not to him,” he whispered back.

  I pressed my lips together (that didn’t feel good either, but I kept doing it) and looked to the side.

  He was right and Mrs. Jimenez was right. There was a lot of bad in the world and I attracted more than my fair share of it.

  I felt Buck’s presence leave me and I saw him go back to his bread. I watched him slather an alarming amount of mayonnaise on all four pieces before I spoke again.

  “Maybe we should talk about Esposito,” I suggested, even if I didn’t want to.

  “You’re clear. That statement was made.”

  “And what about the Club?”

  He glanced at me. “Come again?”

  “You’ve made an enemy of Esposito today, Buck.”

  He went back to his sandwich making and did it talking.

  “While I was sharin’ how I felt about what he did to you, Chap was with the guys who pull Esposito’s strings, sharing with them whose bed you were in last night. They understood the situation. Might be luck, since we hear word they haven’t been happy with Esposito’s games for a while. Might be they just get it. Probably both mixed with the fact these guys are guys who like focus, not dealin’ with problems that shouldn’t be problems in the first place. Esposito is a liability and proved that further today, seein’ as you don’t touch the woman of a biker, ever, and absolutely not like that.”

  Okay, well then, that seemed all good.

  Though, “the woman of a biker” comment was perplexing.

  I decided to sidestep that, because…

  Priorities.

  “I’m worried about Tia.”

  “I’ll eat. I’ll make a few calls, get the word out Aces High wants her. We’ll find her.”

  This made me feel relief.

  “Thanks,” I murmured.

  Buck turned his head and grinned at me.

  No teeth, but still, his full lips framed by that beard tipped up was also pretty terrific.

  Who was I kidding?

  It was fabulous.

  He then piled an alarming amount of shaved roast beef on the sandwiches.

  “It’s weird,” I remarked while he was doing this, “that she didn’t take her phone.”

  “You can track someone through their phone. She knew enough to find and dump the device on her car, she knew to leave her phone behind. Smart.”

  This was partly good, partly bad.

  I didn’t want Esposito to find her (once he, um…recovered), but that also meant we couldn’t.

  Further, it meant I couldn’t communicate with her and she had no idea where I was.

  I watched him put two slices of muenster cheese on the beef, then topped the cheese with the other slices of bread, pressed in, picked one up and handed it to me. Then he went back to the fridge, returning the mayo and deli products and coming back with a beer and a Coke. He popped the top of the Coke for me, twisted off the cap of the beer and flicked it into the garbage.

  I stared at my humungous sandwich.

  “This is a big sandwich, Buck,” I noted.

  “Yep,” he agreed, downing a gulp of beer then putting it on the counter and picking up his own sandwich.

  I stared at a big splodge of mayo coming out the side.

  “With a lot of mayo,” I went on.

  He took a huge bite, his eyes on me. I watched as he chewed and swallowed.

  Then he said, “Babe, like I told you, you gotta live more.”

  “I tried that,” I reminded him quietly. “It didn’t work very well for me.”

&
nbsp; His eyes grew dark and intense in an instant and it was fascinating as well as a bit scary.

  “Don’t do that, Toots,” he said softly.

  “What?”

  “Twist yesterday to bad in your head. Don’t do it.”

  “He knew I spent the night with you,” I explained. “He heard about it. It made him angry. He said it was disrespect. He said…”

  I stopped because the memories were coming back in a flood. Esposito’s rage. His bad guy holding me while Esposito took that rage out on me physically.

  And all this was a lot, so I couldn’t go on speaking.

  “You laughed last night,” Buck broke into my thoughts. “You smiled. You opened up. You told me straight out you hadn’t laughed in a long time, darlin’. What we had was good. What he did with it is whacked. That’s on him. Don’t let him twist that. You do that, he beats you a different way.”

  He was right.

  He was right and I liked it that he thought what we had was good.

  I liked that a lot.

  So I turned to my sandwich and took a bite. It hurt to open my mouth that wide, but it couldn’t be denied it tasted great.

  As I was chewing, I looked back at Buck to see he was grinning down at the counter before he took his own bite.

  He looked handsome grinning. He also looked handsome eating.

  God, I was such a dork!

  Time to put my mind to other things.

  “Did you see my purse at my apartment?” I asked and his attention returned to me.

  “Wasn’t lookin’ for your purse, babe, was lookin’ for you.”

  “So you didn’t see it?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because Mrs. Jimenez gave me her nest egg so Tia and I could go on the lam. I need to give it back to her.”

  He took a slug of beer and set it on the counter. “When the boys go get your shit tomorrow, I’ll tell them to look for it.”

  After he said that, he took another huge bite of his sandwich.

  But I was blinking at him.

  And this blinking was repeated and rapid.

  “When the boys go to get my shit?”

  He swallowed and said, “Yeah,” then took another big bite.

  “Why are they getting my shit?”

  He replied through a full mouth, “Bringin’ it up here, Toots.”