TRIGGER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel Page 4

  Then something shifted, in his one good eye.

  The moment I saw that, I knew what was coming.

  And I knew what I’d have to do.

  My fingers closed around the handle of my Glock.

  Steel was too busy being mad to see.

  “You know what happens when boys like you act up?” he spit, voice gravelly and low, eye narrowed to a slit. “You know what happens?”

  “What,” I said through gritted teeth, knowing exactly what he thought he was going to do.

  “They get buried,” he said, and moved towards his own holster. But his fingers never got to close around the handle, never got to feel blindly for the trigger. My own gun fired, the sound deafening in the silent bar. Steel stared at me, mouth open in shock. Then, he smiled.

  Then, he laughed.

  The sound filled the room. First, it was a dry cackle, loud and hearty.

  Then, it got wet.

  And then it wasn’t laughter anymore, it was the sound of choking, the sound of gargling, and red liquid bubbled up out of his mouth, stained the spaced between his teeth, ran across his lips.

  And then he looked at me. One more time. He sputtered a little bit, a bubble of blood popping. It looked like he was smiling at me.

  And although it was the last thing I felt like doing, although I didn’t think my mouth muscles could ever possibly move that way again, somehow, I managed to smile back.

  “So that’s when the First Five-Year Plan was implemented. And that really started a lot of the perversion of Leninism…”

  “I just don’t get it,” Thomas said, shaking his head slowly.

  “Oh…um…well, see, right, now the government was forcing people to give up their farms and…”

  “No, no, I get it. But why did people let it happen? I mean, people aren’t dumb. And this was a people who’d already undergone so much bloodshed and shit to get what they wanted – to get a more, you know, equal and comradely society. So why did they just start letting themselves get pushed around again?”

  “Well, I suppose you could ask the same thing about Nazi Germany, too. Or even Korea, or Venezuela, or Mexico.”

  There was a pause as Thomas seemed to think this over. Then, he leaned forward, capturing Cass’ eyes in his and making her lean forward too, instinctively mimicking him.

  “Well, right, maybe this is the thing. So, in Germany, right, everyone had been starving for, like, years, right? Like didn’t that happen, after World War One, there was all that bullshit in the treaty of whatever, that made it so that Germany got super poor and everyone was just starving and cold all the time? So then here comes Hitler, and he says he’s got the solution, and people already aren’t thinking right because of how hard shit is, and they’re just willing to do whatever someone says if that person promises things will get better. And stuff does get better, for a while.

  So maybe in Russia, or, you know, the Soviet Union, it was like: we tried really hard, and a lot of us died, and there were wars and famines and misery everywhere, all so we could have this. So, like, even if people started thinking ‘maybe this isn’t right’, they still had to be like ‘well it’s what we want’, or else it would be more war, and all that they’d already been through wouldn’t have meant anything anymore. So everyone, like, lied to themselves, you know? Maybe? Oh, I don’t know. You’re smarter than me. Can you just give me the answer?”

  He’d been poking at the desk, using his hands and fingers to elaborate certain points, and Cass had been nodding along. Now, he seemed ashamed, cheeks turning red. He leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest.

  “No, I think you’re right. Or, I mean, there’s no right answer to that but…but I think you’ve got it pretty right. Thomas, you’re not stupid. Why do you always call yourself stupid? That was…that was, like, really smart.”

  “Nah, just the bullshit I think about when I’m not thinking about riding,” he said with a smile. “You’re the smart one. I mean, what the hell does Korea have to do with any of this? Or Venezuela or Mexico?”

  She laughed.

  “That’s a whole different unit altogether. You’ll probably learn about them next year. Or maybe not until college, actually.”

  He scoffed.

  “College? Yeah fuckin’ right. Waste of money,” he said. “Can you imagine me some college boy? Joining a frat or whatever? Nah, once I graduate from this garbage can, I’m gonna make me some money.”

  “Oh yeah? How’re you gonna do that?” Cass said, playing along. His eyes flashed, a wicked smile coming across his face.

  “I got high friends in places,” he said. “And that’s all I have to say in the matter. But, hey, maybe I’ll come visit you wherever you end up going to college. I bet you could get in anywhere.”

  Cass felt her cheeks flaming up, her heartbeat quickening. Don’t read too far into that, Cass, he’s just being nice because I’m helping him out, she thought to herself. But the feeling that swept through her was exciting. And the image that suddenly burst into her brain…well, that was exciting too. She imagined, in a vision that flickered on and off quick as a lightbulb on the fritz, was being held close to his chest, his face lowering down, their lips meeting…

  “You’re cute when you blush,” he said, ignorant of the full reason for that blush. “But I mean it. You got brains, you got beauty, you’ll be wearing matching pastel sweater sets with the Kappa Alpha Whatevers in no time.”

  “I’m not beautiful,” Cass mumbled, still reeling from the fantasy that invaded her mind. A mind that she took great lengths to keep free from such fantasies. She had always reasoned that thinking about something you’d never have was a waste of time, and a surefire way to feel worse about yourself than you really needed to.

  “Psh, who told you that? You got it all, girl,” Thomas said. When she managed to look him in the eye, her heart stopped in its tracks.

  “Thanks,” she said, praying that he couldn’t see what was happening behind her blue eyes. He shrugged and leaned forward over the open textbook once more.

  “So, anyway, the First Five-Year Plan…” he said. Cass mentally shook herself of the persistent idea of Thomas’ lips closing over her own and pulled her eyes back to the textbook, as well.

  “Right, so…”

  Cass

  The thing about reality is that it’s relative. In the muggy days of my illness – when life was all shadows and laughter in the distance – I was, somehow, as happy as I’d ever been in my life.

  Perhaps because of the way I’d wake up and find Jennie holding my hand. Not entirely surprising; more surprising was when I’d wake up and find my father stroking my hair, sober – somehow, I could tell he was sober. I couldn’t tell you the last time I’d seen my father sober.

  Of course, I call this time “the time I was sick” or “my illness”, but it wasn’t. A sickness or an illness happens on accident. And what was happening to me wasn’t accidental. Not at all.

  Which makes the memory of my father stroking my hair somewhat, though not entirely, less pleasant. Somewhere, even when I know that he was the one making me sick (I don’t know what he was using, or how he got it), I still hold onto that memory of his sad, sad eyes looking down on me, his big clumsy hand in my hair, his mouth moving in words I was too fevered and dazed to even begin to understand. I imagine, though, that he was saying sorry.

  Sorry, Cass, sorry, sorry, sorry.

  But I was happy because for once, I didn’t feel like myself. The bad thoughts that plagued me all the time, every day, were gone, replaced with a delirium that was soothing in its detachment. I wasn’t Cass the screw up, the fat girl, the forever alone loser…I was just a body, a sick body, and a mind that lagged and swelled with feverous dreams.

  What does that tell you about my life, that I was happiest when I was so sick I couldn’t even walk to the bathroom on my own?

  When the fog lifted – for the most part, at least – we were in the backseat of my Uncle Kevin’s beat-up old Co
rolla. We were down by the water, in an old industrial neighborhood that always smelled like vanilla pastries, too sweet, cloying. I knew the area only very vaguely.

  “Jennie,” I said, the words happening even before my consciousness caught up to me. “Jennie.”

  My mouth was the Dead Sea, her name sandpaper as it croaked its way out of me.

  “Jennie’s fine, Cass,” Uncle Kevin said from the front seat. “Jennie’s with the girls upstairs.”

  ‘The girls upstairs’ were what we called the kindly older women who were always ready, willing, and eager to watch Jennie when needed. Sometimes, I thought, they were a bit too eager. When I had to go to my part-time job as a cocktail waitress on weekends, or had to tutor someone after school, or other miscellaneous tasks, they happily opened their home to Jennie.

  They loved her; who didn’t, though? My father didn’t like them, called them “carpet-munching old dykes”, but he certainly couldn’t watch Jennie when he was passed out in his underwear in front of the TV, and the little bit of money my after-school tutoring and weekend job brought in were good for the bills.

  I think they felt sorry for me. I wished they’d been around when I was growing up. Once, when I’d lingered upstairs when picking Jennie up, loathe to return to the hell that was our apartment, one of the “girls”, Jackie, had talked to me about how much they’d wanted a child. She had been idly stroking Jennie’s hair as she stared at the large tropical aquarium in the living room. Jackie’s eyes had drifted down to Jennie, a sad smile on her face.

  I almost wanted to tell them to take Jennie, thought she might be better off living with these two mild-mannered, well-educated, sweet-as-pie, women. But that wasn’t right. Jennie belonged at home, with her family…as fucked up as that family might have been.

  At any rate, my brain processed that information and settled itself slightly; then, I wondered where we were going. To a doctor, I presumed. Maybe Uncle Kevin was going to pay for it. Maybe I was that sick.

  “Doctor?” I moaned. My father’s face appeared, drunken and red, as he peered over his shoulder at me.

  “Yes, Cass, we’re goin’ to a doctor,” he said, voice thick with the lie. Uncle Kevin shot him a disgusted look. I passed out again, my brain too tired to do anything but believe what I knew was never going to be true.

  I can’t tell you of all the things that happened in between my father gently shaking me awake. I saw where we were. I tried to run. My Uncle Kevin had disappeared, leaving my father and I alone. He slipped a rope around me, like a dog…

  And then the boy, his eyes kind and gentle, and his promise…

  And then the hands, rough and ugly and cracked and the breath in my mouth like a plague and my body given up entirely like it was someone else’s, not mine anymore, not mine at all, my mind raising, lifting upwards, away from it all as my hands beat against his chest, happy now to escape it…

  And then the gunshot. And the streaming blood. And the bright rose of death erupting against his shirt. And then falling sideways into his arms…

  When I woke up again, we were moving. We were moving fast. In a car, not my Uncle’s car. The city was zooming past us like we were flying on a jet plane. It was impossible, how fast we were moving…I looked over, blinking wildly, my head throbbing. It wasn’t my father in the driver’s seat. It was him, that boy, the one I knew…

  “Thomas?” I croaked out, the word falling like a spineless fish from my mouth, seeming to flop around on the floor, dead and useless. What did it matter that I could remember his name? What did anything matter anymore? I looked down at myself, clad all in white. Whose dress was this, anyway?

  “It’s Trigger, now,” he said, only half his mouth moving as he spoke. He barely glanced at me over his shoulder, one hand set on the steering wheel, the other on the clutch. We were moving so damn fast.

  “Where…what just happened?” I asked, feeling my cheeks damp and puffy from tears, my nose stuffed up, my throat heavy and clogged. My head pounded. My heart ached. My hands shook. I was a mess. I wished he didn’t see me like this. The absurdity of that thought was almost enough to make me smile. What did I care that he saw me like this? I had bigger problems than a handsome boy I once tutored seeing me in a sorry state. Way, way bigger problems.

  Like the fact that that boy was speeding off to nowhere, with me in tow, and no sign of letting me go or telling me where we were going or…

  “Upstate, for now, then Vermont, I guess,” he said. The straight answer nearly knocked my socks off. So did the fact that he expected me to just go along with it. I mean, I was right out of it, that was for sure, but…

  “Um,” I said, though admittedly it came out more as a moan. “Why? Go? Me? Why I go? I- ugh!”

  Why weren’t my brain and mouth cooperating? I tried to shake the persistent mist. I tried to shake it all off. I tried, and tried, but all I could see was the wound blaring up red, Jennie’s face, my father’s hands on the rope, my body, white flesh exposed…and none of that made talking any easier.

  “Maybe you should go back to sleep,” he said. Thomas. Trigger. Whatever. He made a pretty good point; more sleep wasn’t the worst idea. But…but I couldn’t…because…even as the thoughts went through my head, I felt my eyes closing by the inch. Because Pop…no…not Pop…Jennie…because Jennie…because Jennie…

  But it didn’t keep me awake. Instead, it just made me dream of her. Her hand slipping into mine, her face, cherubic and small, looking up at me. Smiling, smiling, smiling.

  And then letting go.

  When I woke up again, we weren’t in the city anymore. I had no idea where we were. But we sure as hell weren’t in the city. Panic clutched my heart before anything else, and even before my eyes were open I was kicking at the air, screaming, flailing my arms around.

  “Shit, Cass, shit! Stop! You gotta stop, Cass!” Thomas yelled, throwing one hand out to try and still me while the other hand desperately tried to stop the car from swerving all around the country road.

  “Let me out! Take me back! I need to get to Jennie! I need to…”

  “Stop, shit, oh my God, you need to stop. Who the hell is Jennie? You gotta know – I couldn’t leave you there. Not with your asshole father. You passed out, Cass. And besides…” his voice trailed off. I stared at him, mouth open, looking dumb as could be, I’m sure. Not that I could really care about looking dumb in front of him now. As the day’s events slowly began to filter back into my mind, I could remember, all too clearly, how much of me he’d seen not too long ago. The memory dragged up the memory of that old man’s dirty hands on me and…

  He’d asked me to call him Trigger, and after what I’d just seen him do, I didn’t have any problem remembering to call him that.

  “Jennie is my sister,” I spat out, closing my eyes tight, the words chasing the memory away. “She’s only a little kid, I need to get back to her.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Trigger groaned. “If I’d known that…shit. Where…shit! Shit, shit, shit!”

  “What about my father?” I asked, suddenly realizing that he could be dead – or worse, still alive.

  “Your father,” Trigger said, looking at me sideways. “Is probably in the back of a police car right now.”

  I felt sick.

  “Why…”

  “I tried to make it look like he did it,” he said, sighing. “I thought….I don’t know what I thought. Dammit, dammit, dammit!” he slammed his hands against the steering wheel. The car swerved slightly, sickeningly. I was nauseous enough as it was…

  “Tomas – what…what just happened? I haven’t even…oh, my God,” I found myself saying, my voice softer than I meant it to be, my throat closing up painfully, tears flooding the backs of my eyes. Reality was crashing down around me. Life itself was crashing down around me. My father…had tried…to sell me? To pay off a debt? What debt? What…

  “Your father’s a dick, and the guy I work for is an even bigger dick,” Trigger said hurriedly, as if eager to get off the topic
. “Was. Was an even bigger dick.”

  This boy killed someone, I thought. And that made me think of him, as I knew him, a year prior. I’d been assigned by the school to tutor him. And when I first saw him, I’d been terrified. He was so damn handsome, and me with my lifetime of bad self-esteem, I just about shit my pants thinking about what he must have thought of me. Those green eyes, that long hair pulled back into a tiny bun…the way he moved his body, even, was like some sort of wild cat prowling through a jungle.

  But he’d been…sweet. More than sweet. He’d been charming. Hell, he’d been flirty. And I, too shy and awkward to do anything about it, had just taken it all in with a goofy smile on my face.