AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gia couldn’t say how she’d be after a horrific attack like what had happened to Zelda, but she hoped it would be similar. She admired Zelda’s toughness, the way she used anger to climb over fear and hurt—more than admired; she understood it. Anger was a powerful tool for climbing out of trauma’s abyss.
When Zaxx came through the front door behind her father, Gia, with a full view of that door from her sofa sick bed, stared.
Dad smiled and came into the living room. “Hey, squirt.” He kissed her cheek. “How you doin’?”
“I’m okay. How are you? Any developments?”
He gave her one of his sly, crooked smiles and kissed the top of her head. “I’m gonna find your mom.” And with that, he walked back out of the room.
Zaxx stood where he was and watched Dad walk toward the back of the house.
Gia chuckled. “I think it’s safe to get close to me. You came here with him, so I don’t think he’s surprised.”
Zaxx didn’t laugh. “No, I know. I just ... that was weird, how he left. Like he doesn’t want to talk to you about shit.”
“He doesn’t. My dad thinks everything is club shit, and he still thinks knowing all the details could get us hurt.”
“Now I don’t know what I can tell you.”
“Whatever you want to tell me.”
“There’s actually not much yet. We decided to get rid of the bodies and set things up like they went off together for the weekend and never came back. So for now, we’re gonna play it like none of it happened.”
Gia sighed. In a truly just world, they would have been able to call in the sheriff and report the truth: two armed men had raped Zelda and broken into Zaxx’s house, killed his dog, and lain in wait. One of them had shot Gia when she’d brought Zelda home. She’d acted in self-defense.
But it wasn’t a truly just world, and the two armed men had been cops. Nobody involved trusted law enforcement to do the right thing; they’d been protecting those bad apples for years.
Short of bribing or leveraging the cops to let it go, which was where the express train to the dark life waited, the only alternative was to cover the whole damn thing up.
It made sense and was no doubt the right call, but she hated anything hanging over her head. This could hang over all their heads for years, or it could drop down and crush them any second.
That—the uncertainty, the lack of clear resolution—could also pull the club into the dark, she thought. The chance they could all get swept up in the killing of two cops (well, a cop and a half) might be the prybar that broke open the locked door between the Missouri Horde and outlaw life.
Or maybe they’d find a way to fix the lock and seal it tight again.
Uncertainty fucking sucked. Her nature was to find a big stick and poke whatever was hanging up there until it came down where she could deal with it. Probably not the best approach in this case. Gia sighed again, loudly this time.
Zaxx finally crossed the room and crouched beside the sofa. “Hey.” His voice was soft, intimate.
“Hey,” she echoed, suddenly a little shy. Or maybe guarded was a better term. The last time she’d let him close, he’d left her standing there, wide open, and walked away. Things were different now, but were they different enough?
He brushed her bangs aside. “How do you feel?”
“Sore, a little bored, but overall okay. How’s Zelda?”
“Surprisingly great, so far. I took her home this morning. Her story for our folks was she had a bad crash at derby practice—and they swallowed it whole. Didn’t ask another question, not even for details about this mythical crash. Pop offered her a weed soda and Mom made her some instant oatmeal, and that was that. They’re all doing a Lord of the Rings marathon now.”
He sighed and looked away, absently stroking Cheese, who lay on Gia’s belly. Crackers was stretched out across the back of the sofa. “I’m waiting for her to break, though. The way she was when I first found her, so broken and fragile, I keep seeing that in my head and wondering when this façade she’s put up will fall away. I need to make sure I’m with her when it does.”
Though their developing relationship had a gap nearly two months wide, and they’d barely known each other before this summer, Gia was gaining some insight into this man. He’d told her in May that his parents were more like older friends, and that when Zelda was born he’d stepped in to make sure she had more stability than he had, though he was only a kid himself.
Gia saw in his eyes the heavy load of responsibility Zaxx had taken on.
They were only eight years apart, but he’d been his little sister’s primary parent. They were both grown now—Zaxx was thirty and Zelda twenty-two—but he still felt responsible for her. He’d been throttled by guilt and grief all weekend, blaming himself.
He was still crouched before her; she reached down and picked up his hand. “Maybe she won’t break. Zelda seems pretty strong to me.”
That made him smile a little. “She is. She’s tough. But I don’t think she’s as tough as she thinks, and what they did—”
